It's not often, I'm sorry to report, that a Sunday puzzle lives up to the reputation that the NYT crossword puzzle works so hard to maintain. And that's a shame, because probably the Sunday puzzle is the one done by the most people, I declare completely unscientifically. But today's definitely breaks that mold for a number of reasons, which I will now go into unbearable detail about. Brace yourselves.
It all starts with the theme, as always. At first I thought today's theme was a fairly standard if well done version of your basic pun scheme. Take a routine phrase in the English language, replace one of the words with a near-homonym, clue the wacky result and hilarity ensues, and so on. And if that were all that was going on, it would be reasonably good still. All the phrases are well-recognized, all the clues are humorous, and so on.
But WEIGHT! There's more. Look at the title: it's not just a pun. It's instructions! Put the emphasis on the second syllable in each case. Thus "ship of the DEsert" becomes SHIPOFTHEDESSERT, where the emphasis is on that last syllable. "The MOral of the story" becomes THEMORALEOFTHESTORY. And my favorite of all, because the clue is just so absurd is at 68A: "Our lab studies regular dance moves rather than high-kicking"? (ITSNOTROCKETTESCIENCE). Incredible. That's great work to come up with seven high quality examples of this specific trick.
Better than all of that, though is the quality of the remainder of the puzzle. I knew we were going to have a fun time today when I figured out 1D: What one does not do when sent to jail (PASSGO). So unexpected, so perfect. Let's look at some excellent clues today.
15D: Package deliverers of the present day? (REINDEER) - "present day" as in Christmas...
17D: 75+ person (SPEEDER)
46D: Imperfect cube (LOADEDDIE). I almost did die when I got that one.
97D: Some brick houses (IGLOOS). Hah!
Also some lovely words like GADGETRY, INREPOSE, and WASABI. The only entry I shied at was UMW, and if that's all, you know Mr. McCoy has done fine work today.
- Colum
19:38
ReplyDeleteThis was great, if a little easy for my tastes. Definitely brilliantly done, as noted by Colum, above. I've heard from an expert on the subject, however, that we generally mispronounce Thoreau's name, which would make it fit with the theme, but alas, it really shouldn't. Horace's father was privy to the conversation, which took place at the now defunct Webster House. Nice that Thoreau crosses OUTDOORS and is adjacent to both OARS and URSA, though. As an aside, I've never heard of the KNUT coin; maybe I should read the Potter books.
I completely agree. When I saw Mr. McCoy's name, I was hopeful, and boy did he deliver. Like Huygens, I raced through this (though not quite as fast (20:29)), and although I was amused, (especially by ICAMEISAWICONCURRED) I kind of wanted the word "weight" to have played a part. So I am very happy to have you tell me that not only is "weight" important, but also "second," as the weight of the stress moves to the second syllable. So good.
ReplyDeleteThe entries you call out brought a smile to my face, too. PASSGO... brilliant!