The ayes have it! Wait, scratch that, reverse it. The i's haven't ... any place in this puzzle. Not a I. The puzzle is homophonically EYELESS - both clues and answers. Randy Quaid lost an eye and became RANDYQUAD (Campus area for amorous students?). Ha! An eyepopping Greek ruin becomes a GREEKRUN (Marathons, way back when?). and a SOCALBUTTERFLY gets an eyeful in Orange County and L.A. and becomes a social butterfly.
In addition to putting the eyes out of the puzzle so dramatically, there were other GOOD bits. ODDDUCK with the three D's in a row looks great. I also liked SOAK, RECUSAL, REDHOT, EQUUS, and ELOQUENT.
I am FOND of an EXCEL spreadsheet, although a little put out at it being tied with the epithet "common." :) I really don't know how anyone COPES without them. How else do they know what they URN?
And, color me surprised to learn that EMUS lay green eggs - and they are really green! I looked up some images on the World Wide Web - that's just how I am - driven to learn all I can on my own. I guess you could say I am self TAUT. I hope these groan-worthy remarks aren't taking ATOLL.
There were a lot of three letter answers in the grid, but most held their own - UGA excepted. Also, while I don't think this merits being scald out on the carpet, I thought PYRE didn't furnace an exact description of Joan of Arc's demise. Too soon?
~Frannie.
9:11 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteI chuckled at this theme, and at your ludicrous overuse of the PUN form. :)
I'm not sure how many ALEs would, or should, be labelled with XXX, but then again, maybe a true SOAK would know better.
I fwoed on NENA, having misremembered the spelling of her name. grrRURrr...
Totally agreed that ALE is dubious at best as XXX should be liquor not beer. That slowed me down for a while, but "rye" simply didn't fit there.
ReplyDeleteI really wanted the Adam's apple location to be "eden", so much so that I even doubted the judge's voluntary removal for a while despite it not being clear HOW there could be any answer other than RECUSAL for the latter.
I too had trouble with NENA, ended up running the alphabet and relying on the little completion ding ("finished with one ding"? "saved by the bell"?)
18:47, typical for Wednesday.
Eden for Adam's apple location would have been a good one!
DeleteThe way to fool me is to *not* use misdirection, apparently.
Delete