I know it's only Wednesday, but I am starting to see a thread running through the whole week. "Huge, cloudy symbols of a high" theme, as it were, rooted "in charactery."* Well, ok, perhaps I shouldn't get so grandiose, but today's and Monday's themes do focus on the sounds of individual letters taken together. "SKP" on Monday, and "IC" today. It is hoped we will read the latter aloud as "icy," and I wonder just now if there's an even deeper level today - an IRISHCOFFEE could be served cold, and the IRONCURTAIN did have something of an "icy" coldness to it... is IOWACITY known for being especially chilly in the winter? Hmm ... it kind of falls apart with INFORMEDCONSENT, although that answer does kind of serve as a chilling buzzkill after the IRISHCOFFEE.
But let's spend one more short paragraph thinking about a weekly theme, how does Tuesday fit in? Well, again it focuses on letters themselves, their shape, and not so much the words they're in. Do you see? I guess we'll just have to wait a few more days before a review can "hold like rich garners the full ripened grain" of a final answer.
Back to today - I don't remember hearing the term COLDOPEN before a few years ago, and even now, I only think about it in relation to S.N.L. Certainly other shows start before the credits air, right?
Outside of the theme, that NE corner, with its LAKECOMO, AMALFI, it's Fleur-de-LIS, Bon MOT, and ALAMO rental car reminds me that there was a headline in the Times yesterday saying that the E.U. might ban visitors from the U.S. because of "Coronavirus failures." Sigh.
Lots of multi-word answers today. ZOOMINON, INWANTOF, NOCUTS, EXTRAPAY, NOTAKERS ... I have nothing particular to add about that, but sometimes I enjoy a puzzle filled with such answers.
After that last paragraph, you're probably wondering what happened to Frannie. It is her week, after all, but if you also read my reviews, you might remember that I had given her some "Get Out of Blog Free" cards for her birthday, and last night she turned in her first one. So you're stuck with this SQUARE, whose reviews do not have the same ENAMEL sheen.
Don't worry, there's not much more. I'll just add that VIZSLA is new to me, and I wouldn't have been able to tell you RHMACY's initials. I wonder if he's related to William H. Macy?
- Horace
*With apologies to John Keats.
This puzzle was full of Naticks for me. ALOMAR/AMALFI, KAL/PATTI, FALSIE/DIXON, VIZSLA/ZAC. Now some of those are more Naticky than others, but for the most part I had not a kers of an idea without consulting reference material. Oh, wait, "no takers" rather than "not a kers". It was that kind of solve.
ReplyDeleteAs for COLDOPEN, I guess I most often hear about it from my brother who does post-production sound and I get the impression it is completely standard jargon in the business. But whether the general public has a name for it, well, I guess maybe that is more SNL specific at least usually.
23:08 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteHaving recently watched all of the "Monty Python" shows, I noted that in seasons 3 and 4, they'd often either perform a good deal or most of their show before running the opening credits, or run the closing credits only five or ten minutes in, then go on with the show. Would the latter be a cold close? Anyway, I misspelled LIS as LYS and didn't pay attention to its cross, ZANIER. Dumb. I didn't know RHMACY's initials, either, nor had I ever heard of VIZSLA, for which I needed all crosses. Luckily, I'd heard of the ZAC Brown Band, even though I abhor country music for the most part. The rest was all fine. I used to play Whack-A-Mole back in the day (although not a great deal), and MALLET was amusing as it brought that ridiculousness to mind. This ran a little long for me for a Wednesday, but it was enjoyable.