Super Mega

One of the nice things about the Sunday New York Times is the crossword puzzle. I love doing it. And yes, I do it in ink. Sometimes this results in smudges where I've had to overwrite a wrong answer, but I still do it in ink.

Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, the Times published its Super Mega Crossword Puzzle. It's almost a full two-page spread! I knew that this would be A Project, so I saved the section for this week, when I would have the time to give it my best shot.

The twist for this puzzle is that there are three cartoons around it. The extra-special answers are the captions to the cartoons, so you have to solve all the crossing clues to get those answers.

Anyway, here are the clues:

I know they're unreadable; I present them so you can get an idea of the super mega-ality of this puzzle. Doing this puzzle took several days. This week was the perfect week to do it. It's bitter cold outside, the stores are awash with people, and it engages my brain.

I worked it in quadrants. Occasionally I read a clue that I absolutely knew, so I went ahead and filled it in. The upper right quadrant gave me a hard time, but I eventually conquered it, once I figured out that the Port in SW Italy was Sorrento, not Salerno with an extra letter somewhere.

I admit to cheating a bit, but I cheated a lot less than I thought I'd have to. Generally when I do cheat, the one answer that I look up unlocks a motherlode of other answers. This is how I rationalize my use of Google to get an answer.

I finished it this afternoon. Yay!