Greetings All,
Frannie here, as you can probably tell from the time. I know the rest of you blokes can do three Mondays in the time it takes me to do one, but trust me, I am working my ARS off over here. :)
I liked the puzzle. As chance would have it, Horace and I were invited out tonight to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the MAGNACARTA so the theme had a nice NOW kind of flair to it. The five theme answers were strong, although I question the name Innocent for any pope. Too much? I suppose I owe them all DUEPROCESS, but I'd rather just SNIPE (31D. Take a potshot).
Beyond the theme, there was a nice olio of old and new topics from SOLOMON (62A. Biblical wise man) and ULRIC (23A. German prelate who was the first person to be canonized A. D. 993) to NSYNC (39A. Timbalake's boy band) and the expression ASATEAM (14A. Not individually, in sports), which strikes me as MOSTLY modern. I also liked both the clue and answer for 59D. Ample, informally (ENUF). Ample is such a comfortable word and ENUF spells it like it is.
Two answers I disliked for their lack of naturallanguageness were RATER (25A. Movie critic, often) and AIRER (30D. Broadcaster). No one ever says either of those words
A fine flock of animal answers with BRAND, MOOS, OINK, and PEW. Ha!
~Frannie
4:03
ReplyDeleteA reasonable puzzle celebrating a round anniversary of an important event in Western history. INNOCENT is the outlier. Perhaps it should have been clued as: What you are until proven guilty, according to 19A... except I think that's not actually true. Having just researched it, I find that the phrase was coined by Sir William Garrow (1760-1840).
I agree with Frannie's unpleasing pair of answers, to which I will add REORG. Blah. Otherwise, most everything was acceptable.
6:48
ReplyDeletePEW because animals stink or as a nod to M. Pepe Le PEW? Either way is fine with me. I also agree with the pair of answers suggested as not too great by Frannie, but I have no problem with REORG; having a business background, to me that's a fairly common phrase, SOTHERE. I don't particularly like the EMAJ-type clues because no one really knows many keys to various pieces, so they're just filler letters for the most part. Nice clue for OEDS, even though there's that odd plural. I'm not familiar with the term (well, I am now) OLDNICK for the Devil.