A delightfully chewy Saturday puzzle today, with an abundance of cleverly clued entries and a consistent level of difficulty throughout. Luckily, an easy entry presented itself in the NE with MERCI (hey, I'm a Quebecker) and SNAPE (as any Harry Potter fan would know, and also the somewhat punnish ROBERTA Flack and ACURA (there's one in our driveway). Moving to the chunky middle, the real gem of the whole puzzle was the C/AP "One who grows up, then eventually croaks" (TADPOLE) - brilliant!! Of course, at this point, suffused with confidence, I dropped in CUTNPASTE as a two-in-one computer command (hey, it could be, right?), which caused chagrin shortly thereafter (COPYPASTE!!).
I had the right idea on "What might turn pie into pieces?" straight away, but it took the crossers to properly reveal AUTOCOMPLETE. At this point I had the last 5 letters of "Don't make me laugh!" and there was a "Did he really...?" moment as I guessed OHPUHLEASE, as in, "Did he really put the U in there?" Below this - ABIENTOT - another gimme for anyone who knows any French. With this in hand, the whole NE - SW swath was pretty much done.
Another humourous C/AP in the SE - "Heavy metal band?" (MANACLE). I entered GASHEAT instead of OILHEAT as a "housewarming option", which caused confusion and delays, but BULLSESSIONS came to the rescue.
Toughest for me was the NW corner. Undoubtedly as intended by Mr. McCarty, I put UKE in instead of LEI as a "strung accompaniment for a hula" (nice!!) Not helping was USEME, which I'd originally entered as TRYME. After I figured those out, everything else fell into place. ESTERC, unknown to me, needed all the crossers.
Tremendous puzzle overall! Great way to spend 11:08 on a Saturday morning. If I had any nits at all, it would be the ultra-obscure UBE ("purple yam") and the acronymic OOO, but needs must and the rest of the puzzle was well worth it.
Well, that's the week for me! I now throw to Colum's more-than-capable hands. Have an excellent weekend everybody!
-philbo
I enjoyed it too -- the clues are terrific. Thanks so much for the week, Philbo!
ReplyDeleteNot nearly so swift as Friday's... We all deserve a little humility in this life.
ReplyDeleteWell, Colum o' mine, I get LOTS o' humility. But truthfully? Much as I liked this puzzle? I really, really LOVED Friday's.
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