So, I take it Ms. Behar is a comedian. I had a hunch she was somebody famous when I did not recognize her name as a constructor and saw her paired with Ms. Lempel, who usually works alone. Come to think of it, I think I may have seen her name in a grid somewhere along the way. OK, so we've established that she is someone most people will have heard of. Let's move on.
The comedian names worked into standard phrases are all quite good. PURPLEHART (17A: Comedian Kevin after having a sloppy jelly snack?) is a certainly on the fanciful side, but one could easily imagine BARRFIGHT (51A: Cause of comedian Roseanne's black eye?) coming straight from a news story. Heh.
In addition to the strong theme, we get four nine-letter Down answers that are all interesting. My favorite of those is NOTORIETY (32D: Achievement for Bernie Madoff or Al Capone). We also find plenty of interesting small stuff, like BLITZ (11D: Football rush), IMPEL (4D: Incite to action), STREW (8D: Scatter), HELIX (55D: Half of a genetic molecule), and PYLON (25D: Tall supporting tower).
1A: Fruity soft drink (NEHI) - C-. Starting off with an old standby. This answer has been used 79 times* since Will Shortz took over as editor of the puzzle, but this is the first time that this clue has been used, and it tricked me until I had the first two crosses.
Favorite: GOAPE (54D: What Tarzan's friends advised him to do?) - Hah!
Least: There's almost nothing to complain about in this puzzle, so I'm not going to do it!
Very strong Tuesday. My only real trouble came at the cross of SUSIE and LOIS, and sometimes proper names can be tricky like that, but it was inferable, so I was able to finish without incident.
So far, so good this week. Just like we like.
- Horace
4:47
ReplyDeletePlayed a little hard for Tuesday, because of the puns in the theme answers. I know of Freddie Prinze, but thought it was "Prince", which also would have worked. Also had a strange brain freeze around Eric Idle. I knew who they were referring to, but his last name was not available to my left hemisphere.
8:59
ReplyDeleteBLITZ saved me from a FWOE because I'd entered PAWPRINcE at first. I agree with Horace on the strength of this puzzle. All of the theme answers were strong, and although I'm partial to FALLENIDLE for obvious reasons, PRYORCOMMITMENT is a close second. BARRFIGHT does have the truest ring to it. I'm not a huge fan of Joy BEHAR, but to be fair, I don't know much about her other than she's on some daytime talk show, which I think is The View. Thumbs up on this one.