xnerdies

The Faerie Queene.

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One of the problems with doing a comp lit degree in three non-English languages + Shakespeare is that you see a clue like today’s: “The Faerie Queene” woman

And first think – oh, is this the Midsummer Night’s Dream queen… Titania? No, that’s more than five letters.

And then you get 4 of the five letters — IR_NA — and instinctively drop in I because that’s how I spell Irina. And look, the Wikipedia article doesn’t even mention any Irena!

The Faerie Queene frontispiece.jpg
“The poem was a clear effort to gain court favour, and as a reward Elizabeth granted Spenser a pension for life amounting to £50 a year, though there is no further evidence that Elizabeth I ever read any of the poem.”

But then you can’t make out what E_UDIPARFUM is. Although I’m pretty sure it’s ADONAI for the Hebrew god. Although still have no idea why ONEA is fit for military service.

Ok, so here’s who “Irena” is:


Irena, also spelled Eirena, is a ruler whose kingdom is besieged by Grantorto in Book 5. Artegall restores her rule.
Hmm, dubious at best.

Anyway, a sad performance for a Monday at 11:03, but my excuse is that it’s the 4 day Easter weekend here and although I finished Friday’s puzzle early Saturday morning, I barely got Saturday’s puzzle started, and didn’t even open Sunday’s. But hey, that’s 126 Mondays in a row!

PANDA PLUS SEX

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Greetings from Sabiha Gokcen International Airport! I’m here traveling through the Corona epidemic to meet Carol in Athens, Greece. From there, we will travel back to our ancestral homeland of Tbilisi. Our plans include watching the sunset here, running/cycling the route of the original marathon, and eating cheese. Self care is crucial in in the time of Corona!

Current POV

I like it when constructors incorporate the design of the grid with the theme. And I especially like it when the grid is a cute, smiley panda greeting me when I open the puzzle. Wouldn’t it be funny, though, if the grid looked like today’s, and then turned out to be a theme-less puzzle?

Image result for baby panda happy
🙂

I liked a lot of the long answers in this puzzle, too. SPIRIT ANIMAL, NEAPOLITAN, BLACK AND WHITE, BOW AND ARROW, NOT ENOUGH, and PESCETARIAN* were all more or less first passers for me! That’s how I managed to set a Friday record of 20:20.

*By the way, what’s the deal with the spelling of PESCETARIAN? I thought it should be PESCATARIAN, but was pretty confident in SEA (“Title setting for a Hemingway novel, with ‘the'”). A quick google tells me that people have argued about its proper spelling on a variety of message boards. So, I suppose that as a staunch descriptivist, I’ll have to accept that it could be either.

The puzzle, though, had a few ugly answers. LEA SALONGA? Who is that? What’s a FEN? I want to name my future robot wife OZMA. HIE means to go quickly? Huh?

Other holdups for me included DORSAL for DISTAL, every variation of ESAS except for the correct one, and a complete blank on the what NSC could be.

Image result for fen meaning
Fen

Well, that’s pretty much all the wisdom I have to impart for today. I want to leave you with this picture. After a cursory amount of research on the internet, it would seem that this how pandas like to make whoopie. Can we rename this position to PANDA style?

Image result for panda sex
Pretty sure the person next to me saw me google this…

RINKY-dink Wednesday

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Some time ago, some writer must have taken several Klonopins and been scanning Pinterest. Then, they found today’s theme’s “musing” in an inspirational meme about editing and in their barbiturate haze, thought it was somehow a suitable basis for a puzzle.

EDITING A DRAFT OF WRITING IS SURELY AN ART FORM? Huh? Okay? Oh! Hark! It can be edited down to EDITING IS AN ART! Wow! Meta!

I finished today in 20:00 with no problems, but it would have been faster if I had realized that the “musing” was not going to include anything fun, clever, witty, or otherwise interesting. WRITING was the last part of it I filled in because I was racking my brain for something–anything–to make this puzzle something more than a CHEESY boost for writers with INFLATED EGOs.

Anyway, it was fun to see LEANN Rimes today in the puzzle. I guess she has continued to have a career in the past 20 years, but this song from my childhood is still what plays in my head when I hear her name:

Seriously! How could a 13 year old sing that way? Check her birth certificate! I’ll spend the rest of my day off of work (Happy Qatar National Day!) checking out the rest of her catalog.

There’s not much else to comment on in today’s puzzle. PANDAs are cute. I want a TACO. WAWA is a guitar accessory, not a 7-Eleven competitor (Google tells me it’s actually spelled “Wah Wah”). It’s good to see Harry Potter referenced in the puzzle, even if it’s the tragic character of DRACO Malfoy.

Gotta run! And I mean that literally. I’ve got a lot of calories to burn before a week of this:

Image result for georgian food
We need to take some food pictures in Georgia, as I couldn’t find a picture that had my favorite satchmeli: badrijani, Megruli khatchapuri, khinkali, jonjoli, and tsatsivi.

OH, HI!

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I pretty much agree with the Rexnerd about this puzzle, except for one thing: I loved it!

Even though it was about 5 minutes over my Tuesday average at 18:55, I was pleased with myself for doing this in one shot. I saw that Tyler Perry clue though and hesitated… no, no, not again! And since I had wrongly guessed CHART (not alone on this), and then went CAL (also a fail), I felt confident… but ARG, YEA, it was indeed…

Still, not enough to annoy me at all, and even though, sure, the clues are sort of opposite land to the answers, it was overall an enjoyable solve. I kind of like lots of short fill if it’s not too janky, and this one was fine with nice clear clues and few cutes ones such as 43D. Not tooooo tricky, other than the theme – which totally gives way to an easy solve once you see it. A good way to end this year in hell. And now, I’m OFF!

Evil Elves

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5:37 – record time for my current 106 day streak, and 13 seconds over my fastest Monday. Also, my 500th puzzle solved!

for the last 10 years, this is what I think of when I hear “elf” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/15/elf-on-the-shelf-is-a-fun-and-festive-way-to-teach-your-child-to-submit-to-the-surveillance-state

I love a nice and breezy easy Monday solve. I got up extraordinarily early to embark on a work trek to the mountains, only to find it was canceled due to weather just as I was about to walk out of the elevator at my apartment.

So, instead of packing, like I should have, I went back to sleep, dealt with some annoying Erbil Apartment issues, and dashed this off. Proud of myself for getting the first themer right off the bat, and over half the puzzle on the first across pass. I still don’t really know who Tyler Perry is, so will never remember MADEA, but lots of other little nuggets that I was able to fish out of my pre-holiday mind…

Friday Frustration

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25:22 – which is actually faster than yesterday’s and 4 minutes under my average for my current 103 day streak. It felt much longer, as I started with little more than BANFF and BOSC after the first pass. Even after having MUESLI for breakfast. Well, I also had “hourglass” and “benefatto” (which is what my Fitbit tells me when I hit 250 steps in an hour), but those were ULTRA not VERY NICE. Other missed FIRSTSTEPs: TETE, ADD, PORK… and HARP in the wrong place…

I got ETHEL and ARAL and the BEAV easily enough, but that corner was otherwise a mystery for a good minute. I was mystified that SMORES didn’t fit (can you make just one?) and VWBUS didn’t seem to fit until I realized “yogurt” (which I also had for breakfast) was wrong, too.

Ok, yeah DYLAN of course was a first pass, too. And REBA only took a couple seconds of thought.

As a themeless Friday goes, it was pretty blah. RASHGUARD was one of the last entries I figured out, although FIRSTSTEP came pretty early on. POLARBEARPLUNGE was cute, I’ll give it that, although they’re called Walruses in Russia.

The Elements of Solving

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Bella here again reporting on today’s NYT crossword.

Current streak to date: 218
Today’s time: 38:32

This puzzle was challenging, no doubt. The main issue was that the fill ping-ponged between gimmes and complete naticks. There weren’t any entries that were satisfying to solve. There was a lot of obscure fill and weak cluing, but the constructor admits that in his notes on the puzzle. Apparently it was the only way to make the theme work.

When I saw SN, I realized the theme and immediately thought it was brilliant. The science nerd in me geeked out, but then the critic in me poked holes in it. As far as the used elements go, I think they’re well known with ND and SM being notable exceptions… Honestly it’s just unfair to use elements from that separated block on the table because who would know those unless they studied science?

GELLER was an easy gimme (not sure why NYT sorted it as tricky clue, what humanoid hasn’t heard of that oh-so-popular 90s sitcom?) BONFIRE is not what I would say a Burning Man staple is, maybe more like EFFIGY. BONFIRE seems too lowkey for what that festival is about.

Image result for burning man

Wrote in RHYME before RLESS because at least RHYME is an actual word that people use, whereas RLESS is meaningLESS junk. Not sure when people say I WILL SO as a comeback. And also not sure why sting means SMART. The two long entries are good, but took too long to see and most of the crosses were not friendly with obscure ESSENES and that vague clue for DAUNT.

Honestly, I think reading about this puzzle’s construction is more interesting than solving the final product. The author clearly put a lot of thought into the puzzle. The grid is designed to look somewhat like the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom.

Image result for rutherford bohr model of the atom

You kind of have to want to see it though. Have a good Thursday 🤓

Then and Now

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Hello fellow xnerds. Bella here, making my debut into the world of crossword critiquing.

Current streak to date: 217
Today’s Time: 26:10 (which is about my average Wednesday solve time)

Looking back, I’m not sure why I couldn’t see the revealer. In my mind, I could only think of “Child Stars: Where are They Now?” The AHA moment came right at the end of my solving journey.

I felt like this whole grid was wreaking HAVOC on my mind. So many misdirections… DRAT for CRUD, WRITE for WROTE, GOES for GADS, OLGA for INGA (because I only read Frankenstein and never saw “Young Frankenstein” though I guess I should to bolster my crosswordese).

There were a few bad entries that really stuck out to me (SCHWA?? ENCLS??) But I guess the fill isn’t all horrible. I did like the timely appearance of FIRST SNOW, and I immediately wrote in CORN DOG, a favorite treat of my mother’s. But I will say the theme entries themselves are not exciting enough to warrant the sloggy fill of the grid. They are all normal phrases, but didn’t result in any joy from solving or make the solving any easier.

Here’s to hoping for a better Thursday ✌️

SAKARTVELO ROSÉS

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When I was a kid, CRUELLA De Vil was, hands-down, the scariest Disney villain. She easily still is! I mean, she turned puppies into fur coats! I’m fairly positive that they wouldn’t ever be allowed to put that into a children’s movie these days. I’m actually pretty horrified right now thinking about her Dalmatian fur coat. I mean, a puppy jacket?! 🙁

Image result for cruella de vil original

Anyway, the puzzle today was not nearly as scary as CRUELLA. I finished under 6 minutes, which is lightning fast for me. I don’t actually think it’s possible for me to finish a full sized puzzle on my phone much faster.

The theme was lacking a bit, as I had to look back over the puzzle afterwards to figure out if there was, in fact, a theme. I might be missing something, but I think the four themed answers are plural noun phrases that comprised of any “PLACE NAME + COLOR” and are 15 letters. That’s it, that’s all.

Image result for rose wine georgia
Alternative themed clue: Summertime refreshments in the Caucasus

There was some fresh fill though, such as ED HELMS and THE WAVE. ELNINOS isn’t bad, either. I learned about NILS Lofgran and Currier and IVES today.

I missed out on doing the Saturday and Sunday puzzles this week as the ultra proved to require a bit more “recovery” (read: cycles of trying to eat, vomiting, and sleeping) than I expected.

I’m pretty sure that if I had properly trained for the race and taken a few more of the well-known ultra marathon precautions seriously (such as replacing the salt my body was rapidly hemorrhaging around mile 33), I wouldn’t have needed 60 hours to be a functional human again afterwards. But, I will get my crossword streak back in good time and also decide in good time if torturing myself for 12 hours is really the most productive way to spend a Friday.

This is what most of Qatar looks like, I can now attest.

So, stay tuned for some fun/funky/belated Saturday and Sunday commentary! Unless, of course, Carol PERKs up and writes an entry or Bella decides to make her xnerdi.es ALOHA!