A very late review today, after a frustrating late afternoon and early evening of traffic and a pointless car pool to my daughter's youth orchestra rehearsal that was canceled at 6:15, five minutes after I had left my driveway.
Ha! Bet you're missing that carefree European travelogue about now, aren't you?
Anyway, here in UNCLESAM's land, it's all fun and games, at least when it comes to solving the puzzle. Today's revealer is 61A: Ignite something ... or what the first words of 17-, 23-, 38 and 51-Across do? (STARTAFIRE). In each case, the first word can be combined with "fire" to make a common term. My favorite is certainly BONJOVI, not because of their music particularly, but because I did not expect "bonfire" to come out of it.
I liked IRKSOME and KNEECAP, and many people enjoy a good game of OTHELLO. The only entries I'd give a DPLUS to are 65A: ____ point (concise) (TOTHE) and... well, nothing much else. I might cavil at ACUP, but it's a nice quotation, one which I feel more people in today's society could stand to live by.
Anyway, I think we'd all agree that solving the puzzle BEETS sitting in traffic any day.
- Colum
6:55
ReplyDeleteGreat theme, and is TABASCO perhaps slightly related to it? I didn't love PJS, URLS or SEAS (although I did enjoy the clue for the latter), but I have no major complaints on today's FILL. I had a slight slowdown with HODA, where I'd entered HOtA at first, but changed it relatively quickly with the cross, DPLUS. It's a shame that MEMENTO, SHE, TEN and CECIL weren't clued differently, otherwise we could have had a mini-movie-related-theme with PIXAR.
I flew through this one, 6:40, which is about as fast as I get any day of the week.
ReplyDeleteI liked SEAS. I mean, with two vowels and two common consonants, we aren't ever going to be rid of this answer. Well, unless perhaps if we wanted to rip them all out and put in ETUI which has even one more vowel and which I was .... Oh wait, I was talking about today's puzzle, wasn't I? Yes, nice clue for SEAS.
The proper names today are of course fair for the completely egocentric reason that I knew BONJOVI, LINUS, and ARLO, sorta knew ASHTON (once reminded by crosses), and got HODA and CECIL pretty much just from crosses. Well, and now that I list them, I see there aren't as many as some puzzles have.