Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Wednesday, April 10, 2019, Alan Arbesfeld

12:34

How great a time is that? Visually speaking, of course. Puzzle-solving-time-wise it's mediocre at best, but I always enjoy seeing 12:34 on clocks. It's so orderly! And speaking of numbers, today's theme involves a little bit of math. The revealer, DOUBLEHEADER, points solvers to a phonetic hint to the first words of the four theme answers, all of which sound like numbers, and each of which is doubled, in order from top to bottom, for a homophone of the start of the next theme answer. (Sounds almost like a word problem, doesn't it?) For example, the second and third theme answers are TOODARNHOT and FORACHANGE. Two doubled is four. With that in mind, maybe TWICE (62A) is bonus theme material?!?

Other fill that DOSED the trick:
A ewe for you, say (REBUS) - ha!
Bo's'n's quarters (FOCSLE) - most apostrophes in one word ever.
External appearance GUISE - if you look sagacious, do you have a wise guise?
TACT - always good
EGESTS - rarely good

Also, lots of oil in this one: AMOCO, WESSON, and FUEL. Feels a bit like an OVERCOAT, don't you think? :)
UNIVERSE
The detailed, all-sky picture of the infant universe created from nine years of WMAP data
I would have preferred "banks" for SORES (Tender spots), if that could have been managed. And I thought calling for the name of Saturn's SUV VUE (final model year 2010) and the Mideast's Gulf of AQABA were on the tougher side, but the downs were reasonable, assuming you are up on your Brewski synonyms and world capitals.

~Frannie.

4 comments:

  1. My time was 12:38 which is about 10 seconds too fast in the sense that 12:48 would fit the theme quite nicely.

    My favorite wrong answer today was ATEheartily in place of ATELIKEAPIG. But that didn't last long because of ADWEEK (not that I knew Ad Week has an Agency of the Year, but who else would it be?).

    Nice clue for AGEISTS, and SEQUOIAS is a fun answer.

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    Replies
    1. Jim, 12:48 would have been great for this puzzle! I wish I had thought of that while solving.

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  2. 5:02
    I'd like this puzzle a whole lot more if the Red Sox were playing better.

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  3. 14:26
    I loved that this puzzle started off with a REBUS, and I, too, found SEQUOIAS to be excellent fill, partly because Sue and I just visited some live out in Kings Canyon National Park and partly because of its awesome spelling. I wasn't aware of what the theme was until reading Frannie's review, which isn't unusual for early-week puzzles for me. It's almost time for a few COLDONES, but not beers; Saturdays are for martinis and/or vodka-sodas. That's a well-known fact.

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