Sunday, June 19, 2016

Sunday, June 19, 2016, David Woolf

Traffic Intersections

FWTE

I had one error that was really dumb. For 116A. Starting point for Pompeii tourism, I entered NAPoli, which fit like a charm on its own, but caused some crashes on the downs. So, I took it out. But, dear reader, did I swap it out for NAPLES? No, I thought to myself, hunh, I guess I don't know that one. I might have been saved from my own obtuseness had I known crime writer Joseph HANSEN. I guessed HANSoN. Blergh.



The other error came at the cross between 31D. Youth detention center in England (BORSTAL) and the very excellently clued 66A. Call before reserving? (LET). I never once parsed reserving as re-serving. Lovely. If I had known the detention center, I might have figured out the clue, but, I didn't.

But, enough about me, how about today's stop & go theme? I did the puzzle on the app, which doesn't show color, but thanks to the heads up under the blinking "i" and the well known expressions involved, I had no trouble with the theme answers. It is a marvel of puzzle engineering, if you ask me, which you didn't, but it's my soap box for the moment. :) Both the concept and the execution are first-rate. Maybe the best one is the self-referential 92A. Illegal action shown literally in this answer? RUNNINGA[RED]LIGHT. It works on so many levels.

There was a lot of great fill, too - apart from the now-very-tired ONEL (sorry you didn't get your wish englishteacher59).

Here are some of my favorites:
43A. Fill-in-the-blanks diversion (MADLIB)
85A. Trembling (ASHIVER)
91A. Meeting around lunchtime (NOONER - for real this time!)
4D. One going for a board position? (DART) - ha!
13D. Mobile home: Abbr. (ALA) - Another one for the abbreviation clue hall of fame!

I liked 1A. (It's accommodating) quite a bit. It's tricksy on both the clue and answer side, but gettable. I give it an A.

GTG.

~ Frannie.



5 comments:

  1. Theme great, BORSTAL boo. I figured it out at the last second, but unfortunately ran into trouble with SLEAZO (????). I had SLEAZe, a perfectly reasonable guess. When I also had BEaT for BEST, STEREO was ungettable. I finally figured it out. Still, the theme was great, especially the one that breaks the rules.

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  2. Yeah, my eyebrows are raised too for SLEAZO instead of SLEAZe. The theme was fun and I got it early with RUNNINGA(red)LIGHT (solved using the note, didn't bother with pdf or app). I had never heard of a TOMGIRL, but Wiktionary has all kinds of citations, so I guess it is legit (and fairly guessable if one has heard of a tomboy).

    Hard to really like BORSTAL especially since England abolished them (at least by that name) in 1982. On the plus side, I did learn something about the history of juvenile justice in England and to a certain extent the British Empire.

    57A was a nice way to clue a tired answer.

    Finally got 119A after looking for synonyms of tail, string, sticks, paper, etc.

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  3. I agree with the general dissatisfaction with SLEAZO, and Jim - I had the same thoughts about TOMGIRL and TALON. And just how much of West Africa speaks French, anyway? I suppose I should look that up.

    OK, I just did, and it's a lot. Everything except Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria, with a mix in Western Sahara and Gambia. And while that sounds like a lot of non-French-speaking countries, the French-speaking ones include Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Niger, Chad, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and many others.

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  4. DNF
    I stared at the middle west coast for a very long time, got MADLIB, ETE and ONEL, but nothing else there, so.... But other than that, excellent puzzle, and great theme. I agree with Frannie that it's a marvel of puzzle engineering (except for the aforementioned BORSTAL). I worked on this for over 90 minutes, with the bulk of the puzzle filled in right in my preferred time zone, so I can't really complain.

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  5. Interestingly, this was not used for syndication. A "best of" ran instead in today's Star Tribune. Maybe this was because of the inability to reproduce the color in Sunday print newspapers, I don't know. I vaguely remember seeing color on the circles before I printed the thing, but then I forgot about that when I started solving. Don't think the color was necessary as the theme becomes obvious pretty quickly. Enjoyable solve with a lot to like. Frannie, I too loved seeing MADLIB in the grid.

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