Well, I got an early Christmas present today from Mr. Perl - a true gem of a Wednesday puzzle! I LOVED the theme! CRYMEARIVER (17A: 1955 Julie London hit) opposite CRIMEARIVER (62A: Certain waterway to the Black Sea?)? Beautiful. PARASALE (21A: Glide, in a way) vs. PARISALE (55A: Left Bank quaff?)? Lovely. And GOBETWEEN (33A: Intermediary) paired with GOBITWEEN (44A: 11- or 12-year-old Mongolian desert dweller?)? Hilarious. Boy, oh, boy… thank you for that, Adam.
And aside from that, we see some fine cluing too, as in 42A: Eye-opener? (ALARM) (This took me a while!), 52D: Bank security figure? (LEVEE), and 54D: Horns in on? (GORES). Sure, there's plenty of the usual stuff, like EPEE, NEE, NOBIS, EST (fooled again by the clue here!), etc., and there's even some stuff that is downright obscure - I'm looking at you, OOLA.
The NE had one of the trickier parts, with IQS (10A: Figs. on a bell curve) crossing QEII (11D: Royal who's notably a crossword fan, for short). I was worried about that until I got the double I on the down, and then it all made sense.
Very nice.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Peaceful Kwanza. Happy Solstice!
- Horace
12:03
ReplyDeleteI'll take the solstice...all the rest is just nonsense, isn't it? Anyway, I worried about the QEII when I filled in the --II, solving this in a counterclockwise direction starting in the NW, so we worried in opposite directions. But this was a great theme, agreed. And it was a nicely placed puzzle, a Wednesday that was both interesting and not too difficult. REDHOT, some potential Huygens fill, was the last thing that I filled in (the "H," actually). How about how SEARED and SEACOWS crossed right at the "A?" Plus, Frannie's little EMMA made an appearance, as well as the GMAT, taken by yours truly at one point. Plus, PEZ crosses RITZ, which, despite the clue for the latter, could both be foods.
Untimed, finished rapidly with my mother and my brother, Misha. The theme was obscure for a short period of time. We noted the two TWEENs over halfway through the puzzle, but it wasn't until the brilliant GOBITWEEN came out that we understood. It wasn't long ago that OPENMRIS made an appearance; this time we got the claustrophobic counterpart, MRISCAN. Honestly, outside of the theme, the rest flew by so quickly with answers being shouted out, that I have not much to say. Good show.
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