COLOR MIXING
Well, I don't know if any of you get The New Yorker, but they had a "Cartoons & Puzzles" issue a couple weeks ago, and Mr. Pasco was a co-contributor for what they called "The Impossible Crossword." Frannie and I worked together on it, and nearly finished using the "Hard" clues. Finally, the cross of "Object carried by an egbere, a Yoruba forest spirit" and "Donkey: Basque" pushed us to peek at the "Easy" clues, which, for the same two were "Welcome ____ (object in front of a door)" (MAT) and "In re" (ASTO).
So anyway, all that in order to say that I flinched a bit when I saw his byline again so soon. But in the end, I finished sub 15:00, which is certainly one of my fastest times ever for a Sunday.
I was fully expecting a theme involving actual color mixing - like "blue sky" crossing "red rooster" and you have to put "purple" instead of both colors ... something like that - but instead, it was a simple anagram situation. "CORAL + GOLD = pet store purchase," for example, yielded DOGCOLLAR, and "LIME + MAGENTA = visualization" gave MENTALIMAGE. It's a nice trick, finding so many entries that could be broken down into two colors. I suppose there must have been a computer program* that helped with this, but if not, it's an even more impressive feat.
In the fill, it was surprising to find the long answer PRIDEPARADE (Christopher Street Day celebration) in the grid two days in a row. And its symmetrical partner ASTRONOMERS (Ones doing stellar work) had a fun clue. REMITTANCE (Payment sent) was a little less exciting, but still, it's not a word you run into every day in a crossword.
"Dis-tressed" (BALD) was funny, "Homophone of the sum of this clue numbers digits" (ATE) got an A for effort, and "'Jung at heart' persona?" (ANIMA) got a groan.
Overall, a fine Sunday.
- Horace
* There was a computer program involved, but Mr. Pasco wrote it himself!
No comments:
Post a Comment