Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Tuesday, December 17, 2019, David Levinson Wilk

7:49

Fun theme today. Letters missing from the clues combine to spell part of the answer that describes a feature of the fully-spelled clue. How's that for complicated? It was much easier to figure out than it is to explain. For example, the clue for 36A is R_od_ Isl_n_ Red. The missing letters in the clue spell HEAD and a Rhode Island Red is a chicken, thus it's a HEADLESSCHICKEN. Pretty neat. I thought TIRELESSWORKER (22A: _ax_ d_iv_r) was the most amusing, but HAIRLESSDOG was the best because the clue was so bare (54A: _ _rr_e_)

SLICE
I liked the clue/answer pair "On vacation" (OFF). I thought "'Smart' boy's name" (ALEC) was funny. My favorite on the day was "Bean sprouts" (IDEAS). Ha!

BADASSOPINE, and SHRED share the grid with the old favorites EELSERREPEE, and ADO.

So, overall a few LULLS, but tempered by a good LOLL.
~Frannie.

4 comments:

  1. 4:52
    A very nice theme, and I enjoyed thinking about the missing letters, although I mostly got them through crosses rather than through puzzling it out.

    Could there be an FSTOP EMOJI? What would it look like? Horace, any ideas?

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  2. I assume an FSTOP emoji would be an image much like one of these: https://www.shutterbug.com/images/styles/600_wide/public/promof6517.png

    Agreed, fun theme.

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  3. 7:35
    I had to get the HAIRLESSDOG from crosses, having never heard of a harrier, but that's not too surprising as I'm not known for my love of animals, or at least the TAMED variety. IDEAS definitely had the best clue, far and away.

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  4. 6:57
    Neither had I ever heard of a harrier, but teIRLESSDOG didn't make sense.
    And yeah, I guess the FSTOP emoji would have to be one of those that Kingdon links to, only cuted-up somehow.

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