Today's puzzle is very impressive from a construction point of view, but I liked the fill as well, so it's a win-win!
There are five theme answers and a grid-spanning revealer at 7D, crossing every single one of those theme answers. 7D: Part of a blackjack dealer's ritual ... or what this answer is doing vis-à-vis the answers to the starred clues (CUTTINGTHECARDS). And indeed, 7D crosses over words that can be combined with "card" to make a common phrase. Thus, "picture card," "gift card," "note card," "dance card," and "credit card." That must have taken some doing to make it work.
I think "cutting the deck" is a little more common parlance than the answer in the grid. And to be fair, no blackjack dealer in any normal casino will ever have a deck, but rather a shoe with multiple decks in it to stop people from card counting. Also, I think most people would say "open book tests" rather than OPENNOTETESTS, but the idea's the same.
Love MOONDANCE, and the clue's great, so that's excellent, as is The LASTPICTURESHOW, with a young Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges!
With this much theme material, the fill is bound to suffer some, but the clever partitioning allows for chunky NW and SE corners, with the nice OHITSYOU and DEADLINE. 40D: Popular New Year's resolution (GETFIT) had me scratching my head for a sec when I thought it might be an A instead of the I.
55A: Like some long trains (BRIDAL) is a great piece of misdirection. And the two languages FARSI and HINDI sharing their I was lovely (not to mention the unexpected XIANG on a Tuesday).
I can put up with RSS SHO ETES for all of that.
- Colum
But can we put up with POLLER? C'mon. "Pollster" is fine, no? But POLLER? And right at 1D. If it weren't for the density of theme material and the other interesting fill, I'd have remained set against this puzzle, but the grid was eventually redeemed with those positive attributes. Also, I was thinking GETFaT at first, too.
ReplyDeleteWe had open book tests, open note tests, and open book open note tests those were different things when was in school. They are pretty self explanatory as far as differences go but I guarantee there were tests where we could use any notes we took in class/or made during studying but not use the text book.
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