0:42:00
Boy, this one scared me for a while. I started it late last night and got very little, handed it over to Frannie and fell asleep. It doesn't really sound like I was that scared, but I think I probably had bad dreams. I don't remember. In the morning I saw that she had finished maybe half of it, but there was still a ways to go and I really didn't have a handle on it. Luckily, it all worked out, ( I know - "and then a miracle happened," but I can't really explain it, it just got finished), still, this one felt different to me. I'm not sure why.
I liked it a lot, though, now that we're done with it. Answers like POPELEOX (50A: Head of the Catholic Church when Luther's "95 Theses" was posted) (nice clue!) and THEASP (58A: Daddy Warbuck's henchman) (?) look ridiculous. Maybe it's that there were so many multi-word answers. IDECLARE (54A: "Gracious me!"), TEDTALKS (58A: Lecture series with well over a billion views) (one of the few gimmies), NOLOSE, TOOTOO, TAPDANCERS, SHEDTEARS, SQUAREDEAL, EATAWAY, VELVETROPE, BIGGAMES, BLUEJEANS…. and that's not all of them! I like all of those, don't get me wrong, it's just that maybe I wasn't thinking about multi-word answers. But who cares about me, really?
Did you notice that "dungarees" fits in where BLUEJEANS (9D: Alternative to cords) went? I did. Frannie took it out quickly, though, as it really fouled things up. I was confused for longer than I should have been by 20A: Foe of the Vikings (PACKERS). I thought to myself, does 'everyone' fit? KINESCOPE (32D: Part of a TV archive) was a nice word, although I don't fully understand why that would be part of a TV archive… and KAFKAESQUE (32A: Maddeningly surreal)? Lovely.
In all, it was a great challenge, and a lively, interesting grid. Keep 'em coming Wentz!
- Horace
1:20:25
ReplyDeleteAs you can see, this took me substantially longer than it did you two. DELTARAY was a long time coming (17A Particle ejected from an atom during ionization) and, like Horace mentioned, lots of multi-word answers were perplexing. The crossing of ANN, NOEL and THEASP was tricky. And I agree that KAFKAESQUE and POPELEOX were great answers. This type of puzzle is very interesting to me in that there are no real obscure things here but yet it's quite difficult.