So what do we think of starting a puzzle with 1A: On VHS, say (TAPED)? Me, I don't love it. The word has never been clued exactly like that before, but do we want to be so dated? Wouldn't it be dreamier to dream up a new clue that's more modern? Oh well, I can dream, can't I...
Hmmm... that reminds me of something... oh, right, the theme! Four clues using the word "dream:"
19A: "Montage of a Dream Deferred" poet (LANGSTONHUGHES) - Excellent.
29A: "The Interpretation of Dreams" writer (SIGMUNDFREUD) - Hack.
39A: "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening" artist (SALVADORDALI) - Provoking and entertaining, but was he great?
52A: "All I Have to Do Is Dream" singers (EVERLYBROTHERS) - Ahh... nostalgia...
Interesting that the theme exists only in the clues. I wonder how many times that's happened? I don't remember any off the top of my head in the last few years.
I liked the paring of APPLEPIE and PARADIGM, and ARISTOTLE and TAMARIND are always welcome.
My mistake was half-reading the long clue for 43D, "Businesses that tend to be busiest at the starts and ends of months" and entering MOVing without much thought. Then when I finished, it took me over a minute before I noticed RiDALERTS, GnUB, and EgP. Those three boxes would all have been EXES at the tournament, and I would have been very, very disappointed. Let that be a lesson to me! On Thursday I start printing the puzzles out and solving on paper (as Colum has been doing for about a month already!). We'll see if I can avoid any FWOEs (or worse) after that.
I hope your solve went smoothly.
- Horace
4:51
ReplyDeleteI would have been faster except that I guessed koI off of the clue at 49A: Fish in a 26-Down (AHI). It took me a few seconds to find 26D, but didn't think anything odd until I had difficulty getting the down answers in that section.
Strange theme. I'm not sure I like it too much. But I did like how you said "the paring of APPLEPIE..." Seems APT!
I was slowed down by having ToNkatsu before TUNAROLL but the crosses weren't working out and I began to doubt that SIGMoND was much of a name at all, much less Freud's first name. Oh, and by now I already had AHI, so then that section fell into place.
ReplyDeleteTime 11:13, fairly typical for a Tuesday.
8:00
ReplyDeleteAn exact minute! We generally don't eat koi or tonkatsu around here, so TUNAROLL and AHI went right in. I guess I'll have to watch "Frozen" one of these days. I'd never heard ROTFL, and in fact, the cross with TURTURRO was my final entry.