I don't think I've ever heard SANFRANCISCO called the "Paris of the West," but I certainly have heard it called the CITYBYTHEBAY. It's a fun Monday theme today, with the two just mentioned, as well as ALCATRAZ, CABLECAR, and spanning the whole puzzle is the GOLDENGATEBRIDGE. Sooo... fine theme.
And there's more to like. POLAR BEARS (30D: White hunters on a white landscape) (odd clue), and SUPERMODEL (12D: One charging high runway fees?) (nice clue) are good long downs. "22A: The yoke's on them" is cute for OXEN.
It's a little weird seeing STARIN (23D: Lead the cast of) and STALIN (70A: Lenin's successor) both in there, there's the usual smattering of ISEE, OBIES, UMA, etc... and I prefer my OOLALA with an "H," but overall, this was a decent Monday.
- Horace
4:09
ReplyDeleteWell, I liked the theme, but there's a major problem. How can we have SANFRANCISCO and CISCO in the same puzzle? Okay, so CISCO is not referring to the city, but it does refer to the name Francisco... Otherwise it was fine.
Oh, right. I forgot to mention that! I was going to call it bonus theme material. But yeah... weird.
Delete8:56
ReplyDeleteSue and I have visited the CITYBYTHEBAY, walking over the GOLDENGATEBRIDGE and viewing ALCATRAZ from afar since we didn't wish to devote six hours to the place by taking a tour. We also recently visited nephew Scott there (we were his first visitors). I noticed the two CISCO entries, too, and cried foul. All in all, it was fine...I mean, after all, Mel BLANC is mentioned.