There has been a little talk of quitting the blog recently, but there has never been any talk of quitting crosswords, and it's puzzles like this one that will keep me forever coming back to these black and white squares.
Mr. Steinberg - part wunderkind, part elder statesman in puzzledom - has put together a little gem for us today. Four CARs enter the grid from each of the four sides, and they are given the choice of a ROUNDABOUTROUTE. In other words, they hit a rotary with three exits. Or maybe you will think of it as a "traffic circle" if you're not from New England. In France, our GPS, Dominique, called them rond points. Anywho... we are given clues for each exit, and we encounter them, as one does in rotaries, in a counter-clockwise order. Maybe I should just give an example to make this easier.
A CAR enters the grid at 5-Down, and the clue there is "First exit: Floor covers • Second exit: Addition signs? • Third exit: Checking the IDs of." So, as the CAR hits the rotary, the first exit goes out directly to the left edge, following 19A "Pedometer unit" (STEP), which, when read backward, as if exiting the rotary, is "pets" and when put onto the end of CAR is "carpets," which are "floor covers." The second exit goes straight down using 23D "We come in peace" speakers, in brief" (ETS) giving "carets" (Addition signs?) (nice), and finally, the third exit is 20A "[Correct!] (DING) "carding" (Checking the IDs of). See? Nothing simpler.
An aside - I cannot hear the word DING without thinking of a time, long ago, when I was in a restaurant with friends, and when one in our party mentioned that they were considering the "chicken almond ding," another said, rather bombastically, "I don't want anything with 'ding' in it!" Maybe you had to be there. I've since been told that "ding" in Chinese cooking means something like "diced" and I know it's idiotic to laugh at language, but we were very young at the time, and sometimes things are funny when you're young and stupid. (Hey, this gives me an idea... maybe if I can get us "cancelled," I won't have to be responsible for the blog stopping...) (but wait... I guess I still would be...)
All right, so where was I? The other three cars enter the grid at 26A, 66D, and 54A, and each has three exit possibilities. It's a tiny bit unfortunate that 26A and 66D read as RAC, which is not a real word, but I think the cluing saves the day here, because we are not being asked for a real word going in the normal direction. Neither are we just given a dash. We are given the exits, and the CAR is assumed, and it needs to be entering the rotary from the proper direction. Gah! I'm talking way too much about this. I think you all get the idea by now.
Interesting clue for ANGELINA (Name derived from the Greek for "messenger"). The Greek word is "angelos," and "angela" is the feminine, and ANGELINA is the diminutive. Angels are "messengers" of God. Words are cool.
My favorite quadrant, if it can even be called that today, is the SE, with the lovely trio of AMBROSIA (Those who consume it become immortal, according to myth), DERELICT (Broken-down), and GODLESS (Unholy). So good.
OK, this is getting long. I really enjoyed this one. Not a rebus, as we often (petulantly) say, but a great start to the Turn nonetheless. Keep 'em coming!
- Horace
Once I figured out the trick here, I was wowed and humbled (by the genius of the construction). Really excellent puzzling, and I agree with Horace that it's gems like this one that will keep me coming back. Loved the ANGELINA thing, for obvious reasons for those who know me. HALTER would be nice (and is in the accompanying photo), but my grandmother always wore one in the summer, which puts me off it just a bit, not to speak ill if the dearly departed. Also, I love NASA and any CHATS that include a mention of SUNKCOSTS, so this gets an A+ in my book for many reasons, rotaries among them.
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