A very clean Thursday with a cute little theme. Well, I suppose I should say with an "epic" theme, because that's what MOSES's PARTING of the RED SEA has become, right? In addition, we have the PHARAOH of EGYPT, and the ISRAELI. Very nice, but don't you kind of miss the "-tes" at the end of that last one? And are EMIGRATED (20A: Left for good) and PESACH (25A: Feast of unleavened bread) bonus theme material? And hey, maybe even SADAT (27D: October War leader) and EBAN (33A: Nonmusical Abba).
The rest of the fill is remarkably clean, and includes such lovely things as BEERPONG (10D: Party game), PTOMAINE (37D: Product of organic decay) (!), GUARANTOR (50A: Co-signer, say), and HEDONIST (15A: One who's just out for a good time). There's some capital symmetry with HONOLULU (28A: Southernmost U.S. capital) and STTHOMAS (44A: Home of Charlotte Amalie), and really, not much to complain about at all. Maybe AVAS, OSTE, or IDAS… but, well… that's not much.
Very nice.
- Horace
40:42
ReplyDeleteI've been away. I'll fill in the last few days, but since we're going away AGAIN tomorrow morning, I'll cut it off at some point and just pick up when we get back.
Anyway, I hadn't heard of PTOMAINE or PESACH and needed all of the crosses for them. It's well known that I like a Bible theme, so this was up my alley. I've been to HONOLULU a couple of times (to land and take off, in that order), but never toured it or stayed over; it didn't seem like it had much to offer us. I starred 49A Stadium projection, maybe (TIER) as being a nice clue/answer. Also, it was great to see BEERPONG in there, though I've not yet played it, and YURI (55D First name in space), with the double-meaning "first" in there. Finally, I thought that 47D Eye (PEEPER) was a good one.
15:45, FWOE, for SAOPAoLO, and I didn't check the cross. Took a long time for me to understand the middle line. I wanted the first answer to be "the", and was stuck by thinking the middle answer would be "Bering", just because I had the ING. Yes, I know it doesn't fit. And that it's the Bering Straits, not sea. Whatever.
ReplyDeleteThis is really a lovely grid. The triple 8s in the NW and SE are very clean. PTOMAINE was an unexpected answer. What is OREGON referring to (Snake's place, in part)?
19:06
ReplyDeleteColum, I believe you are just slightly too young to have witnessed live on Wide World of Sports Evel Knievel's epic motorcycle/rocket jump attempt over the Snake River. (He didn't make it due to a parachute malfunction.) Anyway, it made the Snake quite a landmark. The "in part" is because it runs from Yellowstone through Idaho through OREGON to the Pacific.
We also had SAOPAoLO at first, but YURI Gagarin fixed that.