Hey everybody! I'm back in charge of this blog, and I've had enough of all of this pro-Europe beautiful-photos high-quality-liquor stuff that's been going on around here. Sure, we'd all love to be visiting amazing places, getting spur of the moment tours, experiencing once in a lifetime opportunities, but life's not always so EASY!
Well, apparently this puzzle wasn't quite as much of a SNAP as I thought. I made the error of not checking my crosses, typical for a Monday. I put TORn at 2D: Ripped (TORE), mistaking the transitive for the intransitive. Or is the other way around? No, wait, it's actually just mistaking an adjective for a past participle, I guess.
Anyway, I loved this puzzle. It's a metaphorical TOOLBOX, containing six items hidden in longer words that you might find in one. Four of the six cross words, such as "tape" inside of EATAPEACH. Two of the six don't, like "drill" in ESPADRILLE. But I don't have a problem with that. They're all nicely hidden, and shows why some themed puzzles need circles.
I'm also really impressed by the pairing of two themed answers with equal length 10-letter answers. ASHBLONDES and GORGONZOLA are great answers in their own right, but to fit them in like that is great work.
Now I can't IGNORE that doing that led to some OLE OLD junk. Mostly I felt that SPH was no ASSET, and I don't know how you can really pluralize PTAS like that, but overall, it was a fun solve.
- Colum
5:55
ReplyDeleteYeah, no one would ever talk about PTAS from multiple schools meeting up. Nice to see the entire ALVINAILEY and TUNASASHIMI. I've owned EATAPEACH for a little over three decades now, but do not ever remember seeing it in a puzzle. I personally know at least one EXPAT, and expect to see him at least twice this calendar year in three different states: MN, MA and ME. I did think that ANWAR might be a little old for some solvers, but who doesn't like ULULATE? While it didn't SOAR, I EMIT that it was a decent Monday, and for once I didn't mind the circles.