Today's puzzle takes us on a transcontinental journey. Each of the three theme answers starts with the USPS abbreviation for a state on the west coast and ends with an abbreviation for a state on the east coast. The 14-letter answers GOCOASTTOCOAST vis-à-vis the grid, as well, which is a nice touch, as is the fact that the western starting points appear in north to south order. Also, all the theme entries are common phrases, with WANTAPIECEOFME (Washington to Maine) being the most entertaining. I do take an ORGANICPRODUCT, but have yet to make the trip from Oregon to Connecticut. I'll consider that route if ever I'm on the LAM (don't tell anyone). Of particular interest to this solver was the brief description of the game CANDYCRUSHSAGA (California to Georgia) in the clue. Who knew it was a color-matching puzzle game? Not I.
And speaking of things I'm out of the LOOP on, I can't make sense of 3D. Maybe I'm parsing it incorrectly (see KTWO moment in previous reviews), but what is that? IMEAN I am totally familiar with misunderstanding song lyrics ALA "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" but where does MONDEGREEN come from?
There were, in fact, a number of other persons in the puzzle that I'm not familiar with (ARI Aster, Janelle MONAE, STAN - kidding!), but thanks to the gettable crosses, I kept up a pretty continuous roll (7:39). Two short slow downs occurred when I first entered 'movie' for FLICK ("Something caught in a theater") and when I couldn't immediately guess the answer to the fun clue "Good number to shoot for" (PAR). Another fun C/AP was "The rain in Spain?" (AGUA). I also enjoyed the "Brooms : Roombas :: MOPS : Scoobas" analogy. Fill-wise, I liked RAGTAG and JOLT. KNOB is a funny word. ATTILA is seeing a surge in popularity of late.
In a crossword puzzle/Spelling Bee crossover event, MEETUP was one of the few words Horace and I missed in yesterday's edition. We ended up with what you might call Countess Bee. We will try again for the more stately Queen Bee today.
~Frannie.
Here you go, Frannie o' mine...from a 1954 Harper's Magazine article by Sylvia Wright:
ReplyDelete"When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.
The correct fourth line is, `And laid him on the green'." Wright explained the need for a new term:
The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original."
Thanks, Kelly! Very interesting!
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