Sunday, October 19, 2014

Sunday, October 19, 2014, David Phillips

WHY NOT?

Kind of a funny theme of replacing one word in a phrase with a Y in it with a homonym without a Y, and then cluing the phrase in a wacky way. It annoyed me at first, for some reason, but it grew on me. The turning point might have been CHAISEREBELLION (46D: "I've had enough of this patio furniture!," e.g.?) - so ridiculous. IDOLSOFTHEKING (24A: Elvis's heroes?) isn't bad either, I suppose. References to Tennyson and a bit of old Massachusetts lore ... how can you not enjoy that? Plus, there's theme running both horizontally and verically, which is always a nice touch.

As for the rest of the fill, I don't want to give it a BADRAP (51D: Unfair condemnation) or BOOHISS (1D: Expression of disapproval), but it ain't exactly full of SIZZLES (93D: Is hot, hot, hot). Lots of proper names - I won't list them all - I don't love ALLEGER (79D: Plaintiff, e.g.) or RESAVE (60A: Back up, as a backup), and ALEKEG (15D: Bass drum?) was a bit of a stretch. A keg of ale. Bass ale. Hmmm...

On the other side of the scales we put SOIR (67D: Nuit lead-in) and DEER (77A: They're game) which are nicely clued, and RAKISH (16D: Debonair) which is nice all-around. 58D: Arriviste (UPSTART) and DEIGNED (120A: Condescended) are nice, too. Overall, I guess it was pretty good.

And finally, we just witnessed Peyton Manning's 509th touchdown pass, which is the most any football player has thrown to date. In case you missed it, there was a really nice graph in the NYT today. If the link still works, you can see it here.

Now, back to the game!

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. 66:09
    Well I starred ALEKEG as one of the good shorter answers. Also, 41D First class (INTRO) because there was no "?", surprisingly. I also starred the CHAISEREBELLION as my favorite theme answer. I started off flying through this, but there were a few tricky spots for me that ended up slowing the whole thing down a bit. UNITARD, though? Do people wear those?

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  2. Not my favorite Sunday, although the theme is cute. I found the solving annoying more than anything else. Plus also, there was UNI and UNITARD, which is just tarded.

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