Tabula RASA...hmmmm.

Living in the city, for parked cars I entered 'damaged' for GARAGED and it was close enough and yet caused some reconstructing problems. back to 10x Orange tonight. Made a number of other bad first guesses, but I love doing this in Across Lite so I can try something else.

So, what are EVEITES? Eskimos?
PhillySolver | 06.13.08 - 11:09 pm | #

P.S. I did not get the DESOTO thing until very late...I did think of a Dodge Diplomat, but didn't know there was an Adventurer of any car. I am sure driving one must have been one however, since the company went out of business.

I am still trying to think why the philosophers wrote about a scraped tablet...I really thought it was a blank slate in a virginal (Stella) sense.
PhillySolver | 06.13.08 - 11:44 pm | #

Didn't do very well with this one - blank NW for a long while and some wrong guesses in the NE. Very embarrassed that I couldn't get TRUTHINESS, since I've seen all 409 episodes of The Colbert Report. Remembered Chris SNEE from the Sunday awhile back when he was in two puzzles on the same day. (...I think?)

I was wondering if you were going to mention the Gaffney contest - how awesome is it that out of the blue, we're getting another top-notch, tough-ish puzzle every week?

re: the poll, none of the above, sort of - my home page is set up with links to the sites I visit daily. I usually start here or Rex and bounce around via blogrolls. (To that end, could you add Sun Blocks and maybe Ryan/Brian over there? ...Or I could join 2005 and learn how to use RSS.)
Dan | 06.13.08 - 11:50 pm | #

My problem was knowing a little about the Wayans brothers, but not enough. I knew DAMON, but because it had an extra letter, I assumed he spelled it DAEMON, leading to FADERS for cautious bettors. In craps, or any other gambling game for that matter, one who accepts a bet is said to FADE it. The house at a casino fades all the action. I faded in the SW, but in a far different sense. One of my slowest solves ever.

Steve
Steve Manion | 06.14.08 - 2:33 am | #

What the hell is going on???? I tried to sign up for google groups and it wont do it! It just keeps sending back to create a password!!! Matt Gaffneys puzzle wont print out correctly. It chops off the bottom inch of clues!!! Today is not my day!!!!
John | 06.14.08 - 8:54 am | #

John, you probably have some type of internet security software blocking cookies or codes. Try a different browser, Explorer, Safari or FireFox. Good Luck.
PhillySolver | 06.14.08 - 9:10 am | #

If 1-A had mentioned Colbert, maybe (but probably not) I'd have made the connection. As it was, I didn't know NORI or the Twain character--but I was positive I knew STATIST. Never occurred to me that ETATIST was even an English word! So there I was, confronted with this at 1-A:

TRUTHI?S?S

And so I invented my own word: TRUTHIISMS. Looked as good as anything to me. :-)
Jim | 06.14.08 - 11:32 am | #

Love love loved TRUTHINESS. Cluing it to Colbert would have made it too easy for a Saturday.
I fell into the STATIST/ETATIST and AVIATION/AVIONICS traps (among others) but still managed an excellent Saturday time. Getting DASKAPITAL aas a gimmee helped a lot.

Loved the fact that DESOTOS, AVIOTIS,ETATISTS, and ADAMITES were all unknown to me but looked so right when filled in. That sort of reflects the definition (though not the meaning of TRUTHINESS.
barrywep | 06.14.08 - 11:58 am | #

"AM I RIGHT" is a line used several times by the memory expert in "THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS", Hitchcocks 1935 thriller that is one of his best.
larry | 06.14.08 - 1:40 pm | #

i see that there's a new daily standings toy. this makes me nervous. i guess it's all just for fun (and/or braggadocio, although i usually only engage in that with people i know quite well). i suppose there doesn't really have to be an answer to this question, but how are we supposed to treat mistakes? i don't use the applet so i didn't know it was wrong until reading the blog. i finished in 11:38 with one bad crossing (the A at RASA/ADAMITES; i had an E). i suppose at the ACPT that is equivalent to almost 8 minutes' worth of time, right? so i could just tack on 8 minutes.

i like the new MGWCC a lot. this week's was much, much trickier than last week's, i think. but both have been great fun.

in the BEQ today, great clues for CARALARM and TALK. the rest of the puzzle was a little blah for me. it contained things that i know but not things that excited me.

i think the olympics uses AUT for austria. or at least, the USA coverage of the olympics i watched as a child.

the clue for SNEE is a little surprising. i mean, i know who chris SNEE is, but there are approximately 0 offensive linemen who are household names among all but the most hard-core football fans. i suppose SNEE plays in new york, just won the super bowl, and is married to his coach's daughter, so that's something.
joon | 06.14.08 - 2:08 pm | #

A couple days late but Orange will see it... I'm one of the "I type in the URL" voters.

In my browser (Firefox 3.0, no errors yet) I pretty much only need to type 2 letters to uniquely identify the sites I commonly visit. So I have a link from my homepage, but it's easy enough to type the 5 keystrokes (Ctrl-T for a new tab, C, R, down arrow, enter), or sometimes mouse and keyboard together since I'm gonna need to click on "Read More..." once I get here. (And I voted to keep the "Read More...".)
SethG | Homepage | 06.17.08 - 3:33 am | #