Monday, April 1, 2019

Monday, April 1, 2019, Joel Fagliano

0:05:05 (F.W.O.E.)

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?)

GRAYBLUE

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 comments:

  1. 3:08 (FWOE)
    Like 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___.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The theme was ggggggggggrrrrrrrreeeeeeaaaaaattt!

    I 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.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 4:35
    I 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.

    ReplyDelete