I finished this puzzle on the way down to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, and since I left the iPad in the car, I don't have access to it to find out the exact time of my finish.
I found this puzzle satisfying, and if it suffers somewhat in comparison to yesterday's tour de force, it's still an very fine themeless puzzle. It is a truth universally acknowledged among the creators of this blog that the Thursday-Saturday set of puzzles are the ones with the most enjoyability; sadly, my recent experience with the Thursday puzzles haven't been at the same level, so I rely heavily on these two themelesses.
I broke in to the grid in the NE corner for once, with the gimme Michael SCOTT. Even after finishing the area, I had no idea why DEVILDOG meant "Marine." Turns out it's a standard nickname for the branch of the armed forces.
The best of the puzzle comes across the middle: SAMESEXMARRIAGE of course is a lovely 15-letter answer. But I enjoyed the clue of 21D: Film featuring an assassin from 2029 (THETERMINATOR). It's amusing to realize how far in the future somebody thought that year would be.
Other good answers include 32D: Vessel in a famous 1960s shipwreck (SSMINNOW) - I love the unexpected fictionality of the Gilligan's Island ship. The symmetric answer in the other corner also has an atypical double letter in AAONLINE.
A puzzle that references Pogo (OPOSSUMS) is welcome. One of my all time favorite comics, and the source of the line "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"
Finally, I keep on wanting to misparse NOIRON as "noir on." Which I will now use whenever we decide to watch a hardboiled detective series.
- Colum
17:33
ReplyDeleteI know not of an OPERAHAT. SAMESEXMARRIAGE took a few crosses for this solver because I was expecting something to do with the wacky-weed. SCOTT was, indeed, a gimme and really, there were not many slowdowns. I knew of COLMES, but not exactly how to spell it, so that took me a few crosses (I tried COoMbS at first). And I wanted "waitress" where MODELING belongs (34D Part-time job for many an actor or actress), even though what I wanted was clearly gender-specific, despite the clue. Shout out to COSEC. SSMINNOW was great, as was WHIPSAWED. I didn't love OPIUMS or TANGS for plurals, but didn't mind the others. Finally, I had a slight hiccup in the east where I confidently entered naanS where ROTIS belongs, but that was eventually corrected with crosses.