It's definitely summertime here in New England. The forecast is sunny and hot for the next several days, so if you haven't been to the barber lately, you might want to run out and get one of the four SHORTCUTS named in today's theme entries. Me, I've been cutting my own hair for some years, and while a buzz cut is definitely the easiest, I usually try to end up with something a tad longer - something like a pixie cut, but for boys, and with less teasing. Is that a thing?
As for the rest of the puzzle, I liked this one a lot. There are ten seven-letter Down answers, and six sixes, and many of those are quite good. ARUGULA (Peppery salad green) is a favorite of mine, and I don't mind the plural on FEZZES (Some Moroccan headwear) because it gives the double Z. The "false capital" in "Apple production site" made ORCHARD slightly trickier, and the echo of that deception might have affected some when they saw "Tablet alternative" (GELCAP) soon after. Even "Chameleons, e.g." (LIZARDS) could be seen in different ways. :)
ROGUE, GLOAT, BILGE, are all great entries, and I chuckled at the somewhat blatant clue for TOAST (Browned bread). Heh. And STBEDE probably trotted out a few OLDSAWS ("Haste makes waste" and similar sayings) now and then, don't you think?
Overall, a ROSY start to the week!
- Horace
3:37 (FWTE)
ReplyDeleteIt's not been a good start to the week for me, doing both Monday's and Tuesday's puzzles and getting the incorrect warning. I put in COSin rather than COSEC. Cosin isn't a thing, so that's all on me. And also I didn't check the second crossing. 69A: Pepsi, for one (COLA) would have put me on the right track. Otherwise it's a fine puzzle.
6:09
ReplyDeleteCOSEC went right in for me, but it better had after all that salad for a math degree, but that was ICEAGES ago. Odd having THEMAGI spelled out there, and SIDEB instead of BSIDE, as we normally see, but all-in-all I'm with the majority that it's a fine puzzle, indeed.