Today's puzzle had a little more meat on its bones, if you will. The solve took me twice as long as yesterday's, partly because I ran into several problem areas. The worst included "Illinois city near St. Louis" (
ALTON) and "Actor Rutger ____ of 'Blade Runner'" (
HAUER), both crossing "1972 hit whose singer claims to 'know a place'" (
ILLTAKEYOUTHERE) - threatening a one-way ticket to Natick. Another problem area involved the crossing of "Network descended from the first national 'superstation'" and the oddish "Rougher-than-usual instance, as of a head cold or thunderstorm," which turned out to be
TBS and
BADONE. Why 'bad one' is particular to head colds and thunderstorms I will, perhaps, never know. Anyhoo, the gray cells
KEPTUP their charge this morning, eventually rerouting the Natick-pportunities to their correct destinations, and I was
ABEL to
FILLIN all squares after 31 minutes, 27 seconds.
I first thought of 'Popeye' for "Olive lover?" but then I counted the squares. A false start of 'godS' for "Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune" instead of ORBS in that same area made it difficult to see BLUTO until I re-TOONed my thinking. Nice for Olive to have two WOOERS.
Some of the fill was a little choppy like EEEE, ENNE, MIS, RES, RECTI, and the oddly pluralized DNAS, but the exciting long answers and some fun shorter fill like HISSY, MAPLE, and SPOOF made up for it. The long answers I especially liked were SCRAMBLETHEJETS and THEPLOTTHICKENS. ROIs for this solver included the French answers ETE and LAI - I was looking at Les Lais de Marie de France on Wednesday! - and everyone's favorite, the SMILEY. :)
The pattern of the grid was interesting. While it might not win an IMAGEAWARD, it made me think of a chocolate chip pancake, and what's not to LIKE about that?
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