crossnerd (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} crossnerd) wrote,@ 2008-08-10 20:14:00 |
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My triumphant (??) return, and NYT 8/10/08
Oh, good heavens. According to livejournal, it has literally been a year-- 52 weeks-- since I last updated. What on earth happened?
Well, the long and the short of it is that I started For the first two years of the x years I'll spend here, I'll be taking classes. So far, most of my classes tend towards seminar format, and that means piles and piles of technical reading. How much is "piles and piles"? Well, in the spring quarter, I had roughly 70 pages of technical reading that I had to do (as in, could not BS my way out of not reading) due every Tuesday and Thursday, and another 70 pages that I was assigned. I mostly did all of the reading (somehow, some way!), which meant that I was doing 280 pages of technical reading (proofs and all) a week. I'm actually not a terribly fast reader to start with. With fiction, I'm about 100 pages an hour. With technical writing... well... we're looking at two or three hours for one single ten page paper. Multiply that by 28... and I think you can see just how much time I've spent reading lately.
By and large, the impact of this on my personal life over the past year is that for the first time since I was three or four, I haven't spent any significant portion of my free time reading. It's like I see printed words and my brain just goes "No! No! I'm full! Go away!" I've been managing to do puzzles off and on, but nowhere near as frequently as I used to.
Now, I like to do the puzzle on paper. It makes my brain feel better to write out answers, and I feel like it's much easier to see the "big picture" of a puzzle on paper. So, last summer, I got paper delivery of the NY Times (not actually terribly expensive even here in California). And I kept getting delivery until about April... at which point I looked around and noticed that all of the papers I wasn't reading (and puzzles I wasn't doing) were sort of taking over my house. So I sighed and called up the NYT billing people (because you can't cancel delivery online, irritatingly enough) and talked to a very nice person who seemed to understand what I meant when I said they were just piling up. And I thought that was that.
But... of course... it hasn't been. Now that I've been on summer break for a month and a half (almost two months, actually), my brain's had time to recover, and I find I'm... craving... puzzles. I signed up for the NYT online again, thinking I'd do the puzzles for a couple of days and then lose interest because I don't really like doing them online. Instead, I'm suddenly doing 10 or 12 puzzles a day, going back in the NYT archive or doing the Washington Post etc... basically whatever I can get my hands on. And I've been thinking about clues a lot, thinking about the stuff that I didn't know and why I don't know it, why it doesn't stick.
So, I suppose the blog is back on, at least for the moment.
Which brings us right around to the puzzle. I've already done the Monday puzzle but have nothing to say about it other than that I liked it and laughed at several points (don't tase me, BRO!) and finished it in a not totally embarassing 5:24.
What I really want to talk about, though, is the Sunday puzzle. I truly and deeply love the Sunday puzzle. I kept doing the Sundays long after I'd dropped the dailies. Whenever I see my in-laws (hey! I got married in January!), my mother-in-law and I do the Sunday together. She doesn't usually do them alone, but whenever I come over, we make it happen. Sometimes we read the same clues out loud together, and sometimes we just start in separate corners and work from there. It's really a delight. I love the Sunday puzzle. And I don't usually time my Sundays anymore. The Sunday puzzle is my leisure puzzle. However long it takes, it takes.
Today's (it's Sunday in California, still) puzzle took me 28:42. Admittedly, I've knocked back about half a bottle of wine and was half watching the fourth season of The Wire at the same time. Still, there's plenty in this puzzle that'd have kicked my butt at the best of times.
Let's talk about:
NEGEV - clued as Beersheba's desert. I've surely seen this before clued differently, but it's one of those things that just doesn't stick. Wikipedia says that the NEGEV covers over half of Israel. But who is this BEERSHEBA? No one, it turns out. BEERSHEBA is a place... the largest city in the NEGEV, it turns out. Sixth largest city in Israel. Hm.
VANCAMP - cross old NEGEV. The NW gave me real trouble, and was the very last thing I finished. VANCAMP's pork and beans are apparently number one in the nation in terms of pork and beans. I thought for sure that I'd recognize the can, because I love baked beans, and back when I ate meat (14 years ago), I loved some pork and beans too. But I have to tell you, I don't think I've ever SEEN this purported VANCAMP's brand before.
MUSKET - clued as Athos' arm. Damn. I've figured this out now-- ATHOS is one of the Three Musketeers, who I really ought to recognize from puzzles. Maybe I ought to just read the book? I can't say that I'm reading a lot of consequence lately (see: lack of pleasure reading), though I did read A Canticle for Leibowitz last week. It's got me in the mood to see FALLOUT, SIMPLETON, etcetera.
APB - Black and white broadcast. I didn't figure this out at all, just guessed the crosses. I've figured it out, though! APB = all points bulletin. Black and white = cop cars. OH! APB! Black and white broadcast! I'm sure I'll forget it by the next time it comes around. Sigh.
ERGOT - clued as cereal killer. See, because ERGOT is a fungus that destroys cereals such as ryegrass... I have to tell you, though, that my brain was just going another direction. I wanted something like BAGEL, or the way-too-big POPTART. When I FINALLY came around to the idea of "cereal" as in "grain", ERGOT seemed natural.
That's all that really got me stuck! But of course, these were all in different places, and blocked me all over the grid. Grr.
Some stuff I got and really liked: MELISSA, clued as a computer virus! I remember MELISSA's spread well. I believe the guy who wrote MELISSA named it after a girl he liked, but I could be wrong about that.
FORKERS! I post on a message board where a more obscene word (first and last letters the same, different vowel and consonant between) gets filtered to "fork". As such, as soon as I saw FORKERS! I cracked up. I didn't like the clue that much, but what a great fill.
One thing I did love the clue for: THX. I got STYX and then saw "Quick expression of gratitude" as the cross on the X. I cracked up at --X, and my husband looked over and said, "well, that's obviously THX." Oh, obviously. Funny all the same!
So that's today's puzzle! I liked it a lot, though it wasn't one of my better Sundays. I don't think I've done another puzzle by Will Nediger, but I'll be looking out for his stuff! Hooray!
Oh, good heavens. According to livejournal, it has literally been a year-- 52 weeks-- since I last updated. What on earth happened?
Well, the long and the short of it is that I started For the first two years of the x years I'll spend here, I'll be taking classes. So far, most of my classes tend towards seminar format, and that means piles and piles of technical reading. How much is "piles and piles"? Well, in the spring quarter, I had roughly 70 pages of technical reading that I had to do (as in, could not BS my way out of not reading) due every Tuesday and Thursday, and another 70 pages that I was assigned. I mostly did all of the reading (somehow, some way!), which meant that I was doing 280 pages of technical reading (proofs and all) a week. I'm actually not a terribly fast reader to start with. With fiction, I'm about 100 pages an hour. With technical writing... well... we're looking at two or three hours for one single ten page paper. Multiply that by 28... and I think you can see just how much time I've spent reading lately.
By and large, the impact of this on my personal life over the past year is that for the first time since I was three or four, I haven't spent any significant portion of my free time reading. It's like I see printed words and my brain just goes "No! No! I'm full! Go away!" I've been managing to do puzzles off and on, but nowhere near as frequently as I used to.
Now, I like to do the puzzle on paper. It makes my brain feel better to write out answers, and I feel like it's much easier to see the "big picture" of a puzzle on paper. So, last summer, I got paper delivery of the NY Times (not actually terribly expensive even here in California). And I kept getting delivery until about April... at which point I looked around and noticed that all of the papers I wasn't reading (and puzzles I wasn't doing) were sort of taking over my house. So I sighed and called up the NYT billing people (because you can't cancel delivery online, irritatingly enough) and talked to a very nice person who seemed to understand what I meant when I said they were just piling up. And I thought that was that.
But... of course... it hasn't been. Now that I've been on summer break for a month and a half (almost two months, actually), my brain's had time to recover, and I find I'm... craving... puzzles. I signed up for the NYT online again, thinking I'd do the puzzles for a couple of days and then lose interest because I don't really like doing them online. Instead, I'm suddenly doing 10 or 12 puzzles a day, going back in the NYT archive or doing the Washington Post etc... basically whatever I can get my hands on. And I've been thinking about clues a lot, thinking about the stuff that I didn't know and why I don't know it, why it doesn't stick.
So, I suppose the blog is back on, at least for the moment.
Which brings us right around to the puzzle. I've already done the Monday puzzle but have nothing to say about it other than that I liked it and laughed at several points (don't tase me, BRO!) and finished it in a not totally embarassing 5:24.
What I really want to talk about, though, is the Sunday puzzle. I truly and deeply love the Sunday puzzle. I kept doing the Sundays long after I'd dropped the dailies. Whenever I see my in-laws (hey! I got married in January!), my mother-in-law and I do the Sunday together. She doesn't usually do them alone, but whenever I come over, we make it happen. Sometimes we read the same clues out loud together, and sometimes we just start in separate corners and work from there. It's really a delight. I love the Sunday puzzle. And I don't usually time my Sundays anymore. The Sunday puzzle is my leisure puzzle. However long it takes, it takes.
Today's (it's Sunday in California, still) puzzle took me 28:42. Admittedly, I've knocked back about half a bottle of wine and was half watching the fourth season of The Wire at the same time. Still, there's plenty in this puzzle that'd have kicked my butt at the best of times.
Let's talk about:
NEGEV - clued as Beersheba's desert. I've surely seen this before clued differently, but it's one of those things that just doesn't stick. Wikipedia says that the NEGEV covers over half of Israel. But who is this BEERSHEBA? No one, it turns out. BEERSHEBA is a place... the largest city in the NEGEV, it turns out. Sixth largest city in Israel. Hm.
VANCAMP - cross old NEGEV. The NW gave me real trouble, and was the very last thing I finished. VANCAMP's pork and beans are apparently number one in the nation in terms of pork and beans. I thought for sure that I'd recognize the can, because I love baked beans, and back when I ate meat (14 years ago), I loved some pork and beans too. But I have to tell you, I don't think I've ever SEEN this purported VANCAMP's brand before.
MUSKET - clued as Athos' arm. Damn. I've figured this out now-- ATHOS is one of the Three Musketeers, who I really ought to recognize from puzzles. Maybe I ought to just read the book? I can't say that I'm reading a lot of consequence lately (see: lack of pleasure reading), though I did read A Canticle for Leibowitz last week. It's got me in the mood to see FALLOUT, SIMPLETON, etcetera.
APB - Black and white broadcast. I didn't figure this out at all, just guessed the crosses. I've figured it out, though! APB = all points bulletin. Black and white = cop cars. OH! APB! Black and white broadcast! I'm sure I'll forget it by the next time it comes around. Sigh.
ERGOT - clued as cereal killer. See, because ERGOT is a fungus that destroys cereals such as ryegrass... I have to tell you, though, that my brain was just going another direction. I wanted something like BAGEL, or the way-too-big POPTART. When I FINALLY came around to the idea of "cereal" as in "grain", ERGOT seemed natural.
That's all that really got me stuck! But of course, these were all in different places, and blocked me all over the grid. Grr.
Some stuff I got and really liked: MELISSA, clued as a computer virus! I remember MELISSA's spread well. I believe the guy who wrote MELISSA named it after a girl he liked, but I could be wrong about that.
FORKERS! I post on a message board where a more obscene word (first and last letters the same, different vowel and consonant between) gets filtered to "fork". As such, as soon as I saw FORKERS! I cracked up. I didn't like the clue that much, but what a great fill.
One thing I did love the clue for: THX. I got STYX and then saw "Quick expression of gratitude" as the cross on the X. I cracked up at --X, and my husband looked over and said, "well, that's obviously THX." Oh, obviously. Funny all the same!
So that's today's puzzle! I liked it a lot, though it wasn't one of my better Sundays. I don't think I've done another puzzle by Will Nediger, but I'll be looking out for his stuff! Hooray!
