My first entry in today's puzzle was 59A: "'____ Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes' (1910 story collection)" because Horace started the puzzle before me and called out the clue out to me knowing that just last week, while we were in Paris, I bought and read an ARSENE Lupin book called L'Aiguille Creuse that featured Mr. Sholmes. Quelle coïncidence!
And get THIS, we are spending the weekend with friends and at the breakfast table, out of the blue, one of them started singing "Lido Shuffle"! And what do we have at 28A? None other than "'Lido Shuffle' singer Boz" SCAGGS. OMG!
The two sets of long answers in the top and bottom of the grid are notable for their stacked Q answers: QUIZZICALLOOK (very nice fill in and of itself) over QUOTATIONMARKS above and FROZENDAIQUIRI over DENOFINIQUITY below. Quite Qool.
I liked "To the nth degree" (ROYALLY), "Bygone sovereigns" (CZARINAS - with the rarely seen CZ spelling!), and "Bad, bad, bad!" (FORSHAME).
I also enjoyed the ambiguity of the clues "Going by" for (NAMED), "Sweets" for BABE, and the lightly humorous "Sound made by a slug" for BAM.
After this fun Saturday solve, I'm OFFTO rejoin the group in the kitchen and BEAPAL.
~Frannie.
23:32
ReplyDeleteNice palindromic time, if I must say so myself. I liked the NOMAD/TRAIPSE pairing in addition to Frannie's list of nice entries above. I don't take a FROZENDAIQUIRI (and needed a few crosses for the proper spelling) because it's too sugary a drink. IOMOTH is nicely clued, as is PARLEYS. I tried tOtALLY off of the ___LLY, but the crosses eventually came in to give the correct ROYALLY. OLMOS was excellent in "Battlestar Galactica"; I hear they're planning a re-reboot of that show. I'll give it a try, but I'm not sure HOW the reboot will be topped.