FWTE
What?
Two days in a row?
How can that be, you ask?
Well, he answered glumly, I started by popping sALtS in at 1A: Bath powders (TALCS), and didn't look back. Did I see sAP and wonder what kind of dance genre that was? Yes. Yes, I did. Did I look at good ol' tOKIE Roberts and think, that doesn't seem quite right? Why yes, yes I did. But it wasn't enough.
Anyway, enough about my sad failings as a crossword puzzle solver. Let's turn our attention to the theme, which is revealed across the middle of the grid with ICANSHOW/YOU/THEWORLD, the opening line to the hit duet/ballad from Disney's Aladdin, "A Whole New World." And an instant gimme to this movie goer.
So we get four 11-letter answers that answer that phrase in clever ways. I like POCKETATLAS and GOOGLEEARTH best, but the other two are excellent as well. Very nicely done theme, and with 61 squares of theme material, extremely dense. The grid is nicely set up that there's little overlap, with the exception of the stacked theme answers in the middle of the puzzle.
 |
| PALEBLUEDOT |
Which does force us to have TWOTO as an actual puzzle answer. You know. Like "three past." Or "twenty-one minutes of." But I see how it was necessary, and I accept it in order to make the theme work.
I'm also impressed that our constructors managed to squeeze in SCAREDYCAT and POPEMOBILE. That's some fine grid work. In the interests of fairness, I will note the large number of three-letter abbreviations, like LLC IRA GPA TSA DEA ATM ESL ERA. That's a lot (sorry Bruce for yesterday's review! I must have been cranky).
But overall I enjoyed it.
- Colum
You're losing it, Mr. Amory! Must be the continuing stress of Covid. I didn't DNF, but I did type in "sidES" for "Pyramids typically have eight of them." Classic case of severely limited thinking. Geometric figure--first part that comes to mind--hey, it fits! Fortunately the downs quickly illuminated my idiocy. I love POCKETATLAS too. So charming and quaint! Were they ever a thing? I might've even had a pocket dictionary, but a POCKETATLAS?? Of course, now everybody has a pocket atlas. I'm not crazy about the grid: weird assortment of black squares in the middle. Fine Tuesday overall, though. Good theme, plenty of nice fill.
ReplyDeleteColum, Colum! Here are two constructors who just this last week became engaged! To be married!!! You know...to each other! So. I mean they coulda -- so could Will, BTW!!! -- have clued TWO TO in any other way. It's a partial, yes, but a 5-letter partial is perfectly legit. ___ tango and many more. Oh...stop me I'm about to cry at at a wedding that hasn't even happened yet. :-)
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