Today's puzzle reminds us just how extra everything has been recently. You know what you can't have a ton of at once? People, that's what. You can't have so many of them. Not even ten. So stop hoarding all the people, people.
Right, so today's revealer, 39A: "I'm deeply indebted" ... or a hint to the ends of 17-, 25-, 51- and 64-Across (ITMEANSALOTTOME) gives a literal twist to the last words of each of the other theme answers: each one is defined as "a lot." The best of these is SEATTLESLEW, because the second part of the horse's name is actually a simplification of "slough," which doesn't have anything to do with a large amount of something, and because it's a great answer. PAPALMASS and BATTERYPACK are neutral, and SCRAPHEAP is too close to the twisted definition.
Meanwhile, the rest of the puzzle has some nice long answers in it, such as THENATURAL, an old favorite of mine (the movie that is, not the novel, which I did read years ago, and I think enjoyed) and GULFSTATES.
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| PLATO |
MYOPES was a tough get for a Monday. Or really any day. I mean, I rarely go about describing myself and my wife as a couple of myopes.
In any case, if you're stuck at home, it's time to break out the Sambuca, as we did last night, and shout SKOL!
- Colum
MYOPES was one where I read the clue, thought, hmm, a noun form of "myopic", well I dunno, I'll come back to it. And once I had more of the crosses, sure enough that instinct was correct.
ReplyDeleteSKOL was easy but only because we always say that in my family.
So why was this a bit tough for a Monday? Because I had Angst before AGITA? Because I had no idea how to spell half a trombone sound? (In fact, I might have been wrong about which sound, because WAH[WAH] might be what you get with a wah wah mute, not the "sad trombone".
7:33
ReplyDeleteI thought this ran a little tougher than a normal Monday, too, but originally thought of a "myopic" noun off of the clue for MYOPES, so that wasn't the problem. I've heard of SEATTLESLEW, but needed the crosses to get it (which were luckily easy enough). I recently watched the first eight "Star Wars" movies in a row, the ninth not yet available for streaming, so even if it weren't a common crossword answer, ANI went right in. And I am passingly familiar with The Beatles, so STARR was no trouble, either. I suppose it's possible that PLATO could have looked something like that statue. But is SAMMY going back too far for some solvers?
4:54 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteNice trivia on SEATTLESLEW's name! Perhaps I'll start pronouncing his name as "Seattle Sluff."
I could not remember the ALCAN Highway today, and I erroneously put in ArI for little Vader. Derp.