Thursday, October 19, 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017, Ned White

22:51
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.

BIGWHEEL

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.

4 comments:

  1. 20:38
    I 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.

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  2. 14:03
    It'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...

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  3. 11:21 FWOE
    Once 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.

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  4. 7:12
    I 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?

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