I'm not much of a "math guy," but I don't have any trouble with simple square roots. And once I realized that they were going in order, I could forget about math again and just sit back and enjoy it.
It's an odd theme, and it looks like a smallish one, in that there are only 38 squares devoted to it - including the revealer. I think we've seen themes using twice that many squares! The entries are, however, rigidly forced into place, and I imagine this made things very complicated. Witness: FTS, AVI (Bird: Prefix), ARR (Opposite of departure: Abbr.), and OWIE (Painful injury, in totspeak). I would OUST those if I could.
Still, it has been executed with a certain amount of FINESSE, as we do get a number of lovely, some might even say ROMANTIC entries. Imagine a VIOLINIST playing SERENE music as you PRANCE about on the FORESTFLOOR... ok, maybe it's more weird than ROMANTIC, but I still like it. And this is my SOLILOQUY after all. :)
It's funny that TETRA runs adjacent to FOUR, and I'm slightly amused by the clue for EXACTO ("Right," slangily). As if anyone has ever said that... hah!
Overall, a fine Monday. Gotta throw a bone to the math nerds every once in a while, I suppose, right?
- Horace
3:02
ReplyDeleteJust missed a sub-three minute time. I did have a typo which I had to find after the fact, but I don't count typos on an iPad as an error because if I had been filling it out in pen I wouldn't have missed the key. But maybe it would have taken me longer in pen? Oh well, not possible to parse these things out.
Look at the craziness of this grid, starting with three black squares in a row in the NW corner! Necessary to insure that there will be a 1D, a 4D, a 9D, a 16D, and a 25D, not to mention the 36D and 49D that appear later on. Very fun. I thought 1D was tongue in cheek. I mean, the square root of 1? Why not just the clue number?
Great crossing of SOLILOQUY and SQUAREROOTS.
6:19
ReplyDeleteI loved the theme, of course, even though it's simple mathematically. Too bad that 64D couldn't have been worked in somehow. I've never said EXACTO, but I seem to remember "exactamundo" from way back.