Thanksgiving week is done, and the mad dash of commercialism leading up to Christmas is upon us. So as my last thanks of the week, let me express gratitude for the quiet moments in life. Companionable time spent reading with a friend, walking a dog in the woods, a warm drink in hand after a cold day outside. Sometimes it's nice to get away from the yammer of constant updates and news alerts and tweets. And thanks to all of our readers for allowing me to wax poetical this week.
Today's puzzle went by remarkably quick, helped by knowing immediately 1A from my days of watching Dora the Explorer with my kids. The entire N third of the puzzle was done in under a minute. I was most amazed by finding that NIETZSCHE's name is nine letters long. Only the Germans and other Northern European speakers can make a two-syllable word have that many letters.
I was mightily impressed by the quality of all six 15-letter answers. SWIPERNOSWIPING, YERTLETHETURTLE, and THECLAWSCOMEOUT all are colorful and fun answers. The other three are not on the same level, but are elevated by their clues. I particularly enjoyed 17A: It's not backed up (IDLESPECULATION).
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| Two answers for the price of one pic |
Otherwise, outside of the bland INITIATOR and NCOS, I had little to complain about. Nice work, Mr. Steinberg! One of my favorites of your efforts.
- Colum
13:49 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteYes, this was a quick Friday, that's for sure. And I continued my streak of finishing with an error by putting in the name of an old chess-like game (SHOgI) instead of the pictured SHOJI. I suppose someone could be called gESSIE, but it's certainly not usual.
Never heard of BOFA, but as you say, most everything else is strong.