[My submission had square 42 circled.]
My only regret with this puzzle is that it didn't run on August 28 of this year. It's a long shot, having a puzzle run randomly on a given date, but it would have been cool for two reasons: 1) August 28, 2019 will be a Wednesday, the one day I need to complete the NYT cycle; 2) It will be my 42nd birthday. Oh well. It's always cool to have a puzzle published, no matter what the date. What's more, guess what number puzzle this is for me in the NYT -- 36. That's not 42, but it is next to 42 on the multiplication table, so, you know...
I don't have too much to say about this puzzle. Well, actually I do, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'm telling myself I don't. It's like that Mitch Hedberg joke:
I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.My pen is too far away at the moment. Before I go, however, I'll leave you with a hot take: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is overrated and fantasy is a boring genre in general.
Until next time...
[Despite what I said above, this is one of my favorite shirts. It's nice fabric -- durable but soft. Cuts my figure quite nicely, if I do say so myself.]
A few further thoughts after reading some online comments.
I've seen a couple people grouse that THE MEANING OF LIFE is not a technically accurate description of 42 vis-à-vis THGTTG, because in the actual text, Adams writes that 42 is the answer to "the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything."
To that, I say, c'mon people. It's a distinction without a difference. 42 is very much associated with the phrase THE MEANING OF LIFE. Google them together. You get roughly 50 million hits, and all the top ones (I only looked at the first few pages) are references to THGTTG -- articles, message boards threads, YouTube clips, etc. Here is one of myriad examples using the exact wording in the puzzle:
It's like saying the Night of the Living Dead is not a zombie movie, because the undead monsters are never called "zombies" in the actual film.
I've also seen a couple people grouse about TEHEE. I'm in agreement that it's not great fill. I will downgrade it on my word lists and try to avoid it from here on out. My defense for using it, is that at Merriam-Webster.com it is listed as the primary spelling, with TEE-HEE being the variant.
Lastly, ECOCIDE is totally a thing and a legit word. I don't get the objection (i.e., Rex Parker's objection) here at all.
2 comments:
Greatly enjoyed the puzzle today -- was thrilled to see the 42 connections.
As a Douglas Adams super-fan, I was happy to see "forty-two" referenced vis a vis Hitchhiker's Guide and instantly got the answer. And it's clearly linked in the popular imagination. So I'm not complaining too much! But I would say that it's unfair to dismiss it as "a distinction without a difference."
Saying "the meaning of life is 42" is absurd, a non sequiter. In fact, when the computer gives them that answer, the philosophers are rightly outraged. That's why Deep Thought needs to clarify that it is in fact "the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything" but that in order to understand it, we need to figure out what the question is.
That framing is what sets Adams apart from simply absurd humor to something truly philosophical. It highlights the fact that the quest for an answer to "the meaning of life" is itself a useless enterprise -- the meaning of life is all around us, and trying to calculate or define it is nonsensical, because it means something different to everyone.
Maybe that distinction isn't important to you, and is just pedantry like your excellent George Romero example, but to someone like me, who read Douglas Adams at a formative age, it was immensely meaningful and shaped my worldview.
So it's fair to say that most people think of "42" and "the meaning of life" as interchangeable, I don't think it's fair to say those people are right and the distinction is meaningless. It goes against what the whole series of books is about and invalidates the philosophy in Adams' work, of which I consider myself a follower.
As a native Ithacan I loved 2 Down ("____ is Gorges" T-shirt slogan) but immediately thought of how difficult this might be for a national audience. Or maybe the slogan is more pervasive than I thought. At any rate a photo of this clue was a big hit on the "You Know You Grew Up in Ithaca NY if... " Facebook book page garnering almost 200 likes. Do you have a connection to the region?
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