Man oh man some terrific Saturday cluing. Rex – you do grumpysome well, fine, blah blah, but when you exalt a puzzle, it’s so, so fun to read. Thank you so much for a most memorable Crosslandia outing. Kate, you gave me high excitement and beauty today. There were 12 answers that I marked as, well, luscious, and I’ll just mention the five that were NYT debut answers, soundly adding to the oeuvre: STEER CLEAR, BEACH READ, LET’S SEE SOME I.D., BLOTCHED, HITS A NERVE, and GO OUTSIDE. This truly may be the first time this happened for me. Thrilling! OMG thrilling! I hope everyone here has experienced this, and if you haven’t, I hope you will at least once. It filled in like a Monday, but with a big difference, because on Mondays the fill-ins feel rote, but today, seemingly, each one brought that kick, that buzz, that I get from cracking a riddle, because that is exactly what I was doing, but in a blaze of one after the other in a rat-a-tat manner. When often I need more than one cross to divine an answer, especially on Saturday, today, that one cross seemed to suffice – everywhere! Boom boom boom, fill-in after fill-in, and seemingly, in the blink of an eye, the puzzle was done. What followed was the thrilling part, which I’ll call a begat-fest. That’s an adjective I can hardly ever remember using to describe a solve.īut there I was, having gone through the clues, with huge expanses of white in the grid, but then the SW corner opened up, with MAISEL, then INKY and SOY, then ARK (with its hilarious clue) and MBAs, and then I saw BENEVOLENT. Well, I rarely talk about my individual solve, but I have to today, because it was just thrilling. Great end to a remarkably good week of puzzles. Hope you liked this even half as much as I did. but I worked it out, and nodded approvingly when I did. Then I considered the possibility that I was dealing with something CRUEL. well TRUE/FALSE wouldn't fit, but something like that. something to do with logic or reason, maybe, like. Also hard, unsurprisingly, were some of the "?" clues, particularly TRUE LOVE (33D: Unconditional condition?). I just refuse to commit "Dancing With the Stars" knowledge to memory, apparently) ( 49D: _ Goodman, longtime judge on "Dancing With the Stars"). although I've seen him many times by now, I know, I know. of YouTube beginning in 2014) and LEN (didn't know him. I struggled most with short stuff, ambiguously-clued stuff like RINSE and TEST (29D: Screen, in a way) and TUNES (33A: Some jams), and unfamiliar proper nouns like SUSAN (didn't know her) ( 39A: _ Wojcicki, C.E.O. Had the -NSE at 41D: Flush ( RINSE) might be DENSE (as in "Rife (with)". I had KICK before BUCK (37D: Resist) (a very unexpected kealoa*). I need a word for the phenomenon of a wrong answer that's accidentally helpful because it (by chance) has some correct letters that help you get crosses (see my FROG error, above). It's a useful term, and it's a phenomenon that happens a weird lot. This is what Andrea Carla Michaels (I think) once dubbed a "malapop"-a wrong answer that ends up being *right* somewhere else in the grid. only to have ACHE be right later in the puzzle ( 32A: Long). ENCHANTing, even.įunny to want ACHE at 1A: Smart and be wrong. Cannot imagine not finding this puzzle at least pleasant and charming, if not outright brilliant. GO OUTSIDE for the MOONSHOT! Take your BEACH READ to the ART HOUSE! There's something for everyone here. Look what great use the puzzle makes of its longer answers. You don't need to be part of a particular generation or be extremely online to appreciate the colloquial zing of " IGNORE THAT!," " CUT TO THE CHASE!," HITS A NERVE, and " LET'S SEE SOME I.D." (that last one so unexpectedly good, I almost cheered out loud, but wife's still asleep, so shh). I want to say it was in my wheelhouse, but I don't think it's flexing much of a wheelhouse, this puzzle. I get too much mail from both teenagers *and* 90-year-olds explaining how the puzzle can (sometimes, often) make them feel left out, and while some amount of this feeling is inevitable for all of us, puzzles can do their best to, you know, roam. When the puzzle works the same plot of land over and over, when it doesn't give all kinds of people from all kinds of age groups a shot, when it over-relies on proper nouns and trivia, well, it can feel exhilarating if it's *your* plot of land that it's working, and if you're part of the in-group it's calling out to, but. It's wide-ranging! This is the thing I really love in a late-week themeless. Breezy, flowing, chock full of snazzy terms and expressions. Once again (over and over now) we get the Friday puzzle on a Saturday. Well this one is GORGEOUS and it knows it.
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