What a crazy few weeks it's been, and I don't see any sign of things changing soon. So first off, words of caution: please stay safe, and practice good social distancing. And wash your hands regularly and thoroughly. As a physician, I can assure you that these are the best practices to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and to flatten the curve.
On a happier note, I'm glad to see that the ACPT has been rescheduled for September 11-13 in Stamford, CT. I hope we'll see all of you there!
Today's puzzle is all about spoonerisms, that oddity of the human language where, most commonly, initial morphemes are traded between consecutive words, to unintentionally hilarious results. The name comes from the Reverend William Spooner of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Oxford. In fact, he claimed that most of the examples of spoonerisms attributed to him were apocryphal. Oh, well. It's all lost in the hists of mime.
The theme answers are examples of same, where two words are then followed by their spoonerized companion pair, and clued wackily. My favorite by far is 114A: Piano that plays only a certain three notes? (BCHORDKEYBOARD), with the three notes being B, D-sharp, and F-sharp. I love how the spoonerization creates a completely different looking set of syllables. The other excellent one comes at 78A: Where a demanding dockworker gets supplies? (STEVEDOREDIVASTORE), reminding us that the first word is pronounced in three syllables.
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| TEAPOY: Has nothing to do with tea |
In the QMC department, 82A: Snack item with a salient anagram? (SALTINE) is fun. And 24D: Vocal quintet? (AEIOU) is nicely done.
Otherwise I enjoyed EUCHRE, AWEEBIT, and SAYHEY.
- Colum
46:06
ReplyDeleteThis was pretty slow-going for me. I was stumped for a while in the NE, but once I figured out KANYE the rest ended up falling. I was also stuck for a while with the unusual cluing for ORR and it's odd cross REC (I wanted "bio"). RAMON is interesting trivia, as was the BRANDO clue. A TEAPOY is nothing I'd heard of, and since its cross DELGADO is also someone with whom I'm unfamiliar, I was reluctant to enter the "O" for a while. Anyway, lots of this seemed like a slog for me, but that's OK. At least APCALC makes an appearance.