Soooo, Me, too, for glute before GROIN, no problem with the IMAN/LLANO cross. That’s AOK, buddy! I’d get a kick out of LLANO crossing “colonel” at the silent l or “island” crossing “debris” at the silent s. I absolutely don’t object to such things, but I do appreciate the elegance of today’s silent g in GOGH crossing the silent g in FEIGN. When the tilde n crossing non tilde n argument flares up, I always wonder if I’ve ever seen any grumbling about the hard c in CORGI, becoming a soft c in CST at the cross, but I don’t think I have. Hey – and we have another long o ending – OGH.Įarly on I had S_OA_ and my xworld-groomed mind went straight to some four-legged critter. Themes like this fascinate me, and I scurried off to think of other untapped combinations: H Ross Perot.John McEnroe. I got SCOTT TUROW right off the bat and was expecting a three-letters-in-a-row theme. I always very quietly hum – to no real tune – “Hail the CONQUERING HERO” when my son or daughter comes off the lacrosse field. We hurrah, hurrah, we greet you now, Hail!įor the glory and fame they've brought us Now for a cheer they are here, triumphant! It's also not all that uncommon a phrase in everyday speech, especially as an ironic description for a defeated person. It seems like every time somebody sneezes that song plays. All in all a nice Fales - I think Milford underestimated the number of times she's heard CONQUERING HEROs. However, there were also several clues I never read or got completely from the crosses - CUD, SRO, TOW, and SLOAN. I also had a couple of spots where the acrosses had to wait, especially in the south. On paper in 10 minutes, with 7 being about as fast as I can get it done, so easy. "Shouldn't CALEY have two Ls?" was the biggest slow down of the solve. Thumbs up to puzzle, thumbs down to my abysmal speed-typing skills. As I said, it's a solid Monday puzzle overall. Racked my brain for two-word answers that worked. Looked at 38D: Sit _ by and could Not get my head around it. As I've said before, I hate *all* clues, so screw you, HAR. Blanked at 9A: Daffodil-to-be ( BULB) and 12D: Name said before and after James ( BOND) when I first saw them. I also, very briefly, considered SLONE (?). It was my first instinct, but in my brain it had an "E" on the end. Couldn't remember if SLOAN was right for 7D: M.I.T. With just "G" in place, I didn't know GROIN (3D: Body part often pulled in sports). I got slightly slowed down in various places. The NW, with its OHI (?) / ASSOC crossing, is slightly ugly, but most everywhere else looks good. I suppose it's possible that either or both of the names SCOTT TUROW and CALE YARBOROUGH might not be familiar to some solvers, but both of them are major contributors to Crosswordese: CALE for his first name, and TUROW for his memoir "ONE L." All " RHO" sounds are spelled differently, which is a nice (necessary, but still nice) touch. Very simple theme, very grabbily executed. Anyway, none of this has much to do with the puzzle, which is quite nice. Still, I have to think the puzzle will play on the Easy side, so I'm splitting the difference with my difficulty rating. Today, I was cruising along thinking this was the easiest puzzle I'd done in a while, but my stupid fat fingers kept betraying me, and so I ended up with a normal time. You'd think with so much typing and solving practice I'd have this all down by now, but no. It's a really, really good thing that all solving is done on paper, because I spend much of my on-line solving time (on easy puzzles particularly) fixing typos and trying with only varying degrees of success to get the cursor where I want it to go. Sarcasm! Stumbled all over myself trying to get the correct words in the grid and then hit "Done" with one square still blank. Wow, looks like I'm in top form for this weekend's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
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