Sunday, November 14, 2021

Sunday, November 14, 2021, Aimee Lucido and Ella Dershowitz

HEADS OF STATE

As the revealer explains, today's theme lays synonyms for "mind" over different states of matter. Thus, "brain" over "solid," "smarts" over "liquid," "wit" over "gas," and "noodle" over "plasma." Not a bad set. And the words themselves are hidden in longer phrases. I suppose the best one is POOLNOODLE since the meaning of noodle in this one is not at all related to the brain. Every other answer pretty much uses the key word in an unhidden way. Not that that bothers me terribly.

Mail, e.g. ARMOR from Higgins Armory

There are a ton of mid-length answers in this one that I like - OLEANDER (Poisonous shrub) always makes me hear Steely Dan's "My Old School" in my head ("Oleanders growing outside her door / Soon they're gonna be in bloom up in Annandale."), and likewise, since I've got music on the brain quite often, INFECTS (Passes along to, in a way) brings to mind The The's "Infected." IGNORATI (The uninformed masses, colloquially) is a fun one, and TUKTUK (Thai taxi with a repetitive name) makes me think of my brother, who loves to ride in those when he visits Thailand.

I didn't watch "Wolf Hall," but I probably should, because I hear CROMWELL mentioned a lot when I watch shows on BritBox, and I know almost nothing about that whole time in England. Frannie and I were just saying that we might try to make this coming winter into an extended "reading period," so maybe I'll break out some history books. 

I didn't love what I consider alternate spelling in HOWDEDO ("Afternoon, pardner!"), and little things like ERY, EAN, and AQI are never really great to run into, but overall, I thought this was a fine Sunday.

- Horace

1 comment:

  1. Wolf Hall and the second book, Bring Up the Bodies, were excellent reading, in my opinion. You probably know more about this period than you think you do, as Henry VIII's break from the Catholic church is usually a part of US History, as a way to set up the Puritans and their move to the New World. I thought this theme was very well done. I had no idea what was going on. I saw the words that were related to mind, but GASGIANTS didn't feel like it could be part of the same theme!

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