Sunday, October 17, 2021, Jeff Chen

COMMON CORE

Hey everyone! I'm back again, once again filling in for Frannie this week. As Horace said, Sunday is its own thing within the crosswording week. It's a mega-size grid, allowing for longer theme answers and a more involved theme overall.

Today's is sort of an odd duck. There are five clues in addition to our standard acrosses and downs, which are described as being "diagonal" in the additional information section of the iPad app. And they are diagonal, of a sort, allowing for the long center section which runs along with a longer across answer. And it's this shared set of letters that leads to the title of the puzzle, a "common core." Which, by the way, is a really terrible way to try and organize education, but there it is.

I'm impressed by the way the shared letters get reparsed from one answer to another. ROGETSTHESAURUS, which is two words, also makes up part of HITSTHESAUCE, three words. Similarly, PATRONOFTHEARTS turns into SOFTHEARTED. It's very nice work. Of course, my favorite has to be BOACONSTRICTORS and BACONSTRIPS. Mmmm. I had some this morning and was instantly uplifted. I mean bacon, of course. Not very large snakes.

There are some fun clues today, like 67D: Step two? (FEET). Hah! Even better is 108D: Summer worker, in brief? (CPA). See, they do sums, get it?

I liked that HYENAS and SCAR both made an appearance with references to The Lion King. 

On the other hand, isn't it telling that the GSPOT is named after a man?

Finally, let's give a nod to the TOCCATA. One of my favorites is by... (wait for it)... Maurice Ravel!

I wonder if any of our readers have given him a listen since my earlier set of references?

- Colum