PLAYING THE HITS
Playing with the titles of the hits, they mean. The theme answers, all top twenty hits (how is it possible that RUMOURHASIT only hit #16?), are clued with wordplay. "THE LADY VANI _ _ _ _ (#2, 1964)" for SHESNOTTHERE is a fairly straightforward one, but I spent quite a bit of time wondering about how ENT / CEMENT could clue COMEONEILEEN. The answer, that I found on xwordinfo.com, is that it is not "Ent over Cement," as I read it, but the entire word "enticement" (a come on) with the letter I italicized ("'I' lean"). Often, the final theme answer is the best, but for me, this one didn't work well at all. I blame the kerning.
Another one that took me a long time to CATCHON to was 93-Across, where letters spelling "Garland" have been removed from the sentence "change appearance to conceal and mislead," or, "disguise." Judy Garland isn't exactly current, and JUDYINDISGUISE isn't exactly a well-known (or good) song. CRIPES!
There's a lot more in here that was not to my liking, but I'm going to try to focus on things I did like, such as:
OTELLO (Opera with the aria "Ave Maria"). Good to know, I'll try to file that away. Also, since we're on the topic of opera, I'll be seeing Tosca soon, and when I mentioned that fact on the family zoom, one of my brothers kept asking me if Nessun Dorma was in it. But no, Dave, I looked that up today, and it's in Turandot.
The ALCAPONE quote "They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money" was somewhat amusing. And "SAAB story" was funny.
Oh, I can't help myself - GEARCASE? I've never heard it called that. It's a chain guard. Or is this for a motorcycle?... LIMEKILN? Ok. Whatever. DRLAO? RESECT, PONS, ILIA - I'm sure Colum will drop them in, and that's great, but me they did not ELATE.
I didn't love it.
- Horace
Cryptic clues - right up my alley!! But I have to confess, I didn't love this one either. The cryptic clues were on the clumsy side (he says snobbishly) and jeez, those songs .... Complain, complain complain.
ReplyDeleteOh! I filled the whole thing in without knowing what I was doing. Except I made a mistake in the upper East corner, putting in AWS, crossed by SEEDY, instead of AWW crossed by WEEDY. Sheesh. I didn't get the way to interpret the clues and admire those who did. But. I did look up JUDY IN DISGUISE. I vaguely remember that song, only I never learned the words -- somehow I thought it was "Judy in the Skies." I'm sad, though, that because of that lousy one mistake I wrongly finished the puzzle. Oh well...
ReplyDeleteI liked COMEONEILEEN a lot, personally; perhaps the italic I was better on the iPad. Of course PONS, ILIA, and RESECT were gimmes. But DRLAO? Heck, no.
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