He married Hungarian-born Maria Gergaly in 1981. The stress led to a heart attack and the breakdown of his marriage. Interest rate hikes and a credit squeeze under the then Whitlam government had a disastrous effect on the building industry. In 1972, he was asked to join a development company in Sydney and became a director. The family increased with the births of Gregory and Wendy. Children Neale and Christine were born.Īfter graduating, Harrison was delighted to find work with an architecture firm in his beloved Grafton. He also gained an SMH crosswords sparring partner in his father-in-law. Harrison moved to Sydney in 1949 to study civil engineering, then two years later, transferred to architecture. Donald could always recall that first cryptic clue he solved, aged 11, while, looking over his mother’s shoulder – New one new gas (4)* Father, Wesley Harrison, was a senior surveyor with the Department of Main Roads and mother, Marjorie née Macklin, liked crosswords. Like his brother Malcolm and sister Rosalie, he was taught to strive and to value learning. Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.Harrison was born and educated in Grafton in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key. As ambitious as I like to be with my themes, I never let myself forget about newer and more casual solvers: If one of my puzzles ends up feeling more like a construction stunt than an enjoyable solve, I haven’t done my job quite right. Working with 18 symmetrical, interlocking theme answers was one of my biggest construction challenges to date, and I wanted to be sure I was keeping each answer in the grid as natural-sounding as possible, even though this meant having a higher word count and fewer flashy bonuses. Will asked me to try lowering the word count from 144, but I’m grateful he ultimately made an exception. Will graciously agreed to hold my puzzle for a year, and I’m excited that its time has now come. Will Shortz liked my puzzle but informed me that Lisa Bunker had beaten me to the punch with her ingenious “ Sealed With a Kiss” crossword.
I constructed this puzzle at the end of 2020 with the goal of having it run on Valentine’s Day in 2021, since Feb. It’s maddeningly charming and a bit like that shy and intelligent person in your life who once had a crush on you, but whose hints to that effect were very subtle. Rarely have I considered a theme explanation so necessary, and I can’t help thinking some people solved this puzzle, scratched their heads and moved on without catching the trick. Once you find a letter that you can switch into the crossing center of each of the asterisked entries and read those letters in order, the name of an upcoming holiday will be revealed.
This letter switch is simple, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find many unplanned examples in a puzzle of your choice - this is very carefully choreographed and definitely a feat of construction. What letter can go there? “V,” to make UNLIVABLE and WOVEN. Try 23-Across, UNLIKABLE, which has 4-Down, WOKEN, crossing at the “K” in the middle of both entries. You can change the “N” to an “E” to get SHRIEKING and TEETH. This happened for me at 49-Across, SHRINKING its center letter, “N,” is also the center letter in 36-Down, TENTH. You need to see the down entries to make the connection. “Noisy disagreement” is ALTERCATION, and “Contracting” is SHRINKING no puns to be found, and certainly no clear connection between any of these words, right? Add COMMANDED, INTERFACING (and not “interacting,” as I first thought) and UNINHIBITED still no hints there. “Watered artificially,” for example, is just IRRIGATED. (But here’s a curious factoid: Seven of these nine entries are either debuts or make very infrequent appearances in the Times puzzles.) The starred clues all seem quite innocuous and their corresponding entries are completely straightforward. As configured in the grid, eight of these clues are paired and take up four rows of the grid, which might make you wonder what those pairs might have in common.
0 kommentar(er)
