Wednesday, July 5, 2023, Joe Deeney

Good morning! Horace here, filling in for Frannie who is busy extracting herself from her job.

Today's theme is an exercise in recognizing foreign script. For once, I am not going to try to figure out how to get Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, or Greek to render properly in the review. Instead, I will just explain that five clues used script from those alphabets, and the corresponding answers each contained the name of the alphabet and another word. RUSSIANDOLL, ARABICNUMERALS, ... that sort of thing. 

ABRA (Introduction to magic?) was a cute one. And in my last Latin class (a year ago) we read Ovid's version of Pyramus and THISBE, so that was fun. They are (spoiler alert!) a little like Romeo and Juliet. Lots of blood...

Anywayyy... speaking of Latin, I always enjoy seeing ECCE ("Look!," to Lucretius) in the grid. And how about that clue for ELDER (Like one of two Roman Plinys). LORDY! And Hey, none of the languages in the theme are at all related to Latin. Two aren't even Indo-European!

Also, EARN doesn't necessarily mean "Rake in." I should know! Heh. But on the other hand, I very much enjoyed the clue for HAIKU ("What Richard Wright wrote" could be the first line of one). Doesn't it just make you want to finish it? 

What Richard Wright wrote:
forgotten over the years
like this morning breeze

Now you try one!

I enjoyed the textual trick today. There were a few OLDEN answers like AGLET, ALIT, and ULNAS, but nothing too ACH-worthy. 

- Horace