Hear me now and believe this later, I found that the top half of the puzzle went much more slowly than the bottom half. Although all of the phrases are perfectly cromulent, none of them came to me off the clue, which put the burden on the Down answers for this solver. I'm not familiar with cartoonist William STEIG, the ABEL prize, or Carson Daly's hosting efforts (THEVOICE). Those lacunae, combined with some other northerly Downs that didn't leap to mind made my start slower than molasses running uphill in January, as my mother used to say. Once I got to the midsection, with RIP, BIGSALE, and BOW, however, I was on a roll. Truth.
I love the words HORDE, GNASH, and AGOG. On the other hand, words and/or things on which I would have VOTEDNO, given the chance, are SCAB, PRAT, and TVADS, but as they say, there's no accounting for taste.
~Frannie.
I, too, needed many crosses for the theme answers, was not familiar with STEIG or ABEL and could've done without the answers mentioned by Frannie, although I didn't mind TVADS as much as she. CHILISAUCE doesn't evoke thoughts of anything very hot, and I wouldn't necessarily call it "seasoning," but that's fine. LOBO always reminds me of the short-lived "comedy" "The Misadventures of Sherriff Lobo" starring Claude Akins. I watched them all, but wasn't surprised when it was cancelled. At 7:47, my time was both normal for me for a Tuesday, and, EVENBETTER, reminds me of going places, eventually maybe to BONN.
ReplyDeleteSlow going for me. NO FRIGGIN' WAY sorta jumped out, but I, too, needed the crossers for many an entry. Didn't help that I had TAG SALE, rather than BIG SALE for a long time, which made getting BOUNTIES for [Awards for some hunters] a toughie. Nice long fill!
ReplyDeleteHey Huygens, I agree re. CHILISAUCE, which seemed kind of klunky. Also I'm a bit leery of implied apostrophes (NOFRIGGINWAY) but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteSilence of the Lambs is one of my favourite movies, and the book on which it's based is an excellent read, if you're into that sort of thing. Even better actually is its prequel Red Dragon.
I've discovered that these puzzles are posted around 10:00 ET the night before, so they've become part of my evening winding-down routine. 5:21 for me on this one.
Sunday and Monday come out at 6pm the day before!
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