I've never heard of FOREX before. Apparently the portmanteau is from "foreign exchange." The crossing with ISOPOD was rough for me, expecially since I guessed PuMAS. There are your two errors, folks. I was nominally slowed down in that corner by thinking seven people play volleyball instead of your standard SEXTET, as well as by guessing MilANO for MURANO. Ah, well.
Meanwhile, the rest of this puzzle just sizzles. 1A: Rhimes who created "Grey's Anatomy" (SHONDA) was too much of a gimme to start the puzzle off, and made the NW kind of easy. 1D: Gets a twinkle in one's eyes? (STARGAZES) is fun. I'm also a big fan of ZOEKAZAN, who after going on IMDB I see I was confusing with Noël Wells from Master of None. It turns out I just saw Ms. Kazan in a small role on The Deuce. Still, great crossword puzzle entry with those two Zs and a K.
There are a ton of misleading clues today. How about 40D: Diet in the Mideast (KNESSET)? Nicely hidden capital there. Also 55A: Isn't discrete (OVERLAPS). That's great cluing right there, simple and surprising. And then there's 26A: Means of drawing up solutions (PIPETS). Masterful!
Can I also call out the divine (YEATS) next to the less than divine (ANDIE)?
(Answer: yes, I can, since I'm writing the blog...)
It's one of the saddest things I can think of that one of the all time great movies, Four Weddings and a Funeral, is saddled with one of the worst actresses of all time. In baseball, they talk about wins above replacement (WAR) - where you imagine how great a player is by thinking how the team would do if a league average player was substituted in. In this case, an average Hollywood leading lady would have done wonders. Ah, DOLOR.
Anyway, I'll look past REDOSE and the SE disaster. Fun puzzle.
- Colum
38:25
ReplyDeleteWell, Colum, I didn't know SHONDA, which made the NW very hard for me. I had maxOUT for a while, and although I loved ZOEKAZAN in The Big Sick, I could not come up with her name. Soo... yeah. 38:25.
I do want to say that due to my recent class (which I am dropping) at the Extension School, I so much wanted to put in "Dumb" for "47A: Like discussions of metaphysics." Hah! Boy I disliked those readings....