Friday, October 8, 2021, Yacob Yonas

Good morning! I'm getting an earlier start on the review today thanks to sheer will power - and setting up a script to run in the background. :) When this work project is finally finished, I will celebrate with a dirty MARTINI! I'm pretty sure Horace will want to join me. 

Our vigilant readers will have noted the pleasing parallels in a number of the clues in today's puzzle, starting right off the bat with 1A: "Epiphanies" (AHAMOMENTS) whose "Bud" is clued identically, at 57A, but whose answer is EYEOPENERS. And speaking of "Bud" both of the above clues are crossed by another set of parallel clues at 2D and 49D (HOMIE and MATE, respectively). In another nice clue parallel, there are two 'art' clues in the top left quadrant. I am sufficiently up on my art history to have guessed TOMATOSOUP for "Classic Warhol subject", but I first picked 'irisES' over LILIES for O'Keeffe's classic subject, causing a slight slowdown. 

The puzzle provided AMPLE enjoyment throughout. There were deceptively simple but ambiguous clues aplenty - like I like. In each case below, the answer seemed obvious once I got it, but my first choice [in brackets] was off the mark.

"Get into" [take an interest] (ACCESS)

"Object" [voice disapproval - as in "One who objects to screw caps, say"] (THING)

"Packs" [gets ready for a trip] (MOBS)

"All there" [complete] (SANE)

"Jersey greeting" [S'up] (MOO) - LOL

I had another near-Natick experience at the cross between 37A ("Model/TV personality Chrissy who wrote the cookbook series 'Cravings'") and 30D ("Eponym for an Italian ice chain"). Luckily, I guessed T for TEIGEN and RITA, which was correct, staving off the dreaded FWOE. 

What's a Friday puzzle without some clever QMC clues?  Here are my favorites:

"Obtain a sum via special relativity?" (INHERIT)

"Cry heard at a shoe auction?" (SOLED)

"Shortening used in many recipes" (TSPS) - genius!

I also very much enjoyed the clue "A bit too articulate, perhaps" for GLIB, and TANKARD and STIPEND as fill. Taken all together, these nice touches are SINES of a fine puzzle in my book. 

~Frannie.