4:25 (FWOE)
Ms. Lempel always makes a smooth Monday puzzle, and today is no exception. The theme takes the idea of KEYS and finds four different ways to interpret them, each time embedding the word in a longer phrase. I had no idea what was going on, and had to search for the revealer after filling in the grid.
I'd never heard of a FLORIDAROOM, which in my parlance would simply be called a sun room. We are in the midst of building a screened porch off the back of our house, so that, it seems, would fit the bill.
Even after getting the revealer, I had a moment of not seeing how it would apply in the case of ATLASROCKET. The key here is that little inset in a map which tells you what the symbols used in the map stand for.
My error today came when I put CuNY in at 52D: Big Apple school inits. (CCNY). City College, not City University, see. Well, it was easily enough fixed when I saw LOuKOFHAIR.
There is plenty of fun in the fill, from GREEKSALAD to CICADAS, TROIKAS to HOUNDS. I personally enjoy a lovely ADAGIO from time to time. The Barber Adagio for Strings is simply haunting. The second movement from Beethoven's Pathetique sonata is lovely.
- Colum
4:11
ReplyDeleteI thought of the kind of key in the atlas that shows the overall state, say, with little boxes showing which section of the state each box shows. I think of the other thing as more of a "legend," but it's probably six of one...
You don't hear the word GARRETS much. And I chuckled at the clue for TITAN (Giant ... with four of the five letters of "giant").
And I've never heard of a FLORIDAROOM either. In all my life. It's definitely a "sunroom" 'round these parts.
Enough with your murder hornets!
Those are Cicada Killers, not murder hornets! They do not attack humans and rid your area of cicadas.
DeleteI see your CuNY and raise you a suNY (although I admit that "Big Apple" would imply the city not the state so this wasn't a very good answer even though it is a real acronym for real schools).
ReplyDeleteThe theme was crisp. Four different kinds of keys. And as it turned out I got the revealer before the themers and was trying to figure out how they fit as I solved (which probably slowed me down but if so I have no regrets as this was an enjoyable task).
5:33
ReplyDeleteI always thought of the key in an atlas being the inset box that Colum mentions, whereas I thought of the item that Horace mentions as being an index. I've heard FLORIDAROOM at least as often as "sun room" because my mother, although she lives in Florida, refers to those rooms of hers as the former. The CLUE for ARK was a little long-winded and made the answer a bit too EASY, even for a Monday. Decent theme. We don't seem to have too many CICADAS around here; maybe we have a bunch of those pictured hornets, although I haven't noticed them.