Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Tuesday, February 4, 2014, David Steinberg

0:09:58

The theme of this puzzle seems to be the letter J. So many Js… It's probably really authors who are known by their first two initials, the first (at least) of which is J.

I don't know what to make of this. In a way, things like OOOH (10D: "I'm intrigued") and OOOLA (12D: Alley Oop's girl) just look so wrong, but in another way, they look kind of cool up there in the NE, being crossed by the equally odd-looking SODOI (15A: "Same with me").

MAHALO (21A: "Thank you," in Hawaii) is a nice word, as is HANKER (43A: Itch (for)), and ACHOO (32D: They often elicit blessings) was kind of funny, but on the whole, the puzzle might have had too much ANON, ILIE, JAI, CROCI, ARB, ARCOERS

Lastly, I've never seen the HAJJ variant of 1D: Muslim's trek. I usually see "hadj," but I really only knew that through Scrabble, and I see now that that is listed as a variant of the double-J version, sooo… my mistake.

Let's call it a wash. Interesting, but not great.

- Horace

3 comments:

  1. 16 mins.
    I wasn't crazy about the stuff that Horace mentioned, especially, for some reason, CROCI. But I did enjoy the theme, especially JSBACH. I believe that there are only two actual authors, though, no? JCDITHERS, JBFLETCHER, JJPUTZ and JPMORGAN (along with the aforementioned JSBACH) aren't authors. Well, except for Fletcher, but she's fictional. Of course, I'd never heard of Mr. Putz, not surprisingly. MAHALO is a word with which I became intimately familiar over about 16 days a few years ago, and look forward to using it in regular conversation again soon. I'd never seen the HAJJ spelling, either.

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  2. 6:51. I like all the Js, and with eight theme entries, this is a pretty stuffed puzzle, which will account for all the meh answers aforementioned. Does anybody know what ARB means? I thought the 1A/1D combo were tough for a Tuesday. EXJET reminds me of EXMET from Sunday, but this cluing was not as tough as there. BILGE is nice.

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  3. DNF. NE corner is utterly ridiculous. Much other crap. Someone who engages in arbitrage, I assume.

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