This is my favorite product of Mr. Berry's in some time. So smooth, so filled with Berryish goodness. And definitely harder than the typical Friday fare in my opinion over the last few months.
I shot myself in the foot early on, though, but confidently putting boiSe in at 18A: City that straddles the Arkansas River (TULSA). That other city straddles... wait for it... the Boise River. Go figure. Anyway, I couldn't get anywhere in the NW.
In the NE, I had LAMAR Odom pretty quickly (sometimes the Sports knowledge helps out, no?), but that led to yet another confident error. At 17A: Uffizi work (OLDMASTER), I happily put in priMavera. I am correct, at least, this time, in that this specific artwork does in fact reside in the Uffizi. For a while I wondered whether the answer would be claMshell, which would be completely ludicrous. Nobody calls The Birth of Venus "Clamshell", do they? Anyway, it was much less specific an answer.
Funnily enough, it was HELLBOY that got me going finally. That and STEUBEN, which Hope knew off the clue (as it wasn't Tiffany). 6A: Standard position? (HALFMAST) is excellent. Even better is 30A: Covered, in a way (DECENT). Very nice.
All at once, I figured out 5D: Item dropped in the drink? (STRAW). The rest of the puzzle went very quickly after that, which just tells you how much time I spent looking at that NW trying to figure out what was wrong.
35D: U.N. member whose capital comes last alphabetically (CROATIA) - that would be Zagreb. I knew playing Sporcle quizzes on European capitals would be useful one day.
1A: Midway sights (RIDES) - B-. For a moment I thought it might be RubES. That would be much better.
Fave: POTTERY (39D: Final outcome of a firing). Hah!
NICEONE, Mr. Berry!
- Colum
11:03
ReplyDeleteLove your idea for "rubes" as "Midway sights." Hah!
I, too, very much enjoyed this one. The top went more quickly than the bottom for me, but OPIONEERS and NANTES helped a lot once I got to them. HECKLE (Bad call?) is great, and who knew it was called a MESSJACKET? ...
Nice that he got Fats Domino in there, and nice twist on FRAN. I used to love watching that guy.
26:20
ReplyDeleteNot much to CARP over in this one. Colum was too nice on the obvious RIDES at 1A, IMO, but I, too, thought this a smooth and fun puzzle. I didn't love CATLITTER, as I was hoping for something not so gross in there. TARTEST would have been nice clued as "road repair requirement, maybe." INSULAR is a great word, and what of that excellent Simpsons reference (perhaps) at HADACOW? Everyone loves a WETBAR and the RIOTACT. I enjoyed the OSCAR/DELARENTA pairing, too.
13:17
ReplyDeleteI totally missed that 16A OSCAR was a continuation of 15A DELARENTA, and don't know what a MESSJACKET is, but the rest of it was pretty smooth going.
It was indeed a NICEONE