Hmm... it seems to be me doing the review again today. Yesterday, when I signed off, I had forgotten that Frannie only does six reviews per week. So today I perform the DUALROLE of ending my week of reviews and starting hers.
The theme made me chuckle today. Ordinary chores are reimagined and clued accordingly. PAYTHEBILLS (Chore for an N.F.L. owner?), for example, changes things like utilities and taxes to the Buffalo Bills. And SWEEPTHEFLOOR (Chore for a security guard?) instead changes the verb from using a broom to the metaphorical sweep of a night guard. It took me a minute to realize that PICKUPTHETOYS (Chore for a dog-walker?) was playing on toy dogs and not dog toys, and I thought GOTOTHEBANK (Chore for a rower?) was the least funny.
Things I did not know about before today - UDO (Japanese vegetable) - this is sometimes called "mountain asparagus," and I will be on the lookout for an opportunity to try some from now on, WIIU (Nintendo gaming console with a pileup of vowels), TATES (Crispy cookie brand), HIPS (Coxae, familiarly), SILVA (Most common surname in Brazil), RON (Wisconsin senator Johnson), ETON (____ mess (traditional English dessert)), SIA ("Chandelier" singer, 2014), ILENE (Woods who voiced Cinderella). That seems like a lot on a Sunday. Of course, that's just me, and I can't really complain about what I'm POORAT knowing. Perhaps you had more Horse SENSE.
I liked the non-QMC "Current location" for SEA, I chuckled at "Person to look out for" (NUMEROUNO), and "Hoppy medium?" was cute for ALE. There were a few groan-worthy entries, but it's a big puzzle, and it did get a few chuckles, so that was nice.
I'm signing off again, and this time for real. Hope you're all happy and healthy.
- Horace
36:00
ReplyDeleteLike yesterday, I finished up the bulk of this puzzle pretty quickly, but was held up in the west with NUMEROUNO (I had N___ROUNO and thought I'd made a terrible mistake, but the crosses all checked out), WIIU, ELIM and GEST, even though I suspected that the common crossword answer WIIG was correct. Also, I had ReDEW__INN for awhile before choosing a Y instead of a "d" for PAYTHEBILLS, where I was thinking of providing pads, maybe, for protection of the players. That helped me to see RODEWAYINN. And of course I've never heard of this SCARRY fellow. So puzzling out those sections cost me around thirteen minutes, but I'll take it. As Horace mentions, the puzzle was, on the whole, amusing and a nice Sunday morning diversion. I enjoyed the clue for CANOE.