Good morning, and welcome to the new week. Back at work, and it's a bright sunny morning, so things are both up and down.
Today's puzzle is a classic phonetic revealer, at 58A: Query of concern ... or a phonetic hint to two pairs of letters appearing in 17-, 24-, 37- and 48-Across (AREYOUOKAY). At first I didn't read the revealer clue carefully, and thought the trick was only that each clue had the letters OK in them. But they also have the letters RU, and always in the correct order. That's cute.
All four theme answers are strong. I might use "running gag" more frequently than RUNNINGJOKE, but both are perfectly cromulent. Also, "instruction manual" is a little more likely than INSTRUCTIONBOOK, but again, I think I'd use either pretty much equally. I don't take a RUMANDCOKE. In fact, I'm not that likely to take either part individually either.
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| PAOLA Suárez |
I found my fingers clumsy and my mind jumping to the wrong answers frequently this Monday morning. I started right at 1A with "diaper" for ONESIE. You know. Diapers. The things with snaps. OKRA put me right immediately. Also, 10D: Lacks what it takes (CANNOT) was hasNOT for a hot second. I mean, literally, if you lack the thing you need, you have it not. But still.
And there is no such thing as a TARTe. Outside of France and tartes tatins.
ULTIMATE is a game I no longer have the knees to play. But I still love hucking a disk.
My only complaint with today's puzzle is the word BORESOME. I've never imagined that this was a word, although from parallel sounding lonesome, I could have possibly predicted it. Ah well, they can't all be zingers.
- Colum
For a change for a Monday, I took my time with this one (multiple interruptions). I had TIRESOME in instead of BORESOME, which was unfamiliar to me as well. Took me until reading your blog, Colum, to really appreciate the theme! (I gotta start paying closer attention..) Never seen LIENEE in a crossword before..
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