NY Times Crossword, Thu 16-Jun-2011

The Game Room
1

I haven’t done the NY Times crosswords in a long time, well over a year, but decided to start doing them again after a recent SDMB thread reminded me how much I used to enjoy them.

I started last Thursday and have finished every puzzle since then, the easier ones in 5-10 minutes and the harder ones like Thu, Fri or Sunday in 45-50 minutes (and last Saturday’s took me 1h45). So I’ve still got it, baby! :slight_smile:

Today’s puzzle took me about 42 minutes because I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the 39-across clue after I’d filled in all but 3 or 4 of the letters. I eventually filled in the entire puzzle without figuring it out… And what’s more, even after solving it, can’t figure out what the heck it means! (A first for me)

The clue is: “Title for this puzzle… which the answers to the eight starred clues will help explain”.

The six starred clues had the answers of:

*Let off some steam? - HISS
*____ soup - MISO
*Not get some Z’s? - LISP
*Birthday secret - WISH
*Workshop sight, perhaps - VISE
*CD part - DISC

OK so all the answers are the same length and all of them have the same two letters in the center… But I still don’t get it.

2

Oh, and there are 11 letters in the answer to 38-across, and it filled out to be:

HLMFFWVDMRV

3

googled it for ya

4

Moved Cafe Society --> the Game Room.

5

Ha, I left out 2 of the 8 clues with stars in my spoiler list too. The problem is I’m solving this on an iPhone and it’s very hard for me to make out which clues have stars, I kept seeing only 6 of them. Typing the answers isn’t super fun either but I’m not timing myself anyway.

I guess this thread can actually be closed… Unless people want to make fun of how long I took to solve it or how I could have missed this one :slight_smile:

6

Wow, that is a clever puzzle. I wish I had solved it (although it’s easy to see the answer when you haven’t been staring at the same clues for hours).

7

Don’t feel bad, robardin; I totally did not get it either.

But thanks to **sinjin **for showing me a fascinating site.
mmm