Like yesterday, today's theme struck me as somewhat surprising. The revealer, HERESTHEKICKER, introduces four theme answers famous for their footwork. We have a FOOTBALLPLAYER, ROCKETTE, UNBORNBABY, and a KANGAROO to boot. My TOPICS is Rockette because synchronized human movement always amazes me.
I was looking at 26A: "Unsolemnly swear" and didn't immediately guess the answer, so I flipped to the Down clue and saw "Murmur lovingly" - the contrast between the two connected answers (CUSS and COO) made me LOL. Answers that I eventually REDREW include "Put in the overhead bin, say" where I first tried 'cram' - we've all bin there, am I right? The answer was STOW, I'm told. I also decided it was safe to use DEFORM 'czar' instead of TSAR because Caesar was mentioned in the clue. OUST. :(
Some clues that gave me a kick:
"Shop for a loxsmith?" (DELI)
"Mined-over matter" (ORE)
"Top of the Highlands?" (TAM)
OBSTRUCTS and UPINARMS are fine fill. Also, I have a real fondness for the word SKIT. I find one doesn't encounter JAPES as often in the wild as one does in puzzles.
Apparently, I'm not quite a big enough Star Wars nerd to know ATAT, which stands for All Terrain Armored Transport. I also didn't know machines in movies were called AIS. My punt being that I'm always learning new things from doing the crossword puzzle - I consider it TINE well spent.
~Frannie.
I loved it! FWOE, neglecting to read the clue for TINE and just putting in TINA because, well, REDRAW works. Duh. But still I really enjoyed it, especially since I didn't fill in the reveal until almost the very end and I love when that happens.
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