Gripe about last Thursday's NYT puzzle
May. 13th, 2012 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuI try to avoid public griping about published puzzles, but something about last Thursday really bugged me.
There were a large number of almost unchecked squares. I simply couldn't get two of the theme entries, and without the ability to whittle them away letter by letter, I was utterly becalmed. (They were not totally unchecked, in that there are a limited number of four-letter words that can follow "JUMP", but neither SUIT nor BALL came to mind for me.)
So props for a clever theme, but it's unfortunate that this theme results in depriving the solver of one of the key bits of fully-interlocked puzzles. (If this had been, say, a Mystery Hunt puzzle, I wouldn't feel cheated, just defeated. And I'd have Googled Cat Ballou.)
There were a large number of almost unchecked squares. I simply couldn't get two of the theme entries, and without the ability to whittle them away letter by letter, I was utterly becalmed. (They were not totally unchecked, in that there are a limited number of four-letter words that can follow "JUMP", but neither SUIT nor BALL came to mind for me.)
So props for a clever theme, but it's unfortunate that this theme results in depriving the solver of one of the key bits of fully-interlocked puzzles. (If this had been, say, a Mystery Hunt puzzle, I wouldn't feel cheated, just defeated. And I'd have Googled Cat Ballou.)