Wouldn't the "Cartesian sum?" be je suis? It's likely that he really did write it in Latin, but if he didn't, it would have been French, right?, not English. Strange clue.
The theme, on the other hand, I like. ITSALOTTOUNPACK explains it. Part of me wishes that the rebus ran from top left to bottom right, but I'm sure it was already hard enough to make it progress in an orderly way from top to bottom. And it unpacks from right to left both in the grid and in the letters as it moves down. Quite elegant, really.
What about the "containers?" Well, I liked ANDTHATSSAYING[ALOT] ("So many layers here" ... or a hint to the circled squares) (interesting that they gave this clue so soon), but CALIFORNI[ALO]TTO (Contest for millions on the West Coast), was a little dull. I guess "lotto" is now understood as another word for "lottery," and it did have a cute clue. So okay. ALOEVER[AL]OTION (Popular skin moisturizer) is maybe the flattest overall. Boring answer, boring clue. And then the revealer is solid.
Boy, it sounds from my review so far that I didn't really like this one, but I did enjoy it while I was doing it, and I think it's a cool trick. So let's look at the fill.
I enjoyed the unusualness of SNAZZ (Spiff (up)), and the "It's a good look" (SCAN)/"It's a bad look" (SNEER) combo was fun. I had a little slowdown when I guessed PIEcrust for "Quiche base," which led me to enter cApo for "Family man." I guess I was thinking "family" meant "mafia." As we've said many times on this blog, it's odd what the brain will do to make its guesses seem acceptable to itself.
You know, Frannie had the idea a while back to use a five-letter word from the puzzle as her Wordle starting word every day, so I've been doing that myself lately. But today, there are very few five-letter words in the puzzle that don't also have a double letter, and while I'm not against guessing words with double letters, I don't usually do so in my first guess. There's SENOR, but I wonder about foreign languages and the Wordle database... and then there's TUBED, but I generally steer clear of inflected words unless I'm forced down that path... so today I just thought up a non-puzzle-related word. Fascinating, I know, and just what you came here for...
So anyway, that's my review. How do you pick a starting Wordle word? Are you one of the sheep who always uses "adieu?" or do you mix it up every day like the Franster and me?
- Horace
Baa! Baaaa!! I use ATONE every day, but of late I've been thinking it'd be more fun if I mixed it up every day. My brother in law uses the previous day's word, which I think is a neat idea.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good puzzle; interesting concept and nice clues. I blew it though - FWOE thanks to ANNE not ANNA and not noticing the nonsensical LESS as the crosser. Oh well. I blame the COVID booster I got yesterday, which has knocked me on my butt today...