Don't be too disappointed, it's me back again after a fun appearance by Cece yesterday. But we get a find and tasty puzzle to make up for it.
The revealer comes at 34A: Turned out successfully ... or what the parents of 16-, 19-, 52- and 57-Across did? (BOREFRUIT). Amusing to think of these four sets of parents coming to the nursery and looking through the window to find a berry, a plum, a peach, and an apple instead of newborns. Do you think MELONS should have been changed to keep the theme cleaner? Tough to rank these four stars, but I'd put FIONAAPPLE first, followed by HALLEBERRY, PROFESSORPLUM, and PRINCESSPEACH.
There are two real life and two fictional personages represented, so that's symmetric. And the placement of the theme answers in adjacent rows is attractive. There are a ton of black squares in the middle, which serve to reduce the number of down answers that have to cross three theme answers to two total. 17D: Save the day (BEAHERO) is fine, but DUALIPA is excellent. If you haven't twigged to her really fun release Future Nostalgia from the midst of the pandemic, you've missed out.
Cute that ONCE and WAS are both clued by their respective positions in limericks. I also like it when two countries are cross referenced like JORDAN and ISRAEL here. Somehow, though I would love it if they could be in the correct positions in the grid with the former to the east of the latter. But perhaps that's just blowing raspberries.
Marty MCFLY is always a fun reference. One of the all time great movies, in my opinion. Amy POEHLER is an amazing comic, and I used to love Johanna SPYRI's Heidi in my day, so all around good times.
FTW indeed!
- Colum
Another fun puzzle - I admire the creativity behind themes like these. I entered BETHERE instead of BEAHERO, which wreaked the expected havoc and cost me loads of time to unwind (cuz, you know, BETHERE *had* to be right). 5:02 when the dust settled.
ReplyDeleteCMON, HALLEBERRY cannot be second. I DEFY it! LOCO!
ReplyDeleteCertainly FIONAAPPLE is first among the bunch; there's no contest there. I'm pretty sure I've never enjoyed a TAQUITO, and noting its similarity to a "flauta" did not help. Luckily, the crosses were quite fair. Nothing terribly CRAPPY in the grid, and in fact if it contains FIGARO and JEDI, along with the other people previously mentioned, it's OK in my book. I never saw ITONYA, but am not against it. It's difficult to keep up with all of the good movies and TV shows nowadays (especially the latter). I thought that I'd erred when I had _CFL_, not immediately remembering the character's last name, but when I got the "M" I figured it out and let out a YUK. 7:37 for me. LATER.
ReplyDelete