Perhaps I am fulfilling my own prophecy, but today's time + FWOE do seem to support my theory that this week's puzzles are a little harder than some - at least for this solver. The answers today ranged from easy peasy LEMONY squeezy (e.g., "'___ whiz!" GEE) to what the? (e.g., "Gesture from a coach not to swing at the next pitch" TAKESIGN). In RE my FWOE, looking back over it, I don't feel too bad about it. I had GoTITNOW,which I feel is as valid an answer for "Question after an explanation" as GETITNOW. If I had any notion of "St. ___ (district in London), I might have been able to GETIT then, but only after looking at the solution could ISEE.
Today's revealer explains that in each theme answer there is a "RE" relocation. When writing it out, it seems like you almost have to double the RE to make the exact nature of the transformation clear: it's a RE relocation that occurs. An example might throw a little more light on the subject. For the clue "Financially behind" one might guess INTHERED, but the letters RE are relocated and the correct answer is INTHREED. I had a tough time parsing that one, especially when I hadn't yet figured out the theme. In relocating the REs, the constructors have made valid new words or phrases, but to what end, I'm not sure. Possibly, just because they could.
I tried 'Blue' before BEAN (Navy) 'street' before DOMAIN (address), and I wanted 'bat' before CUE; I've never really thought of pool as a sport before. It seems like more of a game to me, but my notions may be skewed. I had the most trouble (FWOE aside) in the southwest where "Playing field?" left me at a loss (ACTING) and "Scrambling words" would have been perfectly apt had the clue been 'scrambling for words' (IMLATE).
Dear one? ABBY is very good. I also liked "Was able to acquire, informally" (SCORED). "Barely best" for EDGEOUT was interesting and ABORTED for "Scrubbed" was nice and tricky. "What it takes years and years to grow" (OLD) and "Final figure" for NET were also very good. But my favorite answer today was AMULET for "Spell check?" Charming! :)
~Frannie.
7:48
ReplyDeleteI was most impressed by BAKINGBREAD from "Breaking Bad." That's a great find. YEGODS!
What the heck does "Inthreed" mean? All the other re-locations were words still. Seemed like a stretch.
ReplyDelete21:02
ReplyDeleteI'm with Anonymous regarding INTHREED. I stared at that for awhile before entering my final square. The rest was fine, as I got the trick with the BAKINGBREAD entry. I knew the clue referred to "Breaking Bad" of course, but the crosses weren't lining up, so I decided to fill it in from crossing and came up with an actual phrase, saw what was done, and went from there. I haven't had any CUERVO in a dog's age, and have a bit of a yen for some now, chilled in a glass, 1800 or better will do. Decent enough Thursday, but a couple of odd answers. Nice that DELHI and EDEN are located under __LOCATIONS.
Try IN THREE D. :-) This puzzle cracked me up...it was cool for me that I finally filled in the revealer last.
ReplyDeleteAhhh...I should have seen that! Thanks Kelly.
DeleteI'm posting this on Sunday because, well I just solved it. Or to be precise, solved all but 6 squares (well, more than 6 depending on how one counts).
ReplyDeleteI guess the heart of my problem was fixating on Google MAil, trying to come up with another four letter Google product but not thinking of MAPS. But even with that, I'm not sure I would have gotten COMPAD[RE] and I certainly didn't know the cheese.
On the plus side, I did like the theme. Figured it out early on BAKINGBREAD (incidentally my favorite of the themers). Took a bit longer to get the revealer, as I was working with some variation on REmove, which didn't quite fit the clue or the available space, but at some point I hit on RELOCATION.