Crisis time indeed. It is somewhat comforting to me that MIDDLEAGE is just one of the many possible ages. In all but one of the theme answers the "ages" cross word boundaries, which I think is nicer. It makes the larger answer phrases in which the theme words are located seem more necessary. For example, in 44A. One doesn't need to take a CHAIR to get to the IRON age. LOSTONESMARBLES is my favorite today.
ITCHY is a solid, if uncomfortable answer to start off the puzzle.
I thought 6D. Game for dummies? (BRIDGE) was funny because it is, and, also, if my experience trying to learn it is any indication, it also isn't. I enjoyed both the clue Simoleon and the answer CLAM at 66A. Simoleon always reminds me of the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Wonderful old building and loan.
It's great to see our old friend AMIE in the puzzle again. I got SHEB at 54D. only because his name was just in Sunday's puzzle. Ha! And, apparently, this famous-but-unknown-to-me Rudy is all the rage. Rudy himself was in yesterday's puzzle and today we have his coach, ARA. If I ever want to win the ACPT, I am definitely going to have to watch this inspiring 1993 movie about a Notre Dame football team walk-on.
But, because I haven't seen the movie yet, I was held up for a time where ARA crosses GNAR. GNAR meaning make a snarling sound is a new one on me.
In the Cock-a-POO category, I put the numerous abbreviations (USN, ATL, RAS, CEO, NTSB, SEN, POS, KANS, ELS, etc.) and the answers IMIT, IREFUL, and ROPERS.
Overall, some good material, but not one for the ages.
~Frannie
11:09
ReplyDeleteLOSTONESMARBLES was my favorite themer too, which I almost really did since it was taking me so long to figure out IREFUL.
I also liked that I was able to fill in MCML without hesitation, knowing nothing about the Korean War, since it was the only reasonable year that seemed to work as 4 letters.
I hope you watch that movie and it gets you over the hump so we can root for you up there next year against Tyler and Dan. After you win, they'll need to make another movie about an underdog overcoming obstacles to be a champion. It'll be an endless loop.
DNF
ReplyDeleteI had to run the whole alphabet to get NTSB crossing SHEB. I knew we'd seen that song referenced recently, but I couldn't recall his name. Too much else in the puzzle was of poor quality for me to call this a win.
13:39 (DNF, though)
ReplyDeleteI had four errors once I punched in my final entry, so that's a DNF IMO. That SW did me in with the ODORANT/SHEB/ANTE/NTSB crossings. I tried NhSi (which is actually the IIHS, so that was my problem entirely), and I really just didn't understand 60A Prelude to a deal (ANTE) because I wasn't thinking of cards. As they say, derp. But the rest went quite smoothly, in fact, under ten minutes. Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes. IREFUL wasn't great, for sure, but nice to have LAERTES, MACABRE and BISECTS in there, to name a few. Too bad that ROPERS didn't reference "Three's Company," and that APEMAN didn't reference The Kinks.
11:44 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteI ended up with the same error as Colum - that pesky B. And I knew we had just seen it recently, but that didn't help. Stupid memory... stupid MIDDLEAGE! Heh. Oh well.
FWIW, I loved 'Rudy' when it was released, cliché as the whole underdog concept may be.
ReplyDelete16:00 (with two errors)
ReplyDeleteAfter fussing over the ARA/GNAR cross and IREFUL/RELEE (both pretty awful in my opinion), I hit the reveal button and found my problem was carelessness, namely Eel for ESS. That I wasn't clearly remembering my Shakespeare was one thing (although once I saw it LAERTES was familiar and LAERTEl seemed less likely even just on sounds). But DENIALe instead of DENIALS is what I'm calling carelessness.
The theme is fine, I mean I like having those ages, but I kept looking for something more "middle" about them. The circled answers don't go between two copies of "age", or live in the middle of their theme answer.
Lots of things I didn't love here - OPTI, KANS, IMIT (you're it, yes, "I'm it" well possible but....). The consolation prizes were ODORANT, BISECTS and a few others.