Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Tuesday, March 4, 2014, Bruce Haight and Peter A. Collins

0:19:31

Put me down as being a fan of this kind of variant puzzle. The diagonal symmetry and the kite image was quite a refreshing break! The theme fill seemed adequately dense, and I loved the way it herringboned. The other fill was, I'd say, above average, especially for a Tuesday. There was a point when I saw "LA_" meeting up with "AMI_," and I sighed and looked for the clues "First name in tyranny" and "Office setup," but got instead 25D: Surrounded by (AMID) and 33A: Young chap (LAD). It's a small thing, perhaps, but it made me happy.

On a slightly larger scale, you've got such quality (every time I write the word "quality" I have to suppress the urge to spell it "kwality") fill as PHENOMS (34D: Sports wonders, say), RAVISHED (2D: Enraptured), SENSEI (49A: Martial arts instructor), and QUELLS (30A: Silences).

It was tough getting started up in the NW, as neither DRDOOM (1A: Archenemy of the Fantastic Four) nor JARULE (12A: Rapper with the 2002 #1 hit "Always on Time") came without a few crosses. All in all, though, I'm quite happy with it.

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. 6:26. I'm with you on this kind of puzzle. Interesting to look at, and fun to solve. I wanted DISCOVEREROF instead of DISCOVERING, and went so far as to put it in, only realizing later that it didn't even fit. The fill was very good overall, but EVENER and STARER are poor answers. I liked learning that Buzz Aldrin's real first name is EDWIN. Nice trivia. DRDOOM came for me after putting in DJED (my first thought was the Submariner). The dir. answer in that area was easy, much easier than the typical Gainseville to Ocala useless trivia junk.

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  2. 12:25
    I had JAyzeE for a little while (even though I know it's not spelled that way), but this went fast. I knew EDWIN, being a fan as I am, but I agree that it's good trivia. QUELLS/QUID is a nice pairing.

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