A PRESIDENT theme today, with three from my lifetime and one from a long time ago. I've never heard of a HOOVERVILLE (49A: Depression-era shantytown), and that whole entry seems a bit of an outlier, but what are you going to do? You can't put all 44 names in the grid (... you could save a lot of room if you just went with last names and used them only once...), and really, any of them should be fair game, right? So forget it, I can't complain about that. But even if Hoover can't be called "out-dated," maybe REDOCTOBER (11D: Submarine in a Tom Clancy best seller) can be?
I don't want to sound like one of the INFIDELS, but this whole thing seems a little SOFTBOILED. Lots of MARM, IMAM, REPO, ANTE, ORC, ONEG, GMEN, and ELHI. Not enough SWAGGERS, SCRUM, VERGE, and POESY. I do like FUELROD (47A: Nuclear reactor insert), and the OGLE TATA connection is ... interesting. Especially followed by TEDDY. Or is that a hidden bit of theme?
1A: Exiled leader of Iran (SHAH) - F. This is some pretty stale crosswordese, and to hit it right off the bat is not a good feeling.
1A: Exiled leader of Iran (SHAH) - F. This is some pretty stale crosswordese, and to hit it right off the bat is not a good feeling.
Favorite clue/answer - 40A: Competition in which the winner always gets the last word? (BEE)
MWAH!
- Horace
8:15
ReplyDeleteI guess I'll agree with the F for SHAH. The theme was fine. We history buffs have no problem with HOOVERVILLE (which I filled in with no crosses) but it was a while ago. It appears that I didn't star anything, although I always like ONEG. I guess SWAGGERS is good, too. Interesting definition for HOBO (2D Wanderer in search of work), which I hadn't heard before this puzzle.
5:01 (FWTE)
ReplyDeleteI put POEms in at 16A and never looked back. POESY. Huh. Clearly OGLE, TATA, and TEDDY would only be a minitheme if PRESIDENT Clinton had been included. Hah! Anyway, that last entry (the "revealer", as if one was needed) was superfluous, and only there because no other phrase could be reached to match OBAMACARE. I call that weak.