When I saw Mr. Quigley's name on this puzzle, I confess to feeling a little worry creep over me. And, 15 minutes later, as I stared at the remaining two blanks in the top right, I got a FWOE-y feeling in the pit of my stomach. But, suddenly, somehow, I figured out the excellent clue "King-like, in a way." I was thinking along the lines of "majestic" but it turned out to be MACABRE - ha! All was right again with the world. With the B of MACABRE was in place, I realized I did know "Streisand role in 'Funny Girl'", (BRICE), but I knew it just a little too late. :)
Today, we have an interesting phonetic theme - the key sound in each answer is also a letter of the alphabet. This twist makes me prefer the answers without an actual c in them like PRESEASON and NOSEEUMS (an entertaining answer on its own), but the best one has to be TAXICAB - even though it has the letter C in it, the phonetic C sound comes from the XI. Lovely.
Other clues of note: "Turn into a cliché" (OVERUSE) and "It's a start" (INTRO) - apt! I also love the word POSIT. SIROCCO is nice, too. UNAGI is KOFCAesque for this solver. I had to look up GORDO, which is a funny word because it seems to sound like what it means.
I'm don't love a "quote" clue, like "Yep, took care of it!" at 1A (SUREDID) mainly because they are rarely entertaining, but also because I hardly ever think the two phrases are equivalent. That being said, I thought that far from rating a MIDDLEC, the rest of the C/AP's today were well above average.
~Frannie.
Speaking of Mitchum, I just watched "El Dorado" at Amazon's suggestion, even though it's over two hours long. It was entertaining, but was no "Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (referring to the other main star in the movie). It was made in the year of my birth, and starred, in addition to the two main characters, James Caan and Christopher George as well as that crosswordese Ed Asner (although he was billed as "Edward Asner"). Anyway, I'm a fan of MIDDLEC and now that Frannie told me what the theme was, I like it, but I don't think it qualifies as a Thursday. I never heard the word SIROCCO and needed crosses for the correct AKIHITO spelling, but the rest was fine. MACABRE's clue was definitely excellent. 23:47
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