0:34:04
Well, I was totally wrong about the bylines for Friday and
Saturday, but I am not unhappy, because a name’s been added to those I will
recognize as a “favored creator.” Mr. Polin has given us a tidy little treat today,
and he only needed a 14x14 grid to do it! Well, he “used” the “blanks” around
the edges, by cluing them in such a way that they could be answered with
“blanks,” and it didn’t matter that there were more spaces than necessary for
the word, because it’s the thing itself that answers the clue. I’ve never heard
of Billy Blanks, but I’m guessing that’s who it is. (I suppose it could be
Billy Blank, but if it were, that would be slightly less elegant.)
On my first pass through I got very little, but I did end up
entering the word “blanks” at “1D: Valuable things to have in Scrabble,” and at
“44D: Unstamped metal discs used for making coins.” I thought that was strange,
and started thinking about whether or not it could be possible that every
answer would appear twice. I got nowhere with that idea, and set the puzzle
down for a few minutes while I chatted with Huygens about various topics.
When I opened it up again, I focused on 25A and 39A: “region
beyond the Kármán line … or a literal hint to what this puzzle has.” I had the
U from “____SUIT,” which I had entered because I wanted APESUIT, but it would not fit, and the R from ROSIE “26: W.W. II
poster girl,” one of the few gimmes that allowed a toehold, and from other
nagging things, like wanting ALOHA for
“42A: Greeting that means ‘love’ or ‘peace’” (cue a Huygens comment about their
trip to Hawai’i), and knowing that LILLE
was probably right for “8D: French metropolis near the Belgian border…” Did I
mention that Frannie and I spent a very happy three or four days in an AirBnB
in Lille a year or two ago? The French people we know, when we told them of our
trip, said “Why?,” but Lille turned out to be quite a fun town. Anyway, little
things like that finally allowed me to figure out the theme before I really had
much of anything else. I worried for a bit that the “outer spaces” would extend
beyond the grid and be difficult to solve online, but soon enough realized that
it was a puzzle that would be reduced within the grid instead.
Phew! Seems like this is getting long, but I also want to
add that I love the addition of so much “theme” material today. In addition to
the OUTER/SPACE revealer, and all
the “blanks,” we have the beautiful crossing thirteens of LUNARECLIPSE, ALIENINVASION,
CONSTELLATION, and USSENTERPRISE. All of them, lovely,
lovely answers. And “bonus” material like SOL,
SETI, and maybe even the two “weird”
answers EERIE and OUTRE. And maybe FLIER? And SEGA (46D:
Creator of Saturn)?
Love the clue for ALI
(51D: Winning party in Clay v. United States). Love the word FAIN (37D: Willingly, once), because it
reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Love the whole thing. Sure, you might
grumble at MONAD (43D: Unicellular
organism), or think that LAPUTA (16A:
Floating island visited in “Gulliver’s Travels”) is a bit of ARCANA (15A: Abstruse knowledge), but
these are ITSY complaints and are of
no USE, to which I cry AWAY!
This was a great end to this unusual week. Thank you, Mr.
Polin.
- Horace
22:00
ReplyDeleteIt's actually 14x13, but who's counting? What a fun looking puzzle. I suppose I'm nitpicking to the extreme to say I was slightly disappointed that the "blanks" didn't work into the answers abutting the OUTER SPACE. So many things were hints here: I wanted AFCEAST and PIPS and SETI and ALI and ASSESS. I was all set with PRINTs, and I tried both "shalom" and "salaam" at 42D (ALOHA). I had "blanks" at 1D, then "S tiles". Obviously incorrect. Once I got the revealer, it all fell into place. I don't like that OUTER and OUTRE are both in the grid, even though they're not dupes. I actually didn't get the connection of the 13 and 14 letter answers until reading Rex' review. That made the puzzle much better.
Or is it 13x13?
Delete~1:15
ReplyDeleteIt took me a bit over 1/2-hour to get the theme, and then I was hung up on things like MONAD and, oddly, USSENTERPRISE. Horace already mentioned many of the clues that I starred, so I won't repeat them here. DOOWOP was nicely clued, as was SINEAD (who knew?). The grid, BTW, is 13X13...Horace was ultimately correct. And yes, we went to Hawai'i, a trip which is rapidly careening into the past, sadly.