I bet you don't know what's coming up this Saturday night. Nobody could see it coming, not in a thousand years.
What, you know? Did the puzzle give it away?
I'll tell you something, I'm no fan of Daylight Savings. Both the Fall and Spring hurt in a different way. In the Fall, you get an extra hour of sleep, but boy, does the darkness fall fast in the evenings. At least the Spring one gets you more sunlight (assuming you get sunlight where you live in March, which is no guarantee round here, let me tell you), but goldarn it, if you don't lose an hour of sleep.
But I'll tell you what I am a fan of, and that's a Thursday crossword puzzle. Today takes SPRINGFORWARD literally, by replacing times in three phrases or titles with one hour later. Thus "Darkness at Noon" becomes DARKNESSATONEPM. A "five o'clock shadow" is a SIXOCLOCKSHADOW. And finally, "Burn the midnight oil" becomes BURNTHEONEAMOIL.
Very cute, and well done, if you ask me, and all three have become 15-letter grid-spanners. Which means that none of those three phrases have ever appeared in a NYT crossword before.
Meanwhile, there's some fun and clever cluing going on, including two hidden capitals at 5D: Crow native to the Midwest (SHERYL) and 65A: Buzz in a rocket (ALDRIN). The first got me, the second did not.
If you're looking for a really good QMC example, look no further than 20A: Signs of something moving? (TEARS). That's excellent. And for a pretty darned good non-QMC, there's 46D: It gets you close to home (TRIPLE). That's baseball home. Finally, we get the two clues "Sound from a fan," which yields both WHIR and OLE.
I had fun with this one, so maybe that will help me get through this weekend.
- Colum
Crossword newbie here: what does QMC stand for?
ReplyDeleteQuestion mark clue.
DeleteWe are a little acronym-happy here, so if you run into any others you don't recognize, it's likely we just made them up, and you can find explanations here -
https://crossword14.blogspot.com/2020/01/glossary-specific-to-this-blog.html
This puzzle theme worked perfectly for me. I didn't know "Darkness at Noon" to be a thing, so when DARKNESSATONEPM happened, I was like, "well, ok." Then SIXOCLOCKSHADOW didn't feel just right, but I didn't stop to analyze it, because things were going along fine with the crosses. Finally, I got the revealer and then BURNTHEONEAMOIL and I laughed out loud, as the kids say. :)
ReplyDeleteThat TRIPLE clue was great. Another that got me was "Safari runner, at times" for IOS. Very nice.
I FWOE'd in 18:56 at the AWAY/SWOLE cross, where I'd entered a "t" because I read only the across and StOLE seemed fine to me. But of course AtAY makes no sense, and the quotation marks around "Jacked" makes SWOLE the only reasonable answer. Anyway, I enjoyed the theme, but I thought that OLE for 53D Noise from a fan was off just because there was no Spanish in the clue. Also, I am a big fan of DST, but not of Standard Time, so I'd be quite happy having the former around for the whole year, making that "standard." Most people aren't up early enough to justify having it become dark at 4:00 in the afternoon in the winter, and everyone loves extending summer evenings (except you joyless curmudgeons out there). At least standard time is observed for a relatively short period now. In my youth, the split was more even, as I recall. SHERYL got me, too, but ALDRIN did not.
ReplyDeleteSweet puzzle, and I love DST! In my youth -- I grew up in Michigan which really outta be CST but they state insists on EST -- and wow, did it stay light out long in the summer! We kids had to report home when the street lights when on...which, until our parents wised up, meant we could play outside until 10 PM or so!
ReplyDeleteWelcome, mer! Huygens "FWOE" means "Finished With One Error." Hope to see you again!
Thanks for explaining that to mer, Kelly! I guess I should have done so myself.
DeleteNah, it's okay...Horace gave mer the glossary link. (I was just kinda showing off) :-)
DeleteI did swear a few OATHS around that part of the puzzle. Had CloSE before CEASE, hadn't heard of SWOLE but knew it had to be that from the crosses, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut I thought the theme was really quite good. And I didn't have to BURNTHEONEAMOIL to figure it out, although I too didn't get it right at first.
Oh and I'm sure Sheryl Crow is a fine person but I have no regrets about all the time I spent reading lists of bird species in the crow family. Just because that's the sort of thing I'd do, quite aside from crosswords.
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