TSAR (56A: Historical lead-in to -evna or -evich) - I had IVAN :(.Also, LEWTON, VALLEWTON, all VALid answers. But more disorienting was the "I," which I had as an "A"-very glad I eventually caught STYLA there at 55A: Accessories for tablets and changed it (to STYLI).ĬAT PEOPLE (23A: Ailurophiles) - " CAT PEOPLE" is a classic Val Lewton horror movie you can clue CAT LOVERS as, but you cannot pass up a Val Lewton horror movie title when you have your shot at one, because, I mean, when is "I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE" ever going to appear in a grid, realistically? Also, clue VAL as Val Lewton. So having just one here was slightly disorienting. First of all, I'm used to hearing them referred to collectively: the UPANISHADs. Last obstacle today was spelling UPANISHAD correctly. Now, I also like MILKSHAKEs, but, as with the order in which they appeared in my puzzle today, MILKSHAKEs finish second to MINT JULEPs in the 9-letter MI-drink category, for sure. I like MINT JULEPs, I like figuring out long answers from just a few letters, it was a huge win-win. I felt so powerful dropping MINT JULEP down off the MI. MINT JULEPs are, in fact, served in metal cups sometimes, and MINT JULEP fit perfectly. Was that a planned trap, because wow it felt perfect. But by far the biggest obstacle for me today was MILKSHAKE, or, rather, MINT JULEP, which is what I wrote in there after getting that initial MI. So I had to hack a lot to make FROG show up. Even after getting -RO- I could think only of CROC, which seemed wrong on several levels. But don't ever remember FROG being clued this way. Your ASPs and your ibises and scarab beetles and what not. I've been doing crosswords so long that I I thought for sure I was familiar with all the ancient Egypt-related animals. The first was actually right up top, with the clue on FROG (1A: Animal symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt). But the actual solve was kind of plodding and by-the-numbers.īeyond "accouchement," I only had a few other trouble spots. I see now that the FISH / HOOK theme has its two layers, and I think it's reasonably clever. I liked DIASPORA ( 5D: Group migration), and the theme answers themselves are pretty colorful, but there was just too much 3-4-5 stuff for me to get much of a joyful rhythm going, and it's hard to get terribly excited about something like INK STANDS. but then it was LABOR, and I was like "huh, that's work, work's not sleep," and *then* (when I finally looked it up) I was like "ohhhh. and somehow QUA *and* ERAT?), or short stuff with deliberately toughened clues, like the clues on ORR, say ( 28A: Mary whose short story "The Wisdom of Eve" was the basis for 1950's "All About Eve"), or LABOR (25A: Accouchement) -I figured "Accouchement" had something to do with sleep. I didn't really top to think "wait, why *these* answers?" until I was finished, and finishing mostly meant dealing with a ton of overfamiliar short stuff ( SSNS and AROD and INSTA ESTES ASADA KEA SNL etc. Since I got FISH / HOOK very easily, I figured, well, the answers hook, that's what the circled squares represent, ta da, the end. You figure out the deal with the theme answers themselves very early, with FISH / HOOK giving it all away at the top of the grid there. This probably has something to do with the fact that I didn't see the fish-name gimmick until after I was done, so for most of the solve, I had this dragging "so what?" feeling.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |