Well, what have we today? A standard-looking grid with four long-ish Across entries, each containing a circled letter, plus a grid-spanner bisecting the puzzle. It quickly became apparent that there was some sort of encoding, or translation, going on, as those long answers weren't making sense as their crossers filled them in. For example - 17A "Hand-held communication devices" was coming out as WALKIHLKIES with the 'H' circled. Gibberish! The long middle revealer sheds the necessary light: "Admission of confusion" = ITSALLGREEKTOME - of course! replace the circled 'H' with its Greek counterpart ETA and you get WALKIETALKIES, which fits the clue nicely. Similarly,
- "Songs played on an oldies station" = CLASSIXTS with X --> CHI
- "Juggernauts" = POWEPUSES with the second P --> RHO (but see below)
- "Popular fundraising event" = SILENTCTION with the first T --> TAU
I liked this construction, largely because of its opaqueness - it was not at all obvious what was going on at first. My one nit here is the equating of RHO with the letter P. Sure, it looks like a 'P' but it's really more like 'R' phonetically. For that reason, I originally entered POWERUSES, but then that would make "Galileo, for one" a RISAN, which was definitely not right. Note that this Greek-to-English translation only applies in the Across direction, which is helpfully pointed out in 59A.
My only real hiccup was mistaking "Comfort" at 6D as a verb and entering SOOTHE instead of SOLACE, so there was a bit of scribbling there. I was misled by 50A "Digs" (ISINTO) as I was looking for some sort of residence. .. Is "Vernacular" really the same as PATOIS? I guess so, though I suspect one is more about vocabulary and the other is more about delivery. ASIAGO was cute and punny as a "cheese that comes from northern Italy (and not another continent!)".. ANGSTROM tickled my geeky physics-y fancy as well.
Favourite clue of the day? "Letter indicating ownership?" (ESS). Took me ever so long to understand the reference - to the possessive 'S' at the end of a noun ...
A fun puzzle overall. Back for more tomorrow!
-philbo
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