Oh, don't worry about the tournament.... I have a feeling we'll all get ours.

NYS kicked my ass. It's bad enough Byron Walden makes us all look like we don't know what we're doing on the NYT timed applet, then he throws a puzzle at us that further makes every other person on earth look like an idiot.

And after two nights of bailing out due to errors that would have caused embarrassing times, I finally got a puzzle finished on the NYT... with an embarrassing time.

And that, friends, is how I spent my summer vacation. See you all in school.
Dave | Homepage | 08.31.06 - 11:00 pm | #

Not doing the Sun until later tonight, so avoiding the details. How bad could it be?

Oh, it's Byron Walden again...

*runs into corner, curls up into fetal ball, mutters 'puzzle 5... puzzle 5'*

(With full respect to Mr.Walden, of course)
OK, back to the working world - have fun and have a great holiday weekend.
Howard B | 09.01.06 - 7:29 am | #

Friday was a doozie for me-- I eventually gave myself a break and looked up the intersecting ladies in the SW corner. Took a loooooooong time to finish, even with the help.
Matt | 09.01.06 - 8:09 am | #

I finished the NYT in 11 minutes flat. And the applet wouldn't accept my entry.

Well, that's hardly the first time that's happened, so I scanned for errors and saw none. Scanned again. Somewhere along minute 13, I realized that SI SENOR and ANOS crossed at what should be an ñ. Wow! How clever!

And I spent about the next hour trying to get an ñ to go into the applet.

Whatta maroon.

I finally wrote to Amy, asking for help with the tilde. And she said: "Do you have REATAS on top?" No, of course I didn't. I had RIATAS crossing I CARD. That one fix put me out of my misery. Thank you, Amy. Not only are you scary good on crosswords you solve yourself, you're scary good on grids you haven't even seen.

A note about the Sun: I think PATO was my only gimme. There is an idiom in Spanish (in border Spanish, anyway): "Haciendo pato" translates to something like "I'm just hangin' around." More literally, it means "I'm making like a duck.")
mnemonica | 09.01.06 - 8:09 am | #

Sock it to me. I have no "inside" information but I'd bet a buck David Quarfoot's puzzle is a marriage proposal from/to someone. Maybe ADRIAN and ELENA got SMASHED on VODKA GIMLETs. He said MARRY ME (I HOPE SO!), she said SI SENOR (meaning WELL, YES) because THE HEAT IS ON. He said OH ME OH MY, I NEED CASH! She said I need TEDDYS so RSVP. And they lived happily ever after over the ROYGBIV.
Sherry | 09.01.06 - 8:59 am | #

If you want to read a discussion in which mostly non-hardcore puzzlers get a little riled up about crosswords vs. sudoku, check out the comments thread (60+ comments!) on this guest post. I will do the occasional sudoku, and I don't hate logic-based puzzles, but I pretended that I do for rhetorical purposes.
Orange | Homepage | 09.01.06 - 3:10 pm | #

Whew...good news is it took me just over 15 to complete the Sun today. Bad news is I actually had (I think) 3 letters wrong, which didn't get fixed until about 20 minutes in. Helped to know 8-Down (Pakistan's prez) crossed with a Mets player at 29-A. The fact that I work with a couple of 6-Downs eased that one a bit. Some brutal crossings though, along with great, horrifyingly misdirectional clues. The obscurities caught me in the end though. Great stuff as always!
Howard B | 09.01.06 - 5:00 pm | #

LOL at the idea of an embedded marriage proposal in this puzzle!
ROTFL!
Quarfoot | 09.01.06 - 8:57 pm | #

Okay, okay, so I owe ya a buck!
Sherry | 09.01.06 - 10:21 pm | #

Goddam, that Byron is demonic.
DO | Homepage | 09.02.06 - 6:48 am | #