Well, this was an odd one. Fellow blogger Amy Reynaldo over at Diary of a Crossword Fiend invented the expression "Tuesdays gonna tuez," to express how strange Tuesday puzzles often are, but for me, at least lately, I think "Wednesdays gonna wooz."
I mean, just look at it! As the man says, THATSABIGIF! When I opened the puzzle and saw it my first thoughts went to Rudyard Kipling, and I wondered if we'd have a poetry-themed puzzle. Wouldn't that have been DANDY. But no, DONTYOURFRET, IDSAY we're not likely to see that anytime soon.
Clearly, though, the biggest if of all is the SUNRISEMOVEMENT. Good luck to 'em. Saving the EARTH from its "smartest" inhabitants? THATSABIGIF. Sure, recycle all the PAPER you want, there's still going to be a lot of ASH.
Sorry, that got dark. I seem to have a tendency to drift that way.
Does anyone remember AIRTRAN? I don't. Jet Blue fit in there, but I already had way too much to try that. And speaking of - this went pretty fast for me. Not Colum and Philbo fast, but 8:16 felt pretty quick for such a strange grid. No real SOS spots, aside from that airline, that is...
In the end, a change is as good as a rest, right? I, for one, am a fan of the new Wednesdays gonna wooz movement. :)
- Horace
p.s. Congratulations, Mr. Yamada-Hunter, on your NYTX debut!
I liked the novelty of this one, though maybe all the long downers/short acrossers wouldn't be my every-day cup of tea. AIRTRAN was/is unknown to me - emerged purely from the crossers. I smiled at HABANEROPEPPERS because this summer we put in a garden for the first time and planted a variety of peppers, among other things, and for some reason (climatic maybe?) the HABANEROs and the GHOST PEPPERs went hog-wild and now we have waay more than we know what to do with. Neighbourhood chemical warfare maybe? You're not supposed to even touch the Ghost Peppers without gloves on. "Philbo fast" was a decent 4:54 today. Chances are "Colum fast" was lower than that....
ReplyDeleteHey, fun! I liked it because it was akin to solving a themeless with a HUGE leg up...I plopped in the central entry without even reading the clue...and I was right! The long fill is terrific and, among the plethora of 3-letter words, nothing too awful...I mean, you know, threes are gonna wheeze...
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's good. I'll be using that one. "Threes gonna wheeze..." :)
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