13:15
I apologize for the lateness and shortness of this review, but after delivering the older daughter back to college and shopping for a French Horn for the younger daughter, we got back late-ish. Well, not so late, but then instead of doing the crossword puzzle, we watched Paddington 2. And at 11:10 it occurred to me that the puzzle and blog post still needed doing.
In any case, Paddington 2 was a delightful movie.
We've seen a number of these kinds of grids before now, with the offset stacks intersecting in the middle. With the steps of black squares in the middle of each side of the puzzle, you get 11-letter words. GARLICBREAD is clearly the best here, followed by the incredible SIMONEBILES. The others just didn't grab me as much as I've become used to.
There are some good clues though, including 7A: Museum installations (ALARMS). Definitely not what I was expecting. Also 36A: What a jam is packed with (CARS). Too true! Fortunately we did not get stuck in any of those today during our travels. Finally, there's 8D: It's spirit may be broken (LAW). Very nice!
This is a fine puzzle, but I liked yesterday's better.
- Colum
51:58
ReplyDeleteLonger than Colum's time. Anyway, POINTE was a strong start, and there were several nice entries (GRANARY, XERISCAPING, SHACKEDUP(!), ICESHEET (we recently flew over Greenland, and these sheets are very strikingly beautiful) and HOSERS). However, I didn't love RAMADANS (odd plural), TRAINMASTER (never heard of this position), PIERCE or ACLTEAR (for obvious reasons). Finally, I dislike direction clues like at 47A Tampa-to-Naples dir. (SSE) because they're ridiculous.