Well, Dear Reader, yesterday we had three different answers that could all have been clued with the same single word ("Life"), and today we have three different clues for three appearances of the same single word! GASP! It's a stack of PANCAKEs, and I, for one, applaud the chutzpah of running this somewhat daring puzzle. It's irreverent and fun. The stack sits on a PLATE, with a PAT of butter on top, and two streams of syrup running down the sides. In my book, its ACES.
Outside of the central theme, there's good long material - the full-on French CESTLAVIE (31D: "Them's the breaks," genteelly) (see also GUERRE (48A: Opposite of paix), AUX, and JUS), JUVENILE (9D: Minor), the always amusing CLAPTRAP (5D: Nonsense), and the always evocative SEVENSEAS. Nice.
SNELL (51D: Fishhook line) is a bit obscure - it's the second definition in my desk-side dictionary, after "quick" which comes straight from the German. It can also mean "severe," "extreme," or "keen." I'll have to file those definitions away for a rainy Saturday.
Not too much to grouse about, save maybe KAA (23D: Snake in "The Jungle Book"), a little ESE and NNE, and our old friends ETO, UTE, and OBI, the last of which is elevated by a cute clue today - "Tie that binds, in Japan?"
Overall, I am surprised and delighted by the craziness of having the same word three times, and what are puzzles for if not to divert us from the same old, same old? ICALL it a little bit of MAGIC that these come to us daily, and I shall not RUE giving this a hearty thumbs up.
- Horace
Theme was great, I got PAT and PLATE first and when I saw the PANCAKEs, I was like "oooh, a triple stack!"
ReplyDeleteNoted the French too. Despite some obscure answers here and there, my finish with two errors was on STAYaSoNE, which I knew didn't pass the substitution test, but since I didn't know the snake or the shoe, I wasn't going to get it from crosses.
5:02
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was a bit of fun, to be sure. Three pancakes, all of them larger than the plate they're resting on. And the syrup is excellent.