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I really liked how the puzzle was constructed - but I did use Google for a lot of the obscure clues, and the symmetry of the rebus locations helped quite a bit. |
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Weirdly enough, I found this one pretty easy once I figured out the rebus. The completely regular positions of the months which gave a ton of free letters which was enough to get me by, I guess. Otherwise, neither BAJAN nor DECOCTS would ever had happened. Of course, easy for me on Sunday is still a half an hour :). |
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Orange- |
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Amy- |
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i loved it. really. caught onto the rebus very early (JAN), but did not figure out the circle pattern for a long time. when i did, it was like a big light bulb going off and i raced to fill everything in... except that i couldn't, because the clues were still damn tough. but i enjoyed the attempt immensely. and the round-the-clock construction is a marvel. |
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I didn't see the circle because I used the applet and just used the first letters of the months. So, I was thinking the placement was unfortunately random, and now that I see it, I am impressed. I got the theme at SI(DEC)AR, but then was confused in the upper right where AUGMENT appeared. I tried to think of a word like _ _(AUG)MENT that would fit. Paris as a Trojan and ACHOO were more obvious to me, and DECOCTS was gettable from crosses, if obscure. I enjoyed the challenge. |
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May the circle be unbroken. Very clever and the year went by pretty quickly. PUNT is a football term which has become a metaphor., I believe. |
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I liked the puzzle a lot, but I always like them when I catch on to the rebus tricks. My only stumbling block was whether it was "ATOB" or "ATOZ", which made the language choice between "BAJAN" and "ZAJAN". I guessed the former, then checked it on Google. I must admit I didn't se the circular pattern of the rebuses, because I got them from the contexts of the answers containing them. Good fun. |
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Astounding. Jeremy Newton is clearly a force with which to be reckoned. |
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Slow going until I realized that the months were in order and symmetrically placed. I'm willing to put up with some obscurities for that. Got caught at the various ambiguities that Orange mentioned, along with GENETIC/GENOMIC and TITLES/NOBLES... |
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I enjoyed this puzzle a lot once I'd caught on to the rebus. I especially liked the FRAUGHT/DRAUGHT pairing, since neither of them sounds like AUG. I never time myself, but I'm guessing it took me almost 2 hours. It shouldn't have, since once I cAUGht on to the rebus and saw that the placements were symmetrical, things became easier (easier meaning it should have taken me a little over an hour :-) ). But I got hung up for the longest time in the NOV sector, mostly because I foolishly assumed that a three-letter Indian tribe with a T in the middle had to be UTE. Sigh. |
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I thought I had caught on to the rebus, then I came across [enhance] AUGMENT and down below was that old DECOCTS, for which I had the DEC for the longest time - both of those made me doubt the rebus aspect. |
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one amazing feat of construction, but yeah, found this to be *very* challenging. had assumed the 45-minute solving time i'd allotted myself would be enuf, but noooo. ;-) (turned out to be something over an hour -- in two sittings...) |
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Forgot to say I had STANDSFAST at first, only later to get ADRENALINEJUNKIES. This left me with STANDSFART. My inner tween LOLed. |
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I found your overall reaction--that this was an insanely difficult puzzle for a Sunday--to be surprising, because I finished it in what was pretty much average time for me, and didn't get anything wrong, and only was a little surprised by ION--I did not recognize that as a name from Greek mythology. (This and the fact that I find your usual insane fast times way impressive!) Overall, a cutesy gimmick without a big clue in the middle to act as the glue that ties it all together, and as such, somewhat disappointing. |
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Extremely challenging NYT with exceptionally brilliant execution. I love funny but I'll take one of this originality, depth, and difficulty 3 Sundays of any month. |
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For me this was a satisfying solve. I made (slow but) steady progress, when I got stuck in one place always found another I could do something with. For a while I thought the placement was random but noticed the symmetry just as I was about to stall, so just in time to keep going given I could fill bits from the remaining months. I was never tempted to Google nor had to guess at any mystery intersections. Those last two are rare enough for me on a Sunday-sized puzzle that I was overall pleased when I finished. Plus, I loved the look of the grid when I was done -- I circle rebus squares and the big circle of circles on completion was just pretty to see. |
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Chiming in late on the NYT - I loved the unexpected difficulty. I think Will should confound expectations more often! Sure, it's frustrating for those competing in the applet when a puzzle is taking much longer than it "should". But wouldn't the occasional themed Friday or Saturday be cool? (I'll bring that up at www.JimHXWordForum.blogs.nytimes.com.) |
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I too had a pretty quick time of this one... before I'd gotten a single rebus entry, I'd figured that it was a rebus puzzle from the title, but i put DROCTOPUS in that Spiderman villain clue. That tripped me up for a while. |
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"Take two A DAY," etc. Works. |
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I agree with most of the above comments; once the rebus was figured out it wasn't too bad. But, for some reason this puzzle wasn't very exciting or fun. |
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