![]() ![]() My visual sense is usually sharper than that and I thank all the people who didn’t see the duck until coming here – you’ve made me feel less unobservant. I noticed the growing flock in the clues as I worked my way through the acrosses, but it wasn’t until the halfway mark that I looked at the grid as a whole and saw our fine feathered friend. Hah! I solved this with a protracted chuckle, although the light was slow in dawning. Besides, our nom de blogs aren’t copyrighted and I doubt anyone would mistake you for him - well, maybe at Volt late last night - Yep, and I don’t even like most fantasy. (How’s that for the tersest synopsis of Critical Race Theory - Z used to comment regularly but he hasn’t been about for years. What about - It would be an ISSUE if the editor purposely made this happen - Bias does not have to be intentional to be HARMful. I suppose “ordinal number” is something one might have forgotten from 6th grade math class, but that’s not something specific to solving B - I laughed at the implication of your post that Bugs and Donald are human. I was even wondering what about “Imaginary ordinal” -> NTH would be confounding to a new solver. I’m with Sloth on those clues being Wednesday appropriate. ![]() I would have really laughed if we had gotten a Shakespearean duck clue. Likewise, MAMET has a duck play, use it in the clue. Can’t get Daffy into the puzzle? Sneak him into a clue. I love the, ahem, easter EGGs throughout the puzzle. Nice.Ī debut you say? I like the way this guy thinks. I noticed the kealoa at 1A before I noticed the grid art duck, which I only noticed after seeing the second duck clue, looking to see if 67A was going to be GOOSE, and the eye scan of the grid registered the central duck. The central premise of this single word having so many different meanings is the kind of wordplay I love in puzzles. The puzzle got more interesting as it moved from left to right. I'll go back and read the comments to see if anyone has mentioned what it is. Moving down the East Coast, what on earth is a SAI? It had to be SAI and yet I was sure I must have a DNF. And I don't know either of Tolkien's middle names. Proofing is something copy editors do, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't the faintest idea what "prepare to proof in baking" is. I don't know what a "flat palm b" is in ASL (10D). First, I had SkIRt before SHIRK at 9A - crossed by a lot of stuff I didn't know. I found the puzzle an interesting mixture of a challenge-free West Coast that put up no resistance at all and an East Coast that gave me some trouble. ![]() It gives the puzzle a certain je ne sais quoi that it didn't have while I was solving it. Now that the blog has let me know there's a duck there, I've looked at it - and it's quite a cute duck. I did think it was a quite arresting grid when I first saw it - and then I completely forgot about it. Congratulations on your debut, and thank you!įor starters, I didn't see the duck in the grid. Yes, Joseph, you had me at the start, and you have me now, having experienced that wink in your eye, greatly anticipating your next creation. Symmetry included the four theme-related horizontal corner answers as well as the TAKE COVER and STOOP DOWN theme pair, not to mention the black lines coming in from the perimeter. That asymmetrical duck in the middle was balanced by symmetrical elements (Hi, giving the puzzle a feel of normalcy rather than CHAOS. It would have been cool, also, given the theme, if the A in DECAYS were an O. The grid was a kind of ZOO, actually, as apart from the DUCKs and GOOSE there were other animal reminders: RATS, EEL STY, VEAL, REIN, EGG, RAY, and one-letter-off SHIRK. Charmed, I paddled through the grid with a smile in my heart, a smile that got recharged as it came across those clever clues for TWAS, REIN, TEA, and especially for ORE. Oh, Joseph had me before I entered my first answer with that cutest duck ever, complete with tail feathers, floating in the middle. Very effective.Ĭongrats on a very spiffy NYTXW debut, Mr. It's the airplane-seatbelt-against-the-mountainside & locked-car-doors-while-driving-through-UFO-sighting-country armor of invincibility approach. TAKE COVER reminded me of Duck & Cover, which reminded me of grade school innocence (gullibility) which had us believing that a school desk would provide all the protection needed in case of a nuclear attack. Instead we have a nice smattering of duckses of all kindses. A big thank you to the constructor for not including all three in this puzzle. I enjoyed this theme with all the types and variations of "duck" despite the presence (at 1A no less) of one of the more infamous examples of the kealoa: AVOID of the AVOID/evade/elude trinity of "wait-and-see". I even noticed the grid duck soon after seeing the word duck a dozen times.and upon completion of the puzz. Do I like ducks as grid art? Sure, why not? ![]()
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