Hello all! With the recent cold snap here in Toronto, I was occasioned to put on a pair of LONGJOHNS on a weekend walk, and timely it was, as here it is now, smack in the middle of the Wednesday NYT crossword, revealing the puzzle's theme. The humourous take on this instruction is - each of the four theme clues refers to a well-known figure whose first name is (or was) JOHN, and what goes in the grid is the person's surname, stretched, or made LONG, by doubling each letter. This led to some confusion at first - "First American to orbit the earth" I quickly wrote in as JOHNGLENN ("Gimme", I thought), not twigging that there was a white square left over. After a bit more confusion, as the crossers revealed 'N' after 'N' after 'N' at the end of the answer, it finally became clear what needed to be done - GGLLEENNNN - and I was off to the races. The other answers were then very easy with that transformation in mind, thanks to their straightforward cluing; and the theme answer was more of an "of course" moment than an "aha" one.
Construction-wise, the black squares result in an almost-S shape, with little connectivity between the corners and a sparse middle. I liked it - thought it worked great. And the consistency of the theme answers all being 5x2 letters long was nice.
Highlights elsewhere in the grid - I do like my QMCs, and "Introductory course?" (SALAD) was cute '"*How rude!*"' (SLAP) puzzled me for a bit. Nice use of asterisks there! And ordinarily, you'd never expect to see ANDS in a puzzle - a pluralized conjunction? Really?? But the clue makes it work, more or less - "Logical operators outputting 'true' if both inputs are 'true'" - better known as AND GATES in the world of microelectronics and I will accept this because it tickles my geeky, computer-y fancy.
I shall leave you with this somewhat sparse review. Very enjoyable puzzle. Did not take me long to solve.
Have a great day everybody! "See" you again tomorrow..
-philbo
This was over quickly for me, too, but I think it marks the third Wednesday in a row that we've had a Thursday-ish Wednesday puzzle. Could this be a new trend for 2024? Heady times in Crosswordville!
ReplyDeleteHorace, I wasn't sure what you meant by "Thursday-ish Wednesday". Call me obtuse!
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's got a little trick. Like, usually, you don't have words stretched out like this. And you don't have answers that turn 90-degrees and finish in the Down answer. And the first Wednesday of the year had those overlapped words... I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but it has seemed to me that Wednesdays have gotten slightly more interesting in the new year. I will be watching closely next Wednesday to see if this continues.
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