I caught on to the theme with 59A: "Green peas" (PEACEANDPEPPERS) or more expositorily, words that can follow the word 'green' to make a common phrase that starts with the letter p. "Blue jays" across the top (16A) took me forever. What in the heck is blue jasmine? Is that a thing? Anyhoo, that aside, my favorite was "Honey bees" (BADGERSANDBEARS). Since all the theme answers followed the same pattern, I was able to fill in the initial letters and the internal AND in each theme clue before I even knew the answers themselves. That came in handy in the north west. I didn't know OBADIAH was the shortest OT book, RESANDS for "Smooths over" didn't click for quite some time, and I was stuck on the idea of a locality for 5D. "Albert Einstein, notably" (EMIGRE). DEMERIT!
I've always liked the expressions "To boot" (ALSO) and BARNONE ("Without exception"). I liked the clue "Thunder, but not Lightning" (NBATEAM) - get me, enjoying a sports clue! I also liked "Bygone compacts" (GEOS) and "Unlikely source of a silk purse" (SOWSEAR). I thought EMIGRE and EMERGE made an interesting pair at 5D and 10D. And how about the pair UMPTEEN ("Lots of") and TEEM ("Abound")? Maybe there's something about the syllable "tee" that means many.
I thought the clue "Crowd on the move" (HORDE) was interesting; I wasn't aware that a horde was necessarily a crowd in motion. I never like ASAP as a synonym for "Now!" because 'as soon as possible' is not necessarily this minute.
~Frannie.
17:34
ReplyDelete"Blue Jasmine" stars one of my favorites, Cate Blanchett. I don't know whether there is an actual jasmine that is blue, but there could be. I caught onto the theme at JASMINEANDJEANS and, like Frannie, could fill in the ___AND___ of the other four prior to finishing them. Oddly, I tended to get the second of the pairings before the first. STREAMBED was tricky, and I liked the clues for CURRENCY and ABEAM. I had R_VPED for a very long time before I filled in that box (last of the puzzle) with the needed S. I like that GEOS is below DARTS and just a few above AUDI and DENTS. Mini car theme, perhaps? If only KAI were switched around a bit, and I suppose we could throw CONE in there. I entered EMIGRE off of the _M__R_. I don't know about having AHSO and ALSO so close together. Shout out to DCUPS, but only because it's expected of me; I'm no CAD.