So close! I really thought I'd beat the 3 minute mark but got stuck briefly in the SE corner. I often try to enter the answers with the most blank spaces, figuring that will require me to look at fewer clues. But CALLACAB and BOLSTER were both too difficult to get from one or two letters. Ah, well.
I really like the theme here: there are five films named, each with a synonym for "big" in the title, thus leading to the revealer, BIGPICTURE. Only one of the theme entries required the definite article to be supplied in the clue. I particularly like the crossing of GIANT and TITANIC. That's a nice find.
1A: Home of the N.F.L.'s Dolphins (MIAMI) gets a B. I'd give it a B+, but it's a sports clue, which may leave some in the cold, and also, well, who likes the Dolphins, anyway? It was also my first answer I put in and was completely confident about.
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The fill was on the whole good, with some very nice entries. ETVOILA has a nice ring to it, and is so commonly used in English we didn't need the "Fr." warning. IGNOBLE and INDIGENT are both fine words, despite the negative connotations.
There are a few crosswordese answers, such as OREM, NAN, ATRA, and COE. But I enjoyed this ROMP.
And here's a VIOLAS joke: Why do violists spend so long outside other people's homes? Because they can't find the key and don't know when to come in. Hah!
- Colum
6:58
ReplyDeleteThere was no danger of me breaking the 3:00 mark. This was a fine Monday puzzle. LASAGNA is an old favorite. I didn't love the clue for BLOB, wishing it were referenced instead with the 50s movie, but maybe some people today haven't seen the classic. BRATS is excellent, as is CABALA and REPENT. I think that Bach should have been brought in with SUITES, but I'm glad that NAN wasn't thrown in as an alternate spelling of naan, although I wasn't thrilled at its crossing with IAN. SUPERSIZEME is both great and highly disturbing.