LETTS face it, we puzzle DWEEBs don't care only about speed, but we do TALI our time. For me, this was a pretty fast Friday. As fast as it was, there were a couple of answers where a RETRY was required. I tossed in the completely incorrect 'peel' where I should have thrown in RIND (Addition to the compost pile). I also started with 'couchsurf,' in the southeast (Stay with a friends, say) instead of the correct SLEEPOVER, both of which led to a LOESS of time.
Interesting to learn that the first American film in which a toilet is heard being flushed (1960) was PSYCHO. That was a possible data point I had not previously considered wondering about. I wonder which film world-wide was the first to feature the flush.
My PIXIES for today's favorite clue/answer pairs are:
Sound evidence? (AUDIOTAPE)
Half of an interrogation team (BADCOP)
Fernando or Felipe, once (REY)
All huffy (INALATHER)
Gives away to a better home, in a modern coinage (FREECYCLES)
"Nobody ever told me," e.g. (LAMEEXCUSE)
And ATOP the heap: Rush home? FRAT - ha!
Other fun fill includes TINCT, SCRAPIRON, FATFINGER, and SPASM. Also, 'mop' RATEs a mention for its second appearance in two days. Yesterday, we had the "dust" variety, today, DRYMOP. BRAVO also appeared in both yesterday's and today's puzzles. I wonder what the highest number of duplicated words in consecutive puzzles is. XWordInfo probably knows. I'm still flying virtually 'Net free, so I can't check it myself.
For some reason, I don't mind APERY today as the answer for "Mimic's skill." I am not familiar with "Peer Gynt" and couldn't fill in the blank "___ Death." And, although I was pretty sure about crossword darling ERTE, I was concerned about ASES because parse it as I might, I still can't grok it. And, INRE ungrokables, I'm still not sure why "Struck out" is DELED. Maybe it's a sports thing? That being said, I thought this was a fun puzzle overall. If my immodest hopes at crowing about a sub-15 Friday were dashed by a few AEROS here and there, it's OK. Everybody knows pride is a SYN.
~Frannie.
8:29
ReplyDeleteFun Friday themeless! I loved ONSALENOW, ASIFICARE, and THATSALIE in the NW. Also excellent was the triplet in the NE corner. DELED is unfortunate, but is simply the past participle of "dele" the old editorial mark for remove. There was a fair amount of that going on today, but overall I enjoyed it very much.
18:23
ReplyDeleteIt seems I'm the slow one today, even though I thought this went pretty fast for me. PIXIES reminds me of the delightful ones at the OP Grocery that make sandwiches for me on occasion. TINCT is, indeed, great Friday fill, and given my "business," the PSYCHO trivia should have been a gimme, but wasn't.