BIRD PLAY
This was a strange puzzle for me. For one thing, it took me
about twice as long as it has taken me to do recent Sunday puzzles. Not that
that’s a bad thing, of course… and it could have had something to do with the
fact that I am in a small house with my entire family and more walking around
and talking to me. But for another thing, it took me a long while to understand
what was going on. The theme is, essentially, playing with words hidden within
answers, rebus-style, and then explaining what’s going on in another answer.
This leads to what appears to be a lot of duplication within the puzzle, which
I find unsettling.
Take SCOFF (Jeer)
over POPULARKIDS (In-group at school
school) with the words “off” and “lark” circled, which is explained by OFFONALARK. I know the words OFF and
LARK are not really duplicated, but they are circled, and so in a way, they
are.
That said, the trick is pretty well done. Finding a SPREADEAGLE inside EVANGELIZE, for instance, is pretty cool. And putting a revealer of
HEADLESSCHICKEN on THEPLOTTHICKENS is also very clever.
And that SWANDIVE adds a whole
nother dimension to the theme. So in the end, I walk away a fan. Nice job, Mr.
Eaton-Salners.
In other areas, I still think MISCALL is too soon (Nate Silver is dead to me), and I like the
inclusion of TAKESAKNEE (Colin deserves another shot). BIGD reminds me of a song (see above) by the group Bishop Allen, and SLEEPERCAR (Berth place) reminds me that this country deserves a better rail system.
OK, before I get carried away with my rants, I'll let you go and enjoy your Sunday. I hope everyone is have a good day.
- Horace
Superfast for me. I figured out the concept at 52A, with EVANGELIZE. On our vacation this past week, we saw a bald eagle multiple times, including once from about 15 feet away, so this felt very on topic. But I too was sort of disappointed to have the concepts mansplained to us. Also, I had a Natick at 46A / 33D. I chose TiC. PAiVO is a Finnish name, as is PAAVO. Without knowing the 1920s runner intrinsically, I say there is no particular way to tell the difference.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed myself with this one...nice and breezy. (I lucked out at 46A with TIC.) :-)
ReplyDeleteWhile I definitely do not like it when a player TAKES A KNEE, I was delighted to see the phrase included in the grid.
Nice job!
37:46 (FWTE)
ReplyDeleteThis one took me a bit longer than normal, and I messed up in a couple of spots, as you can see. One is the same as Colum's, where I chose TiC instead of TAC ("toe" was right out), and the other was at the VANDY/NYAD cross, where I tried an "e." Decent theme, but not one of my favorites. I appreciate the difficulty of constructing such a thing, but there you go. I never heard of the Chinese liquor MAOTAI.