So, my intent with the reasonableness scale is not to determine how easy or hard a puzzle is. That’s what difficulty is for, and NYT keeps their own difficulty measures (this was a 5/5). I think they use an algorithm based on how many people solve it successfully.
Reasonableness is about “how reasonable would it be to expect someone with a good general education and English language knowledge to be able to solve it”, based largely on whether they can recognise “oh yeah, that’s what that was!” after the puzzle is revealed. Mostly I’ll dock points for overly-American-specific references, but potentially also if a connection is too loose—too much of a stretch of logic.
Spoilers
Love is love, enough is enough, and a deal is a deal are all fairly common English idioms. A rose is a rose is a rose is a line from a poem, which makes it a bit more obscure. But it’s a poem whose title is vaguely subject to cultural osmosis enough that I would only knock the reasonableness down a little bit because of it.
Blue bugged me more, because “subtitles” doesn’t feel like it properly describes them all to me. A book might contain essays, and it might be a novel, but I can’t see those being used as a subtitle quite as readily. I can imagine “John Doe: A Life”. It’s not the worst because “part one” could definitely be used in a multi-part book, and “a novel” could probably be used in an adaptation of some other medium. It’s not a terrible connection, but it’s right on the border of “too much of a stretch” for me.
So, my intent with the reasonableness scale is not to determine how easy or hard a puzzle is. That’s what difficulty is for, and NYT keeps their own difficulty measures (this was a 5/5). I think they use an algorithm based on how many people solve it successfully.
Reasonableness is about “how reasonable would it be to expect someone with a good general education and English language knowledge to be able to solve it”, based largely on whether they can recognise “oh yeah, that’s what that was!” after the puzzle is revealed. Mostly I’ll dock points for overly-American-specific references, but potentially also if a connection is too loose—too much of a stretch of logic.
Spoilers
Love is love, enough is enough, and a deal is a deal are all fairly common English idioms. A rose is a rose is a rose is a line from a poem, which makes it a bit more obscure. But it’s a poem whose title is vaguely subject to cultural osmosis enough that I would only knock the reasonableness down a little bit because of it.
Blue bugged me more, because “subtitles” doesn’t feel like it properly describes them all to me. A book might contain essays, and it might be a novel, but I can’t see those being used as a subtitle quite as readily. I can imagine “John Doe: A Life”. It’s not the worst because “part one” could definitely be used in a multi-part book, and “a novel” could probably be used in an adaptation of some other medium. It’s not a terrible connection, but it’s right on the border of “too much of a stretch” for me.
Oh well in that case I agree with your opinion on blue but stand by my choice because I needed your explanation for purple.
purple
I thought it was meant to be “a deal is a rose is enough love” Which makes no sense.