21:58 (71A) They are chess moves in algebraic chess notation. Nb3 means kNight moves to b3. Bxh7 is Bishop moves to h7, capturing a piece (x). Ra4 means Rook moves to a4. Since typically there's only one piece that can make a given move, you only specify which piece in particular we're talking about if it's ambiguous. So, if 2 rooks can move to the same square, e.g.
I cannot believe you got theme straight away from the first section, you are amazing. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to complete but I figured it out and got there.
I was like why are there so many clues that are one letter short with the answer that would make the most sense. I finally figured it out but took me an hour.
En ce matin de brume et grésil, quelle plaisir de regarder le Daily Solve du dimanche au chaud avec un bon café crème dans ma nouvelle tasse 'Let's check the crosses' que j'ai reçu la veille de noel... Merci pour la Coffee Cup Mr Remo. loving it! Concerning today's crossword... There's a limit to how much a first-person, present-tense narrative can be handed over to auto-pilot without straining the contract between writer and reader... ; )
This puzzle was very hard for me as a non native English speaker. A lot of US references when it came to the proper nouns and I had such a hard time with the theme. In my brain a dash is / not -. Took me an hour and a half to solve and 20 or so minutes of that was trying to figure out what was wrong with the completely filled puzzle. 😅
66A There's some humor to the specificity of this clue since Johnny DEPP was only Grindelwald for one movie. Colin Farrell played a disguised version of the character in the first movie, and the studio dropped Depp for Mads Mikkelsen in the third movie.
21:58 (71A) They are chess moves in algebraic chess notation. Nb3 means kNight moves to b3. Bxh7 is Bishop moves to h7, capturing a piece (x). Ra4 means Rook moves to a4.
Since typically there's only one piece that can make a given move, you only specify which piece in particular we're talking about if it's ambiguous. So, if 2 rooks can move to the same square, e.g.
I cannot believe you got theme straight away from the first section, you are amazing. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to complete but I figured it out and got there.
Same 😅
how does chris always know how many puzzles each author has constructed
I was like why are there so many clues that are one letter short with the answer that would make the most sense. I finally figured it out but took me an hour.
En ce matin de brume et grésil, quelle plaisir de regarder le Daily Solve du dimanche au chaud avec un bon café crème dans ma nouvelle tasse 'Let's check the crosses' que j'ai reçu la veille de noel...
Merci pour la Coffee Cup Mr Remo. loving it!
Concerning today's crossword... There's a limit to how much a first-person, present-tense narrative can be handed over to auto-pilot without straining the contract between writer and reader... ; )
This was fun! Once I discovered the line pattern in the first quadrant (which took quite a while), the rest of the puzzle came relatively easy!
This puzzle was very hard for me as a non native English speaker. A lot of US references when it came to the proper nouns and I had such a hard time with the theme. In my brain a dash is / not -. Took me an hour and a half to solve and 20 or so minutes of that was trying to figure out what was wrong with the completely filled puzzle. 😅
66A There's some humor to the specificity of this clue since Johnny DEPP was only Grindelwald for one movie. Colin Farrell played a disguised version of the character in the first movie, and the studio dropped Depp for Mads Mikkelsen in the third movie.
Ha ha, a Depp dump.
This, the last NYT Sunday crossword puzzle of 2024. Looking forward to 2025's.
Two relatively quick Sundays in a row.