A nice, tight theme today. Four "tall orders," all associated with dogs: HEEL, SIT, STAY, COME. Seems easy enough, but I'm sure it was a chore to line up those Across answers to make those words line up.
It played a little more slowly for me than many Sundays, possibly because of things like COMOROS (Archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean), MEDE (Ancient Iranian), GLUTENIN (Protein in Wheaties), JALISCOMEXICO (State bordering the Pacific), and ACTAEON (Mythical hunter turned into a stag). That last one was actually somewhere in the back of my brain, but it took a little help to put the vowels in the proper order. And then there were the strange-looking things like APPOLLS (Sources of weekly N.C.A.A. rankings) and GIING (Cleaning for military inspection) that did not come super quickly.
As is often true, we find some interesting trivia today in CANBERRA (Foreign capital designed by two Americans) and PLINYTHEELDER (Early encyclopedist credited with coining "Home is where the heart is"), and I enjoyed seeing Baudelaire's "LES Fleurs du Mal" in the grid. That book was the subject of my French senior seminar back in college. Good times with absinthe and opium addicts...
Lots of fun clues today, including "Measure of virality" (RETWEETS), "Convent-ional sort" (NUN),"It's rigged" (MAST), and "!" (BANG). I'm sure there's more to talk about, but we've got to get on the road to Arezzo, to the oldest, and largest antiques fair in Italy. Should be fun, but could be problematic for our luggage limitations on the flight back.
Tune in tomorrow to find out whether we bought anything!
- Horace
I liked that when I finished the puzzle on the iPad app, the letters in the orders grew to fill both boxes, so that the "tall orders" were visually obvious. Perhaps I underestimated the difficulty of coming up with these sets of answers and fitting them into a grid, because I felt on finishing that perhaps there should have been more than four. But then, as I have so often commented, I'm a reviewer, not a creator. Otherwise, I made an error at the crossing of JALISCOMEXICO and OPENSLOT. I put a P in there, because OPENSpOT made sense, and the other was only mildly familiar to me.
ReplyDeleteWOO! I love this puzzle! Thank you, Finn!
ReplyDelete(OTOH...you were educated in Cambridge and now work in transportation in DC??? Sheesh, because the MBTA doesn't need any help??? Okay, end rant. :-))
Great fun, wonderful fill, lovely Sunday.
38:46 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a longer solve than a normal Sunday for me. I made the same error as Colum, not being terribly familiar with the state of JALISCOMEXICO. I was able to write in GLUTEN__ and just leave the last two blank until I came up with the crosses. I tried POSTdoC at first where POSTBAC goes, but the crosses BEEB and LARVA were gimmes, so that was corrected quickly. I also tried folic where AMINO goes, but, again, crosses saved me. I never heard of an ENJAMBMENT, but I'll accept it. I loved EYEDUP (66A Looked at lasciviously), even though this is something that I would tend not to do.
I believe you, Huygens!
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