ANGSTY is an apt start to today's puzzle for this solver. After my first pass through the Across and Down answers in the top half of the puzzle, I ended up with a SUMS total of three semi-confident entries: INTO, OLIVE, and NELLIE - that's it. To make matters worse, I took a few wrong turns. For "Shady spots" at 1D, I tried very hard to get 'groves' to work, going so far as to consider 'gnarly' for "Like the emo genre." Also tricky were RESTAURANT for "Wait here!" and BLUESMUSIC for "Holiday production?" - the latter because I didn't notice the hidden capital. Derp. At that point, I thought I was in for a long haul. Fortunately, however, I fared somewhat better in the lower half of the puzzle, ending with at time of 22:54 - not bad on a Saturday for this solver.
The southeast corner fell the fastest. I guessed CPR off the clue "Breathing exercises, in brief?" and then was able to CASHIN on that answer to get the corresponding Downs, although I did first try PrimpS for PREENS ("Gets ready for a date, maybe"). I TROOPED on from there, through the rest of the puzzle in an ever-expanding circle around the fun centerpiece BIZARROWORLD. The trip included such highlights as "'Thanks, Captain Obvious!'" (GEEYATHINK), "Main course?" (SEAROUTE), and "It's not a good look" (SNEER), plus fun fill like PENUMBRA, RUMINATE, the delicious HAMUP, and my favorite, NERDPROM. How do I get invited to that?!?
Well, dear Readers, as the puzzle week draws to a close, my time HASOVER. I leave you in the capable hands of my esteemed co-blogger Colum Amory. To him I say, GONUTS.
~Frannie.
This was a real slog for me. There were times that I thought of just taking a DNF and TITT like the old days. However, like Frannie, I too TROOPED on, ending in the NW with the "G" of ANGSTY/GSUITE. Did anyone notice that offIcE fit there and gave two good crosses? Also, did people notice that eLfEnMagIC fit where BLUESMUSIC goes, yielding five good crosses? Finally, emag fits where ZINE goes. All of these erroneous entries helped me clock in at 50:23, but at least I had no errors when it was all said-and-done. I loved PENUMBRA and thought the clue for LIZARD was good, too (24D Monitor, e.g.). ARTFULLY done.
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