5 months ago

195

I cut it off at 5 hours and counted up the misses and errors. Enough was enough.
Out of 632 clues, around 50 words missed or wrong (not including typos). Complete list as follows:

* = "known" answer

Across
44 Three Tall Women playwright (5) ALBEE
49 1975 Doctorow novel (7) RAGTIME
55 Yuletide tart filling (9) * MINCEMEAT
107 Optical illusion (6) * MIRAGE
117 Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? band (7) * CHICAGO
123 Colson Whitehead’s The _____ Boys (6) NICKEL
150 It’s measured with a Snellen chart (8) * EYESIGHT
178 Like a fictional tailless monkey (7) * CURIOUS
184 Jon Krakauer’s Into _____ (book set on 224-Down) (4,3) THIN AIR
211 Greek wine (7) RETSINA
217 Still I Rise poet (7) * ANGELOU
218 Curved Turkish sword (8) * SCIMITAR
263, 230 Captain America portrayer(5,5) cHRIS EVANS
302 Jack Ryan portrayer on Amazon Prime(9) KRASINSKI
304 French actress Simone whose last name is an anagram of TOE RINGS(8) SIGNORET
324 Montreal-born film actress Norma(7) SHEARER
329 Self-Reliance essayist(7) EMERSON
330 Broom-Hilda's pal Gaylord is one(7) BUZZARD
335 Resignation to failure(9) * DEFEATISM
369 Tennessee footballer(5) TITAN
381 Rio beach in a 1964 song(7) IPANEMA
383 Concern of Linnaeus(12) NOMENCLATURE
451 Half-Vulcan of TV(5) * SPOCK
539 Tomfoolery(7) HIJINKS
566 Walt Kelly's possum(4) POGO
582 X-Men villain(7) * MAGNETO
586 2016 Disney film set in Polynesia(5) MOANA
587 Actor Elba(5) IDRIS
592 The Social Network screenwriter(5,6) AARON SORKIN

Down

14 Bug-eyed(4) * AGOG
15 Bug fighter(10) * ANTIBIOTIC
20 Michael J. Fox or Paul Gross, by birth(8) ALBERTAN
24 Noxious atmosphere(6) * MIASMA
80 Emotionally moving(8) * POIGNANT
86 La La Land Oscar winner(4,5) EMMA STONE
88 Leonard Hofstadter on The Big Bang Theory(6,7) JOHNNY GALECKI
103 Brandy goblet(7) SNIFTER
138 Washington peak, or Grace Kelly's husband(7) RAINIER
165 Intermissions(9) * INTERVALS
173 Invention of 254-Across (Lester B. Pearson) (8) DYNAMITE
187 Frasier Crane's brother(5) * NILES
191 It's 88 to 149 bpm for an exercising 45-year-old(6,5,4) * TARGET HEART RATE
209 Jakarta's island(4) JAVA
260 Abbey in a Wordsworth title(7) TINTERN
284 Rhine danger for sailors(7) LORELEI
297 The Blue Boy artist(12) GAINSBOROUGH
299 Fall Out Boy bassist Pete(5) WENTZ
305 It includes Romeo and Juliet(4,8) NATO ALPHABET
324 Plot outlines(9) * SCENARIOS
336 Jib(8) FORESAIL
341 Hamper(8) * OBSTRUCT
412 Joan of Say Anything... and Grosse Pointe Blank(6) CUSACK
439 Viola Davis film of 2011(3,4) THE HELP
446 Israel's national anthem whose title means "The Hope"(7) HATIKVA
573 Dreidel letter(5) GIMEL

It would have required more time and patience to go over it again and squeeze out some more answers; but not many more.

I know from experience doing the Brit style Globe quick clue puzzle, the way the grid is constructed makes clues like these harder to solve. Although this one has more crosses for each answer than the daily Globe puzzles, there are still fewer overall than the American syndicated big daily ones typified by the NYT.

To get an idea of the size of this thing
, here it is printed off and laid out on a table:
https://ibb.co/fMQMf3m

A weekday NYT is 15×15 =225 squares.
This is 69×69=4761.
That's 20 + times the boxes; so that if you miss 2 or 3 words in a regular puzzle, that gets magnified 20+ times in a giant one like this. Plus as I said the layout of the grid is harder.

Anyway 1st time attempting a giant puzzle. It was a learning experience. If I do one again I know that it requires extra time and patience.
BTW shout-out to https://m.youtube.com/@GlennCrossBlog2-bz8wo where I got the idea to tackle this puzzle.

Loading comments...