0:39:45
Pretty decent theme, and the bonus of beginning with an E and ending with a W was a nice touch. Frannie figured it out while not actually looking at the puzzle. Sometimes that seems to work well - when you hand over the puzzle, but are still turning it over in your head. She had wanted "Ebb and Flow" for 17A: Tidal movement, and finally she just shouted out "Maybe it's backwards!"
A lot of gimmies (BAHS, GITA, LOSLOBOS, JEANNIE (although I originally wanted "Genie" and gave up, but Frannie put it right in), NAP, IVE, SEC...) made it easy to get into this one, but there were also a fair number of trickier ones to keep it interesting. NEUTERS (48A: Fixes) took a while to see, and ROBOTS (8D: Men of steel?) was pretty nice. And 28A: Triple, quadruple or more (SOAR), and 45A: Passion (ELAN) both required a bit of a leap. We were both looking for "Boar" or "Bear" for 1D: Big game, so BOWL was a nice surprise.
I liked seeing odd words like AMBLE, EGGY and ASPECT in the grid. I'm a little sick of seeing ELHI and TSO, but the rest was good enough here that I won't complain too much.
- Horace
DNF (Worked on it for many days)
ReplyDeleteThere was too much trouble for me here. I filled in most of it on 5/30 before work (or so I thought), but I could never resolve many of its parts. I needed to end the torture and move on with my life.