AURAL SURGERY
Ahh, English. Where HIGH DOUBTS (Secret lairs) can sound like "hide-outs," and FORK WARTS (Equivalent of one gallon) is equivalent to "four quarts." It's funny how that unvoiced velar K moves toward the voiced labial-velar W. And really, they're all so good. NEIGH MITT ("Anything you want!"), PLAGUE EARL (Former magazine that featured male nudes), SLOPE OAK (Lollygagger)... they're all spot on.
It reminds me of my French Dad, who often did this kind of thing between languages. He would say that he was very "cravate rouge" which, if you were translating idiomatically into English, would be "red tie," but if you wanted to understand him, you would need to say "tie red" or, "tired." And when he said he wanted to take a "green cat," you would translate back to french to get "chat vert," and then back into English sounds with a French accent, to get "shower." Yeahhh.... so we've been dealing with this for a while.
Speaking of French, I should probably confess that I have a bit of a Fleur de SEL habit. On one of our last trips, we actually drove out to Guérande to see the pools where they harvest it, and I bought a bag from a guy who was selling it at a little table, like at a farmstand, but he only had one product. It was fine, though, because that's the only product I was interested in. A little bag of a white granular substance. I should have filled a suitcase with them. The TSA would have loved that...
WHEREWEREWE ... I absolutely loved the clue "Side by side, maybe?" for AREA. And "Things revealing basic truths?" (PHTESTS) was very tricksy!
OK. It's Boswords day, and Frannie and I are both going. If you're going too, good luck!
- Horace
Beautiful work -- I love it! Everything about this puzzle sings -- a real winner.
ReplyDeleteSuch fun!! Agree on PHTESTS and especially AREA. Speaking of language mangling, in my younger years (o so long ago), my friend and I would entertain ourselves at hockey games in Montreal by bellowing out "GONFLEZ LA CONFITURE", which I'll leave to you to translate :)
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