"Black Friday" November 24, 2023

[Jayboy1]

Diane Nyad

[kgiano]

Ashore - thanks to the Zoom call

[ReB]

I was 95% of the way there but needed the Last Call to fill in the critical missing piece. Ashore now.

[Ann]

Hoo boy! On the shore

[Bob cruise director]

Count me on the ship with Isaac.

Enjoying (well if I were a masochist) the weekend rebuilding my LAN. New faster equipment, but it means restoring every device that had a static IP (10 of them, that need to be configured at the device, which is a fun (-not!) location in some cases).

My reward will be totally getting rid of Comcrap/xfinity (motto: our customer service is so bad, we had to change our name) in the spring.

@Tom Shea Find me a cable company that has a high approval rating and I will find you a unicorn - equally likelihood for both.

[MaineMarge]

Ashore with some heavy duty tutoring from @Wendy Walker and final reveal by buddy @Bob cruise director.
I’ve been in a black mood since Black Friday working on this#*!#*€ meta. (Sorry Mike-my fault, not yours)
Mike is The Man again!
Here’s something black that always puts me in a good mood

I’ll play it every Friday all winter, just because

[FKelly]

Ashore, thanks to our merry zoom-room elves.

A liitle 60s jazz vibe.
It was a nice addition to our JFK 60th anniversary workout playlist.

[JoeS]

Ashore with help so no mug. KAS 5 for me. I did see what I was supposed to see early on but would never have figured out what to do with it. I am completely in awe, Mr Shenk. Well done.

Stay well all

I believe I also saw what I was supposed to see but cannot see where to go with it. Looks as we'll sit this one out on the boat.

[LadyBird]

On shore thanks to the helpful folks at Isaac's Last Call! And my husband--who saw the first half.

We had a cranberry hard cider with our cranberry galette--using leftover cranberry sauce and puff pastry.

[wescovington]

Thanks to our cruise director, I have made it ashore.

[Bob cruise director]

Good evening muggles
Our final count is 24 on the ship and 139 on the shore. Good luck winning the mug to those who got it.

[PhantomPhan]

Ashore earlier today. I messaged a few muggles asking for a nudge with a list of some harebrained ideas I'd had that hadn't panned out. Most messaged back saying one of my observations was not so zany after all. Palm to forehead moment, for sure.

[sharkicicles]

Count me on the ship with Isaac.

Enjoying (well if I were a masochist) the weekend rebuilding my LAN. New faster equipment, but it means restoring every device that had a static IP (10 of them, that need to be configured at the device, which is a fun (-not!) location in some cases).

My reward will be totally getting rid of Comcrap/xfinity (motto: our customer service is so bad, we had to change our name) in the spring.

@Tom Shea Find me a cable company that has a high approval rating and I will find you a unicorn - equally likelihood for both.

Been very lucky to have good service from comcast the last 20 years or so, because there is no plan B. DSL is unacceptably slow as S***, there isn’t a second cable provider here, and no fiber internet.

[hoover]

On ship

[hcbirker]

[Big Mac]

I followed what I think is the meanest rabbit I’ve ever seen.

Non-black squares that would have created symmetry spelled “SEE” > clues to “eyed” (24D) whose clue is “checked out” (an obvious Black Friday reference). Well funny enough, there’s only two uses of U in the whole puzzle, both of which can spell “OUT” with their surrounding letters in the shape of a “check” mark. That led to nowhere and I never dug out of that hole. Seems almost impossibly coincidental.

[DrTom]

I looked for B and F in the clues, and found them. Almost every clue starting with a B was followed soon after with one starting with an F. That took me forever to finally decide that it would spell nothing (it almost did but not a word I would associate or not associate with the day). I saw the asymmetry and wondered what to do with it but wasn't clever enough to do anything until I got a nudge that essentially said, "why are there extra black squares in this of all puzzles...?' Then the floodgates opened. Never submitted since that was too much help, but a really cool idea.

[Sleepy]

I followed what I think is the meanest rabbit I’ve ever seen.

Non-black squares that would have created symmetry spelled “SEE” > clues to “eyed” (24D) whose clue is “checked out” (an obvious Black Friday reference). Well funny enough, there’s only two uses of U in the whole puzzle, both of which can spell “OUT” with their surrounding letters in the shape of a “check” mark. That led to nowhere and I never dug out of that hole. Seems almost impossibly coincidental.

Shenk. He must do this on purpose! Just to mess with us all. He’s totally insane.

[woozy]

I was having a hard time finding anything and my surrealism meter was not so out of whack to consider ap(black-eyed)PEAses worth following, and I was thinking about how the WSJ usually have clues to let you see a track, and I thought "well usually when I can't see anything one can stare at lay-out. It'd be nice if I could see an inconsistency such as an irregular or asymmetric grid, but unfortunately this grid is perfectly symmetric and.... oh wait..."

So two minutes after that I figure that as the black squares go between down and acrosses I can replace them with a letter from Friday or a word like F-ARIES and F-TOS. But for the second black square is between OTS and LBOS and that doesn't look very promising... but that has to the black square and ... oh wait....

So two minutes after that I think "Okay I have the pairs of letters L/A D/C and I/P but they don't work in word order (LADCIP) or acrosses then downs (LDIACP) and I can't figure out any order that works and .... oh wait....

"Sheesh. I should tattoo 'grid order of the alternate entries to my forehead. That way I won't get stuck on this type of order *over* and *over* again and I'd see it every time I look at my forehead and... oh wait..."

....

So it was a weekend of silly mistakes and oversights. Got it readily enough but silly oversights.

[Relic]

Diane Nyad

Souns like a remarkable swim to shore!