Thursday, June 16, 2016

Thursday, June 16, 2016, Timothy Polin

DNF

Just when I thought things were starting to slow down a bit for me, now I'm going to have to brush up on my Torah readings AND my Spanish. :( I thought RANCHeS was fine - I could see them being described as southwestern spreads - but I guess ADeNAI isn't a thing.

But enough about me, how about this puzzle theme? I think it's the most theme material I've ever seen in a crossword puzzle. I solved it on the app and the grid lit up like a Christmas tree when I tapped on 29D. ("Move on!" ... or how to decipher the 16 starred clues). I didn't actually figure the trick out on my own. Horace shouted it out in a 'eureka' moment when we were sitting at the bar having a pre-dinner cocktail. On the other hand, I had dropped in COPACABANA because it was one of the theme clues and it fit, which I thought unlikely to be a chance occurrence. The best theme clue/answer might be 41D. "Suite for use?" (ANAGRAM). Sweet. Although, on a second pass through the puzzle just now, I am reminded of 34D. *Bar order requiring celerity. Ha!


I thought 9D. Make a father of was cleverly clued. I entered something else entirely there at first, which, if I see you in person I will tell you and we'll laugh about.

I'm guessing our esteemed reader Huygens enjoyed both the clue and answer for 33A. Service jobs (LUBES).

It was a nice touch to have Word of logic and Words of logic (ERGO and ORS) cross, and also kind of fun to have ARGOS and ARGOTS in the same puzzle. I enjoyed both SINECURE and PALIMONY in their parallel locations. Two others I enjoyed were 18A. Places for naps? (RUGS) and 43D. The French? (LES).

I'd never heard of LINACS. I'm not a puzzle constructor myself, but LINACS seems to me like the kind of entry you might end up with when you've made a really terrific puzzle and it all fits together beautifully except in one spot where you've got what looks like a random collection of letters, which you then Google desperately until you find some meaning for it. But, maybe that never happens.

I'm not quite sure how to grade 1A. *Pitiers (DOCKS). I should maybe give it an A because it made me and Horace LOL. After I dropped "it" from Pitiers, I sounded out the result and came out with something like Pie ers. No good.

Horace notes that it's a 15 x 16 grid. Discuss, 'cause I'm not going to.

~ Frannie

Bonus trivia question: what is the connection between yesterday's puzzle illustration and today's?


2 comments:

  1. 51:12 (FWOE)
    I assume it was only one error, which I didn't know anything about until I read Frannie's review (I solved this on paper). It's the cross of RANCHeS and ADeNAI, which I assume must be an A, although I suppose it could be an O, since a ranch is probably masculine. It took me a while to figure out the theme, but once I did, I raced through the theme answers and their crosses, which were tricky, I thought. I hadn't thought that way about LUBES, Frannie (MYMY!), and I look forward to hearing your original answer for 9D sometime, perhaps over a BLOODYMARY or a GIMLET. I've read quite a lot about particle accelerators and have never, ever, heard or read the term LINACS, but it's fine, I guess. Nice clue for AMULET, and PALIMONY is a good word, unless one is paying it.

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  2. Played hard for me, although I did eventually get it (which maybe make it Thursday-normal). Oddly, I also had RANCHeS despite earlier going through names for God the Torah (including variants like Jehovah) and thinking "well it really should be ADONAI". My biggest problem in that area was that I had misremembered the insurance company as iaG and only after not getting the jingle and messing around with ADONAI did my financial crisis memory dredge up AIG.

    9D was my favorite on this one. Took me quite a while but it was worth it.

    Never heard of LINAC in quite that form by I figured it would be some variation of linear accelerator or cyclotron or one of those words.

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