Average to slightly-above-average puzzle.Īmy Johnson’s Los Angeles Times crossword, “High Jinks” - pannonica’s review Nothing truly scowlworthy, and an entertaining if not earth-shattering theme. That’s one way to make that dose of crosswordese abbrevs. Double-duty, back-to-back: 94a & 95a PGA and AAA.Perhaps clunkier, but is better, in my opinion. 34a A TURN, that’s not a phrase I hear too often, and I associate it with British English.For 10d, I was trying to work out whether it was ROUBLE or RUBLES, but it turned out to be the straightforward MOSCOW.I see TANGIER (82d) and I think Morocco, but is equally viable, especially when 83d ÉCLAT is the next clue.ENTS and ELOI, together at last! (118a & 73d).Botany! 72d BAOBAB 31d SPURGE 21a PEONY 64a ELM themer 61a honorable mention to 9d PATH, 117a RIPE, and 34d APHID.How about the symmetrical DOWNSIZE | BEVERAGES 58a & 72a)? Meets with the approval of New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, I bet. The longer fill is pretty good, if not exactly flashy. Just for the hell of it-and no slight to the theme-here are the other IT words in the grid, none of which make much sense without IT: INHERIT, ITO, LOITERS, UNIT, AMITY (sorry Amy you of course make much sense, but just your name on its own? not so much see also 78a AMICA), EMITS, INIT. Quite a difference those two narrow letters can make, no? In this way it doesn’t deviate from the mechanics of the other themers, with the marginal exception of the hyphenated SIT-IN. I didn’t understand this one until I realized the new version wasn’t DEMERIT but the relatively unaltered …DE MERIT. This one at least has a double Boston aspect. Wow, three of the theme answers reference baseball in either the clue or the answer. I wonder how many solvers are conversant with pipits. The letters I-T bubble up and insert themselves into various base phrases to create new, wackified ones. In all, I’d level it out to merely an average crossword.Įmily Cox and Henry Rathvon’s Sunday crossword, “Now You See It” - pannonica’s review partials) is excessive, while the other two are about EVEN PAR for a 21×21 puzzle.
Very informal impression is that the P component of the CAP Quotient™ (crosswordese, abbrevs.Ha, ha… ha? Oh, the answer is NHL, where the goalies wear masks. Had 96d NOH filled in, then moved back up top, where I encountered NH- for and I was barely-excusably considering NHO, which is so very wrong for at least three reasons: (1) it’s spelled wrong, (2) “it” already appears in the puzzle and I was just looking at it its “other” appearance, (3) it isn’t an abbrev.Yeah, I can guarantee that that scenario isn’t going to happen. Who are these people? Oh, and speaking of “moundsman,” PROSED-while venerable in its antiquity, it’s rather shambolic. What is it with baseball players’ names? Yesterday we saw Turkey STEARNES, today we get STIEB.The A parade! A TIE, A LID, A SAD, A SORT, AN E, with EINE an honorary participant.Huh? 77d HAMMOCK is cross-referenced to 91a NAP, but 63d CASCA isn’t connected with Caesar’s ET TU (57a)? Odd.Nice mid-grid mid-size fill, HIGH FIVE and CHIPOTLE.There’s a general playfulness and tricksiness to the cluing, which imbues the puzzle with personality and elevates it above the pedestrian. Admittedly, not super-exciting words, but an excellent weaving job. I also appreciated the crossing seven-stacks capping the northeast and southwest corners, each with two acrosses and three downs: DAMAGES / EMINENT | GENTEEL / ENTITLE / STYLIST, and AEROBIC / RETHINK | EVEN PAR / SARA LEE / CLIP ART. Quite an audacious opening salvo, with TRANQ at 1-across, leading to QUAGMIRE at 5d. Hey, I just realized I haven’t seen LGM in a crossword in quite some time.ĭecent theme, two or three of the entries caused me to grin. The best for last? Arguably yes, because it has the bonus of resonating with the title, evoking alienses. The letters ET (for “extra terrestrial,” at least as far as the title’s concerned) have been TELEPORTed (73d) into preëxisting phrases to produce, with little prodding, new ones. Well! This is quite close to the theme of the Hex/Hook puzzle (below, but which I wrote up before this).
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