RELATIVELY SPEAKING
Hola, all our loyal readers! After a week suffering from the actual influenza, I'm happy to have my health mostly back, and the opportunity to review more New York Times crossword puzzles! Kudos to Frances for another fine week of pun-filled reviews.
Today's theme takes phrases of two words where the first word ends in -ER and pretends that those words are actually comparative adjectives. Reclue in humorous ways, and wackiness, as they say, ensues. These are, in fact, silly in lovely ways.
Take 24A: Peridot vis-à-vis jade? (OLIVERSTONE) - one stone is more olive than the other, you see! Just the idea of "oliver" as an adjective makes me chuckle. I suppose that's partly because one of my dogs has that name for himself.
I also laughed at 63A: Zipper up vis-à-vis zipper down (SHUTTERFLY) and 111A: "OMG THIS IS AWESOME!!!!" vis-à-vis "good job i guess"? (HYPERTEXT).
I am not convinced by BOMBERJACKET (is a blazer supposed to be more dope than a windbreaker? I think that depends on the windbreaker).
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| Hilary Duff as Lizzie MCGUIRE |
In other unknown areas of knowledge, what are UVTATTOOS? Looking them up, this seems like a pretty niche thing. How often will you be showing your tattoos under UV light? In my world, never. That's how often. But I also don't have any tattoos, so I'm probably not one to talk.
Also, who knew NEWTS had gone on at least six different space missions? Nice clue to spice up our frequent crossword puzzle visitors (at least "eft" has gone the way of the "dodo").
18D: Cover letters, say? (TEACH) required all of the crosses to get. What an unexpected twist the clue takes!
Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the chutzpah of crossing SIGN and SEGNO, as well as UHNO and OHOK. It's rare that a Sunday puzzle can SATISFY, but this one's pretty good.
- Colum
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