It's Thursday, and we all know that means to be on our toes! Today we encounter four odd entries - HIGLIDAYS, FRENCRNS, BEACUSES, and ELEVENTUR. (Ahh yes, ELEVENTUR... that one really ought to be a word.) Luckily, we also have a revealer in the center of the grid telling us to JUSTADDWATER, and when we add H2O (that's, two Hs and one O) the starred answers make more sense. FRENCRNS become FrencHHOrns, and BEACUSES become beacHHOuses. Much better.
I've seen rebus puzzles where you have to put [HHO] into one square, but I'm not sure I've seen this type of trick, where letters are simply omitted with no place to put them. I suppose Jeff Chen on xwordinfo.com will know whether or not this has ever been done before, but for me, it's new and I like it.
Some nice mid-length fill in the non-theme material. I tried "I'm with" for "Start of some souvenir shirt slogans" (IHEART) and "runways" for TARMACS (Airport aprons), and I really wanted "coffee" to fit where RHINO ended up (It has Javan and Sumatran varieties). Heh.
"Some street fights?" (DRAGRACES) and "See red?" (TURNALOSS) were tricky for me, but my favorite QMC today is "Punchy ending?" (ADE). Hah!
I don't typically equate RESISTS and "Counters," so that took a while, but many clues seemed pretty straightforward. Sometimes I think that the trickier the trick, the easier the surrounding clues. And I suppose that's fair. I came in at ten minutes, but I'm expecting the two speedsters I know to be well below that. Whatever your time, I hope you enjoyed it.
- Horace
Not too much below it (7:24). I liked this one particularly because the theme was well concealed and it took a while for the long clues to reveal themselves. A few major glitches .. as an old M*A*S*H fan, I threw ALDA in immediately, which caused chaos in the middle, and I confess to have been completely thrown by HIGLIDAYS. SNELL is new to me, and very cool! If you've never heard of a NAIL KNOT before, have a look. Also cool. And very fiddly. I tied one once and it took me forever..
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