When I started this last night, after a day spent writing a paper and a night of drinking, I lasted about three minutes. I couldn't figure out the theme, and nothing would come to me. This morning, with my shot of expresso, the theme was immediately obvious and everything went in easily. Funny how things change, eh? Is it all due to the beverage?
Everybody loves JOEDIMAGGIO (62A: American athlete born 11/25/1914), right? Especially those who never saw him play and who grew up with Simon & Garfunkel. Even Red Sox fans. Right? ... anyway, that's the theme. He was called the YANKEE/CLIPPER, and he hit in FIFTYSIXGAMES. I won't say that everyone knows that, but a lot of people do, and for those people, this puzzle most likely went right along.
As is often the case, it seems, I like several of the downs today. ACETIC (2D: ____ acid) reminds me of being in the darkroom, SONATA (3D: Hyundai model with a musical name) and MOTET (71A: Sacred choral composition) are a nice pair, SPIGOT (59D: Faucet) is an underused and underappreciated word, and the NE and SW are filled with nice, long, answers.
There's a lot of fill, so, sure, there's some dreck, but it's a good Tuesday.
- Horace
6:41. I was doing the puzzle with Cece, and had entered a number of the down answers in the NW when she announced "something FIELD." I then entered all the theme answers in about 10 seconds with no crosses. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? In a Tuesday NYT crossword, apparently. I liked the NE, with SUSPENSE and SHOCKER around ONHIATUS. That's a nice set of words. The SW is not quite as good: I like LAYAWAY and FINALIZE, but ICANTNOW is not as good.
ReplyDeleteTYPEE again?!
Also need to comment on the changes to the NYT crossword app. The typing is slower for some reason, but I like the yellow accent square. And I guess now we can start a streak to see how many in a row we've completed. And that mirrors Joltin Joe's HITTING STREAK.
15:07
ReplyDeleteI loved BEFOGS and ONHIATUS, and agree about the nice MOTET, which is a Medieval sacred piece much less appreciated today than is its cousin the madrigal, which was secular and often bawdy, containing much Huygens material. I like JOEDIMAGGIO because of all of the references to him in "Old Man and the Sea." He apparently suffered from bone spurs, which Santiago thought must be quite painful. Nice pairing in the NE of SUSPENSE and SHOCKER. Other than that, I see no stars next to any of the clues on my sheet.