Friday, August 31, 2018, Peter Wentz

0:11:46

My first entry today was HARDC (17A: Can opener?)! For once, I was not fooled by that type of question! My second was RADIUM (23A: Subject of Marie Curie's isolation), which seemed a bit of a gimme. And after that, things just seemed to fall into place. Even three, long, unknown people were eventually filled in by crosses - HARTCRANE (2D: "White Buildings" was his first collection of poetry) (I feel I should probably know him), KTOSLIN (5D: Country singer who uses her first two initials), and TANEHISICOATES (51A: MacArthur Fellowship-winning author of "Between the World and Me"). I'm not even 100% sure where to break the letters in that last one.

Fun clues all around today - OYEZ (3D: Court order?), 4D: Support staff (CANE), 28D: Watch words? (SWISSMADE), 49D: Plot element? (ACRE) (You're not fooling anyone!), and 48A: Source of many box office bombs? (WARMOVIE), for example. It's only now that I realize the last one is referring to the kind of bombs that are dropped out of airplanes. I thought at first that Mr. Wentz was insinuating that many war movies were flops!

Of the four long Across answers, my favorite is INTERNETRADIO (53A: Pandora's domain), both for its misdirection, and because I have been enjoying my Christmas gift Pandora subscription quite a bit this year. It's a big transition year for me - I'm both listening to more streaming music, and I'm giving away my extensive LP collection. Twenty-eight-year-old me would be shocked!

Not much junk to ROAR about. Nice trivia in LISA (27D: Toon named after one of Matt Groening's sisters). Decent Friday.

- Horace

Thursday, August 30, 2018, Grant Thackray

10:45

Mmmmmm... A lovely Thursday bit of cleverness. This is exactly the sort of thing we love here at Horace and Frances (featuring me).

At first I tried a rebus, using [ead], because I found both MANSPRE[AD] and UNDE[AD]. But then I had difficulty when I got to the NE corner and couldn't figure out how to fit a rebus at the crossing of SAL[AD] and LEERAT. Then it hit me: the [AD] was hidden inside the black squares.

And thus the revealer, ADBLOCK. Very nice. I'm particularly impressed by the dual bit of trickery at [AD]OPTARO[AD]. Well done, Mr. Thackray!

The theme is chock full of up-to-date contemporary chunkiness. C.f. MANSPRE[AD], [AD]ULTING, and [AD]ORKABLE. This clearly shows the concept of a constructor ATONESPEAK.

With a puzzle this nice, I think LESSISMORE. My only quibble is that IDA is not a standard abbreviation for Idaho, but other than that, ADIEU.

- Colum

Wednesday, August 29, 2018, Alex Bajcz

8:16

What an oddball theme, so I suppose it's no surprise it shows up on a Wednesday. I finished the puzzle and looked over all the theme answers with no clue as to what was going on. So I showed it to Hope, who immediately said that the verb portion of the answer was an anagram of the city name.

Huh.

True enough, but why? Reading the clues, I see 18A: Work as a metropolitan health official? (DIAGNOSESANDIEGO). It seems that rather than using the word "metropolitan" as an adjective describing the health official, it is in fact the object of the health official's work. The idea of a "reclaimant" going about her job as she SALVAGESLASVEGAS is pretty amusing. Perhaps it's something to do with the Southern nature of the four cities involved (presuming Athens is the one in Georgia). All that heat curdles the mind, you know.

Outside of a NEBR (and that's pretty ugly, mind you), and the peculiarly pluralized ONSETS, the rest of the puzzle is pretty DAMN smooth. Some nice long down answers, with ARCHENEMY and USEDCARLOT (the minitheme of junkers is amusing - c.f. CRATE and BUCKET - okay, that last one is not actually in the minitheme). I'm also a fan of LASAGNA.

62A: Things get crazy when all of them are off (BETS) has to win the award for circling around the answer. I love it! Similarly, 39A: It gets depressed on the road (BRAKE) is very nice. I wanted the more generic "pedal" first.

I think I've finally come down on the side of thumbs up for this one.

- Colum

Tuesday, August 28, 2018, Brian Thomas

5:43

Color me impressed by today's puzzle. There are a remarkable six full theme entries, including the revealer, BACKCHANNEL. Perhaps "back channels" is more recognizable, but I think this version is definitely acceptable. And what a clever thing to find five different television or cable channel abbreviations hidden in the long answers today! Of course I like WAXONWAXOFF best, but its hidden channel the least.

You have to admire all of that theme material, and also being able to work in REDASABEET and BOBBYRIGGS. The latter amused me because not only did he lose the "Battle of the Sexes," but he's crossing over 35A: Portia de Rossi, to Ellen Degeneres (WIFE) and a sports BRA, showing how clearly his particular brand of chauvinism has lost out over the years.

In any case, I won't FRET over less than thrilling answers like ASEC, MGMT, or the peculiar plural ANNS. When the theme material comes as thick as it does in this puzzle, you have to accept some glue.

My favorite clue came at 5D: B+, e.g. (ION). I could certainly niggle a little with it, in that Boron's ion would be B+3. But the clue is certainly clever.

I found this puzzle more difficult than a typical Tuesday. Part of it was a peculiar tendency to make typos. I couldn't remember if POTSIE had an S or a Z. I tried ZIPperlok (?!) at first. In any case, all's well that ends well.

MWAH!

- Colum

Monday, August 27, 2018, Susan Gelfand

3:34

Today we celebrate celebrities whose first and last names are both first names, and Ms. Gelfand has found four examples where those names are also the first names of other celebrities in the same fields (acting, comedy, singing, and basketball). The comedy set is strong (who doesn't like Carell and Short?), but I'd argue that all three, including the justifiably famous STEVEMARTIN are better known for their acting work than their comedy at this point. Steve Carell, in particular, has been taking on a number of serious roles, I notice.

And so many men! Ms. Swift is doing her representing all by her lonesome. Add to that Mario PUZO, Mr. HYDE, BLOKE and ANTLERS, and there's quite a testosterone laden feeling to the puzzle. Still, Elaine BENES is present, and the nicely inverted clue at 7D: Object of an ogler (HUNK) removes us from the omnipresent male gaze.

I don't have a lot to HAGGLE over here. There aren't any true dazzlers in the fill, but also very little glue. It's a clean puzzle. Having just seen BlacKkKlansman last night, I found ARYAN tough to swallow, even in its original meaning as stated in the clue.

It's fine, as the kids say.

- Colum

Sunday, August 26, 2018, Olivia Mitra Framke

TO THE POINT

Good morning! Colum here. Determined not to be taken by surprise for a second time, I am getting on the ball quickly today (see what I did there?). As it turns out, Cece is at tennis practice this morning, so I was able to get an early start.

Today's puzzle is honoring the start of THEUSOPEN today. There are a ton of tennis references, some specific, like QUEENSNEWYORK and ARTHURASHE, and others less so, such as GAMESETMATCH. Also hidden around are smaller theme entries, like MAJOR, ACE, BASE (line). And there's some grid artwork in the shape of a tennis racket right smack dab in the middle of the grid. Finally, the tennis racket is hitting a BALL in the circled squares. Okay, maybe it's kind of a four-cornered ball, but there's only so much you can do in a two-dimensional grid.

I found the puzzle overall on the easy side, despite the three completely isolated sections. I did make one error however, so my time would not get me that far in a tournament. My answer for 17D: Returned to earth? (ROTTED) was ROoTED, which seems mildly fair to me. But Peter Mark ROGEo just will not do. I did not recognize the thesaurian by his first names, SADLY.

Other entries of INTERESTS included SHOEHORN and EXEMPLAR, both lovely words. I also enjoyed DUNGAREES, Rod CAREW, and CALLMELATER.

I am not much of a fan of NONMEAT. Not in my personal life, mind you... I have often been known to take a veggie or pasta. But the term seems ad hoc. Otherwise I have no real complaints. There are a RAFT of abbreviations or acronyms, but I can see how the grid art made those necessary, so I'm hardly OUTRAGED.

See you tomorrow!

- Colum

Saturday, August 25, 2018, Sam Ezersky

0:36:18

Frannie has to work today - like an animal! - so I'm giving her a break and filling in. She doesn't know this yet, but I don't think she'll mind too much. If she does, she can always delete this review and post her own.

OLLIE

I thought this was a very good Saturday puzzle. Nicely challenging, where for the first fifteen minutes or so I doubted almost everything I put in. Well, everything except little glue like EAU (7D: Theme of Cirque du Soleil's "O," appropriately) (We just saw "Luzia" by them recently and loved it!), ELIA (36A: Lamb, by another name) (it just had to be), and IMS (49A: Some chats, briefly). And maybe a few others. Things like NEODADAIST (3D: Yoko Ono, artistically, in the 1960s), YOUANDI (42D: We) (Tough one!), and INFIELD (10D: First, second and third place) (also tough), took much, much longer.

I enjoyed the challenge, though, as I always do on a Saturday, and this is chock-full of good, unusual fill. I liked LOINCLOTH (11D: Primitive attire), YAKETYYAK (33D: Talk, talk, talk) ("Don't talk back!"), PLAYSGOD (32A: Acts all-powerful), GOONSQUAD (17A: Tough crowd?), and even WALLMAP (28A: Common classroom adornment), although I tried to make roLLMAP work for quite a while. I used to love those roll-down maps! And that SE stack is really fine - RADIOWAVE on top of ICALLEDIT and OHHELLYES. OHELLYES.

Of course, there were a few Saturday-ish answers too, like NEDLOW (9D: Renowned pirate captain during the Golden Age of Piracy) (There was such an age?), TONNE (4D: Equivalent of a megagram) (yeah, ok, whatever), and FDRJR (51A: First chairman of the E.E.O.C., familiarly) (who knew?), but those kinds of things just come with the territory. Luckily, I was able to work around them with the crosses. It isn't always that way.

There's so much good stuff as I look around, I could go on calling it out forever, but I'll leave some for you to discover. So get your TUSH in gear and go solve this thing!

- Horace