Mondays are well known for being a tough thing to do right in the crossword world, but Ms. Lempel is a past master, as this grid demonstrates.
The theme is a non-revealed set of rhymes ending in [long-o]-L, but spelled differently each way in the wonder that is our shared English language. There are six (6!) of them, set up beautifully in the grid so that no down answer has to cross more than two of them. Funny to think of BILLYJOEL rhyming with LOSTSOUL and CEREALBOWL. I'm less convinced by CLEANCOAL: after a little research, it appears that such plants emit less carbon dioxide than older coal plants, but still far more than renewable energy.
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| BAUM |
I was slowed down at the outset by 3D: Perennial embarrassments for teens (PARENTS). I had the initial P and confidently dropped in PimpleS. Wrong. The actual answer is much better. Funnily enough, I ran into a problem in the symmetric spot at 41D: Grand speechmaking (ORATORY). Here I tried ORATion. Ah, well.
Not a ton else to talk about here. Mostly it's very clean, and the clues are straightforward.
The END.
- Colum
Bedevilled yet again by a stupid mistake - entered SEN not REP (hey, Canuck here), finished the lower right corner with just the Across clues so never checked the Down, and then blew 90 secs at the end figuring out what I'd done wrong. Sigh. lousy 4:32 Nice puzzle though. A wee bit tougher than usual Monday fare, I'd say
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