Thursday, October 5 2023, Daniel Bodily

A nice chewy Thursday puzzle today, which I was able to negotiate without BODILY harm, as it were.  (Sorry.)  The theme here is juxtaposition!  (Please, can somebody put that word into a crossword?)  Six Down clues lead to unexpected answers, as quickly became apparent as I worked through the grid, with words appearing that seemed to be real words but not matching the clues ... for example, 4D "Quick-access rows of icons" started to look like BARS-something-something.  "What's going on?" I thought, and just continued on down the puzzle; by the time I reached the revealer clue, it was all clear : each theme clue is split in two and the pieces swapped in order before entry in the grid.  So BARS was correct, as it led to BARSTOOL, a juxtaposition of TOOLBARS as suggested by the clue.    This is some fine stuff!  We also had:

• "Surfaces for some highrollers" = CRAPSTABLES --> TABLESCRAPS
• "Cook-your-own dishes in some Asian restaurants" = HOTPOTS --> POTSHOT
• "Bureaucratic hassle" = REDTAPE --> TAPERED
• "Dummies" = PINHEADS --> HEADSPIN
• "Mark of wisdom, some say" = AGELINE --> LINEAGE

Making it trickier is that the rearranged "real" answers are not defined in the clues.  Also neat is none of them is just a swapped word pair.  Kudos to Mr. Bodily for coming up with this!!

The revealer clue is "Prevails eventually" (ENDSUPONTOP), which explains why all the theme answers are Down.

I thought the rest of the grid was chewy but fair for a Thursday.  Did Debussy really say there was "too much singing at the OPERA"?  ... ROMA tomatoes are by far the best choice as a base for red pasta sauce ... "How a sailor achieves a good work-life balance?" (SEALEGS) was clever and reminded me of my childhood, when I lived in a remote fishing community (Google this : 50.772522262904666, -59.027979707086374) that was a two-day boat ride from civilization; it took me just about that long every year, when we returned from summer holidays, to shake the nausea and get my sea legs.  Just in time to step off the boat!  ... NYPD Blue was my wife's + my favourite show back in the day.  We used to pronounce it "Nippid".

And with those little personal nuggets, I bid you bonsoir.  One more charity bike ride tomorrow - 95 km in the hills north of Toronto - and that's it for the season.  "See" you tomorrow!

-philbo