Well, I really enjoyed this puzzle thoroughly. It's a quadruple triple stack of 10-letter answers, which means 12 long answers, all of which I liked with exception of one. That's pretty impressive. Then, in addition, there's a fine diagonal of 5-letter answers down the middle. Good flow, overall.
I broke in with 15A: Browse without comment (LURK), a term I remember well from the days of online bulletin boards and forums. Does anybody still use those in the age of social networking? Once I added BOKCHOY (very nice) and ELK, I suddenly saw 3D: Fall out of line (BREAKRANKS). 1D: Crosses, as a range (CLIMBSOVER) seems just a little off, but is certainly accurate. AUDIOPHILE completes this trio. I made my mistake here, where I put OHARe at 30A: John who wrote "BUtterfield 8" (OHARA). Should have realized SHIe made no sense.
1A: Napa options, informally (CABS) is referring to the wines, which moves it up a full grade to a B-.
Despite getting TODAY, I had no more purchase in the transition to the NE, so I moved to the SW. RESPECTS moved me in. 40D: Small bomb used for breaking down gates (PETARD) is wonderful. Now I now what they mean by "hoisted by one's own petard" means. 37D: What's the point? (DECIMAL) is also very nice.
48A: It might involve someone "so fat" or "so old" (YOMAMAJOKE) is a winner, as is 53A: What to grab for the road? (HANDLEBARS). I don't love 51A: Regular joes (AVERAGEMEN), just because it feels like two words stuck together rather than a widespread term. 46D: Home of "Christina's World," familiarly (MOMA) was opaque to me, and the first M was my last square entered.
43A: Halluces (BIGTOES) should have been immediately apparent to me, as we often test the extensor hallucis longus in Neurology. But I read it as a strange version of "hallucinates". In any case, 27D: One stuck abroad? (VOODOODOLL) wins for best clue-answer pair today. Any reference to Star Trek's a winner (ENGINEROOM), and 29D: Starting line (READYSETGO) is also great.
The NE has the best set of three answers, though. I love STIFFDRINK, NOSIREEBOB, and ADAGENCIES took me a while to parse correctly (18A: They get spots out).
Very well done.
- Colum
P.S. The new They Might Be Giants album is out on Spotify. I'm listening to it right now.
11:49 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteSad about the FWOE today. I had all but two squares and got overly concerned with time. One was the G of ADAGENCIES, which also, obviously, took me a while to parse. I got that one, and then was left with B_E (50D: Dating initials) and _LOG (52A: Target for a snake). I could not understand either clue properly and guessed "fLOG." Only after being rejected did I understand that "date" meant "year" and not "out on a date." I kept wanting SWF or something like that. And only just now did I realize that by "snake" they did not mean an animal but a plumber's tool. Egad. In retrospect, they're both fine. Good even. Oh well. And I still got beaten by seven seconds!
Agree all around on this one. Very nice Friday. Chunky and entertaining. I got MOMA right away, but needed almost everything to get BIGTOES. I liked the shout out to the rover with "46A: Curiosity's locale" (MARS). Nice hidden capital.
Thumbs up.
~30 minutes
ReplyDeleteThis was a nice, smooth puzzle for me and went along swimmingly while my car's oil was being changed. Didn't I mention CANTO recently? Funny it mentions Dante specifically today. ENGINEROOM was overly-clued, I thought. 20A Fix, as a toy (SPAY) is excellent, as is STIFFDRINK. I thought that Colum would have gotten BIGTOES right away. No errors from this corner, but the price was the long solve time compared with you two.