dannmann's NYT crossword puzzle ramblings

saturday, october 06, 2007
brendan emmett quigley & david quarfoot / will shortz

difficulty factor: four outta five band-aids. this one bashed me up pretty good.

theme: none.

well, folks, this is a completely new venture to me! (and i have very little experience with this sort of thing... what is the learning curve with this blogger.com beast?!)

first, and foremost, there are some very good blogs already out there already discussing NYT crossword issues on a daily basis, (including rex parker's http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/ ) and linda g.'s (http://madness--crosswordandotherwise.blogspot.com/) and this one may at first seem imitative (you know... the most sincere form of flattery) but i maintain that it is my every intention to be at least a little bit different and therefore worth the effort. btw, i rarely time or score myself, except on occasional sundays or mondays.

boy, oh boy, i chose a helluva day to start this thing, both because it was a really difficult puzzle for me, and because it is a very special day for me: it is the thirty-third anniversay of my first date with my wife. and while i dragged my feet for a bit more than five years before i proposed, and another year to actually tie the knot... well, this is just one of my favorite days of the year!

okay, on with it... i will not profess to be infalible - or even close on some occasions. what you see is what you get... imperfections and all!

i had a very difficult time getting started with this one - which i expect on saturdays - whether it was because of rampant ambiguity with respect to the clues or my own intermittent denseness, that pesky harry potter bully 25A DRACO malfoy caught my eye first. i stumbled throughout the entire southwest with minimal googling, but major cross cluing.

somehow it dawned on me that FDR symbolically purchased the very first 20A SERIES E savings bond. they were all the rage to our ever-saving (and patriotic) grandparents until the late 1970's, and were discontinued in 1980 for the series ee (higher yielding) bond. brandy is NOT the 2D EAU DE VIE or"water of life" (well, let me fix that: i don't know if it ever was, but it sure hasn't been since i got incredibly sick on it at fifteen after swiping some from my grandfather's cabinet!)

that whole nevada/colorado area really tweaked me. i fought way too long and way too hard to keep DECAY as the answer for rot 41A HOOEY and continued to 46A RAIL ON myself over it. the 1D NFL DRAFT was out of my league and i was ready to throw in the towel and say 37A SCREW IT many times before i stumbled to the finish.

oh, and btw, i originally decided BALLS was more fitting two rows above what i was not at all ready for at 37A, right up until the 'k' in 13D PODUNK revealed more serious "pitch" problems: 30A BALKS.

as for porky's pal - i leaned towards the looney tunes porky's buddy DAFFY at first, instead of the correct little rascals' eugene gordon 'porky' lee and his friend 51D DARLA hood.

my biggest clue beef: while both a horizontal and upright 64A BANDSAW have pulleys they are not prominent enough features to be clued in this manner (they are most often obscured by an external safety housing.)

well... keep on keepin on...

dann