Administrivial alert: The Games team continues to work on the issue with the downloadable PDFs. During the meanwhile, here is the Wednesday puzzle.
WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — We, as a species, are not meant to hold more than a certain amount of information in our memory, and the space in which we are supposed to hold this information gets smaller as we age. The only analogy I can think of right now — mostly because I have forgotten the other ones — is if you hired people to remodel your home and, when you tried to enter the bathroom, you found that they had erected a brick wall in the doorway. Younger readers might not believe me, but those of you who are my age or older are sitting there nodding.
We are forced to cram more and more data into our brains until it starts to shed the overload, or it at least conflates that data with other shards of memories, which is why we sound like we make no sense to younger generations. I wrote about this once before, when I had to recall the words to a nursery rhyme to explain a clue:
“These factoids that I don’t need to access every day have a tendency over time to meld together with other unloved bits of information into a single congealed mass, until one day I need to remember what Jack Horner liked to eat or I’ll lose my job, and they come out sounding like this:
‘Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating his curds and whey
Excepting February alone, one nation, under God
Which is not considered to be medical advice in the legally binding sense
So always consult your physician.’“I’m pretty sure this is why they pay me to talk about the crossword puzzle and not, say, foreign policy.”
And that was almost 10 years ago. Imagine how badly I have to go to the bathroom now.
This is why I suspect that the invention of the internet is aging us prematurely. Every time you go to a new website and have to set up an account, you are asked to choose a password, and if you don’t want to have your self-esteem completely destroyed, it needs to be new and original. A website will tell you with absolutely no cares in the world whether or not it approves of your choice of password, so that you spend more time trying to impress the password generator than visiting Cutekittyphotos.com. Then you have to remember it. Oh, I know about password savers and all that, but you have to remember a master password for those too. As far as I know, it’s in the bathroom, locked behind a brick wall.
And now that I have gotten that out of my system, the constructors Amanda Chung and Karl Ni return to make me try to think of a new password. Maybe this time I’ll make it my birthday. What could possibly go wrong?
Tricky Clues
16A. We can bid on items in an auction, but in this puzzle, we are bidding ADIEU.
19A. Hi, kids! The Church Lady was a character played by the comedian Dana Carvey when he was a regular on “Saturday Night Live” from 1986 to 1993. Her foe, as she dramatically announced on every episode of “Church Chat,” was (pause for effect) SATAN.
40D. Apparently, IBANKER is short for “investment banker.”
54D. (Warning: Opinion ahead.) Yes, ROSS was a character on the television show “Friends,” but anyone who says he was an actual friend to anyone on that show is completely wrong. Fight me.
Today’s Theme
Even if my choice of password isn’t original, Ms. Chung and Mr. Ni’s theme certainly is. The three theme entries and the revealer at 49A are debuts.
Each of the theme entries contains — as all good passwords should — letters, a number and a special character. For example, at 20A, the answer to “Reduced-fat option” is TWO PERCENT MILK, which can also be interpreted as “2%MILK.”
Constructor Notes
The idea for this theme came during a visit from Amanda’s older brother, Art. We were discussing recent news about a large password leak.
That got us thinking about all the password requirements — numbers, letters, special characters — and how we could look for normal phrases that met the same requirements. It was a hard search to find these three but we’re very happy with them. Many thanks as always to the editing team for adding some great clues, like 46A!
The Tipping Point
Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.
Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
Your thoughts?
"that" - Google News
July 29, 2020 at 09:00AM
https://ift.tt/2BEFWQL
Something That Is Bid - The New York Times
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv
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