The THREERINGCIRCUS today consists of a "wire walker," a "fire dancer," and a "glass eater." Me, I guess I've seen a tightrope walker at a circus, but never the other two. And frankly, that last one seems more like a freak show act than a modern day circus act. Furthermore, is "three ring circus" really a phrase that people use?
1A: Power figure? (WATT) - B-.
Favorite: GRIFT (64A: Petty swindle)
Least: KER (51A: Lead-in to plop or plunk)
This puzzle wasn't for me. There was too much old fill, and the longer spots were not very exciting. TAXCLINIC (11D: Accountant's service for low-income individuals)? What is that? And why is it only for low-income individuals? And SELAH (9D: Interjection occurring frequently in Psalms) seems like kind of an outlier. I've never heard that word before in my life. Then there's all this ELOI, LDS, ESSES, AFLCIO, IED, ANC, MAA, and EFS.
MATADOR (39A: One waving a red cape) is good, and I liked GUILE (31A: Artful deception), but overall I did not enjoy this one too much.
- Horace
11:41
ReplyDeleteI thought that this was kind of a slog. I never heard of a glass eater or fire dancer either, so the circles didn't help me out as much as they do at times. However, I think that THREERINGCIRCUS is a common expression. I put in torADOR instead of MATADOR for some reason, even though it doesn't seem to be a word. TUNDRA and TWERP are nice. I never heard of the Nabokov novel PNIN. HAREM is a good answer, but more power to those with them; I could never handle one. Everyone likes ERIS and STAN and, frankly, an EXAM. BTW, a great many of the characters on South Park are voiced by the brilliant Trey Parker, so I'm not sure why that distinction was put in there. Oddly, I never like the FSTAR-type answers because who knows that designation scale other than dedicated amateur astronomers (and professionals, of course), especially for individual stars? Everyone can enter the "star" part, but we always need the crosses for the other letter. I mean, I guess it's useful, but it's unfortunate.
5:30
ReplyDeleteIt was fine. The left-right symmetry is always interesting. SANDGROUSES did not hold much interest for me, EMOTIONALLY speaking. And I hope never to meet a GLASSEATER. ELOI in the NW made me much less happy about the grid from the get go.