Wednesdays gotta Wednesday, you know what I mean? The puzzles are not early week and thus straightforward, nor are they late week, and thus tricksy or just straight up tough. Mr. Tuffs's second puzzle in the NYT follows this trend, and does it in a fun way, I think.
The theme finds five different words that begin with "or," and where the rest of the word can be reparsed into a new word, and then clues them with cute either-or questions. Thus, ORLANDO, the city, is reparsed into 17A: "Who's your favorite roguish 'Star Wars' character? Han..." or Lando?
ORDEALS and ORCHARD work very nicely. ORANGERED is an acceptable color term, even if I don't come across it often, and I like how it's reparsed from "orange-red" to "or-angered." ORALIST is not exactly Google-worthy as a term. Apparently, it's one who supports the act of lip-reading for hearing challenged rather than sign language. A bit niche, but once again I like how it's reparsed to "or A-list."
The grid does not make for very smooth solving, a pet peeve of mine which I've learned shouldn't get in the way of a fun solve. I understand that breaking up the grid like this makes it open for more fun entries, so that's a trade-off I am willing to accept. Still, the SW and NE corners are nearly entirely separate puzzles, with only two single letter entries each.
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| ODDJOB |
On the other hand, we get the very excellent ADDISABABA in complete form, along with PATAGONIA, a place I'd certainly like to visit at some point in my lifetime.
In addition, I liked MARRIED crossing SAIDIDO, both clued with "Got hitched." I was not fooled in the least by 1A: Museum wings? (EMS), for once.
Finally, I will raise a glass for the reference to N.K. Jemisin's "Broken Earth" trilogy. They are outstanding works of speculative fiction with strong characters and the heartbreaking choices they have to make. However, I don't agree that they fall into the genre of FANTASY. There are plenty of unsubtle hints that it's futuristic human life, and that all of the events can be explained through technology rather than magic. To boot, the first novel won the Hugo Award for best Science Fiction novel.
All of which is to say, go out and read them.
- Colum
I haven't read the Broken Earth series, so I can't comment on that. But the Hugo award is explicitly for both fantasy and science fiction, though it does skew towards science fiction. The 2001 best novel was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which is not science fiction by any stretch.
ReplyDeleteCompletely fair...
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