For once, a Saturday Steinberg that we were able to almost breeze through. If not for getting bogged down in the SE, I think we would have been under twenty on this thing - but still, it was a pretty smooth ride.
Ten-stacks in all the corners are filled with some good answers. MAIDENFORM (17A: Brand that supports women?), WAFFLECONE (26A: Parlor product made with an iron) (I prefer the basic sugar cone), NIXONTAPES (63A: They have an infamous gap) (I kept trying to fit in "Dave Letterman's teeth"), and ANGRYBIRDS (12D: Top-selling app of 2010) are all good. I like SERIALPORT (13D: Where a techie hooks up) (Do these still exist?) and ICEBOXCAKE (61A: Treat with pudding and graham crackers) less. What on earth is "ICEBOXCAKE?" And there are little annoyances like ODIC (56A: Like many works with "To" in their titles), and DETECTO (52A: Big name in scales), but overall, this is a pretty decent grid. Not fantastic, but solid enough.
I liked NORM (60A: It's to be expected). TROY (28A: 2004 film featuring Paris) was cute, but it didn't fool me. (By the way, we're heading to the city version soon!) And there were a couple of nice pairs (the "blunt" and "hankering" clues). Not bad.
- Horace
16:02. This was a fine puzzle. The NE and SW were fairly isolated sections, both without much ground to make entry into. For example, in PETRIE (a fine answer), only the first two letters were obtainable by crosses, which left a lot of potential answers. Similarly, the P of PADRE was the only letter to give you a foothold. Fortunately, the small answers themselves in the isolated sections were not too difficult to find: MASS and MOOT led to ONEL, and the TROY you referred to (not fooled either) made ANGRYBIRDS clear, and the rest soon followed.
ReplyDeleteI too found the SE to be the most difficult. I had DABO and DECCA and TOKE, but never heard of DETECTO (Big name in scales? I guess so, but who knows anything about manufacturers of scales?). I love NIXONTAPES and KARATECHOP but had never heard about an ICEBOXCAKE. However, after looking it up on Google images, I'm thinking I might need to try one.
3 Xs, a J, a K, and a Q. Leaves the puzzle one Z short of a pangram.