0:07:30
It's been a long winter, and I'll take any hopeful thing I can get, so today's theme was perfect. INBUD (49D: About to bloom … or a hint to 20-, 33-, 41- and 52-Across) meant that all four theme answers were "wrapped" in the word "BUD." BURMAROAD (33A: Allied supply route to China during W.W. II), for example.
The rest of the fill was decent. Some clever cluing, like 6D: Flaming felony (ARSON) and 39D: Volume that requires lots of preparations to complete? (COOKBOOK) were both pretty good. And I like the uncommon BUSS (33D: Smooch), the French angle (somewhat common) in SEINE (12D: What the Left Bank is a bank of) and BERET (43A: Tête topper).
As usual, we see ANIL and OBIS, and the unknown (to me) ILIA (38A: Olympic skating champ Kulik), but overall, this was a fine Tuesday.
- Horace
7:00. Things felt slow today. A lot of crosswordese, including ILIA, OBIS, ANIL, OLIN, and AGEE. But the long non-theme answers were good, especially BEANBAG, which I initially thought was going to be something with BEAch in it. And the closing 58D (DONE) was nicely placed. I didn't love the theme because 3 of the 4 were not common enough phrases.
ReplyDelete11:15
ReplyDeleteWell, I didn't star anything on this puzzle. Obviously I'd never heard of Ms. ILIA either (I assume it's "Ms."). I, too, enjoyed the theme. Budding is certainly AFOOT (17A Underway). That's a word that I like. I should have starred that. PARDONME (9D "Scusi") was good, even though ET59 probably didn't like it. And it was nice to see some Spanish in there (LUNES) instead of French for a change, though, as Horace mentioned, there was some of that, too.
Ilia Kulik is a man, no? Google says yes.
ReplyDelete