Peter's suggested titles crack me up. Not because they're funny, but because they make me laugh at my own idiocy. I read "Eureka moment" and ...
read morePeter's suggested titles crack me up. Not because they're funny, but because they make me laugh at my own idiocy. I read "Eureka moment" and figured he accidentally referenced a different puzzle. No? My train (wreck) of thought:
- Eureka … how is Aristotle involved? Knowing Peter, Aristotle's name might be hidden somewhere?
- D'oh! It wasn't Aristotle in the bathtub. It was … hey Kool-aid Man! I mean, hey, Siri!
- Siri: ARCHIMEDES, dummy.
- That's what I meant all along. Stupid brain and SIRI, you thought I was being serious? SCREW you! Get it? Archimedes screw? Ha ha, I'm so clever!
- Archimedes screw. Huh! Answers screw up the grid in some way?
- (down an hour-long rabbit hole)
- EUREKA means "I've found it." That's so not applicable to me vis-a-vis Peter's meaning.
- WTF does "vis-a-vis" mean, anyway? What's it doing on a Tuesday puzzle's revealer?
- (down another rabbit hole--hey, "vis-a-vis a visa" is funny!)
- (after an hour) Brain: Jeff, didn't you grow up in California?
- Siri: California, you know, whose STATE MOTTO is …
- QUIET, YOU! I KNEW THAT!
Amazingly tight set of themers. I didn't recognize any of the words as STATE MOTTOs, but perusing the Wikipedia page in a vain attempt to make myself appear more educated than I really am (yes, I have two master's degrees), I discovered that there are only five states with one-word (English) mottos. Amazing that they can all start reasonable phrases!
I wonder if shading the words FRIENDSHIP, HOPE, FORWARD, INDUSTRY, would have been a better approach. Given that exactly 0.002 out of 100 Americans could identify these STATE MOTTOs, it's not like it would have given away the game, and it would have helped them stand out.
How about running them vertically … so that the MOTTOs looked like they were at the top of a flag! (Brain: you know that not all state flags have their motto — ENOUGH ALREADY, BRAIN!) That could have helped with the layout, too, allowing for STATE / MOTTO to be in mirror positions instead of oddly broken up at the last and second-to-last across slots.
It's not a clean or newb-accessible grid, what with a whole lot of ARNO CBER NEHI NIMH, etc., but I appreciated the theme more and more over time. It was the right balance of teaching something without feeling teachy.