So, it's 2022. The most twos in a year for another 200 years. Pointless, but curious.
Today we get a riff on the apocryphal story of NEWTON coming up with the eureka (IGETITNOW) for the LAWOFGRAVITY when an apple falls on his head. According to History.com, however, he was inspired when, as a child, he saw an apple fall from a tree. Just not on his head.
The grid has five apple varieties "hidden" in longer phrases. I imagine it would be next to impossible to truly hide these names in phrases. Of course, I like 69A: Birthplace of five U.S. presidents, with "the" (EMPIRESTATE) the best, seeing as that's my current home state. And we're known for our apples. I'd always assumed that the Rome apple came from local region township, Rome, NY, but instead it comes from Rome, OH.
In addition to all of the apples, Mr. Polin has included four phrases relating to gravity, all in the down answers to either side of the central apple-tree like structure. Thus we get WEIGHTYMATTER and FORCEOFNATURE, along with the more direct COMEONDOWN and FREEFALLIN.
Finally, do we think that 9D: Hardly a lover of hot wings? (ICARUS) is a sly nod to the theme?
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| CERN large Hadron collider |
There's always a price to pay for a high density of theme material, and it comes in the shape of things like ETH, SEAEEL, TERRIF, and NAJAF. Nonetheless, there was a lot of fun to be had in the solve.
Some C/APs I liked included:
41A: Spade with a short handle? (SAM)
75A: Just roll with it! (DIE)
106A: Small section of a pit (OBOES)
Well, that's all from me today. Thanks for Horace and Frannie for the last two weeks of reviews. Hopefully we can finally get together at some point this year... maybe even at the ACPT?
- Colum
Haven't done a Sunday for quite awhile, so maybe that partly explains my difficulty with this one. Enjoyed the apple/gravity theme, even though I DNFed because I never changed CATNiP (which I actually think is a funnier answer for "means of a quick recharge.") Agree with all of your highlights. I think NAJAF--even though I have never heard of it--is just fine. It's apparently a city of a million people and, as suggested, an important Shia spiritual center. I always like learning things from puzzles. TERRIF, on the other hand, is awful. Nobody says that, do they? Awf, just awf.
ReplyDeleteI really loved the clue for ICARUS. Thank you for explaining the wider theme.
ReplyDeleteI had a hard time with this one, too. It took me twenty minutes longer than last Sunday's puzzle did!
ReplyDeleteIt's timely for me, too, as I am right now reading "How the Universe Got Its Spots" by Janna Levin. In it, she talks about General Relativity, which altered the understanding of Gravity that Newton provided. For the purposes of this puzzle, though, Newton's idea works just fine. :)