Conversation Piece

by Ucaoimhu

"I apologize for the way the low lighting—"

[bumping into something] "—oops—"

"—causes five entries to run into a barrier you can't see (so they stop before you expect them to); the cutlery (we have so much cutlery that five forks won't fit into boxes, and must be put on line segments instead)—"

"—wow—"

"—and the sensory deprivation windows, which allow five entries to pass through thick bars, at the expense of, well, undergoing sensory deprivation."

"Ouch! (By which I mean it must hurt to lose all those letters.)"

"Your room number is somewhere between 814 and 830, but I'm afraid I can't ruin the mystery by telling you exactly which it is. Instead, each time a barrier, fork, or window is on one of the three line segments between two adjacent dots, draw the (three-segment-long) line connecting those dots; these lines will display your room number. Have a nice stay; you can tell just by looking at the number that your room is really, really spacious."

ACROSS

1. French and English will have used superficially musical work
5. Raise a male dog that's immature (2 wds.)
9. Ought to get into it a bit
12. People who know half-cool ditty about Penny and yours truly
13. Portions of Buds & vino Isis mixed
14. How a musician might play "Farewell, Arkansas" (2 wds.)
15. Things done to keep workers removing the latest built-up substances
16. Put weapons in a room
17. Almost-rude word for "cereal grain"
18. Mature knight's assistant is beheaded
19. Child finally sought misplaced key
21. Poem that praises America's foremost theaters
23. Here, she gasps in wild and woolly situations?
27. Revolves around two of Earl's beverage dispensers (2 wds.)
28. Writes to Jack about subject
29. Helios going around with characters in the Iliad
30. Ken or Dotty's Danish money
31. Sonic beams of energy cause destruction
32. Critic Shalit describes imaginary magical being
33. Comedian Macdonald has standards

DOWN

1. Cause animosity in one who puts out enthralling book
2. Reportedly, a city in Taiwan is not very laid-back (hyph.)
3. Rising, Mr. O stops to pour water on a rodent
4. For example, Spot or Jiminy Cricket
5. Old Tolkien creature is under one hundred and one
6. Loudly make fun of me and her hotel providing footwear
7. OK, rip his fried, stuffed pastries
8. Aim for a hole in the green plutonium that's outside
9. I play bridge in the same place (abbr.)
10. Getting even with ballplayer Cobb during first part of game
11. Determines the value of female donkeys?
12. Oval figure in Egyptian writing and art, inscribed in sofas, mostly
13. I just discovered something inside dried mollusk (2 wds.)
20. New Age singer supports king in African country
22. Liked to take real medicine
24. Segment of genetic material from mutant oxen
25. Placard describes worried, upset, incompetent versifier
26. Stop ballplayers from New York coming north

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