Two debuts in two days! Welcome, Ms. Gervase! It's great to see new faces (or just names in the app) in the constructors' community.
Today, we take four flower names and reinterpret them literally with wacky clues. Thus, BABYSBREATH is clued as "What might smell of Gerber products?" My favorite is 33A: The third "little pig," with his house of bricks? (WOLFSBANE). That's great. I also enjoyed LADYSLIPPER - do I sense a sort of fairy tale minitheme? 40A: Award for a champion angler? (GOLDENROD) is also very good. I'm sure there are many other similar opportunities for amusement - perhaps this could have made a larger puzzle, except that the answers aren't really long enough for a typical Sunday size grid.
The NW and SE corners are almost completely segmented from the rest of the grid, but the crosses were all fair and straightforward, so they didn't add too much time. Ms. Gervase was able to add in EVILGENIUS and HOUSEPARTY as fun long down answers. I also liked ANTEATER with its 2-foot long tongue (!).
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| JETS |
Is a small ear of corn really known as a NUBBIN? Apparently so, I have discovered after googling it. The word dates at least from the 1690s in the Americas, referring to corn. How surprising!
The only entry I did not like was 21D: "Fer ____" (SHER). I found the solve a little slow-going, in large part because of guessing "crumb" for SCRAP and "bliniS" for CREPES. The latter is completely accurate, and is in fact a Russian version of the better-known French delicacy.
4:00.
- Colum
This was fun because I am a huge plant person.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite answer was ANTEATER both because they are fun animals and also because I was thinking of pangolins or (well some non mammals) or well I wasn't sure what to think until I had some crosses.
Funnily enough the post at https://mas.to/@ePeterso2/109506231936921253 also isn't a fan of SHER
It was fun for me, too and I'm not a plant person. In fact I had to stare at the finished grid for a bit trying to figure out what the theme answers had it common before the penny dropped.
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