Say the last words of the three theme answers (ARE AINGE MINT) out loud and it SOUNDSLIKEAPLAN (arrangement). I agree! My favorite was the first READYWHENYOUARE because it spanned the grid, although I was happy to be able to drag DANNYAINGE out of retirement - from my long-term memory - and offer him a BREATHMINT. :)
As something of a woman myself, I was AWAKE to the fact that we find quite a few SHEs in today's puzzle including JONI Ernst, Lucy LIU, Sonia Sotomayor (LATINA), WNBA, SIMONE Biles, and, of course, the ever-fabulous CHER.
I thought the clue-to-answer aptness in the puzzle was on the high side here as well. I particularly liked "Suppress" for SITON and "Fly majestically" for SOAR.
Other fun fill included HAMMY, LUBE (Hygens, are you out there?), APOP, HOIST, and SHANDY. The long downs UPAGAINSTIT and INSTINCTUAL were also nice.
While Mr. Agard's grid layout did NET a number of weaker 3-squares like SPF, BLU, SMU, MBA, et alii, I thought UNI was yukked up a bit thanks to its clue "Prefix with brow," which makes it sound like a span. HAR.
~Frannie.
5:09 (FWTE)
ReplyDeleteNice W1A quote to start the second paragraph.
I put CREam instead of CREME in the Oreo, and had to LAUNCH an investigation when I got the "almost there" message. I've really got to start HOISTing my game before the end of March!
8:07
ReplyDeleteI'm out here! We do need and use plenty of LUBE, that's for sure. Decent theme today. Everyone loves APBIO, but not so much as an answer. Oddly straightforward clue for EPEE; I'm not sure I've seen that before.