Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Wednesday, February 2, 2022, Meredith Colton Hazy

Wordles on a Wednesday!

And so neatly partitioned as well. All of the theme combos whose missing words denote being on top of are above the nearly bisecting lines of black squares, while those whose missing words denote being beneath are under. 

It's very well accomplished, with BENDS[OVER]BACKWARDS and ACUT[ABOVE]THEREST, and then HITS[BELOW]THEBELT and WATER[UNDER]THEBRIDGE. I like how the antonyms are symmetrically placed. That's a lot of attention to detail.

TITIAN

And a lot of letters locked into place. This is how we get UBERED (acceptable) and LONDRES (fine), as well as INHIBITIVE - a nice long entry which lacks any regular day usage. It feels like perhaps "inhibiting" would have worked with some careful smithing in the SW corner. But then, I don't make these, do I? I just criticize.

Still, we also get TEETOTALER, ADOLESCENT, and LOSTCAUSES.

I liked 29A: One in peak singing condition? (YODELER) - that's cute. Another good QMC comes in the symmetric position at 46A: What might display a little spirit? (MINIBAR) - hah!

A little odd to see GOTHOT and HOTTEA in symmetric spots. I know that constructors like to avoid repeating words that are used in the same way in a puzzle. 

Overall a fun Wednesday that I finished in a visually pleasing 4:44. Congratulations to Ms. Hazy on her debut!

- Colum

1 comment:

  1. Hey, that was clever! I liked BREECH and BOLT side by side, both being (old-fashioned?) gun components. 4:34 for me.

    My sister got me onto WORDLE. I told her the original version had 6-letter words, but then a new 5-letter variant emerged, was much more contagious and swept the globe .... ah well, I amuse MYSELF at least ...

    ReplyDelete