The jokey theme answers today made me smile, but not laugh out loud, if you know what I mean. My favorite was the last one - OHTOBEINENGLAND (117A: Midwest state secedes and will join the United Kingdom?), and my least favorite was "50A: Whistler from two Eastern states?" (MAANDPAKETTLE). It just doesn't make any sense.
I've always liked the term BEELINE (122A: Direct route), but I have never heard TOPHOLE (52D: First-rate, in British slang). And speaking of compound or multiple-part answers, I found TDBANK (53A: Financial institution whose parent company is Canadian) tricky and boring, but AAMEETING (42D: Part of a recovery effort) tricky and satisfying. See also: 65D: Getting help getting clean (INREHAB).
1A: Tennis world since 1968 (OPENERA) - C. If you've been doing the NYTX for a while, or if you care about professional tennis, you were probably able to drop this in. If not, it might have been tricky.
Favorite: SPARE (40A: Fifth wheel). Tricky! Also, Take stock? (POACH) was quite good, too.
Least: LOAMY (85D: Like some fertile soil). Is there fertile soil that isn't called "loam?"
Overall, I enjoyed this one. It seemed like there were a lot of those "multi-part" answers that I was discussing before - PASTLIVES, INADAY, IMBROKE (24D: "You'll have to pay for me"), MADESENSE, CALLSIN, ONSTAGE, POSEDAS, ISHALL, ILIED, and OTRAVEZ, for example. The cluing was good, and there wasn't too much glue. I actually smiled as I dropped in ETUI. It's sort of like an inside joke for regular solvers. "Hey, here's this old chestnut..." and then later we got EEL too. When you're actually enjoying those kinds of answers, you know EVERYTHINGSOK.
Hope this puzzle found you in a similar state of mind. :)
- Horace
38:23
ReplyDeleteI thought this a nice Sunday offering, coming in just about right on the time. The NE corner slowed me down the most, otherwise I'd have been in the mid-20s. I'm sure that I've never heard SHAMUS ever before. And like Horace, TOPHOLE is new to me. POSEDAS looks Spanish, and isn't SITUATE a town on the Cape?