I've definitely seen this sort of theme in the past: the portmanteau-ing of several phrases. I like this version because of the way nouns are flipped to become verbs twice each series. My favorite of the words that play double-duty are "bus" and "coin". Others are fairly routine. We've seen many of these sorts of word-plays in Games magazine and elsewhere. "Return" would make the top of my list, only taxes.
Some nice clues, however, I'll take notice of. I liked the ambiguity of 11A: Racetrack figure (ODDS). I was expecting a jockey or something. Similarly, 32A: Put in a hold (STOW) was not what I'd expected. 80A: Additions (SUMS) made me want to put "ells" in. The real answer is better. 87A: Diamond worker (BATBOY) didn't fool me for a second.
2D: Makeup of some sheets (RAIN) is great, and reminds me of a quote from Welcome to Nightvale (which see - it's a podcast). There weren't many ? clues, (for which I'm grateful) and the ones I saw were not particularly tricky. My favorite is probably 55D: Record of the year? (ANNALS).
I know some here will like the reference to KARENS (Carpenters), but I dislike the unnecessary S. In the same vein, I really dislike 118A: Pro responses (YESSES). I think it should be "yeses". I see that both are allowed, but I don't get why the extra S. Analogously to "buses", I would prefer, but on the other hand, "busses" is clearly a different word.
I would class this puzzle as a perfectly passable Sunday. Nothing special, nothing horrifying.
- Colum
I do, of course, like being reminded of Karen Carpenter, but I, too, dislike the plural. As if there could be more than one...
ReplyDeleteThis Sunday theme did little for me, but I like it a little better now that you've highlighted the verbing of the nouns. I also enjoyed the clue "19A: Group of companies" for MARINECORPS, and LESSSO, because, three esses. See what I did there? Would you have preferred eses? Heh. I like the double letter plurals, like "preferred," and "labelled." The New Yorker is still with me, but then, they put an umlaut on the second o in coordinate. Oh well... language is ever in flux. Who am I to stem the tide?