I'm not sure sometimes how my brain works. Or if it does. When I got to 64A: Visibly stunned (AGASP), I had crosses, but not the last one. I put in AGASt, and thought to myself as I was doing it, "That's spelled wrong," but I still put it in. And left it in. Why would I do that? How many times do I come across misspelled words in these puzzles? Never, that's how often. Oh well...
So anyway, kind of a strange PINOCCHIO theme today. I think the growing nose is quite well done, and the revealer at the end, with the tied-in LYING crossing it (the crossed words are almost in the shape of a nose?), is well-placed. They get another reference to baseball with NATIONALPASTIME (46A: Baseball, in America), and I thought NOSERVICE and NEUROSCIENTISTS were quite good. NORSELITERATURE, well, I guess it's fine.
1A: Defunct gridiron org. - XFL - C-. Frannie and I actually watched some XFL games, and we still joke about one sideline interviewee who said of the other team: "They're doing stuff out there that's confusing us." And we wonder why the league didn't last...
Favorite clue: 57D: Hacker, but not on a computer (AXE)
Least favorite: ODEA (20A: Old-fashioned theaters)
I like the word MIMETIC (36D: Imitative), despite its similarity to emetic, and although I was not previously familiar with "On the Beach," nor its heroine, MOIRA, I now see that it was written by Nevil Shute, whose name has come up an awful lot lately in my little circle. YMMV, as they say. And speaking of books/movies, we all know that ASYOUWISH doesn't really mean "Sure, go ahead," it means "I love you." Silly clue writers.
EASTERN (18D: Old airline with the slogan "We have to earn our wings every day") and MEARA (32D: Stiller's longtime wife and comedy partner) give this one kind of an older vibe, and one might wish for a little more bonus material, but I guess the theme really didn't allow for much else.
How 'bout we ENDON a shout out to our resident representative of the NEUROSCIENTISTS set, Colum, who certainly knew PIA mater (brain cover) immediately. I know it now, too, but all I had to do for the knowledge was solve a few crosswords!
- Horace
6:44 (paper)
ReplyDeleteI also wanted AGAST for 64A but fortunately felt poorly enough about it to leave the square blank for a while longer. This is a trick I learned from a friend after putting in MRROURKE for another puzzle and then wasting time later trying to figure out who rapper MC HUMMER was in the cross.
:)
Delete5:13
ReplyDeletePlayed hard for a Tuesday, no? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I wanted AGApe at 64A (AGASP - this is not a word, I think). But VAPORp seemed wrong, so there you go. PIA was a gimme, as you guessed. But tough SE corner with ENOKI and MOIRA.
PS - I was slightly nervous to click your link above. Would I be rickrolled??? But no. A pleasant little journey to Wikipedia. I recognized your reference of course.
ReplyDeleteGood idea! We really should incorporate more rickrolling into our blogwork.
DeleteThis was tough for me (14:27). I had XFL for a while but then wondered if it could have been AFL (although I guess that's merged, not defunct). I had gooN before DARN (which would be a fine answer for that clue, just not the right one). AGApe before AGASP. JiPES (which apparently came from my imagination, not another word) before JAPES. PINnoCHIO before PINOCCHIO. Couldn't figure out how to say "lies" in five letters. And so on.
ReplyDeleteNow, this is all stuff I was able to work out, so I'll give the puzzle good marks. No horrible tough crosses. Not many obscure words/people.
7:34
ReplyDeleteThis played a bit easy for me for a Tuesday. No real slowdowns. I wanted JokES where JAPES belongs, and agree about ASYOUWISH (Sue and I just re-watched that recently). We also just watched a PIA Zadora classic: "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," which isn't particularly relevant since the clue didn't mention her.