Thursday, February 22, 2024

Friday, February 23 2024, Larry Snyder

Well!  Your head will be spinning after today's pinwheel of a puzzle, with its four-way rotational symmetry and chunky, consistent construction throughout - of the 64 answers, only 8 are 3 letters long and 8 more are 4-letter.  

Aesthetic appeal notwithstanding, this was not a difficult Friday offering.  I got off to a karmic good start by correctly guessing YESMAAM for the very first clue "Formal affirmative", and it just went from there.  Over on the right, I liked the misdirection of "Windy location of myth?", which I expected to be MTOLYMPUS or something, but turned out to be LABYRINTH - of course!  Right beside it, the "defunct health tech company once valued at $10B" could only be THERANOS.  Lordy, what a story that was!!  

Down below, it was nice to see LEACH spelled correctly ("Drain away") - so often, you see LEECH.  (Grr!!)  Moving to the end, a little trouble in the SE corner with "Stealing from the collection plate, for example" (SACRILEGE, not SACREDSIN) and "Covered in ink" (TATTEDUP, not the too-obvious TATTOOED).  A little learning for me here too - that CREDO is a liturgical chant..

Aside from this, not much in the way of obstacles.  Looking at it one more time, I just 'got' "Whoops, e.g." (YELLS).  I hadn't been reading the clue as a plural word! ...   I had a hope at one point of mastering the PIPEORGAN - I think at one point these were the most complex of all human-made objects - but alas, it will never be.  Awe-inspiring to sit in a church while an organist is having at it, is it not?!

Though Fridays are generally themeless, I did notice that there were an awful lot of doubled letters in the grid - 17 pairs in all, if I'm counting right.  I doubt that's a coincidence.  Perhaps Mr. Snyder was taking a cue from his first name?  :)

That's all from me today!  Hope you enjoyed the puzzle as much as I did.

-philbo

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