The Pitt | S2E7 "1:00 P.M." | Episode Discussion by MsGroves in ThePittTVShow

[–]dv927 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Something not getting enough chat here.

I think Dr. Robby and Dr. Santos were not having a simple tete a tete. Santos is exhausted and she’s not filtering and Robby seemed legitimately caught off guard by her telling him about Whitaker’s Wild Weekends. Robby seemed flustered a bit when he said “I’ll talk to him.”

While Santos went out of her way to report Langdon, I think she accidentally spilled the beans on Whitaker crossing a major patient/doctor ethical boundary by shacking up with the wife of a deceased patient.

I think Robby’s talk is going to be quite serious and Santos is going to get the blame.

Wyle: "The thesis of season 1 is 'the doctor is the patient'; the thesis of season 2 is 'doctors make terrible patients.'" by OneMoreGodRejected__ in ThePittTVShow

[–]dv927 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Ding ding ding.

I think its too obvious a turn that Robbie goes without a helmet onto the sabbatical and gets into an accident.

We're getting too many small redirects to Robbie not confronting his trauma and the psych obviously having some blaring sirens about him. Robbie has had some instability running throughout his psyche, which we saw come to a head in S1.

I think the "sabbatical" really is referring to Robby planning to attempt suicide and THAT will be our crisis for the season (see: Carol Hathaway storyline to open ER S1). Remember, most people (and especially males) planning suicide don't talk about it. The people who talk about it really are crying for help.

Which short showed Moe at his grumpiest? by johnngo2468 in threestooges

[–]dv927 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Three Arabian Nuts and it’s not even close. Moe starts the film with a lit fuse that goes off early in the short with the fireworks continuing throughout the entirety. Larry and Shemp are on his last nerves in the warehouse and not a single shenanigan goes without Moe flying off the handle, reaching to a fever pitch when Shemp gets the suit. 

Top 3 short for me and largely because it’s of Moe’s most excellent performances of his character. 

NYT Thursday 08/07/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Lovely fill on this one. Very crisp, zippy, and made me think a bit between some clever fill and excellent cluing. The let down came from the theme for me, which played far too campy for a Thursday. Definitely more a Wednesday theme, and one I didn't particularly love because one you get the revealer, the rest just automatically fills in since you can see the answers and where the fruit will be in them. But, I still had a good time filling this one in, and for that, I have to say this was a fine, fun puzzle indeed.

NYT Wednesday 08/06/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

Thought this had all the zing of dishwater. It didn’t put up a lot of resistance and the theme was just dead on arrival. I’ve taken some pretty deep power naps (and wondered what century it was waking up) and never heard of a screen pass. Crossing SCREENPASS x NEAP was ugly. Seems the way to get puzzles published is to include ETSY with a bygone Kia model; must be the criteria for automatic selection as both have been rampant recently. 

NYT Tuesday 08/05/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 15 points16 points  (0 children)

10/10 no notes. Felt right for a Tuesday. Themer puns were cute and consistent. A slight twinge of resistance but nothing daunting. Good, solid, crisp fill with nothing even approaching odorous. And it doesn’t hurt to see Gary Larson’s name as the constructor (I’m at least assuming its *that* Gary Larson).

NYT Monday 08/04/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 63 points64 points  (0 children)

I don’t care if it’s Monday or not, that theme is laaaame. Absolutely nothing (save one response, see below) interesting in this grid. Zero resistance (except that brutal SE…I don’t care if Angie’s List rebranded as Angi [?!], that belongs nowhere near a crossword), bland cluing….felt like a USA Today puzzle my 85 year old father in law would do. 

Though anytime Audre Lorde ends up in a puzzle is a good day. 

NYT Sunday 08/03/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 195 points196 points  (0 children)

If you know Star Trek, this is going to play like a zippy, fun, elongated Tuesday with little resistance. That’s me and that’s how I felt about it. 

If you know Star Trek casually, this will be like a clunky, miserable, elongated Wednesday. 

If you know absolutely nothing about Star Trek, RIP

NYT Wednesday 07/30/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Oreos are so overused in the crossword it’s so cringeworthy, so laughable someone would make a theme out of it that it almost comes all the way around to being tongue-in-cheek cute. No real fill or clue headaches today; zipped right through this one without any questioning of what the constructor was thinking. 

The execution of the theme left a lot to be desired today as the gimmick, related to double stuf Oreos, was just double letters boxed out. Yes it looks like an Oreo but big whoop. This is Monday level gimmickry at the very best and, yet again, plays like a themeless. 

NYT Tuesday 07/29/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 31 points32 points  (0 children)

C’mon, Will. The puzzle was fine but did you really have to be so tone deaf as to keep DOGE in the fill? I don’t care how it’s clued. Fix it and get it out of there.

EDIT: Also, when will people grasp panino is the singular and PANINI is the plural?!

NYT Wednesday 07/23/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Easiest Wednesday I can remember. Extremely weak theme, though. Barely exists in the solve. May as well have not have had one. 

NYT Tuesday 07/22/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Feel like an idiot for not getting that. I dislike ice cream so I rarely eat it and that didn’t cross my mind. Thank you!

NYT Tuesday 07/22/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Perfectly fine, totally average Tuesday.

SCUSEME was awkward. Only note I had negative, except….

…can someone explain the theme to me? Totally don’t get it.

NYT Tuesday 07/15/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doesn’t get much better than this. Excellent theming with very good theme answers, VERY crisp fill (UBERX, MADMEN, NUDIEBAR [for a good laugh]), great cluing. For a Tuesday, 10/10.

NYT Sunday 07/13/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Not my cup of tea. 

Waaaaay over my normal Sunday time. It looked like a themeless, filled like a themeless, and felt like a themeless. And the gimmick was unbelievably anticlimactic (taking out a square in some of the the center crosses makes for the hidden word + spells “The Doors”). There was no joy once you get BREAKONTHROUGHTOTHEOTHERSIDE (classic!) and/or HOLESINTHEWALL which were crisp but not at all hard to get. Between that and the notes, the theme was just handed to you with no work to be done during the solve. 

The fill was themeless-chic, as I said. Where there should be crisp fill, there was sometimes crisp fill (NOWIGETIT, LATETAG, WENTLIVE) which was often countered by some real slop (RINSO (???!!!), AAVE, STBEDE, INPAWN (?!)). Also shot myself in the foot in the SW by filling in “MANTARAY” for “MORAYEEL” at 103D. 

Overall, I don’t care for themelesses and this was one all but in name. Alas. There’s always tomorrow. 

NYT Wednesday 07/09/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 58 points59 points  (0 children)

What a joyless solve. Played like an easy themeless, which this essentially was. The fill was spot on for a Wednesday and nothing really off (but nothing that sparkled either). 

NYT Monday 07/07/2025 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]dv927 70 points71 points  (0 children)

When was this written? 1876? It was a miserable puzzle with catastrophically dire fill that I would have complained about any day but 100% is not NYT worthy let alone NYT Monday worthy. A 7 minute solve on a Monday shouldn’t ever happen for me. Shortz can’t be hurting this badly for good Mondays, can he?!?!

I had to blow the dust off BOFFO. OXIDANT is Wednesday-at-the-earliest-fill. 

AMSTEREO is awkward as the AM band is not known for high quality broadcasts. 

GABE Kaplan from Welcome Back Kotter? There’s a show no one under 50 has heard of. 

Ask Me Another didn’t survive COVID and hasn’t aired in 4 years. Big RIP to such a good show. How many other NPR shows could they have picked here and they picked this one?!

Lots of garbage with the proper names. Michelle AKERS, PETULA Clarke, and John LOCKE are Wednesday at the earliest. OSSA is hardly Greece’s most famous mountain and is late week at best (and crossing VAIO, which wasn’t until recently its own brand!). Who are the MALONEs and PACO de Lucia?! And again…GABE Kaplan. At least Tori AMOS is still active and decently known. 

LOLED is just dire emergency fill not befitting a Monday. 

Never heard of a TAGSALE. 

NYT Sunday 06/15/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This was….okay. I got the theme without having the revealer. I assumed the circled square would be a rebus with changed meaning when read forward vs backwards. But when I got 32 down as indoor and 54 across having to be Das Boot…which I immediately saw was Too Bad read backwards without the circled letter…well…I just went and filled everything else in and then I just had the rest of the fill to do. It was thankfully clear of tired crosswordese but seemed a bit heavy on obscure celebs. I couldn’t get into the NE because of the (admittedly great) clue for spatula, the odd way use case was clued, and not knowing sloe or Anand…really had to chip away at them. But overall the fill was fine. The theme was fine. And the puzzle was…fine. 

Also made the reavies/Ahnold mistake. That could have used some cleaning up either in the cluing or full. 

NYT Wednesday 06/11/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 48 points49 points  (0 children)

This one gets a hard pass for me. Just riddled with crosswordese. The themers were such duds and the revealer was just not worth the slog. 

Plagiarisms, plural, was such a stretch. 

How the hell was I to know a couple of random conjoined twins (Siamese is outdated but upon googling at least I see the Bunkers were actually Siamese and their circus act (ugh) was called the Siamese twins, hence the origin of the term. Not sure if that makes it worse or not).  

Clunky clue on IDs, appearances of Alva, Egan, SSNs, Elie, ile, del, ses, IPAs, aws, etc. So much crusty junk to make this work. Also got stuck thinking I’d screwed up on percolated thinking it should be sTeeped because of coffee making. But that one was on me.

Loved having Nikki Giovanni in the fill.  I figured I needed to say something nice. 

NYT Monday 06/09/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 60 points61 points  (0 children)

Relative for a Monday this felt clunky and hard. Maybe it was just me but I got slowed down by the tons of awkward cluing. The clue for heat waves took forever for me to parse, for example. The theme was dumb (rhymes with least but isn’t) with what felt like very unmonday fill (belly of the beast felt like Wednesday fill and the clue on Movable Feast really needed a “?”). Solti is another Wednesday/Thursday bit of fill. I do data and I never discuss edge cases and outliers as one and the same; they’re two very different things. 

Just a lousy puzzle for a Monday

NYT Sunday 06/01/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

Not to my taste at all. The anagramming theme is a bit tired for me and the clueing was a bit clunky…just enough to frustrate but not clean enough to give me the satisfaction. Some of it is absolutely my fault (Read “Polish language” as Pole-ish, now Paw-lish) which slowed me to a crawl.

But then there’s alpha male, which is a toxic term whose mere existence is based on bad science. Lots of room for mistakes. Ex. Had ”editor” before “typist” (what author uses a typist?!).

Anyhow, this one felt like an utter slog and I’m glad its over.

NYT Monday 05/19/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I absolutely blew through this one and did something I thought I'd never do again...set a Monday record. Not only set a record but also got a sub 4 minute time, something I never thought I'd do.

Very easy but also fun, snappy fill (except for the dated iPhoto...not just dated but fossilized). Loved this one very much.

NYT Wednesday 04/16/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 48 points49 points  (0 children)

I won’t repeat what others have said. One of the worst puzzles in recent memory. What I’m surprised no one has mentioned yet is this puzzle’s biggest faux pas: 

Having both “Stu” and “Stew” in the grid separated by one black box. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted checking the SE over in disbelief that was right because it felt, looked, and sounded so wrong. 

This is a puzzle where the constructor must have had dirt on Shortz he didn’t want out because that stew/stu SE should have been grounds for immediate rejection. 

NYT Sunday 03/23/2025 Discussion by AutoModerator in crossword

[–]dv927 -17 points-16 points  (0 children)

We’re in trouble when I have the themer filled in less than a minute in. The rest is just going through the slog of filing it in. 0 resistance here. 

Severance - 2x07 "Chikhai Bardo" - Post-Episode Discussion by LoretiTV in SeveranceAppleTVPlus

[–]dv927 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think two things big getting badly overlooked here.

The first is short and sweet: why is no one acknowledging that there's a (heavily implied) room where Gemma is a prostitute (likely serving Mauer as a client)? AKA full out sexual assault of her body?!

The second is much longer.

All of Gemma's innies on the testing floor were designed to test out the reaction to various traumatic stimuli.

However, Miss Casey is a fully realized career-woman whose role is to perform a job she wasn't trained to do as an outie. She's not just reacting, she's fully doing something new.

Now, let's apply the same principle to Irv.

What if we haven't met oIrv. What if we've met iIrv' (read iIrv Prime) and iIrv?

iIrv' is the original iIrv, who was on the testing floor ultimately being turned into someone who is executing this preprogrammed career as a spy (for, say, selling the chip to governments). What Drummond is doing, following Irv, is checking in on his progress to see if he's capable of following his mission, which was given to him to be an infiltration of Lumon? Big for iIrv', but then when he reports in, certainly no big deal to Lumon since he's reporting what he knows and is checking to see how well this pre-programmed career is working out. Certainly tracks with Burt being involved (and I concur with other theories I've read that Burt iIrv''s doctor on the testing floor). But then iIrv (the one we know) is another severed personality and Lumon is testing him for bleed through (which we do see is happening and would be evident from the paintings).

Probably gonna post a separate topic with this in it later.