Wellity, wellity, wellity.... I'm pretty sure I've never seen a grid like this. BUS/TED APART, as it were. BRO/KEN INTWO. And the third (what I'll call) theme entry BAN/ANA SPLIT made me LOL.
I liked the fill a lot. TAXICAB (17A: Its distance is measured within a meter) is remarkably clever, I like the word IKEBANA (18A: Japanese flower-arranging art), and wish I could have remembered it without crosses, 38A: Throw on the floor (AREARUG) is another strong clue, and I enjoyed THENORM (40A: How things typically are) too. I don't know about you, but I was surprised by NEIGHED for "55A: Called from a stall, say," and was thinking more along the lines of "Any paper over there?"
I could go on and on. 21D: Subject of an old wives' tale? (HUSBAND) got an LOL, and the bonus 15 TRANSISTORRADIO (11D: It could carry a tune in the 1950s) got a smile, too. I love the word AWEIGH (39D: Out of bed, in a way?), but I'm not entirely sure I understand the clue, and MASERS (42D: Atomic clock components) I am entirely sure I don't understand.
Overall, I liked this a lot. I even smiled at TPING (32D: Pulling a prank outside a house), and the somewhat pedestrian BUS (1A: Route follower) gets a B, even though it is part of the theme. That's just the kind of good mood I'm in.
- Horace
9:27
ReplyDeleteWhat an odd duck of a puzzle! Or two puzzles, really. I enjoyed it as a change from THENORM. I'm not sure how ships are out of bed, or maybe it's the anchor that's out of the bed of the ocean/river? And that's what's AWEIGH?
Yes, that's definitely it. One of the other bloggers explained it, but it makes perfect sense now.
DeleteStrange puzzle. Then again, I like strange.
ReplyDelete11:25
ReplyDeleteReally fast Thursday solve for me. I figured the theme out quickly, and even though many of the clues were fun and tricky, they didn't fool me for any length of time. NITWITS is great, as was its pairing DOLT. I wanted SADsAck in the SE, but INORDER for that corner to work we needed SADCASE. So not much time ELAPSED between the start and "Congratulations!" box for me. PLANETS (23D Well-known octet) was nicely clued, as was TACO (I was thinking seafood). I would have liked a "Castaway" reference for WILSON. Nothing really sticks in my CRAW. MASERS, of course, generates electromagnetic waves in the microwave range, hence the "m." They're used in atomic clocks to measure the vibrations of the cesium atoms.