0:46:37
A very enjoyable Friday. We finished it quicker than yesterday's, but it felt plenty tricky. I surprised myself by putting in FAWN (1A: Forest newcomer), immediately, and I put in ABBA (5A: Group whose last Top 40 hit was "When All Is Said and Done") because the group is often in the grid, and the song rang a faint, distant bell, but other things, like LASSO (28D: Stockholder) (!!), took a little more time. And there were some things like PSEUD (27D: False start?) and PISAN (35A: Fibonacci, notably), that just seemed so, so "late week clue." I can't really hate them, but I don't love them. And speaking of "late week clues," howzabout 67A: Court suspensions (NETS)? Now that's a good one! And what about 10D: Were present? (ARE). Very nice.
As a Bostonian, I enjoyed seeing ESPO (36A: Hockey Hall of Fame nickname) in the grid, and 43A: Papa ____ (Northeast pizza chain) was another nice nod to the region. I thought that, being the more musical of the pair, I would somehow figure out 40A: Stat. for Re, La or Ti, but no, it was Frannie, the more left-brained one, who got ATNO. Very nice deception, that. And speaking of electron shells (oh wait, that was yesterday, with Oxygen), I loved the clue for PIES (50A: They have edible shells). It reminded me of that clue a while back "It's under the lower crust" for "pie tin."
The double "vein" clues were nice, with the latter, 18D: They may be used around veins (TRAMS) being the better clue/answer pair. The double "sense" clues... meh. And of the double "revolving feature" clues, I liked the second one better (47D: Revolving features? (VEES)), even though they got me AGAIN!
My favorite 15 was 59A: Universal query? (WHERESTHEREMOTE). That's really very good. But ENOTE (32D: Cybermemo)? E-nope. Nice trivia, though, with 54D: Day of the week of Jul. 4, 1776.
We quite enjoyed this offering from Mr. Collins. Good grid.
- Horace
p.s. I think it's a sign that I've been doing a lot of crosswords lately that I figured out CWTS (51D: 1/20 tons: Abbr.) without any difficulty.
DNF. Missed three squares. Little enjoyment other than seeing ESPO, although even for that one I wanted "Mr. Go" or Mr. No."
ReplyDeleteDNF (52:35)
ReplyDeleteThe whole east coast is a mess for me, and I’m sick of carrying all of these puzzles around everywhere. I see no stars that I made on any of the clues. For the long answers I got MEATTHERMOMETER on 17A, but came up with only PLAYME……COACH for 27A and DONTEVER….. for 46A. I think that 59A Universal query? could be WHERESTHERELIFE, but I’m missing many crosses, so who knows? Depressing…. (Note: Having written this earlier, I see that instead of "LIFE" above, it should be "MOTE" thanks to Horace's reveal on that.)