Yeah... when I got down to 65A: Cool, in the 1960s (GROOVY), I had no crosses and I put in "far out," which, of course, is wrong. Not wrong wrong, but puzzle wrong. The trouble was that I got everything else in that corner from the Across clues, and never went back. I suppose I could have said "Finished with Six Errors," but at that point, why bother?
So anyway, the theme is BATMAN (71A: 1960s TV icon whose name follows a pair of letters found, appropriately, 16 times in this puzzle's Across answers), and I like it a lot. The sixteen pairs are "NA," as in, "Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BATMAN!" LOL. And as if that weren't enough, we have the bonus BANG, BAM, POW, and WHAM from the fight scenes. Very nice, Mr. Peredo, very nice.
With all that theme material, you'd think things would get a little crossword-y, and there are certainly a few oddities - NITA, ANEG, ADES - but nothing terribly offensive. And on the other hand, we've got attractive bonus fill like TANKINI (5D: Modest two-piece bathing suit), ADONIS (8D: Dreamboat), BALLADEER (10D: Singer of love songs), ANYONE (48D: Question repeatedly posed by Ferris Bueller's teacher) (Ha!), and TABLAS (49D: Indian drums similar to bongos). If a girl I adored in high school hadn't played the tabla, I might have been stumped at the cross with NAE (67A: When doubled, a 2010s dance) (Huh?).
The long theme answers are lively today, too. It's quite a diverse group, from BANGALORE to WHAMMYBAR. And SNORT (54D: Embarrassing laugh accompanier) makes it in for the second day in a row, though I preferred yesterday's alcohol-related clue.
1A: Like a virgin (CHASTE) gets an A-. My first confident entry was NAM (7A: "Apocalypse Now" setting, familiarly). Overall, an entertaining Wednesday.
- Horace
My favorite Wednesday in a long, long time.
ReplyDelete4:29
ReplyDeleteI laughed for quite some time when I figured out what the revealer clue was referring to. Very nice as well that BATMAN comes at the end of all of the across clues, completing the show's theme music. I'm not entirely convinced that all virgins are necessarily CHASTE: just because they haven't had sexual intercourse doesn't mean they are uninterested in sex... Also, BUNS could have been clued better. Otherwise thumbs up from me!
9:49
ReplyDeleteNice comment on BUNS, Colum! My thoughts exactly. Haven't thought of ENCARTA in a while, and I, too, enjoyed Tuesday's SNORT better. I started watching BLACKMASS on a plane, but have yet to finish it, and the "ANNALs of Tacitus" was quite good, and amusing in many spots. My final entry was the TABLAS/NAE cross, neither of which rang much of a bell.