It's the ol' homonym theme today: POLLSPOLES, HEALSHEELS, ADDSADS, etc. Always worth a chuckle. Also chuckle-worthy, to me anyway, was the clue "19A: Bushy part of a squirrel" for TAIL. It's just so... I don't know, silly? Not silly, or chuckle-worthy, to some, I'm guessing, will be "20A: Modest swimming garment" (ONEPIECE). Speedos are one piece, and they're not so modest. So, for that matter, is a monokini. I'd use it as today's photo, but this is a family blog, so you'll have to do your own Googling.
The SW got a little crosswordsy, with SACS, ERTE, ASIS, CACTI, and APSES, and there are pockets of crosswordese all over - LOOIE, LOCI, ASSN, EEL, RRS, ENO, MAH... Kind of a lot, I guess. Was the theme worth it all? I'll let you decide. I'm going to look forward to tomorrow.
- Horace
3:36
ReplyDeletePut in ALPO before ABHOR, as self-confirmation. I don't like the dupe between the clue at 14A: Sergeant's superior, slangily (LOOIE) and the answer for 49A: Two steps above cpl. (SSGT). ISDUE and SEETO both gave me longer pause than expected on a Monday. I could have been done in under 3:15, I think. On the other hand, the theme helped. All you needed was the beginnings of one word and the answer filled itself in.
For some reason I had UNPin before UNPEG, although the latter is the more apt answer for that clue. Liked the theme (I'm just a sucker for puns) and I agree that the clue for TAIL was nice. I was wondering if the ozone HOLE was kind of an obsolete concept, but on looking it up I see that it isn't supposed to be back to the way it was until 2060–2075, so I another 45 years of ozone hole-ness still counts. Oh, and I liked EMDASH, but that's just because I went to the trouble of learning when you use a hyphen, minus sign, en dash, or em dash, and the clue only fits one of them. Oh and I have a childhood memory of buying a camera ASIS. It leaked light so it didn't really work well, but it was so exciting at a young age to have a camera of my own (as opposed to a family one).
ReplyDeleteThe EM DASH, which is really just what regular people simply and correctly call a "dash," will be gone in twenty-five years, at most. More importantly, it is certainly NOT akin to a semicolon. The dash is related to commas and parentheses, but should be distinct from either. Dashes are often used when the content between them is not related grammatically to the rest of the sentence. They represent a stronger break than mere commas. Example: He arrived--I knew he would!--precisely at 7:00. Here is a poor usage: The em dash--which is really just a dash--has been steadily fading from the public consciousness as digital copying has replaced mechanical printing.
ReplyDelete8:51
ReplyDeleteWe've come to expect lots of crosswordese on Mondays, no? It's more the rule than the exception. Nice lesson on the EMDASH, ET59; I hopefully won't confuse its usage with a--God forbid!--semicolon. The theme itself was only mildly amusing to me with, of course, POLLSPOLES being my favorite.