Wednesday, May 10, 2023, Victor Barocas

Today's constellation of theme answers relate to stars and configurations thereof, clued with alternate descriptions - like everyone likes! "Ursa Major and Ursa Minor?" can now be described as OVERBEARS, "Pegasus?" as a HIGHHORSE, and my favorite, "Sagittarius and Orion?" as SHOOTINGSTARS. Ha. 

I was happy with the two French clues, "Opposite of 'sans'" (AVEC) and "Avignon affirmative" (OUI). Other ROIs (References of Interest) for this solver are SPICE ("Critical resource harvested in 'Dune'"), BURP ("Tupperware lid sound"), and PEPYS ("Famed diarist Samuel"). I also enjoy the idea of people actually saying AHEM to get noticed by others. I'll have to try it out on my RETINUE.

Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte located in Maincy, France. Photo credit, yours truly.

Clue-wise, I really liked "A growing number?" for AGE, and the pair "Defensive line?" for ALIBI and "Offensive line?" for SLUR. Our esteemed Readers probably knew this already, but even though I studied Latin as a youth, I learned just last night on the Jeopardy! Masters tournament that ALIBI means 'elsewhere' in Latin. ACES!  

Fill-wise, I enjoy CASHEW, HAM, and ALES (heh). And how about the two parallel-and-yet-completely-not long answers in the north east and southwest: BRATISLAVA and GANGSTARAP - where else but the NYTX are you going to find those two keeping company?

Based on the fill in the northwest, I think the constructor was trying to subliminally encourage the authors of the influential publication that is HAFDTNYTXFCA to write a stellar review. Why else would the words BLOG and RAVE appear next to each other at 1D and 2D? There can be no other explanation. Mission accomplished. :)

~Frannie.