In which we put our heads in the sand

The other day, I was rummaging around on the intertubes, and I landed on a TimesMachine page for a 1952 copy of the New York Times. What really intrigued me wasn't the newsy stuff on that page, the stuff I'd been looking for - but that on the lower right hand corner appeared a crossword puzzle! An edited by Margaret Farrar puzzle, from 1952.

Being a person who *really* likes doing the NYT puzzle every single day in pen, I grabbed the puzzle image and printed it out for my train ride home.

And man, it is HARD. It is larded with things I had to look up - like "Creator of Mr. Tutt" and "Governor of Hawaii" and "Senator from Tacoma". And it's full of uncommon (archaic) words like the answers to "Assumes presumptuously" and "Roasted" and "Splinter". And then there was the blasé generic "Actress from Germany". I did get "White House initials-to-be" right off the bat because that answer still turns up in current puzzles - though clued way differently (i.e. W.W. II hero who retired from the mil. to run for president or H.S.T.'s successor or Onetime White House inits.)

All in all, it was an entertaining and engaging exercise but I hope to not encounter a "Relative of the civet" or a "Two-year-old sheep" anytime soon.

If you'd like to try, here you go: