Comments on: Super Bowl Sunday, 2/7/10

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:01:17 +0000

In the CS, why is “stool” clued as “one standing at the bar”? Shouldn’t be a person, and not furniture? Have I missed something?

By: John Haber

John Haber — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:31:53 +0000

This being Patrick Berry, I expected a truly hard but elegant puzzle from beginning to end. I was wrong on both counts. In fact, I started filling simple answers one after the other, but it took forever, between the large grid, the huge number of three-letter words (that alone never satisfying), some forced fills on the theme words (FIRST DOWN indeed) or football terms I didn’t know (IN THE POCKET), and just plain obscure or strange ones. But I guess anything to appease football fans this once.

I, too, cringed at ORIENTATE, one of my last to fill, but dictionaries don’t complain. “Up and down” do seem odd to me. One generally talks of up and down quarks, not ups and downs. It’d be like calling negative ions “negatives.” It’d also get downright embarrassing when one comes to top and bottom quarks.

By: old mike

old mike — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:22:57 +0000

I was once told that ORIENTATE (2D) was an illiterate form of orient.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:22:05 +0000

I train for the tournament by trying to simulate the conditions as closely as possible. It’s a bit tight with 700 people in the room.

By: Doc Moreau

Doc Moreau — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:10:44 +0000

Joseph of ARIMATHEA was the fellow who provided the tomb in which Jesus was laid out (for a few days.)

By: Craig K

Craig K — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:20:05 +0000

Regarding the Arimathea clue:

A sufficiently abridged reference might not mention this, but there are two Josephs mentioned in the Gospels. One is Mary’s husband Joseph, and the other is Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb for Jesus post-crucifixion.

By: Howard B

Howard B — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:56:29 +0000

Merl’s puzzle was a fun theme discovery, and a mix of easy and challenging clues and answers. Easy that I was able to predict JOE NAMATH being in there, somewhere, and challenging in that KLAMATH FALLS and CINEMATHEQUE were new to me, so to the crossings I went. Having OPSIMATH up in the top-left initially also had me thinking I messed up, but instead we learned an interesting new word. Generally a solver-friendly puzzle though.
That’s just my 2 cents, but often I aM A THoroughly inconsistent solver, so take it for what it’s worth.