Thursday, March 29, 2018

Thursday, March 29, 2018, Claire Muscat and David Steinberg

21:40

Not too tough a nut to crack today - certainly faster than an average Thursday for me. The theme answers are three sets of shaded squares in the grid each containing a nut broken up by one letter of the word NUT (A[N]CORN, ALMO[U]ND, PEC[T]AN). Maybe the unannounced title of the puzzle is "Nut Cracker." All this talk of nuts puts me in mind of a great bit from "Best in Show." Genius.

Today's nutmeats include:
16A. Summer camp craft (CANOE) - nice ambiguity. I was thinking multi-colored-yarn God's Eye, Popsicle(R) stick tissue box holder, or hand-stamped leather wallet, but couldn't make any of them fit. :)
45D. Like good spellers? (WICCAN) - bewitching clue.
43A. Puts blades to blades, say (MOW) - clever.
3D. Suave (URBANE) - both are good words.

And in re: 30A. Powdered ingredient in sweet teas and smoothies (TARO), I think I just heard about this from the commentators of Sunday's ACPT championship. If true, I did learn something at the tournament after all.


My comPLAITS are few:
5A. The answer to this clue is located on one (EDGE) - fine, but not fine.
19A. ADDLE for Scramble - less apt than I like.
26A. ___ place (ONES) - meh

~Frannie.

5 comments:

  1. Yet another Thursday with not an interesting enough theme. But (I misspelled that as "Nut" for a hot second) the puzzle is super smooth, as you'd expect from Mr. Steinberg. But I see that this is Ms. Muscat's first puzzle. I saw her at the ACPT - I believe she may have left her stickers at the podium and Mr. Shortz had to call her up to get them? Congratulations are definitely in order.

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  2. First puzzle this week that I was able to smoothly finish. This week has either been a bit harder than normal, or else I hit my head a little too hard on puzzle 5 from Saturday's ACPT.

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  3. I do like these puzzles that have a nicely accessible theme, give a bit of that 'a-ha' moment, and yet do not overdo it (making really obscure fill to make the theme fit).
    Cruciverbally,
    Howard B

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  4. 18:47
    I'm with Colum on the "not an interesting enough theme" bandwagon, but it was smooth. I didn't even notice MOWS in there, Frannie, and it goes along with LAWNS and, maybe, EDGE for a SNUG little mini-theme. I put in brAIdS at first where PLAITS goes, but luckily the crosses fixed that up nicely. NEMEAN makes another appearance, but this time, it's not unknown to me. I suppose I should watch WALLE at some point; I hear it's good.

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  5. I side with Howard here - I enjoyed this simple, yet elegant theme. Plus, the college Frannie and I went to had BURIALMOUNDS on the campus, so that was nice to have in the puzzle, too.

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