What a fun grid shape today, almost a figure eight. I loved the top and bottom, but found the middle sections much harder to break into.
I thought I was doing very well with CATSCAN and GOATEE gotten right off the bat. Even with LASSOES, I couldn't get going across the top yet (especially with mbaS instead of CFOS). And unfortunately I tried SEAbedS at 20A: Locales for deep investigations? (SEALABS).
I got going again in the SW. I couldn't recall the full name of Allison Janney's character on the West Wing, only that she went by CJ, so that started me off. 44A: Deadline in a western (SUNDOWN) is a very colorful piece of cluing. And how about the excellent misdirection at 47D: Clay, for one (WHIG). That's Henry Clay, of course. Very nice.
I finally got my first long across answer with DOAGOODdeed. Oops. 50D set me right (LSAT). 53A: Turn lemons into lemonades, so to speak (MAKETHEBESTOFIT) is a lovely 15-letter answer. Then, even though CHIFFON (nice) and HEROIN (not so nice) and INERT were clear cut, I couldn't break into the east middle section either. For some reason, ____HEN was opaque to me, even though I thought of Colbert. And NOGUCHI... well. There you go.
At this point, the obvious in hindsight GAMEOFTHRONES occurred to me, and that opened the top section. This is a really strong set of three answers, especially GOTINTOHOTWATER. 1A: Holder of many titles (CARDCATALOG) is very nice cluing as well. I will give it a B+.
Anyway, I erased my mistakes in the middle west section, figured out ARNO and got CJCREGG through crosses. The east section improved when I took out ISsue and replaced it with ISBNS. Good stuff for our library friends.
- Colum
38:22
ReplyDeleteI thought of Frannie, of course, with CARDCATALOG, and even with the incorrect Citylibrary that I put in originally. ISBNS was a gimme off of that, and actually, not much slowed me down here. A fan of Westerns, SUNDOWN went right in, but like Colum, STEPHEN came slowly for me, as did NOGUCHI and CJCREGG. The long answers were great, especially RECRIMINATION. I, too, entered DOAGOODdeed at first. I also tried MAKETHEmoSTOFIT, which slowed me down a bit. I loved 32A Army ____ (BRAT) and even 25A "We should get going" (ITSLATE). Nice trivia for SENEGAL, which I entered off of the SEN____, and for JAGUAR, which I should have filled in faster since I had ____UAR early on. Excellent clue for USSTATE (17A What a star may represent).