Happy Presidents' Day, everyone. It was not a holiday for me today (the hospital continues to have patients no matter what), but the NYT crossword celebrated it anyway, with a puzzle that felt about as old timey as any we've seen recently.
The theme is straightforward: three word phrases whose first letters are the same as the initials of various presidents, who are then bracketed in the clue by their president number (is that sort of like atomic numbers?). I could tell what was going on after entering 17A: On a whim [#35] (JUSTFORKICKS), and the rest sort of fell into place as I went along.
I say "sort of" because just what is a FAMILYDININGROOM? Is it different from a regular dining room? Worse, I originally had a "family dinner room," which made even less sense.
HAVINGSAIDTHAT, however, the others were much stronger. I like to think that GWB hasn't achieved nearly the recognition as a three-letter president name than the others, for obvious reasons. Although the actual reason is that we prefer to call him Dubya, for what it's worth.
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| Where OLAV is from |
Meanwhile, the fill was crazy old-school. YEGG?! I haven't seen that since the 1930s. Outside of crossword puzzles, that is. LIANA, EBAN, JONG, MAE, TRACY, AKELA, OLAV, DOC, ATESTS, and RCA - all of these are relics of a very long past crossword era. Trying to keep the spirit a little more up to date, MADEA, EARBUD, and ZUMBA do only a small amount.
In the end, I won't say UGH. Any puzzle that includes JODIE Foster is a win in my book.
- Colum
Was it just me, or was this harder than the usual Monday fare? We Canucks don't celebrate your PRESIDENTS of course, so here in Ontario we have made up our own substitute, the charmingly generically named FAMILY DAY. We celebrated with our boys with Moroccan chicken in the FAMILYDININGROOM :)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Philbo--considerably harder than an average Monday. I just finished today's (Tuesday's) in about the same time. Colum, here's a fun little how-de-do for you: (Maureen) DOWD--another oldie--comes down from the phrase for Harry S Truman, late in whose administration she was born.
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