Most of those are very blah answers but they all shine because of the cluing. or suffix for something contracted” for ITIS, and “this clue’s answer might contain more than seven letters” for MAILBAG. Other witty clues: “raise people’s spirits” for HOLD A SEANCE (which doesn’t feel “eat a sandwich-y” at all to me), “Met for a few hours in the evening” for OPERA, and especially “a bad one is your fault,” for SERVE.Īnd then I absolutely loved the two head-scratchers - “phrase that’s often contracted. (I, too, wondered what was going on with those two extra letters when I had HIDE AND … but I do remember using the GO when we were kids.) In the former category, there’s the clue for HIDE AND GO SEEK, as Rex notes. And I loved this one because it had awesome clues, some just beautifully clever and some delightfully knotty. I feel like Rex really loves a puzzle for its answers and I really love a puzzle for its clues. But here in early November, no ice as yet, so the clue did not compute. We certainly salt our walkway and sidewalk multiple times each winter to keep ourselves and our neighbors from, you know, dying. Maybe if I'd solved this puzzle in winter, that connection would've been clearer. it was only after I started down the road of "what are some things that are ICY?" that I hit upon "sidewalks in winter," and bam, the connection between salt and ice all of a sudden made sense. The "L" helped me ditch SALAD and replace it with different greenery: FIELD! I finished the puzzle having no idea how I was supposed to get from to ICY. But then I got out of that jam with the help of the LADIES, who gave me the "L"-"Take the L," they said (This seemed unkind. Only real error today came slam-bang in the middle of the puzzle, where, faced with -DDAYS at 34A: Romps, I wrote in SALAD DAYS. Luckily THE CATCH ended up being a gimme, and the corner fell from there. I got super-annoyed at the puzzle when I tried to move up into the NW corner from below, towards the end, and while I could work out CHAI TEA from -TEA ( 2D: Cardamom-containing coffeehouse creation), the other two 7-letter Downs leading up into that section were giving me -ING and. But I don't mind it, in that you can infer the answer from fair crosses, and you learn a bit of trivia along the way. I'm not nearly as rap-averse as many of you-not rap-averse at all, in fact-but the very existence of this song was news to me. " RAP GOD" feels exceedingly hard as clued ( 17D: Eminem track with the Guinness World Record for "most words in a hit single"). But she's the rich white nice-lady face of a global bigotry movement, so. I mean, if you've got SNAPE, then you don't really have any other cluing options, but RAT!? To be clear, I am, in fact, trying to "cancel" J.K. What else? Not sure why we're still doing Harry Potter clues, honestly. Confessing something.Īlways nice to learn something from a crossword and then be able to put it to use. Once I dropped through NOT GOOD and CRAPPY, it felt like the grid was trying to tell me something. Early in the solve, that answer just felt a bit clunky, *as marquee answers go*, and it didn't feel like a harbinger of good. HOLD A SEANCE isn't really up to the task of being one of so few marquee answers today. But the bright, longer answers are simply few and far between today, and the other stuff is merely OK. there are only two other answers in the whole puzzle that are this long or longer, so it's bearing a lot of weight, this answer maybe if the rest of the grid had been really humming, HOLD A SEANCE would seem like a fine, even colorful addition to the party. HOLD A SEANCE is tighter, for sure, more focused. Look, HOLD A SEANCE is not exactly EAT A SANDWICH in its arbitrary verb-phrasiness, but it's definitely EAT A SANDWICH-esque. That answer may also have been the highlight of this puzzle for me, as PINERY (?) set things on a rough track ( 12D: Dole Plantation, e.g.), and then the first marquee answer, HOLD A SEANCE, continued down that track, only a little more so. IRANI was also tentative, though JAM UP was more confident, and finally UNO CARD went in, the first thing that actually felt rock solid ( 11D: Skip or Reverse). Weird U-shaped beginning to this solve, as I went ETHOS, SEEPED, and then, tentatively, JIBED (8D: Agreed).
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