Utah! Who knew? My first reaction to the black squares was that they looked like quotation marks, and I thought that might be a cute theme. Cece and I did this together. We got into the gird with the little section of 3-letter answers in the NW: STS, MIA, ENT, which lead Cece to get BEATSME, and me to get INLATIN. Nothing else was immediately apparent to us there, so we moved to the middle.
Cece immediately, without any crosses, suggested CONESTOGA. Wow. OAS followed, and ATMS (good clue there), and then ASSISTED and STMARYS (a guess, that).
So then we got the theme with UTAHSTATE, which led to the 2 15-letter answers, TABERNACLECHOIR and LATTERDAYSAINTS.
The corners, once again, were nice and chunky. Some answers I did not like: REPEALS, for the clue (The 21st Amendment and such) - why not make it the verb instead? As a noun it feels super awkward. ISOTONE is a real thing, but not something I knew. I went for ISOTOpE, which is actually two atoms that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons, so the exact opposite. And that was my error in the puzzle. DEME is a desperate piece of fill. I don't like the definition of TWEEDLE, even though I feel I've seen it before in the NYT puzzle.
BIGMAC is a nice piece of trivia. I wanted "Reuben" first, but that sandwich was invented in the 1920s. PEACHPIT is a fine answer. MAINE is definitely a "Big source of blueberries," and I always think of "Blueberries For Sal," a delightful book. 43A: Things you might enjoy with your best buds? (IPODS) is cute. 37D: One way to be held (HOSTAGE) was a shocker (not a SHANKAR).
Other answers Cece got: GRABSAT, STINKAT. We both had a strangely difficult time getting HORSE (23A: Mount), even with HOR__ in place.
So, TILSIT, IONBEAM, and ISOTONE. That made the SW the most difficult corner, and our stumbling block.
Mostly a thumbs up from me.
- Colum
19:28 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteThere's a typo and a weird thing happening in that third paragraph. You might want to fix that, Colum, because I just spoke with Jeff Chen ten minutes ago and when I told him the name of this blog he said "Oh, I think we just linked to that." ... ... ... Yes. xwordinfo.com has a link to our blog now. !!!!!
http://www.xwordinfo.com/Blogs
Well, not a link, but we're included with the likes of Reynaldo, Amlen, and Rex!
So anyway... I think I had half the crosses at least before CONESTOGA finally came to me. Nice work, Cece! My FWOE came at ENCAsE, which I entered without checking all the crosses, and then I finished the top of HOSTAsE with crosses, I guess, because I didn't notice it. It's been a week full of carelessness leading up to my first ever ACPT. In less than twelve hours I will have completed the first puzzle of the tournament, and if I'm not more careful than I have been, I will be very disappointed.
But my own errors aside, I liked this one pretty well. INLATIN, coincidentally, appeared tonight in one of the puzzles that people did in teams as an ice-breaker on the opening night of the tournament. I actually tried "iSnomOrE" for USEDTOBE at first, but that didn't last long. Still, it's kind of funny that it fits.
TILSIT, we know, of course, from Monty Python.
OK. Gotta get to sleep. Need a good night's rest before the big day. Six puzzles tomorrow, and one more on Sunday. !!!
Also, we're listed on the xwordinfo.com site. Did I mention that? :)
Thanks for picking up on the typo! That happens sometimes when you move pics around in the blog, don't know why.
Delete29:55 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteThat's fast for me for a Friday. Error? CONESTOGA (agree about the nice work by Cece on that one!); I'd heard that somewhere back in the mists of time, but I needed most of the crosses, then still didn't get the first "O" because I had no idea how to end 22A Mount of Moses and guessed, wrongly, an "a." I even liked the foreign language ALAMORT, because it was accessible with the crosses. I'd never heard of an ISOTONE, either, BTW, or "Peril at ENDHOUSE" for that matter.