Thursday, March 2, 2023, Malaika Handa

We've got ourselves a threebus today - or rather a sixbus, but that doesn't work as well. There are six answers into which STEMCELLS have been incorporated or grid square by which we mean that the letters STEM are stuffed into one square, or cell. The trickiest one for me - and the one where I figured it out - was GHO[STEM]OJI ("Image in some 'Happy Holloween!' texts"), which  crossed with LOSEONE[STEM]PER. The STEM letters crossed word boundaries, like everyone likes in all but one answer. Nice that SOLARSY[STEM]S and ASTER ("Flower whose name comes from the Greek for 'star'") are on the same line. 

A scientific review of the puzzle revealed several fine C/APs including "Group of club owners?" (PGA) - ha! - "Body image?" (TATTOO), "Program extra" (INSERT), "Stick with it" for GLUE, and the clever "Flattering lines" for ODE. Sounds at a poetry slam (SNAPS) made me LOL - I would like to see that happen sometime. I also got a kick out of the answer to "Kind of job that's coveted." I can't remember when I last heard or read someone refer to a PLUM job. Lovely. "Gumption" and its answer PLUCK were also pleasantly RETRO. 

I was temporarily lead astray by "Add-ons to some bills" because I kept thinking of fees and the like instead of the correct RIDERS. Also, when I read the clue "Who so-called 'Swifties' are fans of" I could not get Tom Swifties, which I am a fan of, out of my head. It took quite a while for TAYLOR to show up. 

I thought "Whiffs" for ERRS was a bit of a miss, and  ENTITLE for "Qualify" didn't quite for this solver, but its rare to find totipotency in a puzzle. 

~Frannie.