SUNDAY, october 21, 2007
set your mind at ease
brendan emmett quigley / will shortz
difficulty factor: this was for me the absolute toughest sunday puzzle in many, many months. if i was a cussin' guy, i'd say "sonuvabitch"! but i'm not gonna...
theme: set your mind at ease (or at least on "E's"): in a relavively common phrases, change the last word from the "short e" sound [think: BREAD]... to the "long e" sound [think BREED] thus rendering the original expression fairly ludicrous.
- 23A CHICKEN LEAGUE [leg]
- 13D PASTRY SHEAF [chef]
- 16D SIMON SEIZE [says]
- 40A BLANK CHEEK [check]
- 72D RED HEARING [herring]
- 65D A GOOD MEANIE [many]
- 97A HARD PRIEST [pressed]
- 117A EDUCATED GEESE [guess]
as is our way, my wife and i spend leisurely saturday nights together doing the sunday nyt puzzle. [kibbitzing is permitted -no actually preferred - only at this time.] as she can wholly attest, i have never erased so much (yes, on my second copy i switched from pen!?) on a SUNDAY puzzle in more than five years - maybe seven - but at this one sitting, i more than doubled my cumulative output of crumbly pink junk on the floor - during the last ten years. and while there were lotsa chances to turn it all around, as it were, i just kept guessing wrong and fillin' 'em in... oh... and, of course, waiting forever to fill in right answers i was too timid to fill! my wife knows better than to add coal to a roaring fire, but at one point she just giggled and said, "boy, you... um... didn't bring your "a" game t' day, did ya? [kiss on forehead] by the way, 7D PENTaTHoL is misspelled... reverse the last two vowels.... say, y' want some ice cream?" well, of course i missed the cue to drop the puzzle for a bit... and missed out on some breyer's vanilla with hershey's hot fudge sauce. day-um!
i refuse to discuss in depth the particulars of this puzzle... on the grounds that it may again heighten the tension surrounding my momentary meltdown.
maybe later...
this may be somewhat related to the sunday nyt puzzle - in terms of its relative diffiiculty for me today - i 'd like to ramble on a bit about biorythms. mind you, i don't place an awful lotta stock in them. but after i finished the puzzle, i looked at mine for the weekend and saw this... 
hmmm.. "today your intellectual level is 0%: it is advisable to avoid too much study." well, there y' have it... empirical proof: i should have done the friggin' puzzle in the friggin' attic - not the friggin' study! and my friggin' emotional level is only at 4 friggin' %, so now i have license to rant! oh... and then... i'm friggin' stronger than a country horse with a 96% level! well, with that friggin' combination isn't it a just tad presumptive to think, with anything resembling any kind of certainty, that i would be out of jail in time to - as they so cheerily suggest on the lower left - "see you monday"!?
keep on keepin' on...
dann
all elements of the puzzle (grid layout, clues, and answers), NYT, NY Times, and The New York Times logo are ©2007 The New York Times
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