Quite a bit in this puzzle was a challenge for me. At one point, IDEST I was ATADEADEND, but GENII put it down for a few minutes and then, TATAR! Interesting information about the language and its alphabet, BTW.
In re: 1 Across, I seem to be out of the loop on TACOTRUCKs. Tacos and their sales LOCI have appeared in puzzles fairly often recently, but in my day-to-day life never.
The easiest sections for me were the northeast and most of the south. ZAGAT and XANAX in the north east really set ATONE. REFINANCE, OVERAGAIN, and EARWORM kept the southeast from being a PANE. I especially enjoyed CRANE at 44D: for "Origami creation" in light of Wednesday's quip puzzle.
I ran into trouble at the cross in the mid-west. The clue "Darkest moon of Uranus" would have stumped me forever without the helpful "Latin for 'shadow'" bit. As it was, I could only confidently enter the UMBR part. It was no help that I found the answer to 24A: "Very far from" NONETOO obvious, even with NON_TO_ already on the board.
I never seem to TYRE of the clever clues in the NYTX. Today's favorites included:
"Make a slight correction?" (ATONE) - no need to apologize for this one!
"Elaboration phrase" (IDEST) - Apt, if a bit elaborate.
"Sex drive?" (LOVERSLANE) - LOL-ORAMA.
~Frannie.
40:29
ReplyDeleteJust what a Saturday should be: challenging, but eventually solvable. Even though there were some gimmes in here (CELESTA, ORANGEADE, YESNO, ZAXIS (off of ZAGAT), NEIL (and ALAN), ARTDEGREE, NEMEANLION, PANE, EARWORM), there were some great answers (UMBRIEL, STRIVER, VANGUARDS, BEANO) and some previously unknowns (DYNEL, BALDRIC (I thought I'd heard this somewhere before) and TARTAR). Fun puzzle, and decent enough time with no errors, so I'll take it.