It is the aftermath of Hallowe'en here in Toronto. The jack-o-lanterns are extinguished, the streets are quiet, and the neighbourhood houses are full of hyper, overstimulated (and over-sugared) little children. I sit here with my little personal stash of mini chocolate bars and turn my attention to Wednesday's crossword, which was fun and clever and "meta" and a little bit silly - just my cup of tea for a mid-week diversion! It's an anagrammatic theme today, with four long, oddly-worded clues, whose solutions turn out to be concatenations of the same five letters, arranged three different ways! Better I just lay it out than try to describe it:
- "Actor Sean does some things that aren't nice" : ASTINISNTASAINT
- "Silent film star Bara didn't want to leave us" : THEDAHATEDDEATH (bit of a reach, this one)
- "Artist Edouard mistakenly proposed 11:00" : MANETMEANTTENAM (my favourite!)
- "Fictional lawyer Perry cries 'I give'!" : PERRYMOANSNOMAS
See? Clever and fun and silly! And the icing on the cake is the revealer in the very last Across clue, "1545 treatise..." which is ARSMAGNA, an anagram of the theme! Meta! This is the kind of creativity that makes me think, "gee, I should try setting crosswords some day..."
Funny about the Bosch reference (ex-LAPD). I was watching an episode of Bosch just before writing this blog! Sometimes I do wonder if we're all in the Matrix. I liked the thematically linked IBERIA and DESOTO stacked on top of each other. Good cluing, that. ... on the other hand, one doesn't often see OMS in its plural form (unless one has clued oneself into a corner, ha ha)
Great puzzle! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
-philbo
We loved Bosch. Sad it "ended." I understand there's some sort of sequel series, but haven't looked it up.
ReplyDelete