It's Meta-Wednesday! The day when the puzzle refers to itself in odd ways. In today's example, the standard crossword puzzle cluing tradition of giving the number of letters in each word of a phrase is turned on its head. Instead, the numbers are RHYMING clues to the phrase. Thus, KEVINKLINE is clued with [7,9] appended. WARHERO gets [4,0]. Etc. It's a very clever and unusual touch, carried out across five theme answers.
But did you also notice that each digit from zero to nine is used only once? That's amazing that Mr. Aaronson was able to come up with answers that fit this requirement.
For funsies, though, we also get some nice long down answers like GASTROPUB (mmmmm... beer and burgers...) and INTHEZONE. The opposite of yummy comes in the symmetric space at 12D (MCDOUBLES). I mean, really? I'm not convinced by ROADFLARE. Isn't that just... a flare?
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Some C/APs I liked:
20A: Say "I dunno," say (ELIDE) - it's a nice palindromic clue and a surprising answer.
61A: Sandwich eaten next to a fire (SMORE) - more yummies.
38D: Stand no more, say (SIT) - indeed.
48D: Oversaw? (BINGE) - hah! I did not see that coming until I had all the crosses but the first letter.
Fun midday puzzle. Gives me hope that the week will only get better as we go into the Turn.
- Colum
Yes, the clues for ELIDE and BINGED are both very clever and original. GASTROPUB is a nice long down, I guess, but, to my ears, it has always sounded so pretentious. This is one of those themes that is much more impressive as an accomplishment than it is as a puzzle to solve for GREATFUN. But I'll take it on a Wednesday. Faster than a usual hump day solve for me.
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