Monday, November 5, 2018

Monday, November 5, 2018, Roland Huget

0:04:11

A theme of three onomatopoeic foods: TOOTSIEPOP, CAPNCRUNCH, and GINGERSNAP, with SOUNDBITES as a revealer. Works pretty well for me.
65-Across
I thought there was quite a bit of good material to be found today. "Slice from a book?" (PAPERCUT) was a surprise, as it always is. The clue for ACCENTS (38A: Two marks in "résumés") gently introduces Monday solvers to trickery usually found later in the week, and INSITU (54A: As originally placed), ROUE (35A: Dissolute sort), and ETERNE (21A: Endless, in poetry) are drawn from the edges of most vocabularies.

I enjoyed the wistful clue for ROADMAP (52A: Plan going forward, as for peace), especially after running into NAPALM (30D: Incendiary weapon used in the Vietnam War). And a CAROUSEL (39D: Amusement park ride that goes around and around) is a calming thing to think about.

GASBAG (23D: Long-winded sort) and ONTHEDL (4D: Hush-hush, slangily) were fun. That last one could also be "On the QT," right? Well, anyway, I left the last two spaces empty until I verified them with crosses.

Overall it was a perfectly cromulent Monday puzzle.

- Horace

4 comments:

  1. I also liked PAPERCUT, clue-wise, PREEN, and GASBAG. Your noble review embiggens the earliest puzzle of the week. :) ~Frannie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 3:05
    Fun Monday. PAPERCUT is clearly the best, clue-wise, that is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well...hmmm. I liked this Monday puzzle, but now I am curious...being a latecomer here, I wonder how much this blog has discussed Will's clues vs the constructor's original clues. Or does it even matter to me, the solver - a tricky clue is a tricky clue???
    I also want "QT" for the answer to hush-hush - I recently watched "LA Confidential" again. Thanks for the great review. ~MLou

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi! Thanks for the validation on QT - and LA Confidential is great! Now I want to watch it again!

      We don't have all the inside access that Wordplay or xwordinfo.com has to Will and Joel, so unless I go to one of those sites, I don't ever know if the clue has been edited or not. But like you say, a tricky clue is a tricky clue. :)

      Delete