Today I had the odd sensation of finishing the puzzle without really understanding what was going on. I had spoken with solvers at the A.C.P.T. (better solvers than I) who told me that they did that with Puzzle Five, and I thought it sounded almost like magic. But, well, today it happened to me, and it didn't really feel magical. Just weird.
So I spent a minute or two looking at it after I finished, and saw that "Toni" did in fact occur in 3D: Writer Morrison, but the full answer was RIGATONI. I put this together with the revealer "Proceeds from an asset ... or a hint to understanding six answers in this puzzle" (CAPITAL / GAINS) and voilà! Then it was just a matter of removing those gained national capitals. TIMBERLINES (What "x" might mean) became "times," LOSLOBOS (Some corp. takeovers) became "LOBOs" (leveraged buyouts) (this is the weakest one), MOSQUITO (Criminal patterns, in brief) MOs, PARISHES (Fellows) is "hes" (ok, this one isn't great either), and BAKINGSTONE (Sweetheart) is, obviously, "bae." Fun trick!
And we get a bonus of the legislative and executive capital of SRI Lanka in what is a nice combination of clues - "Colombo's country, in Olympic shorthand" (SRI) and "Former name of Colombo's country" (CEYLON).
There are a couple "fancy vocabulary" C/APs in "Helicon, e.g., musically speaking" (TUBA) and "Hollywood" vis-à-vis the film industry, e.g." (METONYM). And a nice pair of workout clues in "Drops in the gym?" (SWEAT) (heh) and "Bench press target" (PEC).
"Summer music" (DISCO) features a lovely hidden capital (Donna Summer), but "Material that's bad for the mouth?" (SILT) is a bit of a stretch. I mean, sure, silt forms a delta at the mouth of a river, but is it always bad? It's just nature being nature. And what do we think of SOG as a verb? Hah. I think it's just crosswords being crosswords. And it's a small price to pay for a fun, challenging Thursday.
- Horace
Whoo, hoo, a David Kahn special! This guy's amazing. I found myself completely lost on the theme and solved most of it as if I were constructing it...and then I saw PARIS and bam, there it was. Very satisfying. (Psst...it's not Tuesday, Horace o' mine.) :-)
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