Game on, puzzle friends, starting with the theme! There are six two-word theme answers that each end with a judgement as to the status of a pitch or play commonly rendered by umpires in baseball games, all summed up by the revealer CLOSECALL. For example, 51A: "Attack from the sky" is AIRSTRIKE and 35D: "Vacationer's container for valuables is HOTELSAFE. I particularly enjoyed 25A. "Spilling a drink or eating all the guacamole, say" (PARTYFOUL), which, for some reason, reminds me to mention FUNSPONGE (One who sucks the joy out the room) in Saturday's puzzle. Ha!
Other athletic support in the puzzle included ESPN, TEE, NHLTEAM, REF, and ERRORS.
Fill-wise I liked CADENCE, VEST, SPIFFUP, STEALTH, and TACIT. Also, I love NAAN. Best bread EVER. Better than Ezra in two ways. One, because it is, and two, because Ezra wasn't the correct answer.
I was amused to note that the puzzle contains both SEAU and ESAU, one a 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker, and the other mentioned more than 70 times in Genesis. The same, but different. And speaking of Genesis, how about the clue in Sunday's puzzle, 55A: First character in Genesis? I tried to jam "gamma" in there, but I was thrown by another curve ball. The answer was SOFTG. Rho!
I won't cry foul, but I was not a fan of IHOPE for 52D: "If there's any justice!" The clue-answer pair lacks the parallelism that I value.
Let us not say ADIEU, mes amis, but à demain!
~Frannie.
3:27
ReplyDeleteI think I channeled my frustration at making an error in the tournament yesterday into what could very well be my fastest solve ever. (I really don't know what it is, I just know I've never been in the twos.)
I didn't even notice the baseball theme as I was going along. But I did notice the nice fill you mentioned, plus COUGARS, ENTICE, and TRACTS. I also liked SPIFFUP. And lastly, I like how the theme is all over the place - Across, Down, in every quadrant, and right in the center. Nice start to the week!
4:04
ReplyDeleteNice time, Horace! This was a fun puzzle. I too, Frannie, thought of Better Than Ezra, but that band name should really have capitalized words throughout. To be honest, though, I thought of that only now, so it didn't help me during the solve. TRACTS was fun to see because of perhaps the best scene in Holy Grail.
Quick for me (6:25). I liked RAKE (maybe because it is a nice change from "hoe"?), COUGARS (although I suppose I would have clued it with the animal), and VEST (which I guess I should enjoy while I can, what with one rare letter and two other consonants).
ReplyDelete5:55
ReplyDeleteThis went along at a normal pace for me for a Monday. I threw tyPeAS in, off of the ____AS over there where ALPHAS belongs (34A Socially assertive types), which slowed me down a bit, but nothing else did, for the most part. I knew KELSO off of the clue, and enjoyed the ALTO/BASSO/OPERA group. I fear, though, I've never heard of ROS Asquith, the well-known Dutch author, but am happily familiar with KIRIN.