Tuesday, November 6, 2018, Alan Southworth and Yacob Yonas

0:08:50 (F.W.T.E.)

First of all, if you haven't already, go out and vote! Democracy depends upon you.

Second of all, solving a puzzle depends upon knowing a lot of different things. Today, I didn't have the SMARTS to remember that NOSYPARKER was an expression, and I confused the UTES with UTEP. I also considered MAn an acceptable synonym for "Bub," and didn't notice that SNUnK was left as the answer to "Crept (out), informally)" (SNUCK). Soooo... not so good a result. POORME.

One more thing I was not SAGE enough to remember is that FOUNTAINSOFWAYNE was a band that had a marginally popular song about fifteen years ago. When I was trying to find my errors, I briefly considered "fountails of wayne" because it would have "fixed" "snunk" into "slunk." Yikes. The lengths we will sometimes go to to justify wrong entries!

So anyway, this puzzle focuses on super hero alter egos. The ones that worked the best for me were STARKNAKED (Iron Man without any clothes?) (Tony Stark is Iron Man's ALTEREGO), and BANNERYEAR (When the Hulk was born?) (Dr. David Banner is the Hulk). Those two used an adjective that is the same as the last name, which seemed more of a discovery than just finding other uses of the name itself. Well, I suppose Kent is a place... but DUKEOFKENT is a person, and maybe the name Kent comes from that place name originally... I'm not going to bother to look it up. I've got a cold, and I'm in no mood. If you have information on this and care to share it with me in the comments, I'd be happy to read it.

I liked being reminded of a mango LASSI, and AVAST, SNUCK (once I got it!), NOUGAT, and HOISTS are nice words. But is a BLT ever grilled? Isn't the bread just toasted, and then the ingredients put between the slices? Or have I been doing it wrong all this time?

A little gluey in parts (ETS, PAS, ROO, OTRO, TNUT, VEE...), but kind of a lot of theme material, and who doesn't like super heros?

- Horace

p.s. Congrats on the debut, Mr. Yonas!