First off, happy birthday to Frannie! Hope you have a lovely day.
It's a Monday, so we're looking for a straightforward and smooth puzzle with a fun theme, and that's what we get. Three well known fictional figures with military titles but no actual military experience lead to the humorous revealer at 49A: Unfazed response to a threat from 20-, 31- or 38-Across? (YOUANDWHATARMY). It's impressive to me that Mr. Scherban came up with three different military titles in SERGEANTPEPPER, CAPTAINOBVIOUS, and COLONELSANDERS that are all fourteen letters long.
It's also impressive to have four down answers that cross three theme answers, and have them be as strong as RAKESITIN, GRAPESODA, ISLANDHOP, and VIDEOTAPE. Nice work!
I had one error today, putting in CHOi for Bok CHOY. The latter is the accepted spelling, so that's a bad on me.
In other notable features, it's cute having WASNT next to AINT. There ain't many cute clues, it being a Monday, but I smiled at 61A: Swiss borders? (ESSES).
- Colum
Easy peasy breezy 2:15 Monday. "EBT" was a pretty egregious hack.
ReplyDeleteYou are smashing it out of the park these days, Philbo!
DeleteYeah ... but I feel like it's not me; rather, the crosswords have just been easier in recent days.....
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