Toss in that computers anagram better than people and it sort of takes the shine off. LAUAN is good enough for people who actually buy plywood, but not for the NYTimes wordsmiths.Īnagrams being more about letter play than word play, they really aren’t my thing. They prefer to do their business in the lumber aisles where I saw LAUAN plywood for sale, available in 2x2, 2x4, 4x4 and 4x8 sizes, of various thicknesses. Yesterday it was so hot I had to take my dogs to Lowes for their evening walk. Yesterday neither LUAN or LAUAN were acceptable. Having a large vocabulary doesn't help - the list of acceptable words are curated to omit obscure words to, in their exact words, "give everyone a chance". The only get a high score is to try adding the suffixes or prefixes to see if they work. Yesterday we had HUMAN, then UNHUMAN, HUMANLY, UNHUMANLY all as valid words, even though Google auto-correct and I agree that only two of four have been used in HUMAN conversation or writing in the past century. The trick scoring well is to see what prefixes or suffixes can be formed, then randomly apply them to words to see if you can get two or three or four for one. I cringed because I've started doing the spelling bee game on NYTimes. The envelope containing the winner of the Oscar is unsealed on stage. I also cringed at UNSEAL, though not because UNSEAL is a bad word. If you're going to do city anagrams, why not city specific anagrams of the city - ROTTEN TRENTON, or DESMOINES IS DEMONS? My "f*&*in Anagrams of Cities!?!? What kind of bullshit theme is that!?" tirade last night woke my wife up and caused her to run downstairs in terror, wondering what calamity had happened at midnight. I wonder how Alex pronounces his last name. I make chocolate CHEESE CAKE so I never have to worry about berries. I'm with Don't put berries on CHEESE CAKE. I've tried putting them over my face but it's hard to breathe. ![]() I was picturing the old westerns when the hombre in a sombrero would cover his face with a kerchief. ![]() I really get smart when I go to the bathroom. What always works for me when I'm In that kind of rut is to get up off my BUTT and go to another room. ![]() I didn't know BRET whatshisname nor NOAA. I was looking for some type of UFO and then I'm thinking of some sort of disease. AHA anagram.Ībsolute favorite clue and the one that held me up was 32D-> They hid beneath the surface = U BOATS. When I got to HASTEN ATHENS I let out a little squeak. I had the left coast done and could not figure out the right. So glad Matthew subbed for because every single puzzle I like, he doesn't.Ĭluing made this hard for me didn't care. Go try Patrick Berry's New Yorker puzzle from Monday and see how far the bar has fallen at the Times.ĬLEVER.Loved this puzzle. I apologize for being grumpier than usual lately (yesterday I even fell back into anonymity to make my acid remarks) but this week has served up nothing but weak puzzles so far. An egg can be "extra large" but no one would call it obese.Īs for UNSEAL, I'll give it a pass. I'm assuming it refers to Athens, Georgia which while technically a "city" is hardly a "metropolis." And the verb HASTEN really only would apply to traffic or an activity, but hardly suits a location.Įxtra Large for OBESE is also pushing it. Having three of the themers use the S form of a verb and only one, HASTEN, being the outlier, weakens it. Yes, it's cute and has some AHA moments, or perhaps HAHA is more apt. It's nice to have Matt stop by again but I was really COUNTing on Rex to tear this puzzle a new TUSH. The gifs I find distracting, and I hate as a reader being forced to parse run-on sets of characters like radio producer/baseball fan/whale enthusiast, which requires me to go back and figure out how far on each of side of the slash I have to make an association. Regarding UNSEAL, it was certainly something that was done with letters back when people used wax seals to close them. That lady was a real KHAN-do person, that's for sure! I learned, too, that Hellen Keller was a co-founder of the ACLU. But all in all I considered it a good work-out, with some descent fill. Then, finally, I noticed the anagrams and was impressed.Īll that toing and froing made the going medium-challenging for me, therefore. ![]() So when I started noticing the city names (first, like at LAS VEGAS), I was at first disappointed. By the way, when non-Anglophones ask me what distinguishes American English from British, Australian or New Zealand English, I usually answer, "Well, besides spelling, and subtle differences in the meaning of words like 'quite', I'd say Yiddish." I'm not even Jewish, but I love how that language has enriched our vocabulary, or at least the vocabulary of people living in the mid-Atlantic area. Like DIAGNOSES A khalas (disease), or COUNTS TUChes (butt). That's what I thought this puzzle was about initially.
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