Wednesday, October 26, 2022, Simeon Seigel

Today's theme answers are sixteen-letter noun phrases, or in one case, a proper noun that are clued as if they were composed of four, four-letter words or ALLFOURS. For example, the clue for 18A is "Patsy + French 'to be' + Singe + Pop queen = Sales wonk" or MARK ETRE SEAR CHER. I don't know how people think of these things, although, I suppose if one were stuck in a boring meeting led by or about market researchers, one might find one's mind wandering to just this sort of re-parsing. I think it's pretty cool that the constructor found four such, but I think it would be a tad cooler if you could find ones that didn't make use of proper names like CHER, ALIS, and ILYA, but maybe that requires a MASTERSTRATEGIST.

I especially enjoyed the mix of old and new in the puzzle. How about these pairings? "Quaff of gruit and wort, in days of yore" (ALE) and "Slangy request at a kegger" (BEERME), "'Interwebz" (THENET) and "Radio toggle" (AMFM), plus the fun rhyming pair, DRAM and CRAM. 

There were several C/AP's I liked including "Be nosy" (PRY), "Give a few laughs" (AMUSE), "Flat ... or inflate?" (PAD), "Part of a stable diet?" (OAT), and my favorite of the day, "Co. making arrangements" (FTD) - ha!

As I'm sure was intended, I was kerflummoxed by the clue "Sound emitted by methane emitters." Luckily, the Down answers in that section came to my rescue. I don't know if I would ever have come up with MOO on my own. Other clues that made me use my NOODLE were "Regards" for APPLIESTO, "Incline" for RAMP, "Tag, key or chip, say" for MAR, and "Thrill" for SEND. III! One QMC I still not CLEAR on is KNEE for "Bend it, like Beckham?" I mean, I know David Beckham was a soccer player, but is he (or are they) really known for bending their knees, or does it refer to something else entirely? The meaning was not READILYAVAILABLE to me.

~Frannie.