Not the greatest finale to my blogging week, my fellow crossworders. I was very careless and slapdash today and FWTE - a rarity for me. I blame this on my recent brush with Ontario's health care system, which brings me to DONOHARM, which, we're told, is not actually part of the Hippocratic oath; I hope it is implied, then, at least. Certainly my recent interactions were nothing but positive, notwithstanding a fair amount of wait time. But on to the topic du jour! A lovely, very chunky grid with very few black squares - really great construction with stacks of long answers in all four corners and one across the middle for good measure.
The problems started from the get-go. Surely the tiny fairyfly must be a GNAT? No - it's a WASP. With that cleared up, it took me a while to correctly interpret "Annual New Year's Day event" as ROSEPARADE - I was stuck on RESOLUTION. And I was so close with "Statement of admiration after someone's impressive feat" - WHATABEAUT, which wound up being one of my two errors, instead of WHATABEAST. So poor. Especially the crosser "Stuff in microdots", which is obviously LSD. LUD doesn't make sense at all! Sigh.
Much of the grid content resonated with me. GINMARTINI ("Two-ingredient cocktail with an olive or twist") is my go-to tipple, as I believe Horace has witnessed. Right beside it - "Breakout site" (ESCAPEROOM) is clever, and also a fun way to spend an hour with friends or co-workers. Down and to the right, I liked HEYNOW ("Whoa, calm down!") as that was Jeffrey Tambor's character's catchphrase on the fantastic Larry Sanders Show.
It was nice to see NENES clued as something other than "Hawaiian geese"...Are 'AAAS' really "thin cell types"? Narrow, sure, but thin? I dunno...SMAZE is one of the crappier portmanteau words, IMO...True that HERBS is pronounced differently in the UK than in the US. Here in Canada, we fall on the US side of that one, though when it's a man's name, the 'H' is pronounced (as I bit it also is south of the border)...And down at the bottom, "Daughter of Catherine of Aragon" is MARYI, not MARYS (and "galangal" is THAI ginger, not THAS) - my other sloppy error today.
Great Saturday puzzle. I did not do it justice. Hope this review isn't too much of a SNOOZEFEST. OK Colum, over to you!
-philbo
I finished with so many errors. ECOblAMING was to blame. Isn't a PREbET a thing? Also SHARENTING? This is definitely not a thing and I don't want to admit that it is.
ReplyDeleteI hear you Colum. Sometimes I just can't bring myself to go back and check my work - and I swallow the humiliating consequences.
DeleteI share your love of a GINMARTINI, philbo, but I quibble with this answer, because a gin martini is simply a martini. It is the original, and the qualifier is only needed for that abomination, the vodka martini.
ReplyDeleteYes! Now this is pedantry I can really get behind! Our son's Scottish girlfriend just arrived for a visit, bringing with her a bottle of "Glaswe-gin". Will sample and report back....
Delete