Gripes about today's Times puzzle

[rhu]

The theme was, perhaps, not entirely unexpected. But:

I'd never heard of "♥LINE" for {Palm reader's reading}, and for the longest time I want this to be a double-rebus with [LOVE]. Especially since the crossing gave me trouble: "OPEN♥ED" would have been fine for me, but I don't think I've encountered "OPEN♥" as {Symbol of generosity}. And despite the recent concerns about what's suitable for the Times, I guess {Kind of surgery} would still have been over the line. (Not over the "♥LINE", of course...)

And with thirteen theme entries in which the symbol ♥ stood for the word [HEART], it threw me that the fourteenth theme entry was "♥HS".

Anyway, just felt the need to vent (-ricle).

Comments

[saxikath]

And with thirteen theme entries in which the symbol ♥ stood for the word [HEART], it threw me that the fourteenth theme entry was "♥HS".

Never mind the one where it was part of "Now hear this." The inconsistency in the theme bugged me.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I didn't do the puzzle, but isn't this kind of standard? Since there are no spaces in the answers, and ♥ stands for "HEART", isn't "NOW♥HIS" valid for "NOWHEARTHIS"? Or are y'all saying that if one is word-crossing, they should all be (as in "T♥OFWAR" etc)?

[saxikath]

It is kind of standard, yes -- but in this case, all but two of the many theme entries used the heart for the word "heart." It felt weird to have just the two that weren't. I'd rather have it be either all one or all the other, or at least a more even mix.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

What irked me was that fourteen were one way and two were the other. After fourteen instances of ♥ meaning the morpheme "HEART" --- as a word by itself, as in "AT♥", or as part of a larger word, as in "LION♥" --- these two exceptions made the whole thing feel inelegant. If they had been roughly half-and-half it would have been easier to accept; if they had all been one way or the other there'd be no issue.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Oops. No wonder "DISTENS" didn't make sense. And I even expected a ♥ in the center square. [Hangs head in shame]

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

How did you get the ♥ to appear in your post?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I brought up Windows Character Map, scrolled to the portion of Unicode where the symbols are, copied character U+2665 to the clipboard, and pasted it into the entry box.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

You can also use character refs like ♥ (♥). Or ♇ (2647).

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Didn't they remove ♇ from the UCS-2 block and demote it to the "dwarf glyph" surrogates block?

[jangler-npl.livejournal.com]

To say nothing of the fact that the *exact same freaking theme* was used in the February 11, 2007 puzzle. Yes, the Sunday nearest Valentine's day of *last freaking year*.