Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Tuesday, March 24, 2020, Olivia Mitra Framke

0:04:51

What a delight, in these dark days, to solve such a smile-inducing puzzle this morning. The theme involves four phrases clued as if they were happy gatherings:

TVRECEPTION (The sitcom writers met at a ...)
TRIGFUNCTION (The mathematicians met at a ...)
MEDICINEBALL (The pharmacists met at a ...)
SEARCHPARTY (The Google employees met at a ...)

And the revealer just might be that central FARCE (Wacky comedy). :)

not so BIGCATs
Can you think of any others? "The auto-shop workers met at a 'tire blowout?'" "The balloonists met at an 'updo?'" ... My mother's sisters met at an 'anti-social?'" That actually wouldn't work in my corner of the map, but I understand it would in many other parts of the country.

So already, this one's off to a great start. Add to that a ton more fun fill and good-natured cluing, and you've got yourself a winner. A few of my favorites are: OCTET (Maids a-milking, e.g.), OWES (Is shy, in a way), and EARTHLY (Terrestrial). GENDERGAP and BRASSIERE are interesting symmetry mates. And is it ok for me to mention that I noticed that BRASSIERE was right next to RACK?

I initially entered dRY for "Like some humor," but the well-known Franklin quote "A constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy" (WINE) straightened that out. Me, I'm an AGNOSTIC at best, but a good quote is a good quote, IRECKON.

This puzzle is good proof that crossword constructors love to see us happy. And we're happy they do.

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. I've always heard that Franklin quote about beer, which may or may not have any historical validity, but which is unfortunate, just in the sense that beer and WINE have the same number of letters.

    As for other themers, the company founders met at a "liquidity event" (14).

    ReplyDelete
  2. 12:27 (FWOE)
    I left the dRY/dINE in, unfortunately. I should have known better and more carefully checked the down. A fine puzzle, but some parts, for me, were a bit of an ORDEAL due to some initial poor answers on my part.

    ReplyDelete