Mark Halpin put out another set of puzzles for Labor Day this year, and I solved (most of) them!

Like my first post here, I started this year’s Labor Day puzzles with a Rows Garden variant.

I definitely made one key strategic mistake, not trying to fit the snakes together earlier. The interplay between flowers and their crossing answers is the only way (for me at least) to get very far in these puzzles.

Despite that small strategy issue, I still did much better than I did back on my first puzzle for this blog, which took me over five hours.  I had a technical issue blogging this puzzle, but I definitely finished under two hours (over two days, after not starting out too well Saturday morning, when the puzzles were released).

The puzzle can be found here: http://www.markhalpin.com/puzzles/wisht/wtpuzzles/valley.pdf

(The error checker here won’t work. If you need one, use Mark’s at http://www.markhalpin.com/puzzles/wisht/wtanswers/answerpage.html )

My somewhat abbreviated solving log is after the cut.

Log:

• 9:08 (AM) Snakes and Roses, crazy! (Still working on downloading software to log my solve)
• 9:11 got snakes 20+21, googling for others
• 9:12  IMFDB (fun site!) for guns… doesn’t help with #1
• 9:15 fighting with software for a few minutes
• 9:17 got 4,11,13

Ok, at about 9:20 I got a proper log going:

0:00:00

Up and blogging, yay.

0:00:12

Currently have answers for snakes 4,11,13,20,21.

0:01:23

3 may be greek empire

0:03:32

Working on some gem clues now

0:04:27

On hold for now [Should probably have assembled snakes right away]


0:04:29

Ok, it’s the next day, solved 7 of 12 puzzles. back to this one.

0:08:32

getting a few pinks, and 8 DEFENSELESS

0:15:11

ooh, SLYTHERINHOUSE’s THER goes with my THERON grey diamond. that’s good

0:16:23

16 HOGNOSED fits right in with the ON

0:24:32

have 3,4,5,8,11,12,13,14,16,20,21 

0:24:46

6 also has a THER grey circle, it could be THERON instead

0:34:38

because 6 and 8 make DELANY, put them together in bottom right (there’s a spare Y. neat)

0:40:04

looks like tongues point to not-in-snake squares

0:43:42

piecing together whole grid… about halfway done

0:51:13

grid is complete.

0:56:10

letters so far, 6I 8Y 9A 10N 14O

1:10:25

plugging away. C?P??I?YAN?B?OT??R???

1:11:09

first part, before AND, looks like CAPACITY/CUPIDITY, guessing both

1:11:41

it’s CUPIDITY!

1:12:12

bootstrap and brotherly are the best two for the rest…

1:12:45

both wrong. hmmm. next best two are bioterror and brothered

1:13:24

both wrong. hmm. guess i’ll keep going

1:19:22

Guess I had the wrong length before…

1:20:09

BOOTSTRAPS is the other. whew.