I laughed out loud at the audacity of this puzzle when I caught on to the theme of repeated letters, as in 20A: Tea set? (TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT) and 50A: Beeline? (BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB). Hah! Not exactly a trick (for April Fools' Day), but kind of an oddity nonetheless, and a fun way to start the month. (Is ENMASSE (45A: All together, as a crowd) a revealer?)
Was it just yesterday that we had "eargasm" in the grid? I had originally wanted for that spot the EARWORM (25A: Tune you just can't get out of your head) that we see today. Only today I somehow got an extra M in the word, which took me quite a while to find. I guess I should go back to solving on paper, where I don't think that would have happened! :)
It's too bad that Mr. Fagliano couldn't have gotten R G B as the repeating letters, to go along with 37D: Supreme Court justice nicknamed "The Notorious R.B.G." (GINSBURG). That would have been nice.
I liked THETHINGIS (11D: "Here's what you have to realize ..."), the full RAGINGBULL, CASTLING (9D: Chess move involving the king and rook), and, of course, TOMTOM. :)
There might be a little bit of BLAH material necessary to make it work, but there's not ALOT, and I love the overall effect so much that I AINT gonna complain.
- Horace
3:08 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteLike you, I entered OHIi by mistake and didn't notice until I got the message. Like you, in that it wouldn't have happened on paper. I also noticed TOMTOM. One nice thing about the grid is that three answers had to be of the forms ___T___G and G___B___.
The theme was ggggggggggrrrrrrrreeeeeeaaaaaattt!
ReplyDeleteI had a bit of a Natick on ULEE/GINSBURG (didn't know the former, didn't know if the latter was GINSBURG or GINSBeRG). So I tried both and saw which one gave the solved chime.
4:35
ReplyDeleteI flew right through this. The second I saw that 20A was all Ts, I filled in both 36A and 50A appropriately, which really made things pretty easy. It was quite audacious. It's always nice to have astronomy referenced (STAR), as well as Shakespeare: "The Tempest" (even though a Disney movie was used in the clue) (ARIEL) and "Othello," kinda (DOGES). OUIS looks strange in there, but I was able to FINIS in near record time.