Comments on: Thursday, 3/11/10

By: Jim Finder

Jim Finder — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:59:03 +0000

Fireball was based more than usual on names, TV show names, athlete names, product names. How could I have ever run across those old Spike and TLC shows, which cross with other unknown factoids? Don’t enjoy trivia so much.

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:24:22 +0000

Seems to me Will messed up the order of the puzzles this week. Tuesday’s puzzle was insanely hard (Thursday difficulty), Wednesday’s was very easy (Tuesday difficulty), and today’s was very easy (Wednesday difficulty). They were all enjoyable though, so no complaints here!

By: joon

joon — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:49:50 +0000

anon, amy’s sick and hopefully resting. i’ll post the grid. but remember, peter attaches the answer grid (and some explanations) to the original email, so you can check your answers even without amy’s help.

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:28:00 +0000

Like davidH I misread the instructions and missed the diagonal answer. I missed the CEY/EMA crossing, and also messed up NIL/NEL. I guess that NIL has a lot of other cluing options; NEL pretty much gets clued by blu or Dante’s first word; it means ‘in’ in Italian.

By: anon

anon — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:21:23 +0000

amy could you please post the fireball?

By: Dan F

Dan F — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:48:50 +0000

Fastest Thursday for me too. Had the same problem as DavidH – I misinterpreted the note as referring only to the circles. Should have known that with the Farmer byline, that couldn’t have been the end of it…

Yes, THE JOE SCHMO SHOW was mine! It was one of my favorite shows ever (and to my surprise, one of Peter’s as well) – a hilarious parody of reality TV, with one poor, earnest schnook thinking he was on an actual reality show… but every ridiculous character and plot point was scripted out and performed by improv actors (including pre-SNL Kristen Wiig). I’m taking ALIA and ANKA as bonus paid fill, since we discussed an “Arrested Development” entry too. Thanks, Peter!

By: John Haber

John Haber — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:42:11 +0000

Started way too easy for a Thursday, then became almost impossible and, basically, mere guesswork in the W and SW, with NEL and crossings like CEY, EMA, TAMMIE and MAV, KOMODO (and I’d forgotten OH CAROL, really really old and I hated Neil Diamond anyway). I was also tempted to try Ford for the car, which would lead to T bond instead of T bill.

I can’t say this dual too easy/guesswork made me like the puzzle. Also too many other names, like SABU and ENYA, though at least that was unambiguous in crossings and she’s now crosswordese. And at some point we really have to retire Mel Ott. I guess the theme is nice, and I appreciate that if you have to rely on circled letters, at least they are symmetric. But not a favorite puzzle.