Saturday, November 18, 2023

Saturday, November 18, 2023, Hoang-Kim Vu

An attractive, open grid today. We've got chunky corners and a stepped stack in the middle. Right off the bat I dropped in OCEAN (Charybdis' milieu) and OOPS ("My bad!"), but I also put in pEels for "Kitchen shavings" (ZESTS), so that slowed things down a bit. Eventually, I corrected it to find the "Modern meeting organizer" (ZOOMHOST), ESCAROLE (Radicchio relative), and TEAL (Shade named for a bird). Nice clue for SHEETPAN (Kitchen item for preparing cookies or pizza). I guess there's no reason pizzas have to be round. 

VISUALGAG

Looking back, I don't know why it took me so long to think of BIGMAC (Burger burgled by the Hamburglar). On the other hand, what the hell is a FOAMPARTY (Festivity with mountains of bubbles)? Verifying with Wikipedia... yup, apparently, the idea can be traced back to a 1932 short film featuring Louis Armstrong. Earlier this year, apparently, was the "First Annual National Foam Party Day," on June 15. You should mark your calendars now for next year!

OK, what else... Until I sit down and power stream "Game of Thrones" I will need every cross for names like SANSA (Elder Stark daughter...). Actually, the same goes for the Bible. When the answer for "Genesis woman" was more than three letters, I needed crosses. (LEAH) Heh.

Best C/AP today? "Sessions of congress?" (TRYSTS). Heh. And does that go with "Did you enjoy yourself?" (HOWWASIT). Ahem.

Actually, I did enjoy it. I wasn't really familiar with a couple of the abbreviations (HRT (Treatment for someone in transition, in brief) (hormone replacement therapy) and DLC (Gamer's post-purchase add-ons, for short) (downloadable content)), but I love thinking about the DRYSALT process (Curing technique), and the central slant stack was solid. A bit of a challenge, but Thursday's this week took me twice as long! Still... it's all good.

- Horace

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