Hello out there in Crossword-land! Today's puzzle was sprinkled with starred clues - both Across and Down - and, as is my wont, I dealt with them as I worked my way through the grid by simply ignoring them and letting the crossers do their magic. This didn't get me anywhere at first. For example - 15A "Inappropriately jocular" seemed to be FACET, which didn't seem to work. And that made the crossing clue, 6D "Fiery feelings", come out to PASS, also not making sense. A couple more of these and it became apparent what was going on - the starred clues were all missing suffixes (IOUS and IONS in the above two answers). And sure enough - the revealer across the middle tied it all together - BACKTOSQUAREONE it says, and yes, back at square 1, the across answer is IOUS and the down is IONS, the very suffixes required by the starred Across and Down clues respectively! The idea, of course, being to head back to these starting clues for the endings to the theme answers. Clever! A fair number of them too - 6 in each direction.
Partly because of this obfuscation and partly just because, I didn't find myself racing through this puzzle at quite my accustomed pace. Lots of dumb mistakes, like entering PISAN instead of PABLO for 26D "Picasso, for one" (huh??) Oh and IPODS not IPADS for 5A "Ones touched to be of service?", which was one of my favourite clues today.. along with 36A "Skinny?" (DERMAL). I do like a good QMC! Even better was 29A "Multiple-episode pilot?" (HAN) which I only "got" just now while looking over the grid.
I'm always impressed by these imaginative themes. I worry that there are a finite number in the universe and some day we'll run out. Not today though!
Gotta go tend to my toothache. (Ah - THAT's my excuse!) I fear a root-canal is looming on the horizon.
Ciao for now!
-philbo
Yes! Thank you! A really fun and clever puzzle! My only nit is that starring the theme clues made it super easy for me, but that's it. Love this puzzle...theme, clues, and fill. Philbo, I do hope your tooth feels better!
ReplyDeleteI am a noob in all of this but got to say I didn’t understand the caps/numbers? used in two of the clues: OverDO as an ACtor and T00tal r00kie—can you help me out?
ReplyDeleteHey Anonymous - I confess I didn't "get" the capitalization in the EMOTE clue either. Perhaps that's how you'd say the clue if you were emoting - extra emphasis on the capitalized syllables? As for T00tal r00kie - I think that's a nod to how "NOOB" is often spelled - with two zero's instead of two O's.
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