Tuesday, December 19, 2023, Seth Weitberg

Fun theme answers that show what might result IFIWEREYOU in a set of two-word noun phrases. More specifically, the final I of the second word in the answer has been changed to a U, and clued accordingly, with humorous results. My favorite was "'This cardboard belt is a waist of paper,' for example" (CLOTHESPUN) - ha! The revealer reminded me of my favorite joke pickup line: "I'd like to rearrange the alphabet so you and I could be together." Heh. The other theme answers were also good, with "Desire in the dessert aisle?" for GROCERYLUST as my second favorite.

In other parts of the grid, I found the C/APtness quotient to be slightly lower today than yesterday. I see the connections/rationales between the clues and the answers, but for me, they don't have the beautiful necessary parallelism that sings to me: 

"Raised" (BRED)

"Shabby, maybe" (OLD)

"Lasted longer than" (OUTSTAYED)

"Nipping pests" (GNATS)

Having said that, there were a number of C/APs that had a nice trick that I was happy to truck with:

"Capacity" (ROLE)

"Year abroad" (ANO)

"Nettles" (RILES)

Except for the couple of hiccups with the above-mentioned C/APs, my solve was smooth sailing and I was able to take a lick or two and turn it to luck to complete the grid in a zippy (for me) 6:53. 

~Frannie.