Monday, August 31, 2015

Monday, August 31, 2015, Michael Dewey

0:07:32 (FWTE)

Put in Peta today for PICO (66A: Micro : millionth :: ____ : trillionth) and had a grand old time figuring out what went wrong when the "Congratulations!" didn't appear. Well, that's the way it goes, I guess. Sometimes you have to DIVEINHEADFIRST (17A: Attack an endeavor vigorously) in these situations. And sometimes there's water in the pool, and sometimes there isn't. Just ask Teddy.

Those willing to TAKETHEPLUNGE (37A: Get hitched) today will find some ARF-worthy fill, sure, like IVS, REY, AHIT, ANAP, and OLEOS, but if they just HANGINTHERE (26D: "Don't give up now!"), they'll also find such lovely words as MODISH (1D: In fashion), MEDIEVAL (8D: Pertaining to the time of castles and knights), AVENGE (46D: Exact retribution for), and the SEVENDWARFS (3D: Title characters in Disney's first full-length feature). Interesting trivia in that last one, both in the "first full-length feature" part, and in the plural itself. "Dwarfs" is, apparently, the standard plural, according to the Internets, and "dwarves" was invented by none other than J. R. R. Tolkien. Who knew?


Overall, I guess it's fine. Maybe a few too many gratuitous plurals and partials to be a great Monday, but it was at least serviceable.

Tomorrow Colum takes over again, so if you've grown weary of my reviews, you're in for a treat!

- Horace

3 comments:

  1. 4:53
    Wow, another month has slipped by. Just 4 months left in 2015! And two of them will be reviewed by yours truly. All I can say is that I always worry when I'm writing my reviews that they aren't nearly as interesting as Horace's. Anyway, I'll try out one of my themes this month, and we'll see how long that lasts.

    This puzzle was pretty good. I like the three theme answers and the lack of a revealer makes for a clean feeling. Kind of like the first cut of the water against your body when you slice into a pool...

    Um.

    Well, anyway, I had a difficulty time right where you did, but I didn't finish the puzzle before discovering my error. I had TWISToff at 38D, which made that little section in the middle S confusing. Once I got GOOFFTHEDEEPEND, it came together. I also had Deco initially for DADA. I tried to spell HADJI with 2 Js. Otherwise, it went pretty smoothly.

    See all y'all tomorrow!

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  2. 11:10
    Binary, but one second off of all ones, which would have also been nice. Feng Shue? Est? Add ta? Sometimes one needs to glance at the crosses. This ran a little tough for me for a Monday, but I agree with Colum that it was overall enjoyable with a nice theme. TROD is a word that isn't used often enough, in my opinion, and ESTHER brought back some great memories of reading the entire Bible. I also enjoyed 56A Eighty-sixed (DITCHED) and one of its crosses, 46D Exact retribution for (AVENGE) for both the great cluing and answers. OTOH, I'd definitely not use the term TWISTTOP.

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