Thursday, October 26, 2023, John Donegan

Here, finally, are my centcent about today's puzzle. First off, it was a fun and trixy theme. Theme answers included phrases or titles with numbers in them and instead of the number and plural, the key noun appeared the appropriate number of times. So, for example, PLACEPLACEAT was clued as "What it's impossible to be in" or two places. Another nice one was BIRDBIRDSTONE (two birds with one stone) -"What a multitasker might kill." You might even call it NEWMATH. I caught on to the theme with MANMANMANBABY (Three Men and a Baby) because I remembered that movie, having seen the original (?) when I lived in France. It was early days in my life overseas at that point and watching a movie in French with no subtitles was big. Anyhoo, that's not why you called me here. Truth be told, you didn't call me here at all. Duty did. 

In addition to the actual theme, there seems to be an running ghoul of having some Halloween answers in every puzzle this week. Today we have EYEBALL, CANDY, and the amusingly clued "Spirit-filled?" (HAUNTED). 

Other fun ones included, "Off the hook, so to speak" (INSANE), "Sunny side of breakfast" (YOLK), "Narrow" for TAPER, "City of Paris?" (Troy) - ha!, and the entertaining, "Bottoms out?" (MOONS). Oh yes, and "Maker of small front-end loaders" (TONKA) - cute! I'd include a picture of a Tonka front loader as a decorative element, but I'm getting a message that Wikimedia is down at the moment. Troubling! 

I'll try to get UPANDATEM a bit earlier tomorrow, dear Readers. That's it for nightnight.

~Frannie.