WHATWEVEGOT / HEREISFAILURETO / COMMUNICATE.
Except I always thought it was "...a failure to communicate." Turns out that's a routine misquotation, at least according to Wikipedia. Nice that Mr. Collins found space to put COOL / HAND / LUKE across the bottom of the grid. Great movie, great quotation.
That's a lot of theme material (49 squares!). In exchange, the grid is set up so that there are no long down answers (the longest being six letters). Only two answers cross two parts of the quotation, allowing for smoother fill. I am impressed that there are four extra 9-letter across answers, all of them right next to theme answers. REFASHION is not so great, but LETSSLIDE, OLDFLAMES, and ICALLEDIT are all strong.
I feel so nostalgic for the bygone days of DUBYA. DAPHNE and STREEP are two strong representations of the feminine. In fact, of nine real-life people's names in the grid, five are women. That's coming closer to representing the 51%. Mind you, I am no fan in any way of ANDIE MacDowell. Almost anybody in the role would have made "Four Weddings and a Funeral" ten times more believable.
How about 6D: One poked through the eye? (LACE)? Pretty clever there.
Almost nothing here that I could complain about.
1A: Things kindergartners learn (ABCS) - B. I've had no brilliant 1A answers yet this month. I hope it turns a bit in the second half.
- Colum
6:55
ReplyDeleteThis took a bit longer for me than Mondays of late, and I'm not entirely sure why. JUICE could have referenced OJ, doubly, maybe, but the given clue was fine. Nice ASTER/GLADS pairing (even though the latter is a plural). Speaking of plurals, I'm glad that ISAACS isn't, although I've never heard of the Susan variety. Nice theme and decent puzzle.
5:08
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was "...a failure to communicate." which cost me some precious seconds but oh well it was fun anyhow.
6:51
ReplyDeleteSame on the indefinite article. I also had entered iOnIC instead of DORIC, and BOFFO was not immediately obvious, so that lower right took a little longer than I would have liked.
I enjoyed this one. And by the way, I can eat fifty eggs.
Hmm, I'm used to actors I don't know. In fact, this grid seemed to have more than usual (but these things happen). What I'm not used to is actors I don't know named ANDIE. Especially crossed with a painting I don't know. You might think it would cancel out with a movie quote I do know (modulo article issues but people tend to misremember or alter that sort of thing in quotes, so I'm generally on the lookout for that). But the result was a slightly disappointing 11:44.
ReplyDelete