Posted on September 06, 2007 by Steve
I gave the 8/31/2007
puzzle a shot and do concur that it is a challenge. After several days of work and no cheating, I've still got 20 empty squares. I accidentally saw the answer to 15D
here and tried to forget it. Later I misremembered the answer as "FLOOR" which happened to agree with a crossing clue and threw me off for a while.
It seems Gordon is far from banning "obscure clues requiring rote memorization" however -- I've no idea what Frankie Avalon's hit was, or who costarred with Knight on '70s TV, or who sang the 1997 album "Drag." And I must be missing something obvious where "D O _ _ A T _ O G" gives "Ruthless."
Comments
And I must be missing something obvious where "D O _ _ A T _ O G" gives "Ruthless."
Is that a cry for help? Once it falls into place you won't be able to restrain yourself from a big / fat / "d'oh".
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Wait - are you the two or the one?
You may want to try today's puzzle. I found it quite a bit easier than last week's although, as always, it looked impossible and daunting until I got rolling. Solving time: 13:22; still a ways to go to catch up to the (other) womanless dorks.
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"Two Against One" is the title of that puzzle. Is it a coincidence that "big fat d'oh" could be an anagram for the "ruthless" answer, if I got just one crossing letter wrong?
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All your letters are correct. "big fat do'h" is a major clue, though - or rather, "big / fat / d'oh" is.
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Click.
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I'm down to eight empty boxes after much honest labor (and Fiat's increasingly blunt tips). If I could come up with Pepsi's original name, Knight's costar, and the beguiling "five of a kind" (A E _ _ _) I would be done.
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I have a guess what "5 of a kind" might be. Not that I've actually looked at the puzzle, so maybe the cross-letters don't work.
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I'm about ready to simply
cheat, so I'm open to any suggestions.
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The hecat engine is unlikely to help you much with "five of a kind". That clue was really rotten - I had pretty much put it out of my mind. That there are five letters in the answer, leaving one slot for each of the five, may give you a nudge.
This clue is not intended to be facetious. Nor abstemious, for that matter.
The other answers are harder to hint at. Pepsi was (apparently) originally called "the beverage of an anti-apasstate[sic]", or something like that. And Knight's costar earlier appeared with Marx in a less singular performance.
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Is that a cry for help? Once it falls into place you won't be able to restrain yourself from a big / fat / "d'oh".
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