Monday, November 19, 2018, Jim Hilger

4:14 (FWOE)

Happy Thanksgiving week! Today, I am expressing gratitude for music. It's so important to me to be able to participate in music making on a regular basis. This year, I've been a part of Albany Pro Musica, a choir in my area of the highest quality. Last week we sang Britten's War Requiem, with the Albany Symphony, and it was a joy to help create something of so much emotion and wrenching beauty.

On the other hand, I blame the exertions for my current nasty pharyngitis, so no good deed and all that.

Today's error (a bad start to a week to FWOE twice in a row) came because I chose EwAN, the Scots version, rather than EVAN, the Welsh version of John. And of course, it being a Monday, I forgot to look at the crosses.

The theme is an odd one: there are only three answers, each a movie title in the form of "The A of B." The clues then call each movie an adjective which can be defined by the movie title. That's complicated to describe, and I'm not entirely convinced I've gotten it quite right. In any case, I guess that's why THECOLOROFMONEY is a "green" movie, or THESOUNDOFMUSIC a "noted" one.

That being said, all three movies are pretty good ones. I'd say that The Sound of Music is my favorite of the three, especially given the nostalgia factor. The Shape of Water was very good, but is a bit recent for me to be able to sense its overall value. I was certainly not in favor of it winning Best Picture. The Color of Money was a ton of fun, but clearly pulls up the rear of this trio.

With only three theme answers, the rest of the puzzle is free to have very good fill. I enjoyed BABYBUGGY, GRILLE, and BOTOX. MAKEME is also very nice.

- Colum

Sunday, November 18, 2018, Byron Waldon and Joel Fagliano

PORTMANFAUX

Hey everybody! Thanksgiving week is upon us, so in the spirit of the season, I will be expressing gratitude daily, strewing appreciativeness left and right, finding more and yet more ways to redundantly recognize aspects of my life to which I am obligated for the contentment I am lucky enough to experience.

Today I give thanks for my family, their health, humor, and support. Here's to you guys, who make every day fun and interesting and funny and loving. Looking forward to having everybody back in the homestead this week!

But on to today's puzzle. The theme is one of taking well-known portmanteaux, those smushed together words, and misinterpreting the two words that created them with wacky results. Thus, "brunch," originally created from breakfast and lunch, is instead clued as 52A: Late-morning mean for a TV family? (BRADYBUNCHBRUNCH). It's a cute idea, but it never reaches the level of guffaw out loud funny. Also, sour grapes alert, I made an error at 31A: Unseasonal wear on a winter vacation? (SKIRESORTSKORT). I had a T at the E, parsing it as "skirt sort skort." Hmmm. It didn't make any sense then, and it would have broken the rules of the theme by including an original portmanteau-d word in the answer.

Anyway, I have to express considerable respect at the construction of the grid. Note how the answers at 52A, 64A, and 71A are each only separated by one row. Note also how there are seven down answers that cross all three of those theme answers. All of those answers are solid. I especially like 32D: Split personality? (EXPARTNER) and 57D: Hightail it, saltily (HAULASS).

Other highlights in the fill include 16D: Formula for slope in math (RISEOVERRUN) and 15D: Can-can dancing? (TWERKING). That last one? Too funny. 67A: Like the number i, mathematically (NONREAL) adds to the math minitheme.

On a final note, I was saddened when I had to change my answer at 112A: See to it (MAKESURE). I originally had MAKEitso. Why, oh universe, why??!

- Colum

Saturday, November 17, 2018, Doug Peterson and Erik Agard

DNF

A big DNF for me today. I got stuck literally forever in the south east and decided to give up. I would like to say that if I didn't have to write the review today and could have taken more time with the puzzle, I could have solved it, but when I saw WORLDSERIESRING for "Band since 1922" I knew that it wasn't true. I would never have guessed that in a million years. Well, maybe I could have guessed it with most of the crosses, but there was too much I didn't know in that quadrant. I did not improve matters by confidently and erroneously confusing Mario Vargas LLOSA with Federico García Lorca. Dumb. That also meant that I was never going to get LLAMA, and so on. I didn't think to spell out I in ACTONE for "Play starter." Derp. THONGS never once crossed my mind for "Summer slip-ons." I call them flip flops. To sum up, that section was the perfect storm of weak topic areas for this solver: sports, musicals, and vocabulary variants. :|

On the upside, I did get TRACEEELLISROSS, even with no prior knowledge of her. The triple E's in her name are sweet. I thought TELEVISIONPILOT was well clued.

I've already ended my feud with France, and I quite enjoyed "Homme land?" (TERRE). In other foreign fill, I also enjoyed the complicated parsing necessary to understand the clue "Die on one side of Italy?" (SEI).  I enjoyed HOWODD and "Some causes of brain freeze" (ICEES), the latter, as a puzzle entry only.

~Frannie.

Friday, November 16, 2018, Kyle Dolan

15:32

A fairly fast Friday. I had a faster time today than yesterday and my Tuesday time was only three minutes faster than today's time. Maybe Friday is the new Wednesday?

The only place I had any real trouble was where CELEB crosses BEBE. I was not aware of Ms. Rexha (my apologies for missing her #2 hit last year), and the clue "Inspiration for some fake social media accounts, informally" didn't (and I may say, still doesn't really) make any sense to me. I was faced with CELE_ and since B was the only letter that made anything close to an actual word, I put it in to great success. I had another slight slowdown when I entered "ref" instead of UMP in the north west. On the other hand, I dropped in TEA straight off the clue, "Break during a cricket match." Does that count as a sports reference? :)

I liked seeing DRACHMA in the puzzle. It reminded me of my trip to Greece when I was in high school. There was a guy at a souvenir stall who kept showing our group various gimcracks and saying, "free for 50 drachma." Oh, the ironing.

I thought the clue "A chorus line?" (TRALALA) was good. I also liked SEEDIER, WASSAIL, and GEORG. SELENIC seems like good Friday-level fill, at least for this solver. I thought it was funny that DONUTHOLE  and SNOCAPS have a layer of SLIMEMOLD between them - an EOCENE, of sorts, if pronounced a certain way. :)

I normally enjoy French fill, but France is in the doghouse with me today. We got a speeding ticket in the mail this afternoon from la gendarmerie. They allege that at one point during our trip back in May I said something like, STEPONIT, and Horace complied. Six months later, they tell us we have two weeks to send them multiple euros via wire transfer. Sacre bleu!

I also have something of an ax to grind against AXE, and other highly scented health &beauty aids and home cleaning products. They give me sinusITIS.

~Frannie.

Thursday, November 15, 2018, Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

27:22

A rebus puzzle theme today where the letters IOU are squeezed into one square making MICROLOANS. Ha! My favorite is OU[IOU]I because of the crazy way the rebus cuts across the two OUIs. Also, it's paired with another favorite, the humorous DUB[IOU]SHONOR (Making a "Top Party Schools" list, e.g.). LOL. I saw the need for a rebus when I got to the clue "Sundry" at 49D and I already had the V from SVEN (Reindeer in "Frozen") in the top square. Once I had that one, the IOUs seemed to crop up everywhere - a lot like bills. :)

I had the most trouble in the north west. I couldn't figure out "Real lifesaver" (HERO). I kept wanting something like CPR. I also considered "lime" but, of course in that case, Lifesaver(TM) would have had to be capitalized. Our dear readers will not be surprised to learn that I didn't immediately know Matty ALOU, but, believe it or not, that crossword darling that he is, that answer finally helped me break into that corner. The word ELUTE is completely new to me. I looked it up and the clue is apt; it appears to be a somewhat technical word associated with chromatography.

I don't know that I've see the answer TOAT (Precisely) in this form before. Tee is usually spelled out, isn't it? It sure looks funny when considered as a single word, but according to Wiktionary, toat means "the handle of a joiner's plane." Who knew?

I also enjoyed the clue-answer pair "Bounce" (PEP). The answer to "Choice of juice?" had a nice twist (ACDC), and I liked "What you might call a Friend" (THEE). I'm always happy to see a reference to NOAM Chomsky.

We're in debt to Ms. Guizzo and Mr. Chen for another solid puzzle.

~Frannie.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018, Sam Trabucco

9:59

Today's theme is a hair raising adventure - lit'rally. The circled letters in the theme answers increase from a single bristle - the B in BFLATMAJOR (Key for five Mozart piano concertos) to a full face of whiskers in the revealer, GROWABEARD. The middle theme answer BEAARTHUR amused me in this context because I've always loved the old line, "almost like a female Bea Arthur." Ha.

I am a big fan of PJS, both as fill and as indoor attire - you know who you are. I also liked FALSEIDOL, "Big do" for FRO, and BEERHAT (Drinker's party headgear). I thought RIBBITS was great. I don't usually look at XWord Info until after I finish writing the review, but I looked just now and it's a first appearance for RIBBITS, along with 12 other firsts. Now that's fresh. :) Other fun fill included THATGUY (Fellow you don't want to be, in a phrase) and OHJOY ("How wonderful!," sarcastically). TYRANT for "Bad, bad boss" struck a chord - you know who you are.

Perhaps IRAIL, RESEAT, UTE, and RTE are more mutton chop than imperial, but they're not bad enough to make your hair curl.

~Frannie.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018, John Ciolfi

12:33

For me, the theme's sparkle fades in and out, although, dear readers, do let me know if I've missed something; that happens to me occasionally. As spelled out in the revealer, each theme answer is a common thing ANDES, literally, or in other words, with ES added to the end of it. It is also a mountain chain, but that's not important now. For example, "For the win" becomes FORTHEWINES (Why many people visit Napa?) That one didn't do much for me, but I did enjoy HOOVERDAMES. Ha! GUESSNOTES and BABYSITES less so. BEARCUBES seemed like a bit of a stretch.

On the other hand, I enjoyed most of the rest of the puzzle. I liked the four big down answers: BERNOULLI, ANGIOGRAM, WOMENSLIB, and my favorite, ALONETIME (Period enjoyed by an introvert - apt!). There were a few French answers for the francophiles among us (ce qui AIME les EAUX). And fun fill like STOAT, TRUCE, BOOTH, RASH, MUTED, and NIX.

I was not duped today by "Half of due" and I dropped UNO right in at 62D. I felt that my indupability, combined with the fact that I knew almost all the relevant factual answers, might have resulted in a faster solve time for me today - I was YDS AWAY from my best Tuesday time. But, as they say, HAI NSA is 20/20.

When AWLS said and done, there was maybe a TAB too many acronyms around the edges, but I'm sure it helped put the puzzle TOBED. 

~Frannie.