Sunday, September 18, 2016

Sunday, September 18, 2016, Jeremy Newton

MAKE A DASH FOR IT

Pretty amusing theme, today. Hypens have been added to standard phrases and re-clued wackily. As in, AMERICANGOTHI-C (65A: An airline now serves a Minute Maid beverage?). Ha! Or MOVINGA-SIDE (100A: Record half that stirs emotions?). That’s slightly less good. And PHOENIXA-Z (24A: Actor Joaquin’s complete bio?) hardly works at all, for several reasons. But the others are ok. And in the Downs, the hyphens also work as hyphens, but they don't have the wacky clue element. Still, it's nice to picture a PUSH-UPBRA, and FREEWI-FI is what I'm using now.



We don't get many marquée, non-theme answers today. The long downs are mostly STEELGRAYS, THEFENCES, and TAKESDRUGS. Not terribly exciting. And we get TOPED (90A: Drank to excess), ORCS, ESE, ISMS, OOM, and other similar bits of glue. But Sundays are often all about the theme, and so I won't complain too much.

1A: Pranks with a roll, briefly (TPS), gets a B-. Sure, it’s a three-letter abbreviation, but who doesn’t appreciate a good TPing? And the first entry I put in confidently was POSTED (7A: Updated one's blog), which is now what I have done.

See you tomorrow!

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed this theme. The dashes are very cleverly placed. Of course the best is the AMERICANGOTHI-C. But I also very much enjoyed LO-CALHERO, and many of the others made me chuckle, which is what I'm looking for. Level of difficulty was definitely appropriate for a Sunday. Weirdly, the first answer I put in that I was confident and correct about was ESE at 22A. I had THEcw at 1D.

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  2. C'mon...the best is definitely G-RATEDCHEESE. Yes, level of difficulty was perfect for a Sunday, coming in right at around 45 minutes. I starred 86A Joint action (TOKE), even though I expected that. Nice that FLAB is directly above LO-CALHERO. I've never heard the term THEPO-PO, and what's wrong with the NYT for not having COMICS? Fun little puzzle.

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