This went fast! I was astonished to see my time. Did it play easy for others?
I entered the puzzle quickly with SHANIA, a gimme. Some nice answers in the NW, including WHOAWHOA and HARDSELL. 1A: Like the national currency known as the tala (SAMOAN) gets a B for the trivia. Apparently the name is a transliteration of "dollar". It's a bit of a strange piece of cluing, that "known as".
The minitheme, appropriate for the time of year (like yesterday's puzzle), is very cute: ALLHALLOWSEVE crossing LORDVOLDEMORT.
Otherwise, I also liked LIFEHACK, LASERBEAM, and IWONTDOIT. I was astonished to find that the first TEDTALK was given in 1984. Boy, that seems like a long time ago. I guess it wasn't shown on any kind of internet. Turns out it was a conference, and the second didn't happen until 1990.
I guess EREADERS are here to stay. I accept that word much more than any other E- type phrase. ARMPIT and VERBOTEN, on the other hand, I could do without.
I just went through all the clues: there's really not a truly tricky one among them, and I suppose that's what led to the quick time of the solve.
So overall it was fun, but not challenging enough for a Friday, in my opinion.
- Colum
20:41
ReplyDeleteI thought it went pretty quickly until I saw Colum's time! My Friday times are generally in the mid- to upper-20s lately. I thought that there were a couple of tricky crosses: IDIOLECT/BOLA, and the TEDTALK would have been tricky if the crosses weren't somewhat fair (ARMPIT was a surprise). I guess there was only that one tricky cross for me, come to think of it. Oddly, LEFIGARO went right in with only a cross or two, since we've seen it so often. I never heard of Norman MINETA. I enjoyed HISSAT and VERBOTEN (a word not used often enough, IMO, even though Colum doesn't like it), in addition to those answers mentioned in a more positive light by Colum. Decent Friday.
14:07
ReplyDeleteYeah, this was an easy Friday. "Certain Logic Gate" (NOT) might have been the hardest clue, and crossing IDIOLECT is kind of tough. But overall, there wasn't much friction. That said, I still enjoyed it. The LEFIGARO trivia was interesting.