Monday, January 18, 2016

Monday, January 18, 2016, Kathy Wienberg

3:23

Fastest time yet! Everything went in so smoothly, I really didn't have time to think about what those letters in circles meant, but I filled in 49A: Sublime physical performance ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters (POETRYINMOTION) when I had only a few blank spaces left in it, so this time I understood the theme before the end of the puzzle.

I like the three phrases or words that contain "poetry" in anagrammatic form; they're all acceptable as phrases. It's too bad that not all three could be made up of two words, where the anagram crossed the gap as in MINORITYREPORT and PARTYPEOPLE, but PYROTECHNIC is such a nice word that I don't really mind.

It's a lovely open grid, with two 9-letter words and two 8-letter words across and nothing longer than 7-letters down. But there are also only ten 3-letter words, and only one of those is an acronym (AKA). I like MAELSTROM and CHARGE next to ZODIAC. Very few proper names (AESOP, TONI, KENTS). Clean as all get out in my book.

1A: Bread with a pocket (PITA) is a perfectly fine Monday starter, and I give it a C+ for being just above average.

41D: Fictional pirate who shares his name with a bird (SPARROW) gets my vote for best clue-answer pair, because of this:

- Colum

2 comments:

  1. 5:23
    Nice time, Colum. Of course, this was very fast for me, also. I had a tinge of sadness at MAELSTROM since that ride was discontinued in Epcot and some dumb "Frozen" ride is taking its place. It was one of the few rides that I'd go on. At least we can still get the wonderful Cloudberry Horn in the adjacent pastry shop (Kringle?) as consolation. SPARROW is great, and I even liked ZODIAC, although the clue could have been just a bit more tricky, maybe something about the apparent path of the Sun through the sky.

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  2. 4:03
    I felt some resistance as I went through, but not much. And neither did I realize what the theme was before reading this blog! I like it, though, now that I do!

    Definitely a good Monday. MAELSTROM, RENEGADES, EASEMENT, CADENCE... all good.

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