I like the literalness of today's revealer: "Go their separate ways ... or a description of 17-, 24-, 35- or 47-Across?" or PARTCOMPANY. It works on two levels, both for the primary clue and when one notes that the circled letters in each theme answer is the name of a company - making them part company. APT! SA[INTEL]MO, for example, has Intel inside. :) Each company name crosses a word boundary, which is, I believe, de rigeur for this type of theme answer. VOCAL[COACH] just doesn't have the same pizzazz as VOC[ALCOA]CH, NON? Of course, our keen readers will have noted that if the answers are part company they're also part something else, but that's not important now.
The grid was like a hive of B'ESE today, which I only noticed when I started listing some of my favorite answers. There's BEWILDER, BEHEST, BELAYS, BLIPS, and BABYFAT - not to mention two of the theme answers BUC[KROGER]S and BISCAYN[EBAY]. B-dazzling!
The seven-letter Downs in the four corners were generally ARAL treat. ANIMATE, DISAVOW, and SADLYNO were favorites.
I'm sure Mr. Guzzetta had his RAISINS, but I didn't think "Whip" was a good synonomic match for FLAY, or "Pokes through" for PIERCES, but OTO I know?
~Frannie.
Agreed that FLAY isn't as APT as FLog which is what I had at first.
ReplyDeleteFavorite answer: SADLYNO.
6:59
ReplyDeleteI tried the same thing as Mr. Kingdon, i.e. FLog where FLAY goes. I didn't really take note of all of the "B" answers until Frannie mentioned it above, nor did I notice that VOCALCOACH could've had another company in it! BUCKROGERS, which I watched back in the day when it was on the TV, was not very good. The robot, Twiki, was one of the worst parts, but so was Gil Gerard's acting, as I recall, or maybe it was the scripts. I needed a few crosses for ALLMALE, since I'd never heard of either of the colleges mentioned. BELAYS brings to mind a much better series than the above, namely "Star Trek TNG," so that was welcome, CLEO reminds us of Miss CLEO, and DISAVOW conjures "Mission: Impossible." Anyway, this was a fine Tuesday.