Boy oh boy it took me until the very end to figure out that it was the PHONETIC alphabet they were talking about. TANGO (7D: *Dance craze of the 1910s) should have tipped me off, I suppose, but I kept looking for more than just a circled letter with the asterisk clues. A rebus, a missing part, something, anything slightly tricky... but no. Just circled letters and asterisked clues, the answers to which were part of the phonetic alphabet. Hmph.
The theme may have been a little lackluster, but Frannie and I enjoyed many of the clues. 47A: Run out of clothes? (STREAK) is nice, and 50A: Spring breaks? (OASES) was very tricky! I mistakenly guessed "I am a rock" for 66A: 1969 Simon & Garfunkel hit in which "lie-la-lie" is repeatedly sung" (THEBOXER), and then when I realized that must be wrong, I spent about thirty seconds singing the song until I finally got to "... In the clearing stands a boxer..." And speaking of mistakes, I tried "beastly" for BESTIAL (44D: Inhuman), but I like the real answer better.
CORTEX, OVERTIP, CLICHE, CHINUP - all good. In the not so good camp I put TILTSAT (29D: Battles against) (and just yesterday I was praising "atilt..." - I told you, that's how it goes!), UTAHAN (I don't care if that's what they call themselves, I don't like it), and my least favorite - CDEF (13D: Scale opening). I had tried "dore" which I would have liked slightly better, but the sheer arbitrariness of CDEF is off-putting. Can I now expect to find "gabc" with a similar clue?
1A: Put next to (APPOSE) I give a B. No one ever says APPOSE, but I can't fault it for that.
Overall, I guess I'll call it a wash.
- Horace
p.s. I suppose Huygens will suggest that ATEAT (56A: Bothered no end) could have had a more suggestive clue...
8:19 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteI stared at the SW corner for a long time, where I had HO_E crossing PA_ArENA. Uh, yeah. You probably see the problem right there. That R, which was a guess at the cross of 62D: Honshu's ___ River (EDO), which I should have gotten from context, but I was seduced by the idea that the parade could be taking place in an Arena of some sort. So I finally put the S in (Pas Arena? It could be some corporate name, right?), and got the dreaded message. Oh well. I don't love the theme either, although it's nice that everything is symmetric. Anyway...
The alphabet in this puzzle is not THE Phonetic Alphabet, IMHO. It is what the Wikipedia calls a Spelling Alphabet. The WP does say that a "spelling alphabet is also often called a phonetic alphabet, especially by amateur radio enthusiasts," which seems ham-fisted to me. :)
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