TONES OF VOICE
Hello everyone! Just got back from a lovely weekend in NYC, where we celebrated my mother's 85th birthday (last month), my daughter's 25th birthday (next week), and our 27th wedding anniversary (Friday). A fair amount of shopping was done, a lot of excellent eating was accomplished, and we saw "Merrily We Roll Along" on Broadway with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe (!!), and Lydia Mendez. Amazing performances all around. Who knew Harry Potter could sing, and also maintain a flawless New York American accent throughout a musical?
And then I got to solve the Sunday puzzle. We sometimes complain that the Sunday offering suffers from a certain amount of bloat, and that the extra theme material doesn't make up for it. Not so today, faithful readers! Mr. Sivakumar gives us a twist on an old concept: the colorful squares which are interpreted literally in other answers. Thus, the yellow-shaded square at the crossing of 24A and 15D is filled in with an N, inside the word CHANCE. This is then interpreted at 25A: Special moment exemplified by 24-Across (GOLDENOPPORTUNITY). See, "chance" is an "opportunity," and the N is "gold." Hah!
It's truly lovely, because the letter is hidden in each of the interpreting answers. I is in REDEYEFLIGHT, E in BROWNIEMIX, V in GRAVYBOAT, and E in PINKYPROMISE. I wondered if there was another meta level to the letters, but N-I-E-V-E doesn't spell anything that connects to the theme.
And then, to top it all off, we get a bonus revealer at 98A: Interesting person ... or what's included, phonetically, five times in this puzzle (COLORFULCHARACTER). Nicely done!
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| ADONIS and Venus |
Not much in terms of tricky clues today. I enjoyed 84D: iPhone charger? (APPLEPAY). I also appreciated the trivia at 22A: State whose last four letters are the first four letters of its capital (VERMONT) - that's Montpelier. Do any other states have a similar property? Nope. The closest any gets is Georgia - Atlanta, and that's just one letter. Too bad.
- Colum
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