This week has definitely skewed harder than average! I've been above my typical time on each day. It's not much of a surprise for a quotation theme though. Essentially, you need a ton of crosses in order to get a foothold. Once one part goes, the rest tends to follow suit. I don't love these kinds of themes, but today's was super dense, with four 15-letter chunks and one 7-letter answer. That is a ton of theme, and all four corners have three 7-letter down answers in a stack.
The quip is... well, cute. THEPRIMESUSPECT / KNEWHEWASCOOKED / AFTERHE / WASGRILLEDBYTHE / POLICEDETECTIVE. Yeah... puns. I'm a big fan, in general. We had puns yesterday as well. This is passable.
I like a number of the down answers. Of course, Sweeney Todd being my favorite Broadway musical, JOHANNA was a gimme. I think 3D: Count of Monte Cristo, e.g. (AVENGER) is not so great. That ending with -er is awkward. And after all, you could clue it so easily nowadays, perhaps too easily. Or not? 3D: Vision, e.g. would be pretty tough.
11D: Some sneakers (REEBOKS) is fine, while 12D: They can be gross (INCOMES) is saved by the clue. Otherwise that plural is actually gross. 13D: Two-part letter (DOTTEDI) was my final fill. And it took forever to see it. It didn't help that I had BOy at 22A: Turing test participant (BOT). In my defense, one version of the Turing test, as proposed by Douglas R. Hofstadter, is to have one person try to guess the gender of a hidden participant through a conversation over a computer. And also, BOT is annoying. It really should be an A.I.
I like SWAPPED and LANEONE. My favorite down answer is 36D: Was unhappy (with) (HADABEEF). That's fun. BYITSELF was also a surprise, as I wanted it to end with -ly.
How about 18D: Pity (RUTH)? How many people got that one without all the crosses? It's the source of the term ruthless. I questioned that one all the way to the end of the puzzle.
1A: Unlatched, say (AJAR). I'll give it a C+.
- Colum
P.S. Turns out this is a debut puzzle, so congratulations to Mr. Mendelson!
ReplyDeleteOMFG You and your 16:43! Last night I looked at this just before falling asleep and got almost nothing. Then this morning I tried again and got a few things, but not much. Then tonight after dinner, as Frannie and I took turns with it, I said, "Colum will know this Sweeney Todd one," and "Colum will just know this Handel opera one," and, in a different vein, "I wish I knew the capital of Togo!"
ReplyDeleteThis took us 50 minutes exactly, and we were working together! Granted, we were also chatting a bit and passing it back and forth, but still!
When I figured out HADABEEF I let out an audible groan. It's great, but it fooled me so long! I loved UTILITY (One of a pair of Monopoly properties), but I also wish I had gotten that one more quickly. (Notice a trend?) I wanted AJAR (Unlatched, say) from the beginning, but we went through "imitate" and "copycat" for "Ape" before Frannie found ACTLIKE.
This was like a solve from three years ago for us. Took a long time, but was a lot of fun. I second the congrats on the debut!
I'm just glad to know that everybody's having a harder time this week!
Deletep.s. I wanted RUTH, but only after a couple crosses. I didn't know it for sure, but it felt right. It's interesting that it comes from (probably) Old Norse"hrygg∂," because I've just started learning Norwegian with Duolingo in preparation for a trip to Norway in 2018. It's a very strange language. The definite article is a suffix!
ReplyDeleteOMFG! You and your languages!
ReplyDelete25:04
ReplyDeleteWhy not the homeland? Why Norway? At least you're circling out a bit farther from the comfort zone. Anyway, this ran a bit long for a Thursday, mostly trying to figure out the quip. LIV: nice, and HEAVETO is a great bit of boating lingo (I don't have my own in the water as yet; maybe this weekend). UTERUS: gross, and PEE: 'nuff said. But the puzzle itself was, indeed a fun solve, so I third the debut congratulations.
Duo doesn't have Finnish yet. I think they're working on it, though, and if they get it up and running soon, we might alter our plans.
DeleteOf course, I could try to learn the language using some other method, I suppose...
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