Friday, January 10, 2014

Friday, January 10, 2014, Patrick Berry

0:23:06

Patrick Berry is fast becoming one of our favorite constructors. His grids are almost always clean, meaty without being overly so, chock-full of fun stuff, and what's more … we seem to be right on his wavelength. This one starts out strong with two tricky clues 1A: Attaché feature (ACCENT) (why did this take us so long?!) and 1D: Bread boxes (ATMS) (Frannie nailed this one immediately). We ended not far from there at the intersection of another tricky pair, 23D: Flimsy lock (WISP) (we could only think of the locking kind of lock) and 23A: Not down with anything (WELL) (beautiful).

In the middle, we credit a year of NYT Crossword solving for our laying down OATERS (28A: Many old B films), and off of that (and maybe one other) we got COPACABANA (24D: 1978 disco hit featuring the warning "Don't fall in love"), which really opened up that lower middle section.

So many good clue/answer pairs today. PREACHERS (37A: They deliver on Sunday), PIGEONS (51A: Common gathering in a public square), OCTAVE (50A: La to la, e.g.), CHEATSHEETS (16D: Cribs), THENCEFORTH (14D: Ever since that time), and more! I also have a fondness for the very straightforward answer that is hard to see at first, a good example of which today, at least for us, was ELDERLY (4D: Aged).

A very enjoyable Friday.

- Horace

3 comments:

  1. 29 mins.
    Well, I thought I had a good time! Anyhoo, I agree with the cleanness of this puzzle, and with Horace's assessment of its fun, tricky clue/answers. I also loved 17A Ordered pair? (SIDEDISHES) and 24A Deadeye (CRACKSHOT) (could this be a pair with OATERS, which is immediately below it?). WELL was great and I enjoyed the appearance of ONEIDALAKE (25D Body of water belatedly added to the course of the Erie Canal), since Sue and I love the Finger Lakes area. My only write-overs, as ET59 likes to say, were with 9D Unspecific recipe quantity (SPLASH), for which I first had aPincH, and 11D Diploma holder, for short (ALUM), for which I first entered grad. I never heard of Mr. KASDAN, but enjoyed both of the movies mentioned.

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  2. This was one of those times when Frannie and I worked on the puzzle side by side. When I couldn't see something (CRACKSHOT, for example) (and yes, it does go well with OATERS), she could, and vice versa. It works best on Fridays and Saturdays, and makes for a fun, quick solve. (That being said, I still expect Colum to come in under twenty minutes!)

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  3. Well, I was untimed. Printed it out and worked on it with Hope last night for a bit, then finished this morning. I got the SE pretty quickly starting with OCTAVE. Suspected KASDAN but it took some time to get it because I too was misled with aPincH and grad... The only answer I don't love is MACHOS; even though it is absolutely correct, it's not the way we use it in common parlance, so it felt awkward. Otherwise this is a extremely well constructed puzzle. I also love the strange shape of it. It almost felt like it was on its side.

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