Tuesday, May 9, 2023, Margaret Seikel

Many peaces make up the theme answers in today's puzzle: each theme clue features an emoji-style image of the hand formation that can be variously read as a PEACESIGN, VFORVICTORY, BUNNYEARS in a photo, or a request for TWOPLEASE, when ordering. It may also be the case that there's a representation of a V in the shape of the grid. Or is it a smiley face? Or maybe it's POP[T]ART. Heh. Other sets of two in the puzzle are the homophones OBI and OBIE, and the nostalgic NODRAMA OBAMA pairing. Another possible twosome is the fun TROVE and AVAST. 

Perhaps taking the two theme too far, I hit a couple of slow downs during the solve. I started with the Down clues and quickly entered LOGCABIN for 6D, and OBIE for 7D. I didn't immediately know what to make of the clue for 8D ("Implement for eating soup but probably not for stirring coffee") so I left the area with LO_. When I went back to that section to finish it off, a combination of the way the app works (you kind of see both the A and D clues at the same time) and an APSE of attention, a glance at the clue "Early home for Abraham Lincoln" led me to enter LOg at 6A for "Tennis shot that might be smashed back," even though it made no sense, which left me with 'gIGSPOON' and a big mental question mark at 8D. A careful review of that section cleared up the situation, but at the cost of over a minute. TOOBAD. Elsewhere, thanks in part to the already-entered A in OMEGA at 9D, my first guess for "Make believe" at 26A was 'imAgine' instead of the correct PLAYACT which didn't help my speed (9:29). 

Clue-wise, I would have preferred "Bottomless pit" to "Bottomless well" for ABYSS. OTH, I admired the number of words in the clue "Incline that affords access" to describe RAMP, and FOOT for "Print maker?" hit the mark. :)

~Frannie.