Not to crow (much), but I almost always finish the NYT crossword puzzles that I try, i.e., Weds thru Sun. I sometimes have small errors, but I never look stuff up. Today, however, the very first day of this blog, I crashed and did not finish (DNF). It happened in the Northeast where ARCO finally popped into my head (amazingly), regarding the violinist’s bow, but I couldn’t let go of LOAF for “Lie about.” (It was LOLL, of course.) And “F in music class?” — fuhgeddaboutit. So I sputtered and crashed.

But it was a very impressive puzzle, it seemed to me, with two themes working together in five locations. Two downs “merged left” to answer the clue. So for “Noble title” the answer was COUNTESS, but it was formed by four across pairs: CO, UN, TE, SS, each also forming part of their own separate answers. And each down pair spelled another (unclued) word! — CUTS and ONES, from Countess. Wow.

So, bravo, Simeon Seigel. Other treats included a pair of identical clues: “Officer’s title,” with the answers being SIR in one case and MAAM in the other. And I somehow remembered that Melville dedicated Moby-Dick (good name for a porn star, btw) to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I did not know but was happy to learn that the Swiss flag is square! Really?

Rex (of the Rex Parker puzzle blog) absolutely hated it. He’s quite the curmudgeon. And one member of “the commentariat” paraphrased Samuel Johnson wonderfully and said: “The theme must have been extremely difficult to execute. I wish it had been impossible.” Another carper recounted what the losing football coach said when asked about his team’s execution. “I’m in favor of it.”

But another commenter countered: “Why do you always complain that themes don’t have a “reason” for existing? It’s a puzzle. You have to figure out which letters the clues want you to put in the boxes. That is the reason.”

The very first clue/answer was “Musky ‘cat’” for CIVET. And I bet you coffee drinkers didn’t know this: “Civet cats in Sumatra eat the fruit of coffee plants. Unable to digest the bean, they excrete them whole. The beans are then gathered, cleaned, and roasted to produce a rare and expensive ( $100 USD per pound) coffee prized by aficionados. I’ll….pass.” (per Rex commenter Joel Palmer) (I might put a little more emphasis on the “cleaned” part.)

That’s my puzzle chatter for the day, and I’m sticking to it.