Comments on: Sunday, 5/2/10

By: John Haber

John Haber — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:14:03 +0000

I’ll agree that the roots of the theme entries could have been smoother. Even with “King’s men,” it felt funny to me as a phrase apart from “all the.” Amy caught my obscure spots, like TEGNER, although I also didn’t recognize SPOON REST, making the corner with that and IDES my hardest. I didn’t find it a hard puzzle overall.

By: Eric Maddy

Eric Maddy — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:18:26 +0000

Nitpick on the US Soccer Hall of Fame — it WAS in Oneonta, N.Y., but closed permanently in February of this year.

By: LARRY

LARRY — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:31:43 +0000

CRISCO is simply hydrogenated vegetable oil, like oleomargarine without the color. I’m sure glad it’s digestable.

By: ArtLvr

ArtLvr — Sun, 02 May 2010 15:55:15 +0000

I especially admired Merl’s inventiveness… and all the connector words between the repeats are different! Not just VS, TO, FOR, AFTER, AGAINST, IS, AND and OR, but also BLOODY, SAY, SWEET, DE, COUNTER, THINGS and MADOX!! I ask you, man oh man, how great is that?

By: Martin

Martin — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:58:36 +0000

To second Martin-of-the-North: splitting a word into parts that could be otherwise clued happens regularly in Puns and Anagrams. I enjoyed it here and wouldn’t mind more of them, particularly if they were as witty as Mel Taub makes them.

- M of the S

By: Martin

Martin — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:52:25 +0000

Re ANDR/OID word-clue split:

To come to Merl’s defense, at least both ANDR and OID are valid stand-alone entries, whereas, in crappy puzzles the word fragments are usually just nonsensical groups of letters. Also, the combining form ANDR (“male”) and the suffix OID (“-like”), are probably most familiar to solvers in the ANDROID combo anyway.

-MAS

By: pezibc

pezibc — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:17:04 +0000

My mother has a very old pump organ; from when she was a girl. The stops are so cool. Contra Viola is one of them.

If I ran a kitchenware store I would have a ‘Ladle Cradle’ sign printed up and sell me a bunch. (Maybe a speaker tucked behind playing a soft lullaby.)

Had PASSES for PAPERS until forced to see the problem.

Like BRAMBLE, AQUEOUS

Only one letter where I wasn’t pretty certain of the answer. Had to throw a dart to get the I in OSRIC – CIE. Had to be a vowel, and got to I or O pretty quickly. Guessed right.