Okay, this is excellent. Instead of your typical word ladders where the rungs are scattered through the grid, we get the word ladders as clues for standard phrases of the form ____to____. All four phrases are well-established ones. SLIMTONONE (and Slim just left town) is my favorite. You could quibble that the theme would be stronger if the word ladders were all equal length, but that doesn't float my boat.
Other than starting with an obscure person's name (to me, anyway - GINA Carano has also been in a number of well-known movies, including Deadpool this past year; still, C+ from me), I thought the fill was pretty good. I liked 20A: "... shall not ____ from the earth": Gettysburg Address (PERISH), especially in its entirety - "that government of the people, by the people, for the people..." Good words for these days. Do you think RENEGE right next to BREXIT is also a political statement?
I enjoyed 39A: Impulse transmission point (SYNAPSE) for obvious reasons. ANTISEPTIC was a nice long down answer. The pair of tennis clues was odd but interesting (MATCH and SETS).
Not too much in the way of clever cluing here. Both BON and BUS were clued with question marks, but neither were particularly tricky. This was a solid effort.
- Colum
15:38
ReplyDeleteGINA is a terrible way to start a puzzle, especially as clued. I suppose some people may know of her, but isn't the "Dennis the Menace" Gina more well-known? The remainder of the top (BARB, BALE) is better. LIMBO could have been clued differently, especially with ADAM, EDEN and AMENTOTHAT in the grid, but that is just a matter of taste. TOSCA is always welcome. Nice to see OHENRY in there, even though it's not an uncommon entry, as I've read his complete works, oddly (I've never met another that has done so; of course, I don't ask many people that I meet about that topic). TROPES is excellent.