Fabulous puzzle! Smaze stumped me. Very tricky.
I love the Split Decisions puzzles. Thank you, Fred Piscop.
I have had the greatest time doing the puzzles in "The Big Book of Brainteasers" by George Bredehorn, Fred's mentor. There are different kinds of puzzles in the book, but most of them are
Split Decisions.
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Hints on the bottom right answer? Please!!!
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Going down that is
It's Teacher Appreciation Week.
________US is the teaching plan an instructor uses;
________LE is a break-down of a word
Hope this is what you wanted;)
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What's the first word beginning MA/PI? I see too many options for some squares: [B|C|F]OWL/URL, [D|H|R|]ANDY/OWDY.
As Caitlin points out in the blog, this is two fish. (She found it clever, I thought it was annoying.)
Totally agree about the myriad possibilities for the two middle crosses. They are:
C/OW/L, C/U/RL and R/AN/DY, R/OW/DY
with LITT/LE, LITT/ER at the bottom.
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This is a clear failure by Will Shortz. Split Decisions does not typically indulge in obscure non-words. SMAZE was not necessary to complete the puzzle; SMALL or SMASH would have paired nicely with SMART.
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found it pretty easy. I filled in longer entries before some of the shorter ones. Actually the word that gave me trouble was SMAZE -- my last entry. I see now it is a portmanteau word combining smog and haze!
The crossing in the upper right LIMPID/LIQUID could just as well be PIMPED/PIQUED
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I had PIMPED/PIQUED! Quite legitimate.
Liked Head Twisters a lot!
My last one was also MISSION IMPOSSIBLE but it finalloy occurred to me!
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The Spelling Bee was fun, many of my "invalid" list words (I jot them to one side to keep them out of the way) were proper names.
I included REBAR, RABBET and CABER to the legit word list.
I also included REBAR and RABBET, along with ABETTER (acceptable alternate to ABETTOR), CRABBER, and ACERBATE. Comically (tragicomically?), my 25-point list (with the above additions) did not include BETTER!
Like others, I had to resort to the internet to determine that SMAZE is (kinda, sorta) a word. SMAZE yields only 10 hits in a search of the nytimes,com website; one dates back to 1953, and another is in Caitlin's column. Some of those appearances marvel at the portmanteau's poor traction in regular usage. SMAZE is not what anyone would call common parlance. It's not so egregious as the infamous QUOIN, but it's up there. And having said that, I loved working the puzzle!
This is the first time I've failed to solve a Split Decisions because I refuse to look things up, and SMAZE is not in my vocabulary.
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"Smaze"? Unaccebbtabble!
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Head Twisters and Split Decisions for this week both earn my Goldilocks Seal of Approval: not too hard, not too soft, but just right! Lots of fun. Thanks, Patrick Berry and Fred Piscop.
Head Twisters was yet another “middle” puzzle that was new and different.
[SPOILER ALERT]
The only answer that I had to search for was MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. The one I got last was NUMERO UNO (ironically), which left me with the feeling “Why didn’t I get that easy one faster?”
I thought it was funny that the clue for No 8 was "Vote cast from overseas, say" and the first thing I did was look for OV in the list to spell OVERSEAS VOTING.