Monday, September 14, 2020

Monday, September 14, 2020, John Guzzetta

0:03:11

Hello, Dear Readers, it's me Horace again. I'm still on vacation, and I'm hoping that Frannie and Colum won't mind too terribly if I just take another week of reviews. What else have I got to do? 

To tell you the truth, I felt I had to take the reviews after 1A: Insect that builds a paper nest (WASP), because just yesterday I found one of those nests on a rafter tail on our house. I wanted to paint that rafter tail, but I didn't want to kill the wasps because they were native Northern paper wasps, which are not terribly aggressive and WORDIS they are largely a benefit, ecologically. I wanted to be like one who HASITBOTHWAYS, so I just removed their nest without harming them. Sorry guys, I hope you have time to build a nice new nest somewhere else before winter.

Also wanting to be one who HASITBOTHWAYS, Mr. Guzzetta has found four two-word phrases where the first word ends in "IT" and the second word starts with "TI." What won't these constructors think of!? My favorite is SITTIGHT ("Hold your horses!") because both parts of the C/AP are old-time folksy talk, and who doesn't like that? 

Remember Woodsy the OWL? He was one who gave a hoot about ECO issues. 

I enjoyed the central language quiz: Italian for "seven" (SETTE) and French for "here" (ICI). That language degree is finally paying off!

Nice nod to one of my U.S. Senators with "Nevertheless, SHE persisted," and I enjoyed the self-referencial "Do, as a crossword" (SOLVE). And ANYONE, makes me think back to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Anybody else go there too? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ...

- Horace

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4 comments:

  1. Kelly ClarkSeptember 14, 2020 at 2:25 PM

    Really sweet puzzle! I love it when I (A) have no idea what the theme is and (b) solve the revealer last, giving me that great AHA moment. Didn't know SASSON Jeans -- thanks for the image -- but that didn't matter. And loved the shout-out to my hometown baseball team!

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  2. Colum AmorySeptember 14, 2020 at 6:02 PM

    3:14
    Nice time, Horace! I noticed the pattern of ITTI but had no idea what the revealer was going to be until I finished the puzzle.

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  3. Jim KingdonSeptember 15, 2020 at 1:15 AM

    Not unusually for a Monday, my aha moment came not during the solve, but afterwards as I looked at the themers, looked at the revealer, looked at the themers, started to see some paired T's, looked at the revealer, thought to look for "it", and then it clicked to connect the paired T's with the paired I's in the "both ways" formation.

    I was really hoping that "sources of much spam" would be tinS. But that's probably just because I have Hawaii on the brain. I've been watching maps of west coast fire smoke going at least halfway to Hawaii and mentioned this to someone I know who lives in Hawaii who said "well yes we can see some haze at sunset". And of course where there is Hawaii there is spam (no, not the computer kind, the other kind). Oh well, I didn't really think it would "tins", I just hoped it would be.

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  4. HuygensSeptember 15, 2020 at 1:27 PM

    4:28
    We had a bicycle guide for riding down a mountain on Kauai that liked to purchase those sushi-roll-with-spam things for lunch. He'd go out surfing and leave the roll on his dashboard. When he'd come back in, he claimed it was heated up perfectly for him. Now that's livin'. Of course, he liked to "hang loose," not SITTIGHT. Decent theme and pretty well done. I needed all of the crosses for SASSON, which I never wore.

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