Wednesday, July 13, 2022, Addison Snell

Interesting theme today. I'm not sure I've ever seen one quite like it. The theme clues are what you might call existential quotes, and the answers are the people to whom the quotes are attributed. The first is the question "'Who am I?'" and the answer is JEANVALJEAN, from Les Misérables. The following theme entries could be seen as replies to that initial question, from GLORIA GAYNOR's "'I Am What I Am'" to the classic from RENEDESCARTES, "'I think, therefore I am'" to everyone's favorite from POPEYE, "'I yam what I yam.'" The responses vary, but are they EQUAL? Maybe it's a question of you go YAHWEH, I'll go mine.

I was pleased to see ALBUS Dumbledore make an appearance. As our dear Readers may remember, there seemed to be a rash of Harry Potter clues in puzzles last summer (?) so I re-read all of the books to brush up. Since then, naturally, the fad has faded. What's the most important part about brushing up your arcane knowledge for puzzle solving improvement? Timing. 

I found it amusing that the puzzle included the clue "Primary place to park" (MAINLOT). I guess that's a thing? I thought the singular THROE for "Intense convulsion" was interesting, but also a bit unusual. "Love of soccer?" for NIL was amusing. Fill-wise, I enjoyed PEG, AQUAVIT, SMELT, and  BUSLANE. Less to my taste was IDEATE. I would not get AGRI if use of that word should CEASE.

And for those dear Readers who are following along with both this blog AND Wordle, you may be interested to hear that I did solve the puzzle first today and then chose EQUAL to use as my starting word for Wordle. ALAS - vague spoiler alert - 'equal' was NOT the Wordle word today. Maybe tomorrow. :)

~Frannie.