0:04:20
A Monday morning puzzle for all those people who didn't win an Oscar last night. The revealer gives it away - 53A: Not sit well ... or what eating 20-, 32-, or 41-Across might do? (LEAVEABADTASTE). And a bonus, movie-related feature is that ROTTENTOMATOES (20A: Online aggregator of movie reviews) is, as they say, a movie review site. The connection to the Oscars is not explicit, but I gotta believe it's implicit.
Some nice, long downs in the grid - ANGORACAT (3D: Long-haired feline), ARTMUSEUM (33D: The Getty or the Guggenheim), and I like the trivia in 9D: Least populous state (WYOMING). Is there a mini-theme with ROPER (12D: Lasso wielder)?...
Nothing too terribly objectionable. I like CURIO (29D: Bit of bric-a-brac) next to TRILL (30D: Sing like a bird), and I also like the Ellen quote at the end - IMGAY (67A: Groundbreaking admission from Ellen in a 1997 sitcom).
On a personal note, I had to renew my subscription to the puzzle recently, and with the increased subscription price comes access to the puzzle through the Times Web site. (You also get a Ken-Ken, a Sudoku, and maybe one other puzzle.) If you start it on the iPad, for example, and then log in and look at it through the Web site, it shows the progress you've already made. It's quite nice, really. And furthermore, I love being able to type on a regular keyboard when doing the puzzle. Now, maybe, I can make a run for the elusive sub-4 time. I've hit 0:04:00 once before on the iPad, no less, so I'm hopeful. Not that it's a race or anything, but I am planning to attend the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at the end of next month, and, well, it actually is a race there. So anyway... too much on that perhaps.
Good Monday.
- Horace
4:24. Nice time! I wasn't sure what form of HADJI they were looking for, so had to work around it, which slowed me ever so slightly. This is a fine Monday puzzle, solid sections, excellent theme answers with a great revealer - I wasn't sure about BITTERPILL, as it is not a food substance, but I don't mind in retrospect. ATRIUM, ARTMUSEUM, WYOMING, OHYOU. These are nice. I'm not sure STATEDEBT is more than two words stuck together, but oh, well.
ReplyDelete8:23
ReplyDeleteOne second under the combined times of the two above. No SOURGRAPES, though; this is no BITTERPILL to swallow. I did not like ROPER, my only starred clue, and I had the N from WYOMING first and erroneously filled in montaNa, which slowed me down a bit. For me, this was a nice, challenging Monday.