Happy Thursday, everyone, and welcome to the start of the Turn. I finished the puzzle just in time for the start of a very nice Zoom session with my esteemed co-bloggers. Turns out some people didn't agree with my rankings of the Tom Swifties on Tuesday. I want to emphasize that while I may have ranked the "relish" answer at number 5, by no means does that mean I thought it "didn't work" or whatever.
Jeez. Some people are so sensitive.
Anyway, today's tricky Thursday takes standard phrases that start with a color, and then subtracts the color red from that color and replaces the word with the remaining color. Get it? And to make it even better, the revealer at 37D: Organization with three Nobel Peace Prizes ... or what "corrects" the answer to each of the starred clues (REDCROSS) explains why each color intersects with a shaded in down [RED].
I entered browNNOSER at 16A, thinking "Boy, that's kind of surprisingly straightforward for a Thursday." Solvers should know to prick up their ears at a thought like that. Instead, if you take red away from brown, you get green. Apparently. I suppose. Mostly I get kind of a muddy mess if I mix those two colors together. And muddy is a sort of brown.
It's nice the way the "red"s are hidden inside longer down answers. I particularly like FREDDY. I had no idea of this Fender person, but the crosses were good.
The toughest area of this puzzle came in the NE. 10D: Jazz group (THENBA) is excellent - both a hidden capital, a clever non-QMC, and an unexpected concatenation of letters in the answer. 11D: Classic work famously translated by John Dryden (AENEID) is near and dear to my heart, although not the specific translation. I also had THou in place of THEE.
Other nice answers included RONDOS, ORIOLES, and LESOTHO. I'm not convinced by ECOLAW, but it's acceptable. ATTHAT.
Looking forward to the rest of the Turn!
- Colum
17:03
ReplyDeleteNever heard of FREDDY Fender? What about "Feliz Navidad?" Classic. I really enjoyed this puzzle, even though there was no rebus. And I, too, dropped in THou off of the clue, but thankfully, the AENEID fixed that right up. PREDATOR was nicely and ambiguously clued with the T-Rex reference, and everyone loves RONDOS. Nice that TOOHOT abuts HADES.