Little Bunny Foofoo!
Come on, how many thought of this when looking at the long answers? Of course, then it should have been "Hare today, goon tomorrow."
[Thinks about it]
Kind of hoping I'm not the only one who thought of this now.
Anyway, I messed myself up at the beginning by putting in LETyourhairdown for 17A: Entreaty to Rapunzel (LETDOWNYOURHAIR), which was just a complete misrecalling on my part. It slowed me up for a while. I'm pretty fond of PSYCHOLOGYTODAY, because Hope publishes essays on their website from time to time. In fact, all four 15-letter answers are really solid, which adds aesthetic pleasure to the theme. And the revealer, WAX, is funny, but I guessed it ahead of time.
There are an awful lot of proper nouns in this puzzle. Let's see... eighteen of them! And some are really out there. Harold UREY? Alan LADD I've heard of, but Kirk ALYN? Wow, that's a deep cut.
Willie AAMES, Van CLEEF and Arpel, BRIGGS and Myers, ROY Disney. Meh. (Is ROI to close to Roy?) I didn't know that Lorde's real first name is ELLA (Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor), but to me, Ella will always be her:
I did not like the partials IANA and ZOA. NOES and YESSES are annoying but acceptable. ENOW with the ECOLI, already! Like I need to think about abdominal cramps. On the positive side, I like DEWDROPS, ANNEALS, BVITAMIN, and the obscure BIRETTA. Cluing was not great, mostly because of the plethora of names, but 18D: Punch line? (OUCH) was cute. And I like 28D: Sticking point? (CARET).
Theme good, fill okay.
- Colum
Thanks for the beautiful pic of the divine First Lady of Song. She was the best. As for the puzzle, my reaction was generally negative. The thing is way too easy for a Thursday. None of the theme answers offered any resistance whatsoever. I kept hesitating to put in the LETDOWNYOURHAIR because I was hoping there was some twist to it. This thing should have been a Tuesday! The number of obscure proper names is indeed ridiculous. I mean, seriously, AAMES and ALYN?? Agree about the lousy partials--what collecting word ends in IANA, anyway. I know ephemera and Americana, but I'm coming up empty on IANA. Also horrible are TOL and ODING. Did like BIRETTA and DEWDROPS, but overall I think you're being too generous to a disappointing Thursday.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I was a little easy on the puzzle. How about Mozartiana?
Delete21:06
ReplyDeleteWillie AAMES was great, especially on "Charles in Charge," but I've never heard of Kirk ALYN. Good clue for CRAZIES (25A Loons) and there was that one "Huygens Fill" in there: MINX (65A Cheeky, flirtatious sort), but in general I agree that this was a sub-par Thursday. Positive: BVITAMIN (looks odd in there, and I thought I was in error somewhere when I saw the BV) crossing BEAV and MALT, two words not often seen in a grid.