Congratulations on a debut puzzle, Ms. Dershewitz! Also, Ms. Baicker, for your third published puzzle with the NYT.
And it's a doozy for a Tuesday! The revealer is right in the middle of the puzzle, at 34A: Kind of fallacious argument ... or, phonetically, a hint to the answers to the starred clues (ADHOMINEM). Hah! "Add homonym." In each theme answer, a standard phrase has a homonym for the last word appended, making a new phrase which can be clued wackily.
Thus, 46A: Marriage ceremony for the perfect guy? (MRRIGHTRITE) - beautiful. Even better is the one saved for the last. 57A: Mother superior? (SECONDTONONENUN). Amazing. That one had to be the seed entry at 15 letters long. I appreciate that it was the punchline at the end of the puzzle. Nicely done!
Also, I am a big fan of repurposing the central revealer. We've had enough of ad hominem attacks to last a lifetime over the past 10 years.
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| HARDEDGE painting by Lorser Feitelson |
In the fill, I liked that the first two across clues were essentially the same, with 1A: Get moving (SCOOT) and 6A: Get moving? (PROD). That, along with 1D: Haul, from the Yiddish (SCHLEP) and 23A: "When will u b here?" (ETA) made for a motion filled start to the puzzle, with some fun clues.
6D: Like checks and balances? (PLURAL) is a great form of cluing we've seen a bunch of recently, where the clue is self-referential.
Do our readers think that there needs to be a hint (at least in the early days of the week) for the alternative spelling of AEON? I'm not a huge fan, although I get the utility of such a collection of vowels for our constructors.
I did not fall for the SILENTB bomb, as I usually do. The clue made it fairly clear what was going on.
Fun puzzle!
- Colum
Particularly liked this one. Played hard for me, for a Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteMe too, Philbo!
DeleteI also enjoyed this one quite a bit. Always nice to have a puzzle make you laugh.
ReplyDeleteAs for Aeon, I am traumatized when I see that spelling because I have to use a particularly terrible piece of software with that name at work. Ugh. But in this case, clued with "Many millenia," in either spelling, I would prefer to see it pluralized.