It's a Boxing Day theme today, with six different four-letter toys rolled up into 2x2 squares, scattered around the grid and revealed by "Places for playthings" (TOYBOXES). I found this neat in a few different ways; first, there are so many of them (six is a lot, in a 15x15 grid); second, they're all rolled the same way, clockwise from the upper left (although there's some ambiguity there, if you care to look for it); and third, one of them (YOYO) is attached to the revealer answer, which is an added bonus.
A nice Tuesday puzzle forms the substrate. I found the layout today made the connections between grid sections somewhat tenuous, which led to slower-than-usual progress. LEGOSET made me smile - I got one for Xmas (the Mars Rover) - a nice Zen-ish activity in the lazy days before the New Year. Raised my eyebrows at OPTIMUMS ("OPTIMA", surely? Well, ok...) MTDOOM formed a LOTR connection to yesterday's puzzle, which featured Samwise Gamgee. A near-Natick for me at the intersection of NORMA ("Fashion designer Kamali") and PADMA ("Author Lakshmi.."), but the crossing letter could only really have been an 'A'. And the prize today for oblique cluing was for TEN ("What's rolled to get from Free Parking to Go to Jail") - love it!
Not much else to report. Fun puzzle and nice debut by Mr. Shook! CYA tomorrow..
-philbo
I thought it was absolutely adorable!
ReplyDeleteSheesh! It's been too long since I've played Monopoly. Isn't it also true that if you do not throw a ten in three turns you get out anyway?
ReplyDelete