Saturday, June 03, 2017

NYT Crossword 06/03/17 (Saturday)

Cruciverbalist: Roland Huget
Editor: Will Smith

Solving time: 29:29

Puzzle uniqueness:

Lots of white space, basically four mini-puzzles with limited entry. NE - easy for me; SE - a bit harder but not too bad; SW - that took some time but TIMRICE and RUST were the big help; NW - the toughest by far, almost took me as much time as the other three combined, but WAY and TYPE gave me a foothold.

Words I hadn't known until now:

FASCIAS - "Horizontal pieces covering joint, in architecture"
ARCADIA - "Ancient Greek land that fought Sparta" (Never knew there was such a country)
PRIE - "____-dieu"
ARECIBO - "Puerto Rican home to the Western Hemisphere's largest radio telescope"
FARPOST- "Shooter's target in soccer" (I've gotten into soccer lately, but not heard this term)
RAMADAS - "Open-sided shelters"
AREAWAY - "Passage between buildings" (New one to me)

Trivia I didn't know:

PIRATES - "Team that last won the World Series in 1979" (Not much of a sports trivia guy)
TAPIOCA - "Thickening agent in cookery" (Who'd a thunk it?)
BIZET - "'L'Artesienne' suite composer, 1872"
LASALLE - "Mississippi River explorer" (Had it after a couple of squares)
THISTLE - "Heraldic emblem of Scotland"
RODRIGO - "Phillipine strongman ______ Duterte"

Junk Answers:

SERT - "Spanish Muralist Jose Maria ____"
PRIE - (See above)

Clever clues:

ALFREDO - "Saucy name?"

Obscure (i.e., really reaching) words:

FASCIAS - (See above)
ARACHNE - "Weaver of Greek mythology"
BIZ - "Infrequent ending for URLs"
BEZEL - "Part of a watch that holds the face's glass cover"
PRIE - (See above)
ARECIBO - (See above)
IDEATE - "Brainstorm"

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