So it turns out AMFAR (Org. for H.I.V. prevention and study) has been around since 1985, but I've never heard of it. And off of that comes the odd ATCAMP (Spending time away from parents for the summer, say) and the partial MAHI (When doubled, a brightly colored fish). A bit of a THUD for me. See also SIGEP (Skull-and-crossbones fraternity, for short).
On the brighter side, we've got MOONROVER (Wheeled vehicle designed to function in low gravity), DECADE (Twenties or fifties, but not fives) with its nice clue, and the all-too-uncommon TRUCE (Agreement to end a feud).
Lots of French entries today. The pair of "French farewell" answers - ADIEU and AUREVOIR, and then PARFUM and INGENUES.
And then there's the clever theme of HOPPINGMAD, where circled letters span a black square to form the words "livid," "fuming," "angry," and "irate." It's a strong theme, and I guess we need to allow for certain exigencies in the grid.
- Horace
Didn't like it and I'll tell you why. The intersection of AMFAR and REI, neither of which acronym was familiar to me (though the latter should be, it's shown up countless times). This led to guesswork and eventually a FWOE, pretty much a first for a Monday. Oh well.. #grump off
ReplyDeleteSIG EP was almost my downfall but I put it in because everything else fit...to my amazement, it was correct. I struggled so much with that section that I missed the theme entirely until I looked at the finished puzzle. Nice theme!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I knew both AMFAR (having been in the gay community and thus HIV adjacent almost that long) and REI, I can see how crossing them is a bit of a Natick especially on Monday.
ReplyDeleteAs for your thuds, SIGEP thudded the hardest for me although I didn't really have much doubt about any of the crosses.
ALLAN as opposed to some other spelling was the big one when we were talking about this on Mastodon, but at least for me I got that from HAIFA.
The theme made up for the THUDs in my book. Definitely some non-Monday crosses in there, though, which led to an almost seven-minute solve for me. Too much French in there for my taste, but it's always nice seeing FIONA, even though the fictional ogre is referenced, and not the great Apple.
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