Thursday, October 19, 2023, Colin Ernst

Good Morning, Dear Reader, and welcome to The Turn. Our term for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday puzzles. Devilish tricks often start the turn, and today we have a lovely double-rebus!

The fun starts right away, but I made the mistake of entering "iTs" at 1-Across for "____ no good," which worked with TURNEDRED (Was visibly embarrassed), but nothing else. Hardly a strong start. A little later on, I tried "hatS" for "Derbies, e.g." but that didn't really work with anything. Then, finally, I think it was DI[ET]S (Food regimens) that finally gave me the idea that we were dealing with a double rebus. With that in mind, I felt sure that CIT[RO]EN (French automaker) and VI[GO]DA (Actor Abe) were correct. And because the theme answers were marked with italics, it was easy to know where to put the rebus letters. So in the end it wasn't as difficult as it might have been, but still, everyone loves a rebus.

Good QMCs included "Critter that grows by leaps and bounds?" (ROO), "Taken into account?" (ONDEPOSIT), and "Religious agreements?" (AMENS). On the other hand we do have a bit of CEN (100 yrs.), DAK (Territory divided into two states: Abbr.), and RAS (Univ. staffers). Overall, though, a rebus forgives a lot of SSN, AND, and ENDO. Double rebuses forgive even more.

But I haven't really even talked about the theme yet! All the rebuses make up a set of [DO][UB][LE][DO][WN] betting terms - "ups the ante," "go for broke," "raises the stakes," and "bet the farm." Boy, it all makes me sad that I've missed my usual poker game for the past several months. Yes, I play poker, but it's very low stakes!

I love this kind of stunt. It reminds me a little of a puzzle by Patrick Blindauer from - sheesh - ten years ago, that I absolutely loved. That worked a little differently, but still - double rebus. Overall, a solid start to the end-of-week fun.

- Horace