Love 'em or hate 'em, the LOVEHATERELATIONSHIPS today are surprise rebus squares! Me, I love 'em. There are only four, but they are very well done, using "LOVE" in the horizontal and "HATE" in the vertical. And at least for me, they really made simple answers much more difficult to see. C[HATE]AU (98D: Fancy French home), for example, should have been easy enough, but it took me forever! Even with LEIAS (110A: "Princess ____ Theme" (John Williams composition)) and ERST (99D: Once, once) in place, that quadrant was the last one I filled in. In fact, the A of ADOUT (114A: Certain break point) was my last square. The "17-year-old Peace Nobelist Yousafzai" was not helping me!
I liked the cluing today. 31A: Minor's opposite (ADULT), for example, probably had a lot of people guessing "major" at first, and for 29A: Whopper inventor (LIAR), I spent some time trying to remember if it was M&M Mars, or Hershey's, or some other chocolate company that made those malted milk balls... And 88A: Parts of many law firm names (AMPERSANDS) also amused me. And for the record, I got 98A: Chocolate chip cookie starters? (CEES) with a single cross - and still couldn't see C[HATE]AU for a long while! Sheesh!
Other things I liked were HUNTERGATHERER, CALIP[HATE], OVERTURE (76D: Score starter), BAREFOOT, INDECENCY (see also: BUM), and YESWECAN.
I'll let Frannie tell you what she did or didn't like in the second half of this review.
Thanks for reading!
- Horace
CALIP[HATE] was especially fun because at first I had CALIPh (grumbling the whole way, doesn't this dumb constructor know that the ruler is the caliph and the thing they rule over is the caliphate?). So very satisfying to see it work out after all.
ReplyDelete