Sunday, November 22, 2015

Sunday, November 22, 2015, Samuel A. Donaldson and Jeff Chen

RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON!

What a pleasing and smooth puzzle. If I have any complaint, it's that it was too easy. I finished well under my average Sunday time, and I rarely had to hesitate even when filling in an answer.

The theme is nicely carried out: as the title suggests, each theme answer takes a right hand turn. But beyond that, if you take the portion that has turned and put it after "right on", you get an answer to the clue "exact". Thus, 25A: Threshold of major change (TIPPING[POINT]), and 26D: Exact ([RIGHTON]POINT).

Each theme answer is definitely a recognizable answer, with the possible exception of SNOOKER[CUE]. I also like that the answers are not symmetrically placed.  I take this back. The answers are symmetrically placed, but the right turns make them feel asymmetric. Nonetheless, it wasn't an issue to recognize the theme answers because of the "exact" clues. It was definitely cool that two of the answers cross each other as well.

1A: Big gasbag? (BLIMP) got a smile from me, so I'll give it a B+. I didn't love UTAHN or RUMBAED. Likewise, there are some standard meh fill, like AST, KIVA (never heard of them), and a few partials. But minimal, really for such a big grid.

And who can complain when DCUP is present? Not to mention the triumphant return of DDAYS. I hope that doesn't herald the start of a new streak.

I think my favorite clue-answer pair was at 93A: Modern spelling? (WICCA). I did think for a moment of Tori Spelling, but there was no hidden capital, and she's not very much in the current news.13D: It's in the eye of the beholder (IRIS) was an amusingly specific clue. 17D: Equity valuation stat (PERATIO) was not familiar to me, but the crosses were fine.

Anyway, I don't have too much to say, but I enjoyed it fine.

- Colum

1 comment:

  1. P/E Ratio (PERATIO) is the "price to earnings ratio," often used to give a quick gauge of a stock's value (whether it's undervalued or overvalued), but be careful to look at other factors, too, before investing. I hated RUMBAED, too, but I'm getting accustomed to UTAHN. DCUP was awesome! As soon as I read the title of the puzzle I started looking out for the right-angle turns; I figured out the "right on" with the downs a little later. NANOBOT (29A Small body of medical research) is nicely clued. For me, this puzzle took about the normal time for a Sunday (~45 minutes). I was slow to get into it. BTW, I think that you're being a bit hard on BLIMP; I'd have given it at least a low A. Are we supposed to say COLORED?

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