FWOE
I'll start with a quibble. If the revealer is going to be HEADOVERHEELS, should there have been multiple Louses (or is that lice?) under each Honcho? I don't really know why I am quibbling, except that quibble is a fun word, because I LOLed when I got the theme. And the theme material entertains. I especially liked NUMEROUNO, TOPBANANA, and SCOUNDREL.
I FWOEd where TOPOm crossed mUSAKA. I didn't know either "Fiddler on ther Roof" star or, to my chagrin, the capital of Zambia. I might have made a better guess than "m," but the "m" got in there somehow and I didn't notice it until I had to track down the error. Derp.
I think the cleverest clue is 66A Split to join (ELOPE) - ha! 16A It grows in the dark (PUPIL) was also good. TUBETOP (strapless summer wear) was a nice blast from the past. Do they still make those? I like the word SPORE, but Horace tells me puffballs are disturbing to encounter in real life. And any mention of APU (Kwik-E-Mart clerk) is always welcome.
In addition to the theme answer itself, there were a couple of NOGOODNIKs in the grid. My least favorite was 65D Shout at a circus (OOH). Also a little weird was 27D Hookup for a tenant: Abbr. (TEL). Does anyone get a telephone hooked up these days? Or is TEL another technology like Nest that I've failed to incorporate into my life?
~Frannie.
20:38
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing about TEL, which is probably my least favorite, although OOH and TOD (34A Fox in "The Fox and the Hound"), which admittedly I don't like only because I didn't know it, ran close behind. I did know TOPOL (but not CHAIM), which helped me with LUSAKA, which I didn't know. PAGANS are always welcome here at the YBH, as are ALE and SAKES. My grandmother always wore TUBETOPs, which she crocheted herself, so NOTOK. But it was an OK Thursday.
14:03
ReplyDeleteIt's a disturbing image you've left us with, Huygens... NOTOK indeed.
I guessed at the L, after briefly considering a V (but vUSAKA seemed too odd), so I lucked out of a FWOE.
I, too, enjoyed this theme, and many of the answers. "It grows in the dark" for (PUPIL) was my favorite clue. I have yet to see SASHA's sister around the campus, but even if I do, I'll be leaving her alone so she can just have a normal college experience. Well, it's probably impossible, but at least I'm not going to contribute to the circus...
11:21 FWOE
ReplyDeleteOnce again done in by obscure proper crossers. This time TOPOL and LUSAKA. Glad to see our leader had the same issue that I did. I'm sure the elite New York Times readers are intimately familiar with Chaim Topol. I wanted it to be Chaim Potok, but apparently that is someone else.
7:12
ReplyDeleteI knew TOPOL from my youth of listening to classic Broadway musicals. I did not know LUSAKA, so sighs of relief there. I really like the theme. At first I wondered why BIGWHEEL and DIRTYRAT were so separated, but then I read that the former was above ___HEELS and the latter below HEAD___ in the revealer, so pretty darned good there.
I'm not convinced by a number of things in the fill. ELTRAIN? Is that how we say it in Mexico? The clue at 58D: Range unit: Abbr. (MTNS) is really rough, as is the answer. And the worst may be OTYPE. Huh?