Saturday, August 19, 2023, David P. Williams

And so another week of reviews comes to an end on this gray and rainy Saturday. The farmers' market was undervisited, as the vendors huddled under their canvas tents. Plenty of lovely veggies and fruits available though. And an okay breakfast sandwich. Don't think I'll go there again.

But the weather was conducive to a pleasant relaxing Saturday morning crossword solve. Mr. Williams has given us a lovely pinwheel grid with six 11-letter answers crossing each other in the middle section in stepwise positioning. This was the kind of solve which was especially satisfying for this crossword lover: starting in corners and getting little hints to the long answers in the middle, which then suddenly became clear, leading to entry into the last two corners.

FAYE was my first answer placed, which along with the initial F in FIE (I didn't know whether it could be FeE or Fum also, so left those letters out), led to SPLIFF. I need to look at the actual lyrics to this song now. [Pause to Google and Wikipedia]. I see now that I misread the clue and thought it was a lyric from Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix (1967), because of that other lyric, "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky." Instead it's a song from 1978 by Bob Marley. Had I realized that, I might have gotten the answer directly from the clue.

Anyway, the NW corner fell pretty quickly (love HELLYEAH and PROSAIC). But I had to switch to the NE corner next. SLICE, LOONIE, and MITOSIS led to 7A: Theater backers (SCRIMS) (nice clue), and the rest of the corner followed. Now I had initial letters for a couple of long down answers and the ends of the three long across answers. I think the only other cross I had was MILAN, a guess for Leonardo Da Vinci that made sense because of The Last Supper mural being in that city.

A RIA (Naragansett Bay)

The first long answer I got was the lovely MOLLYCODDLE. That was followed by HOBBYHORSES, which is such a great answer for the clue "Preoccupations." After that, the rest became very obvious, as other crosses also filled in. 31A: Embellish something unnecessarily (GILDTHELILY) is beautiful. The other three answers aren't quite as good, but CABARETCARD is interesting.

Now I completed the SW corner, and finally the SE corner, which was the most challenging, and took an "aha!" moment with 46A: Bronze finish, maybe (SPRAYTAN). I thought first about coming in third, then about the concept of a patina before seeing where we were going. SIDEEYE is also a great term.

It's been a fun week. Tomorrow Horace takes over - or is it Philbo? I've lost track. In any case, see you in about a month!

- Colum