Monday, August 1, 2016, Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette

4:53

The last thing I want on vacation is a TODOLIST. Well, in real life, anyway. In a crossword puzzle, it's fine.

Happy August! It feels like it's been a long time since I last put fingers to keyboard to produce a post for this blog. The family and I are in Rehoboth, Delaware (actually Dewey Beach, but more people have heard of the former) for a week, enjoying the beach. I hope the steadfast readers of this blog have also had enjoyable vacations this summer.

So, for this first Monday of the month, we get a theme of two word phrases where the first word starts with TO- and the second with DO-. The chosen phrases are all solid. TOYDOLLS is acceptable, although I suppose the "toy" is not truly needed. There are dolls that are not toys... or maybe we don't want to go there.

Otherwise, I'll remark on the cluing for 25A: Land, as a plane (TOUCHDOWN) which refers to a two word phrase, as opposed to the event in an American football game, which is a single word. I'm sure there is a large potential list of phrases that fit this pattern (I just came up with "tofu dogs", but with computers nowadays, it's probably not difficult to generate many more), but this list is fine.

I enjoyed the two long down answers TOOTHPASTE and COMETOREST, and the two shorter answers PSYCHOUT and YACHTING. In general the fill is good, although DATER is questionable in my opinion. 15A: Very rich ... or drunk (LOADED) gets a yuk for the clue. I also thought it was amusing to follow up 63A: "Immediately!" (ASAP) with 64A: "I mean ... this instant!" (NOW).

1A: Guacamole, e.g. (DIP) gets a B-. It's solid, but it's a 3-letter answer, which I'd rather not have right at the outset of a puzzle.

My new feature for this month is to identify the first answer I put in that I was 100% solid about - this is often not the same as the first answer I put in at all, which may be a guess or a complete stab in the dark. Today's answer (not surprising for a Monday) was DIP.

- Colum