Hello everyone and happy October!! I send these wishes prematurely as it is still Saturday evening and I have to keep this short as I have to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to participate in a charity bike ride - the cause is World Bicycle Relief, which supplies bicycles to rural communities all over the world, where walking long distances is a necessary part of life.
I found this to be a clever puzzle, and I expect it was a lot of fun to construct. The theme is movies, and, as hinted at by the title ("Film Adaptations"), each of the several films appearing in the grid - both across and down, always a bonus - have been punnily, or -perhaps better - literally modified, each in an entertainingly different way..
- ONE FLEW (literally OVER) THE CUCKOO'S NEST - two separate answers, one over the other
- THE EMPIRE (literally STRIKES BACK) - ends with STRIKES spelled backward
- (Down) A RIVER RUNS (literally THROUGH IT) - the 'RIVER' in the answer splitting the IT in the backwards STRIKES from the above
- THE LAND (literally BEFORE) TIME - no need for the redundant word 'BEFORE', now, is there?
- LOST (literally IN) TRANSLATION - yep, a word within a word
- BURN (literally AFTER) READING - so BURN is at the end, as "instructed"
- (literally DOUBLE) JEOPARDY - at this point this is obvious, right? 🙂
- (Down) (literally LITTLE SHOP) OF HORRORS - with the SHOP entered tinily in rebus format
- CROUCHING TIGER (literally HIDDEN) DRAGON - sure enough, no DRAGON to be seen (but - see below!)
I could make no sense of the very final Across clue - "Deliberately procrastinate" - from the crossers, it had to be ESFEET - until I read the CROUCHING TIGER clue, which refers its unseen portion to this clue - yielding DRAGONESFEET, which then makes sense. Brilliant!
Alongside this wonderful construction, other nice nuggets were to be found: Neat to learn that a praying mantis has only one EAR, on its stomach. Praying mantises are scary. I liked the Garfield/Sylvester clues side by side. Always a bonus to add cleverness to three-letter answers. ACLOSESHAVE, with its double meaning, was a nice one.
Couple of little clangers - sure, BCD is an "early alphabet trio" but c'mon. "Buoyancy control device" or something? SOHOS was palindromically weird.
OK gotta go and get my pre-ride beauty sleep. Until tomorrow!
-philbo
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