Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Tuesday, January 17, 2017, Timothy Polin

0:06:09

CARRIE FISHER tribute puzzle today from Mr. Polin. It's a little odd (ok, kind of a lot odd) to have her quote broken up such that the second part comes after the final part, and the WANKENOBI line is especially unfortunate on its own, but I'm going to give it all a pass ("This is not the criticism you're looking for..." I hear Mr. Polin telling me...), because, come on, it's CARRIE FISHER!


Lots of theme material, and a couple tie-in clues: 5D: "____ a trap!" (ITS) and 10D: Makeup of the planet Hoth (ICE). Of course, with all the theme come entries like MOTHY (64A: Like old, neglected sweaters, maybe), ALPE (24D: Mont Blanc, e.g., to locals), and ALLEE (67A: Tree-lined walkway, in France), but what are you going to do?

I like FETTLE (50D: In fine ____ (healthy)) and CRUX (16A: Essential point) and ADLIB (8D: Deal with a broken teleprompter, say). Not sure what to think of SODOI (44A: "Same here!"), TILNOW (47D: So far, informally), ONARUN (29A: Hitting blackjack after blackjack, say), and WINSAT (45A: Is victorious in). I guess I like the first two better than the last two. My favorite clue/answer is 56D: Real head-turners? (OWLS), plural and all. 1A: When Polonius says "Brevity is the soul of wit" (ACTII) gets a D+. The plus is for Hamlet.

Overall, it's a (hastily constructed - it's only three weeks since she died) tribute puzzle for a beloved screen icon. Perfect Tuesday fare.

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. 11:21
    ACTII was my first confident answer, and I thought it an unfortunate foray (too strong a word?) into the puzzle, too. ALLEE was the worst answer, IMO, but it crosses one of the best, FETTLE. I didn't love RAPDUO, either (9D Rae Sremmurd, e.g.), since I've never heard the words in the clue in my life. WANKENOBI looks terrible, especially since it begins with wank, but I, too, give the puzzle an overall thumbs-up because of PRINCESSLEIA, of course.

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  2. 4:45
    Too easy once I got to 23A, even though I tried to enter CINNAbuNBUNS first, whatever those are. Once I had that, the rest all just went in easy as cinnamon buns.

    We saw Rogue One after she passed away, and that was just plain weird.

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