Friday, July 1, 2016

Friday, July 1, 2016, James Mulhern

0:26:00

First of all, I'd like to thank Frannie for a very entertaining month of reviews. Hopefully, she can be convinced into becoming a regular part of the rotation! You'll get no such cleverness from me, so brace yourselves.

Today's puzzle denied me three times: with answers that I just didn't know (a good example of this is "57A: 2006 musical featuring a vampire." I had _ESTA_ and I still needed crosses! Same with _ULUSEA!); with oblique clueing (62A: They're drawn by the bizarre (STARES)); and with unusual answers (AIRWOMAN, ERDOCTOR).


I should have known I was in trouble when the first two answers I entered were EPA (19A: Org. that covers Springfield in a dome in "The Simpsons Movie") and LOIS (Lane in a strip). I threw in GIBLET (31A: Gravy goody) (eeuw), CHORAL (40A: Like motets), and ORIENTAL (59A: Light blue partner of Connecticut and Vermont) too, but after that it was slow going. One great help was that I "accidentally" glanced down at my computer keyboard as I was working and saw that the SQUAREBRACKET key is the "35A: Backslash neighbor." I briefly considered spelling "curly" with an E, but really, that character requires a shift, so I guess SQUAREBRACKET is more accurate.

I very much enjoyed the fill today, for the most part. TATTLE (1A: Talk) is solid B+ material in my book. And better still are TAILGATE (38D: Get too close, in a way), ONEMAN (15A: Not divisible, as a job), FLASHERS (7A: Driver's hazards) (I don't care what they mean, I'm understanding this to mean people flashing drivers from the side of the road. Or maybe from an overpass. Or heck, even from a passing car...), and DESTROY (20A: Torpedo).

Overall, I'm giving this one a thumbs up. The month is off to a good start!

- Horace

5 comments:

  1. I too loved this puzzle. Decent challenge for a Friday, and as you point out, a lot of good fill. I believe FLASHERS is a reference to a car's emergency lights, sometimes called hazard lights or just hazards. But I like your imagery better. Great cluing of ORIENTAL, wasn't it, since that word in most meanings is out of fashion nowadays? I got LESTAT fairly easily thanks to the fact that my wife used to read a little Rice. How about the very tricky cluing of MORN?! I thought that was great. Almost as good was the clue for EPIDURAL, but that is really one that didn't need a question mark. I'm surprised that Horace, known to be somewhat green, didn't call out TOTEBAG. Odysseus's dog is wonderfully arcane, and I appreciate the PC-defiant line of ONEMAN and AIRWOMAN. Thumb way up indeed!

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    Replies
    1. Completely agree about MORN. I almost used that as my example of oblique clueing. I thought "Crazy Horse, e.g." (LAKOTA) was tricky too!

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  2. 17:33
    This puzzle got me a couple of times as well: first with FANTASYBASEBALL (I wanted football instead), and then with AIRWOMAN, where I wanted Aviatrix. I could not come up with SQUAREBRACKET without a ton of crosses (in part because in my mind I was thinking of the placement of the forward slash). ERDOCTOR is great; TEXASBBQ is awesome! Very very nice puzzle.

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  3. I didn't love this puzzle, but maybe because I was stymied for so long in the north west and then finally completely stumped on the YAZOO/ZAC and SULUSEA/STUPA crosses. I had to look those two up. I did like the cluing for MORN, ORIENTAL, and TOTEBAG and some others, but the obscurity, at least to me, of so many answers: LOLITAS, STUPA, SULUSEA, TRU, Arthur BEA, and ISO - what is that anyway? - really got my GIBLETs in a bunch, Which reminds me that the wording of the clue "Gravy goody" set my teeth on edge. To sum up, this puzzle took its TOLL on me.

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  4. Untimed (but around 20 minutes)
    I loved this, too, and I'll definitely side with Horace's definition of FLASHERS. Interesting trivia about NAGASAKI; I always figured it had something to do with rice wine. LESTAT is well known to me, so a couple of crosses sufficed, but ORIENTAL needed all of the crosses. GIBLET...yuck. TAXCUT and RAKEIN are nice, and I loved the clue for LOLITAS (41D Teases, in older usage). I wanted "Monde" for 42D, but it just wouldn't fit. FIGARO is much better regardless.

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