I had the same experience with the meta. I had to leave it and come back and then, suddenly, it was obvious.
Spencer | 07.14.09 - 2:25 pm | #

My only problem was figuring out the theme... took me way longer than it should have. Not until the last one (So To Speak) did I see how to parse it, and then had an enormous DUH moment.

But I did fare better on the meta...started at 1 across...JAMB...CUBE...done! I finally beat Joon's time at something lol!

First LFC friendly tomorrow, Joon...Go Reds!!
jimmy d | 07.14.09 - 3:34 pm | #

4:20 on the puzzle for me, too...and about a minute and a half for the meta, first parsing all the opposite pairs in the puzzle for their DOOR DIEness and then finally realizing DOOR, JAMB, etc.
OrangeXW | Homepage | 07.14.09 - 3:52 pm | #

30 hours? That's quite a difference from negative 2:51.

Let's move on to the hard metas, shall we?
Alex | Homepage | 07.14.09 - 11:27 pm | #