Color me impressed. Four triple stacks of 10-letter answers, one in each corner, and eleven of the twelve answers are strong, as far as I'm concerned. Very nice.
Before I go any further, I'm going to give a shout out to my lovely wife, Hope, who came up with SHAPELY and helped open up the SE corner. Cece offered the first word of NEONYELLOW as well, so this was a family affair.
I broke in right off the bat with REBA and AMO, both confidently entered. I remembered ELAINECHAO, although it took some crosses to get her last name right. 1A: Its ribs stick out (RACKOFLAMB) gets an A-. Beautiful answer, fun clue. 17A: Where to stick a stick (BUTTERDISH) is also quite good. I actually finished the puzzle in the connection between this corner and the SW. 5D: "110%" effort (ONESALL) took some parsing to understand, but now I love it.
I'm not convinced by TRON, although I appreciate that the clue avoids the over-referenced movies. Apparently a magnetron is what generates the microwaves in the eponymous kitchen appliance. It's just that the clue seemed a little CREAKY. Nonetheless, I love INDIANFOOD, especially right next to the STICKYRICE from Thailand. They're even geographically appopriately placed. And 14D: Dives (HONKYTONKS) has a great surprising clue.
CHAINEMAIL is my one less liked long answer. But TEXTALERTS and STEELYGAZE are wonderful. I'm also very fond of 51A: Colosseum crowd? (TRE) because, see, three's a crowd, am I right? 57D: Part of a gig (MEG) was likewise tricky, referencing gigabytes and megabytes.
Finally, I'll just say I found nothing INBADTASTE in this puzzle. And remember that HADES watches over SHADES.
- Colum
15:04 (FWTE)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on TRE - that brought a smile. I'm also with you on ONESALL being difficult to parse. I had put NEaLe in for NEILL ("Jurassic Park" co-star Sam), and apparently didn't even look twice at HaDDENMIKE or ONESALe. Derp.
43:59 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteELAINCHAO/LCDTV did me in, where I had the quite reasonable LeDTV and didn't check the cross. I was a bit CREAKY solving this puzzle, but it eventually came in just fine. Even the short answers are good for the most part. HOTLICK could have been clued slightly better for a SHOCK value. Loved HONKYTONKS.