Sorry the review is so late, but I spent the entire day running all the New York cities near the Pennsylvania border through my head and I just couldn't come up with OLEAN. It was not that lacuna alone that brought about the DNF, but that, coupled with 30A. Hooked projection on a bird feather (BARBICEL) atop the south west section of the puzzle - a section which also included the stumper, for me at least, MOGAMBO (47A. Clark Gable film that was a remake of his "Red Dust") - brought about my DNF. The foregoing sentence is a DNF of a different kind, isn't it? Ha!
Anywhoo, I don't want to sound like sour grapes or anything, but I didn't love this puzzle. It wasn't just the trouble in the south west corner, but the general lack of FINESSESHOTs in the answer/fill pairs. I'm going to list a few of my least favorites, dinged not because they are invalid, or obscure but, to take a page out of yesterday's puzzle, meh.
BIODATA
OHIOBORN
WATERLOVING - this just a one-to-one word swap between your Latinate clue and your Germanic answer. :(
ARTEDITOR
STRATI
EMER
The triple three stacks at the top right and bottom left also did not emsparkle the fill. Trust me, it's a perfectly cromulent word. And, what the heck is the NIT Season Tip-Off, I mean besides an annual hoops event? Maybe it runs on the Ocho, which we don't get.
On the upside, and speaking of cromulent, it's always nice to be reminded of the INEPT Homer Simpson - no comeuppance! Plus, the ELSEIF conditional construct in computer programming is included (45A), and who doesn't love that?
So, I'm not MAD mad or anything, but some of the ho hum fill did HINDER my enjoyment of today's NYTXWP.
~ Frannie
P.s. 1A. gets a B+. It's a nice long word, and a tweeny bit jokey. :)
25:44 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteReally tough. My error came at the cross of NIT and CLIOS. I put NeT, because that seemed a strong possibility for a basketball event. Yeah. BARBICEL really hard. OLEAN really tough. EMER annoying.
Colum, if even you don't know NIT, then I call foul.
ReplyDeleteIt's Saturday, so I guess we can't get too upset, but jeez, this was tough.
DNF (after 71:47)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that others had some trouble with this one. I filled in the SW, oddly, in its entirety, but not a great deal anywhere else. I prefer a Saturday that is difficult, but doable.