Bob's Angry Rants

As the editor of the New York Times crossword, he does a pretty good job. It's definitely a good crossword with a nice scaling difficulty throughout the week. I'm usually fine through Wednesday. Thursday gives me a lot of trouble and you can just forget about Friday. But the puzzles he presents on Weekend Edition are just fucking bizarre. With all of the add this, drop that, rearrange bullshit, it's less like a word puzzle and more like one of those stupid present treasure hunts. You know, where instead of just giving you a gift, the person lays out a series of annoying tasks for you to follow and then when you finally get to the end, you're rewarded with some stupid piece of crap that they got from the convenience store during their lunch break because they forgot about your birthday and tried to cover up it's lameness by making you jump through hoops to get it. With these puzzles, Shortz is basically saying, "Merry Christmas. I got you socks."

Here's my attempt at a Weekend Edition/Will Shortz style puzzle. First start with a word that means a kind of writing. Now, convert any double letter pairs to a single letter and then rearrange all of the letters to make a new word. Now, take a synonym of that word and add to it a word that means semi-automatic weapon, rearrange the letters and you'll have a common vegetable. What is that word?

Highlight this next line for the answer:
essay > easy > cinch + uzi > zucchini. Duh. I mean, how could you not get that?

If you solved my puzzle or came close or even idly thought about it, let me know and I'll send you a prize. You will receive a page from my NY Times crossword-a-day calendar that has been partially solved by me. I make no promises as to the accuracy of the answers that have already been filled in. Happy Easter, here's your slightly used crossword puzzle.