Comments on: Wednesday, 2/10/10

By: Tim Platt

Tim Platt — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:33:37 +0000

I am a day late on this, but does anyone else have a problem with THY being clued [Lord's Prayer adjective]? I would have thought “thy” is a pronoun, not an adjective. I had just seen the same clue for “THY” in a NYT puzzle from 2006 (I’m still finishing my 2009 Puzzle-a-Day calendar), so this is really bugging me now.

Actually, I just checked Wikipedia, and they say “thy” is a possessive determiner, whatever that is! And dictionary.com says the pronoun “thy” can be used as an attributive adjective, as in “thy table” – so I guess Will’s off the hook on this. Darn!

By: John Haber

John Haber — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:01:35 +0000

Maybe the C cliche is just passing on a myth, or maybe it reflects a society that’s mathematically challenged, even people as smart as Will S. They may not get that it can’t be average unless the same number of people get C-, D, and F as get C+, B-, B, B+, A-, A, and A+. Which of course wouldn’t be a system that resisted grade inflation so much as a nonsensical one.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:11:04 +0000

The Loki=goddess clue threw me for a loop too, I wondered if there were some genderbending theme.

By: davidH

davidH — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:00:05 +0000

Evad –
DOH!
Thanks

By: Matt Gaffney

Matt Gaffney — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:53:19 +0000

Wow, all these years I thought LOKI was a goddess…and I’m 1/8th Norwegian, too.

By: Evad

Evad — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:27:39 +0000

Related, as in told to…

By: davidH

davidH — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:13:07 +0000

Where I teach, a C means “barely adequate”. D is not an option, so C is really “one foot out the door”. On my syllabus, I define it as, “Met enough of the course requirements to pass, but submitted nothing exceptional and did not achieve any noteworthy results”. In the true mathematical sense, I agree – it is not “average”.

I have a question regarding the NY Times “Classic” puzzle posted today, from 11/04/1999 – the little happy pencil guy in A/L tells me that “SAGA” is the correct answer for “It’s related to others”, and “GAVE” is the correct answer for “LENT”, but I don’t understand … I assume Mr. Lees and/or Mr. Shortz intend “Lent” as the past participle of “To Lend”, but isn’t that different from “to give”? Am I missing something here? (Still new enough at this to assume it’s me, not them, but inquiring minds want to know!)

Likewise “Saga” – it’s like other whats? Stories? Sagas?

Please help me to understand these clues.

Thanks