All sorts of places I set myself back while solving this puzzle. It started with putting "space" in at 5A: Wide keyboard key (ENTER), then Aton for ALOT. Later I took out "space" because I wanted to put dEf in for RES. Following that I misspelled VITTLES with a Z (?!), and then finally stared at the crossing of CGI and GIGS for 15 seconds trying to place the final letter. Better than finishing with an error, I suppose, right?
Oh, and I put MutE in for 36A: Charades player, essentially (MIME). That's a lot of errors to make up for.
Our theme today is a collection of four equine beasts. An ass is a subspecies of equus, while a mule is the offspring of a donkey and a horse, and is famously sterile. All four phrases are relatively strong, with STUBBORNASAMULE and ONETRICKPONY being the best. ONONESHIGHHORSE suffers from the "one's", but is acceptable. THELAWISAASS is the least familiar and the most enjoyable, for certain, but required a number of crosses to become clear to this solver.
BEANTOWN is of course well known to the bloggers on this site. ISIAH returns once again, although not the Isaiah Thomas who was recently traded from Boston to Cleveland, maybe.
1A: Battery fluid (ACID) gets a B-. It's okay.
Fave: SIESTA (42A: Rest of the afternoon). Great clue.
Least fave: ASSN, I guess (1D: The first "A" of N.A.A.C.P.: Abbr.), just because it's an abbreviation from an acronym.
Pretty smooth overall.
- Colum
5:12
ReplyDeleteEven with all of those errors to correct, Colum cones out ahead! I had no problems with this one, with even THELAWISAASS coming in with only a couple of crosses (I should re-read that sometime). I didn't love LEDIN, but it's fine, I guess. GOUGE is good; it reminds me of the hotel price that Sue and I just paid in Hopkinsville KY to view the Great American Eclipse. Of course, I wanted "solar" down there in the SW where LUNAR belongs, but a quick check of the first cross (ALPHAS) led me immediately to the correct answer. As a side note, I downloaded the Android NYT puzzle app and tried filling in the puzzle on there, even after solving with Across Lite previously, and it took me 5:30. It's a bit clunky.
4:11
ReplyDeleteI, too, put in "space" right away, but I didn't have so many of those other issues, I guess, even though my initial thought when reading "14A: Variety of wrestling" was "greco-roman" (SUMO). My only other error that I can remember is putting in (and leaving in for too long) "ets" for "Staple of sci-fi filmmaking, for short" (CGI).
Other than that, it was smooth sailing. So much so, in fact, that I didn't remember that TOOTSIE was in the puzzle, and as I was going through clue by clue to figure out why you put a photo of Jessica Lange in today, I briefly considered that it might have been to represent NORDIC ("Light-skinned and blond, say). Would have been enough of a reason for me. :)
7:07 (fast for me)
ReplyDeleteI think I got EGO before ENTER because I don't remember even thinking of space (and I would usually look at the three letter answer before the five). I was hoping for a totAL eclipse but I think I had some crosses because it took a second or so to get LUNAR. GOUGE was also one of my favorites.