Sorry about the late, late review today, but it was a tough day at the office and then right out to dinner and a show. The show was a wonderful performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience, but that's not the review you called me here for.
Most of the puzzle went right along for me, but for me, the north west was not ASEASYASPIE. I didn't know that horse racing fans call Churchill Downs MECCA, nor that MOBIL was once named Socony-Vacuum, nor that there's a palmlike tropicla plant called CYCAD. I did manage to guess correctly but I hemmed and hawed for more than just a SEC.
My favorite answer in today's puzzle might be MALLSANTA. IMATALOSS to say why, but there you go. I also enjoy the word VOLUNTOLD, but not the reality - see "tough day at the office" above. In that same neck of the woods,VIVID served as a striking reminder of one of my favorite movies, Auntie Mame. STARE for Vacancy sign? was clever, and probably the best ? clue in the puzzle. PARCH and JOT are also nice. I also thought it was funny that after stiff and shy in yesterdays' puzzle, today we get OWE. Somebody better start making some money.
My SCAPEGOATs for today are One devoted to Mary? (LAMB - weird), Uber app abbr. (AVE - lame), and Bears (HAS - hunh?).
I had better wrap this up if I am going to get it posted before midnight, or WOEISME!
~Frannie
13:42
ReplyDeleteContinuing the week of hard puzzles! So many great answers in this one. I too had difficulty in the NW: I ended with MECCA/MOBIL, my last square being the first. I kind of liked LAMB ("And everywhere that Mary went, that lamb was sure to go..."). Is that nursery rhyme actually Christian propaganda?
26:55 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteI, too, liked the LAMB clue, and I think Frannie was thrown off by thinking too much about the Christian propaganda angle.
I FWOE'd at CYCAD and LTD. Once I saw LTD I considered myself an idiot, but I was so hung up on THX that I could no longer think straight. That whole NW corner was brutal. Also, what the hell is ALEPHNULL? Huygens??
14:01
ReplyDeleteDidn't really understand the EQUUS clue (36A: Group of horses?) but I knew ALEPH-NULL so that helped even things out.
Also, apparently Shylock is not in fact a SCARECROW. Perhaps I need to read more Shakespeare and fewer Math books.
39:08 (DNF)
ReplyDeleteALEPHNULL went right in for me, but things do get weird, Horace, when one starts discussing which infinite sets are larger than other infinite sets, and it turns out that the cardinality of the natural numbers is the smallest, and is defined as the aforementioned ALEPHNULL. Too much horse and goat in this puzzle, though, and there were just too many crosses in the NW that I didn't guess correctly, so DNF. I'd eat a "faconator," but not a BACONATOR. You'd think that the clue for JIMI could have been shortened somehow.