Rebus alert on a Wednesday! And 12 of them, too, with three each in the four theme answers. Very nice! I hope Thursday can step it up tomorrow.
The revealer is in the middle of the puzzle at 39A: One serving punch? ... or, parsed differently, a hint to 12 squares in this puzzle (BOXER). First of all, congratulations for using a QMC for the revealer, and an amusing one as well. Secondly, I love parsing things differently. We all could stand to parse a little differently from time to time in non-crossword puzzle life. Here, you have to place a space between the X and the E to make "box ER," meaning the rebus will be the two letters ER.
The theme answers are F[ER]R[ER]OROCH[ER], ROG[ER]FED[ER][ER], W[ER]EOV[ER]H[ER]E, and BORD[ER]T[ER]RI[ER]. I'm impressed with coming up with two 13-letter and two 12-letter answers that can then be boiled down to 10- and 9-letter entries.
Now, I knew something was up when I hit 4D: Assert. That is always either "avow" or AV[ER], and neither of those fit into three letters. I figured out the necessary rebus when I got to 9D: Oracle (SE[ER]), and then everything fell into place.
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| My daughter's fave EMOBAND, MCR |
In the fill, I love OHHELLYEAH. Great piece of colloquialism, and I imagine the person saying it suffering 28D: Temporary embarrassment in a public competition, figuratively (BLOODYNOSE) just moments later.
Other fun C/APs include:
58D: Two-thirds of 100 (Z[ER]OS) - not 66.66666666666...
22D: Cutesy sound that may accompany a poke (BOOP). Reminds me of "Festible poking." Ask Horace for clarification.
7D: Unleaded, so to speak (DECAF).
Fun stuff!
- Colum
Let's try again...fun stuff indeed! The "BOX ER" dictate cracked me up and I love all the entries and bonus fill. Terrific time, once the penny dropped!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had suspicions when "beer me" and "alert" seemed to be a letter off, I really got serious about themes on "amber". But I was still trying out A[MB]ER and AM[BE]R before settling on AMB[ER] after which most of the rebus squares started working quite quickly.
ReplyDeleteI was struck with how ROG[ER]FED[ER][ER] was made for this puzzle.
I figured this one out on FERREROROCHER (which I'd had no idea how to spell) by getting its crosses in the key areas (IB[ER]IA, AV[ER] and SE[ER]). It helped that I knew how to pronounce it, and knew that was the answer. Anyway, figuring out the surprise Wednesday rebus relatively quickly certainly helped with the solve time, which was a bit slow for a Wednesday, but fast for a rebus puzzle at 16:02. Two dog breeds in the grid (if we don't count the otherly-clued BOXER) is a little too many for my taste (which tends to Z[ER]OS, but please don't write to me of your love of dogs and my obvious shortcoming in that area. In my defense, I'm fine with the other animals in the grid (LEOPARD, HARE) because they at least have the decency to stay outside and, for the most part, not harass me on my way to the mailbox.
ReplyDeleteFestival poking is over!
ReplyDelete