0:11:12
I did this last night, after having a few drinks, and right before conking out. When I thought back on it during my walk at lunch today, I could remember nothing at all – not the theme, not a single entry.
Looking at it now, however, it comes back to me a bit. The theme of TURNINGAPROPHET (64A: Punny description of the circled letters in 17-, 27-, and 48-Across) was kind of "meh." The entries that the prophets are in, however, are great. I wonder if SWARTZENEGGER (48A: Governor elected in a 2003 recall vote) was the seed entry? ESPRESSOMAKERS (27A: Barista-operated gadgets) (or, "Horace and Frannie-operated kitchen necessity," more like!) was very good, and WINSOMELOSESOME (17A: Words of resignation) makes me wonder why "losesome" isn't a word like "winsome" is. What a winsome word, winsome.
And after a few near-misses lately, we finally get a pangram. They love a pangram, those constructors. We have complained in the past about how they sometimes cause tortured fill, but today's was pretty good, I thought. OLEO, PTL, JAS, OTO, and ADES (why oh why isn't this accepted in Scrabble?) aside, that is, but that's not too much, and it's outweighed by interesting fill like SKEWER, MAGPIE, SLOTH, MISHAP, PRONTO, and others.
A decent red-headed stepchild.
- Horace
16:36
ReplyDeleteI starred 46D ____-surf (Google oneself) (EGO) as a term with which I wasn't familiar but enjoyed. Other than that, this seemed initially like just a normal Wednesday. I didn't notice prior to Horace's review that it was a panagram, but that's a nice touch. I suppose that any time that a constructor decides to use a word with a "Z" in it, s/he must consider making one. I was confused by the theme until I considered that the prophets, none of whom I had heard, were read backwards, then I'd heard of them all, of course. It turns out that this was a very nice Wednesday indeed.