Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Normal / Medium
THEME: two-word answers and reversals — Four 2-part answers, and then four more answers where each of those three answers has their 2 parts flipped (w/ respelling of one part):
Theme answers:
- STARES DOWN / DOWNSTAIRS
- PLAIN PAPER / PAPER PLANE
- PEACE TIME / TIMEPIECE
- SEE RED / RED SEA
Word of the Day: "MOANA" (
55D: 2016 Disney film set in Polynesia) —
Moana () is a 2016 American 3D computer-animated musical fantasy comedy adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 56th Disney animated feature film. The film was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, and co-directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams. The film features music written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i, and Mark Mancina. (wikipedia)
• • •
Not that exciting. Feels like it was lifted from a list of such phrases on the back of a kids' placemat at some chain restaurant. Half of the trouble I had with this puzzle consisted in my balking repeatedly at writing words into the grid that I *knew* I had already seen (e.g. PAPER). The other half, ironically, consisted in my muffing the freshest, most contemporary answers in the grid, i.e. "
FEEL ME?" (
24D: "Understand?," slangily) and "
MOANA" (
55D: 2016 Disney film set in Polynesia) The former just floored me. I had the "F" but that was useless. Needed most of the crosses to find the answer, partly because I couldn't believe the NYT would go for such a phrase (good for it), and partly because I'm used to hearing the question start with a "Ya" ...
The fact that I totally blanked on "
MOANA" is many times more hilarious. First, it's a Maori word. My wife is from New Zealand. I'm usually on top of all pop culture NZ things. Second, it involves the musical talent of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and after The Year Of Hamilton, you'd think that anything he's involved with would've stuck in my head (I know he's developing Patrick Rothfuss's work for film, for instance ... and yet I blanked on "
MOANA"?!). I had the "M" and my brain went "... [shrug] ... don't look at us; all we got's 'MULAN'." I have nothing else to say about any of this puzzle. See you on the morrow, good sirs/madams.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on
Twitter and
Facebook]
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86 comments:
Also RED SEA and SEE RED.
With all due respect to today's crossword puzzle (thanks, @Zhouqin Burnikel for the puzzle, thanks @Rex for the review), does anyone understand what just happened at the Oscars?!
Incidentally, MOANA is a @Shortz-era debut ... the movie includes a song by @Lin-Manuel Miranda that was nominated and would have completed an EGOT for the polymath genius behind "Hamilton" -- alas, he'll have to wait another year or more.
This puzzle made me smile. @Tom Gilson, I liked RED SEA and SEE RED too, esp placed as they were. Kept reading DOLAPS as one word, which took a second to unscramble. Since SWIM was in the grid already, I wasn't quite expecting it.
Also realized I didn't know how to spell OKEEFFE all these years. :-/
With Red Sea and See Red, I'm shocked to see "see note". I kept looking to see if that was also part of the theme.
Easy-medium for me. A fine Mon. Liked it a lot. Nice one C. C.
Visiting museums in Santa Fe locked in the OKEEFFE spelling for me, before that mostly random assortments of Es and Fs.
And speaking of OKEEFFE, its not a theme entry but she is symmetrically paired with PAINTER.
C.C. Can do it all, from an easy Monday to a tough Sunday, the baseball fan has all the bases covered. Pun intended.
The most fun I had with this one was after it was done. Puzzle partner aka Jon was finished with his own copy and picked up mine and said "O.K. I finished it correctly and got 13D, but I didn't really GET it, SEERED. Me, SEE RED"? At which point he started laughing, "I was wondering why my steak was angry for SEERING it. We've all been there, right?
It might just be me, but I found can DO, DO laps, and as DO i, unacceptable in a 15x15 puzzle. Had ASamI because I was convinced NYT would never allow 3 DO's.
This was a very enjoyable puzzle. No grating puns just some interesting juxtaposition. I solved on my tablet. Mid solve one of my co-workers came up and told me about the Oscars SNAFU. That's one for the record books. Speaking film, prior to downloading the puzzle I read about Bill Paxton dying. I'll always remember one of his lines in "Aliens." After the first attack scene he said "I hate to bring you up on current events man but we just got our asses kicked." It's always a sign of a good actor when you remember their lines years later.
Both our host and Jeff Chen missed a pair of the themers today. Maybe it's a nerd thing.
Where's the PriceWaterhouse dudes when ya need them! I miss them appearing on stage in their gray suits. I swear one used to have the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
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I have nothing else to say about any of this puzzle.
well, that really sells this terrible blog, now, doesn't it?
How could I have missed a placemat or whatever with a list of these cool expressions? I had the whole thing finished and still hadn’t seen the deal here. Ok – I was catching up with the Moonlight/La La Land mistake as I was solving, so, well – the aha moment was really satisfying. I, too, missed that SEE RED/RED SEA pair.
I also missed the trio of DOs. In hindsight, I just can’t get all worked up about them. I thought the big complaint would be that PAPER PLANE isn’t as natural a phrase as “paper airplane.” We’ve been trying to make some great ones in an after-school program – pulling up youtubetorials, following the steps carefully…. And …. Nothing. They looked great but didn’t fly worth a flip.
I liked the FUDGE/DIET(ED) cross. Sign me up.
CC – in a rush this morning, but you better believe I’m going to try to find other phrase pairs like this. I loved being shown this phenomenon. Thanks!
Oh wait – I got one – Dear John and John Deere. But they’re not symmetrical.
Liked the theme with much creative cluing--ACES, RADAR, and EXOTIC.
POPEYE was the first cartoon I never wanted to miss. Still watch some to this day!
Thanks ZB
Loved the theme bec she could get away with repeating words and I love anything that makes me see words in a new way!!!!
And I too had to reparse SEERED and DOLAPS (don't turkeys have them??)
But the SEENOTE mars this otherwise great execution, I actually did like for a NOTE SEE
Or a C-NOTE... I'd have settled for NAZI!
But CC does continue to stretch and play with my way of looking at English and for that I'm grateful and she's full-y great!
I think this theme was special. Look at it. Two words that switch around; one stays the same, the other changes spelling AND meaning. I've been trying to come up with alternative answers, and the best I've been able to do is SAILBOAT and BOATSALE (and the latter is easily green paintish, and, incidentally, "green paint" is a Gridiom). Furthermore the theme takes up 50 squares, quite dense, which makes, IMO, the answers RTE/EXP/INSP/OCT/SYR forgivable. Maybe it'll be easy for some of you to come up with other answer pairs, but "kids' placemat" makes it sound like there are a ton. Maybe there are, let's see what the comments bring.
I enjoyed the ironic cross of REX and PEACETIME and the Boggle of REXes in the SW. Other homonym words in the grid include TIED, NEE, and, if you count names, MOW.
Terrific theme, CC, and thank you. And you too, Will, as this nice run of puzzles continues.
My solving style is all the acrosses and then all the downs. Whatever that yields, I go back and tackle what looks workable. During the downs, when I entered REDSEA, I remembered having SEERED and thought to myself "well, that's inelegant, @Rex is gonna hate these answers". Turns out the joke's on me (and @Rex).
Now the real question is how I noticed that, and picked up the theme later, but failed to notice the 3 DO's. Hi @LMS. Thx @maxsherer for pointing that out.
Jeff Chen at the NYT also missed SEE RED and RED SEA.
Man, this deserved a better write-up. I am sure there are many more phrases like this, but 20 comments in, no one has found one as solid as those in the grid. Pretty good theme density, but kept it Monday easy.
Just a really well done puzzle.
I understand it's Monday. But "Month before Nov."? All across America those rustling sounds you hear are puzzle solvers feverishly paging through their calendars....
32A clue "Fired up" recalls yesterday's 90 degree vertical launch of a mortar....
Loren: I had a science teacher in 7th grade who taught the paper airplane deal. His most useful contribution: bend the wingtips up, which really helped. Remarkably, decades later aircraft engineers figured out that adding upbent "winglets" reduces drag and the violent vortices that can roll trailing aircraft ass over teakettle. Shoulda patented that sucker, Mr. Knodel....
Fun puzzle. Never heard of Moana. and hand up for not noticing see red and red sea. Glad to see Rex in there
No dreck at all makes this grid a terrific Monday. The wordplay is superficially simple and yet I haven't seen this theme before and I can't come up with another entry that would work at all, even after looking at a list of homophones.
I've never heard a goat say MAA, but perhaps I've never heard a goat say much of anything at all. SEERED tripped me up when I entered it and it didn't make sense until I came to REDSEA. Aha! Beautiful job, CC!
Really clever and yet Monday easy. Great puzzle from Ms. Burnikel as always. Have spent twenty minutes with a list of homophones and can't beat any of her themers.
Like several posters already, parsing answers can be daunting. Spent thirty per cent of my solving time (over two minutes) on two answers, DO LAPS and SO DO It did not help I suppose that I had yAMS in for the pet food. The "and" phrases get me every time. What the heck is a Man Dm anyway? Or a Band B?
I solved with the Across clues removed and had no chance at 54A {___ card (cellphone chip)} SIM/55D {2016 Disney film set in Polynesia} MOANA. Since I didn't have the Across clues, SI_ could have been SIB, SIC, SID, SIL, SIM, SIN, SIP, SIR, SIS, SIT, SIX and any of those letters would have worked with _OANA as far as I was concerned. Let me call this a MOANA (pronunciation of "moaner" in certain areas of the country) which is an answer that is impossible to get if you are solving without one set of clues.
Details are here
@Nancy, I now know what superhero hat or teeshirt to get for you.
@Lewis, seeing the double double letters in OKEEFFE makes me wonder what word has the most double letters
I was a little SAD that spit wads didn't fit. The straw and the wads were easier to hide from teachers than PAPER PLANES.,
I liked that
STARE DOWN
was close to the top
and
DOWNSTAIRS
was close to the bottom
I'm having a little trouble going DOWN STAIRS at the moment since I tore my MCL and ACL. The prognosis is not BLEAK, however thanks to advances in orthopedic surgery. If I ever have an MRI again I'm selecting heavy metal, not rap, to listen to. The rap music was not loud enough to mask the noise of the MRI and the beat of each was dissonant even enough that my thigh muscles started to twitch to yet another beat of their own. Quite an unpleasant cacophony of rhythms.
And the winner is "Mulan"! At least I thought so. haha. Never heard of Moana.
This was a smooth and lissome little Monday diversion. Kudos!
Duh--never noticed the theme.
Hey All !
Nice theme density, the reversing themers are pretty neat, also. Same nits as others, but a new one here. Ot seemed to be alot of E's as I solved. Counted 'em up, there are 33 E's. Ya FEEL ME?
CC can do no wrong. #ACME
EXOTIC SNOUTS
RooMonster
DarrinV
See - Mondays can be clever. Lots of fun, and apparently hard to beat the homophones selected by the constructor.
And how about awarding the Class Act of the Year award to Jordon Horowitz, the Producer of "La La Land"? Upon having the rug pulled completely out from under him he was the one who took the bull by the horns, interrupted his friend, grabbed the mike, and got the true winners on stage while Kimmel and others looked confused. Cool head and classy guy.
MOANA: first hotel on Waikiki
Yes, this is a lot of words that share the two-word phrase reversed homonym pattern. But is it a theme? What idea is there to connect these phrases? Nice construction, dense, decent fill, but in the "word ladder" category of interesting things about words but not that interesting to me as a crossword puzzle. The "theme" is as close to being a Byzantine province as a recurring idea.
@ACME - agreed on SEE NOTE.
@Evil Doug - I wonder how many people flipped the wrong way and put in dec?
So, the moment of truth is here. Should I admit how really, really dumb I was today -- how I had a blind spot that I simply couldn't shake -- or should I FUDGE it and imply that I finished this [what should have been] very easy Monday? Oh, well, here goes. I guessed the F in FEEL ME, a ridiculous idiom, btw, and so I actually had FA- at 24A. But I had no idea what "flash mobs" were. And now -- ready for the stupidity? I had ABEL first at 22D. Leading to EAGER instead of AMPED at 32A. When AMPED became undeniable, I needed an A instead of an E for the 3rd letter of the Genesis 2 guy -- and I was not happy about it. So I thought of AHAB, figuring that "Genesis 2" was the name of a chapter in "Moby Dick." Wait, it gets even worse. That gave me FAH. Did I leave it in? Yes, Dear Reader, I did.
I never thought of ADAM. Never once. It's as though ADAM had completely disappeared from my knowledge base and my frame of reference. Poof. I don't understand this blind spot at all, but this is what occurred today. A dazzling, inexplicable, ignominious DNF.
Oh, yes, and I had BAA instead of MAA for the goat. Making AHAB pure perfection.
@LMS, how did the farmer know his wife left him for a tractor salesman? He got a John Deere letter.
"De DO DO DO De da da da
Is all I want to say to you"
About the DO DO DO is I don't care one bit. I think Will had something to say about doubling up on some words recently and I don't believe he cared either.
PLAIN PAPER PLEIN Soleil? Didn't we just have that recently too. Oops, no, that was The Talented Mr. RIPLEY. I often have trouble with CC's puzzles but @ACME has me wondering if it's because her talent is akin to Joseph Conrad's. English is not her first language and it appears she SEES things that we ABORIGINAL speakers either take for granted or just don't see at all. I found her last few puzzles interesting and fun and not perticularly difficult. Maybe I'm begining to tune in on her mind set.
@Rex had to have dug really deep into his metaphorical hand bag to find the child's menu at the local Denny's for a comment. Especially since, so far, nobody here has come up with another menu entry. @Rex must be reading Roger Ebert's book, Your Puzzle Sucks. (Did I get that right? Should I google it?)
Unlike @r.alph I barely saw the down clues at all. I did SEE RED SEA though. I notice that at some point someone mentioned that to OFL and he appears to have ammended his critique. Like @r.ralph, MOANA stumped me for a while too when SEE N?TE was eluding me. I was thinking about c.f. Op Cit. ibid stuff and just couldn't focus. Golly, I felt foolish.
CHEESE AND RICE. I didn't think it was real Cockney slang, chinas, so I had a butchers at cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk and apparently 49 people have rated it Mockney. Only 29 thought it was classic and 20 thought it was modern. I'm no expert but i've always thought Cockney was cool since I was first introduced to it on my first wedding day in London. A freind aske me, "So, how's your trouble?"
"Huh?" Says I.
"Trouble and strife, wife" says she. And she explained a little about Cockney rhyming slang to me.
Did I like this puzzle? Yeah. Even more when I saw the theme. And there I was thinking it was going to give me problems.
@nancy -- perhaps ignominious, but what a terrific smile-producing post! It made me feel like I'm not alone.
@aketi -- Go to this page: http://jeff560.tripod.com/words4.html , go down nine sections and read the section starting with SUBBOOKKEEPER, and you'll get all you ever wanted to know about words with double letters. You're welcome, from your resident alphadoppeltotter.
Har, @Nancy, the vision of a white whale whispering temptations into Eve's ear is wonderful. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who can find ridiculous justifications for leaving in wrong answers!
A sub-six minute solve so quite easy today and I wasn't using the theme to save time until I got DOWNSTAIRS from STARESDOWN.
@ACME, DOLAPS being folds of skin off the top of the head rather than the chin-hanging DewLAPS, nice!
MOANA not a problem here due to my reading about some controversy about the film. And there were multiple mentions of the film at last night's Oscars.
Another good Monday by CC, thanks.
I was going to object to ScARES DOWN as a way to intimidate (ski resort could be ALcA as well as anything else, to me). But, well, there was the theme.... Still, I did enjoy pondering what one would scare people down from.
My homonym of the week for you Zhouqin: this was suite sweet!
Liked DO LAP SWIM EATS FUDGE DIETED COLA.
SEE NOTE stuck out like a soar thumb though. OKEEFFE ARP PAINTER made me smile and I bet this was a bare to come up with for a Monday.
A POP POP EYE......
Finally broke the 3-minute mark (2:44). Easiest puzzle in (my, at least) history.
Sorry to ask, but what or who is CC, since these are not the initials of the puzzle creator?
This had to be the easiest New York Times crossword puzzle ever. I had finished the whole thing and still didn't realize there was a theme.
@Anon 9:58 - If you see "C.C. Burnikel" in other places, say the LA Times Crossword, it is the same person as today's constructor. Shortz apparently has a copy of her long form birth certificate.
This Monday outing by Zhouqin Burnikel, was ARP for Arps sake! She's ACES as far IAMS concerned!
@Nancy - We've decided we prefer your solution. We've all been there, we're just not quite as much fun in explaining our face plants.
Nothing EXOTIC or BLEAK here. Nothing to make one MOANa or SEE RED or require an apology from Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Just an appropriately simple Monday theme well executed (except for those little redundant SEE's and DO's). Another week begins.
@George Barany, my best guess is that the Russians interfered in revenge for Warren Beatty's "Reds". "La La Land" obviously won the popular vote.
Smooth and easy puzzle today with a clever twist on homophones.
I wanted DO LAPS to have a DEW LAP pair, POP EYE -- I POP, ATTENDS -- ENDS AT, CAN DO -- DUKE ANNE, etc. Alas, they didn't.
Enjoy your Monday!
@lewis, @aketi, an old puzzle book I had when a kid said the word with the most double letters was boobbookeeper. That memory is now old enough to apply for Social Security, but I think it stuck because even then I thought it was a really dumb concoction.
@Nancy, I also had Abel at first. But I tried to stick to the Bible so bAA never was a candidate, and eventually putting in FAD gave me ADAM. Lucky me!
I'm glad @Rex and @Jeff Chen missed RED SEA/ SEE RED. I missed all of them. I never saw the theme until reading the blog.
Many, many thanks to @Lewis, @Teedmn and @Mohair for making me feel so much better!
I cracked up over your John Deere joke, @Numinous.
@Nancy, my route was a little different, but I ended up in the same place. All the goats I've ever known say bAA, so Ahab seemed the only choice. I did consider Abab/fab (old meaning of flash), but gah seemed better. I did think the clue was too tough for a Monday, but still never thought of ADAM. 🐐🐐🐐
O'KEEFFE (5D) is symmetrical with PAINTER (46D). Nice.
I time myself Mondays and Tuesdays. Today was 10 minutes, a little slow, because I did not know MOANA and certainly had forgotten the weird spelling of the painter's name. I did not even notice MAA, but it has long been the convention that sheep say Baa and goats say MAA.
Thanks all for the explanation of the trick theme, where the second time around the words are not only reversed but one word changes its spelling. Thanks too for the CC explanation.
I was seered off for a while until the proper parsing broke through.
Et tu, @jberg (11:07)? That is SO interesting! I guess AHAB is what my old high school math teacher would have called "the best wrong answer".
@Lewis, I enjoyed your link. HEEL LOOP sounds like a move in Brazilian Jui Jitsu.
@Gill I, If Apple expands their line of iProducts, maybe they can come up with a liquid consumable iPop device to take the place of burner phones that could be paired with POPEYE.
Very nice MonPuz theme. Got it after seein PEACETIME and its partner-in-waitin TI?E?IECE.
C.C. nailed about every possible imaginable themer combo. Even given total FREE REIN, the M&A Research Desk was unable to come up with a single extra combo. The MARDesk decided to take the rest of the day off, in order to go out and enjoy the RAIN-FREE weather forecasted for today.
Blow-out winner, best moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Month before Nov.} = OCT.
Wait … there's been a mistake … wrong envelope, dude … the blow-out winner was: Hillary.
fave touch of class circle-of-desperation: RERAN/INSP/DOLAPS/EXP/PAPERPLANE.
fave (symmetrical!) non-themers: OKEEFFFFEE + PAINTER.
Thanx for the fun, C.C.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
**gruntz**
I was sure that 13D was SEETHE, but Bill NYE, the Science Guy, wouldn't get out of the way!
Thought male deer was a buck, as referred to by all hunters, who usually knows such things. Stag is a large buck per google. So no harm no foul i guess.
I blew through this so fast I did not see the theme either. I kept wondering why there were so many green paint answers like 'plain paper'. Now it all makes sense. I think the theme was clever, although I wish the answers were better but maybe there are not a lot of possibilities. Too bad you just phoned it in today, Rex. It would have been more interesting to actually read a review.
Very nice puzzle. I spent most of my time finding that I had put a zero at the end of CANDO, a feat that wouldn't have been an issue for a paper solve, which I do for the LA Times.
Agree with Anon@1:20 on the ad hoc crosswordese feel to PLAIN PAPER. The phrase isn't nonsensical but it doesn't seem like something we would hear or see in the wild. "I'll have a can of green paint, and would you wrap it in PLAIN PAPER please." And yes, it's a PAPER AIRPLANE.
A winner of a Monday - clever theme, lovely construction, just-right-easy. Three pairs of 5+5-letter phrases, each featuring a homophone - I thought that was fantastic. I (too) missed RED SEA-SEE RED, but I did appreciate FEEL ME next to SENSES and MAUI over MOANA, in which he (MAUI) is a character. @Alias Z, I too thought of dewlaps (the joys of aging); would have been fun to see even though it doesn't fit the theme pattern.
GMAIL is the alternative to AOL Mail or Yahoo Mail. The alternative to AOL or Yahoo is Google. This clue/answer is wrong.
@Gerry Kahle - You're being to technical and not very linguistic. "What do you use for email?" might be answered with AOL, Yahoo, or gmail. I suppose someone might answer that question with "Google" but would immediately expose themselves to suspicion of technological rubitude.
@M&A - All my pewits are rein free.
Fastest Monday ever!
@Z - pewits. arrggh. Rein em in, dude.
Wasn't there a NYTPuz one time that had themers of FIRSTLADIES and LADIESFIRST? …
M&Also Forgetful
"Are you sure you're able?" "Yep. Can do lima epps." Thought it was themeless till the write-up.
@Gerry Kahle, check. @Rex's FAQ #16.
That was all one can hope for in a Monday, and more. I figured out the theme consistency and after TIME PIECE, I went looking for where to plug in PEACE TIME. Fun solve!
Being a veteran teacher, I at first balked at PAPER PLANE as the term to describe those annoying bits of evidence of lax classroom control, but on the other hand, had no problem with PLAIN PAPER, which was a valuable commodity to those who liked to pass a NOTE to their friends.
My initial response to the clue "Name first encountered in Genesis 2." was dismissal. Gawd! Not another pop culture clue from some space shoot 'em up. Oh, that Genesis! Might I recommend The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb,with a panel for every verse. Masterpiece of a masterpiece, complete with sex, violence, and space aliens, plus our ancient ancestor ADAM.
Yes.
The response to " understand" as feel me, I don't get. Is this a new slang response. Generational gap with me
@jaymar - If you think of 1970's era rock opera as "new," then sure.
MAA?
I'm drunk as hell!!!
I thought the word was dewrag long before I saw dorag in writing, so yes, DEWLAPS do lapse. Some nice supporting acts provided by LIMA MALI, IAMS SIAM and the C-NOTE SEENOTE, but the clue for OCT caught my attention also as being sub-Mondavian. And if there's no such word, I say we need it hence fourth.
Am thoroughly impressed by the abel contortions a damn entry elicited in some quarters. My place to hangup was hitherto unrealized double E double F (double G whiz) of the PAINTER O'KEEFFE, but I guess she almost had to, given Stieglitz lits. [Note to self: Must stop this while I still can. Stiehl can. Stiehl Khan. This might be harder than I thought.]
Definitely found it a tight and clever theme, unrealized for some minutes after completion. Tried my hand, and found it not that easy: got a little vertangled before breakfast with BRAKE_FAST and FAST_BREAK, and figured SWEARS_BY/ BUYS WARES would be a mortal insult to @Anoa Bob. The one that just holds a curious appeal foe me is A DORMOUSE that can ADORE MAUS. (Hope that doesn't gross out anybody.)
Just like many others, I liked this CC B. offering.
Tx v much!
I didn't absorb anything after seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda is developing Patrick Rothfuss' work... !!!!
Didnt see yet.
I hope to use some of their quotes in my blog.
loveisintheair10.blogspot.com.br
Stopped in my tracks coming out of the NW with Georgia...who? I started filling the name in, but there was a square left over. Eventually the double-F came to light, but wow, I never heard of a double-F O'KEEFFE.
A bit later I was stopped again as I tried to figure out the theme. I'd gotten STAREDOWN, PLAINPAPER and TIMEPIECE; west to center wasn't yet in because of the name confusion. Asking myself, "What goes with -DOWN, -PAPER and -PIECE??" Rackin' mah brain. Gave up and returned to the solve, and uncovered PEACETIME. Oh, Zeebs, ya got me again!
And again we have OFL: "Not that exciting." Talk about BLEAK! I tell you that man could wilt a vaseful of fresh flowers just stepping into the room. Then what would Georgia have for a model? Oh well. Maybe by this afternoon when I check back they'll at least have updated their Syndi-page so I don't have to load a whole month's worth of puzzles. Hope springs eternal.
Despite chestnuts like APOP and ALOE, I liked this one. It has a super-DOD in Angel Cheryl LADD, and as others have mentioned, thumbs its SNOUT at one of crossword's main thou-shalt-nots: the repeated word. In this case, being the point of the theme, the pass is granted. A well-done birdie.
ENEMY RADAR
At the STAG, ADAM’s EXOTIC dancer, ELENA, we SENSES his friend –
what she CANDO costs SIM a SEENOTE for each who ATTENDS,
UPON the stage she’ll EXPOse
while she STARESDOWN her nose
and says, “FEELME DOWNSTAIRS and I’ll POPEYEs ‘til it ENDS.”
--- ERMA OKEEFFE
One small bit of resistance: the formal "AS DO I".
Nothing else.
Jet-lagged from my return trip this morning, but nevertheless had the mojo to finish this little gem from CC. I found the multiple "theme" entries to be delightful once I realized that yes, I *can* repeat a word because it is part of the theme. There aren't many examples of this type of phrase. I tried
"booster rockets" (propulsion for satellites) and "rockets booster" (Houston hoops fan), but both phrases use the two words spelled the same, so no. Same with "income" and "come in" (also bad because "income is one word).
Glad to be back with the syndies, but I think I need a nap.
Hey @Spacey - I recently completed a puzzle with OKEEFFE as part of an answer, and thought it might have been part of this past week. But I've done so many puzzles this week - ACPT, anthologies on a long plane flight, the entire week whilst catching up, it could have been from any time. But I did remember the double F.
Speaking of an F, I did the basic amateur wrong move today - not checking crosses after completion. I had guessed HBO for 1D - everything I haven't seen must be on HBO - so there were a few errors. Also had LAad instead of LADD.
When I began to notice the replications I thought Rex would have a cow, but then the theme made them apt instead of something to opt out of. Cool CC Monday.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Mr Pakrer,I was unsure of the same two that you were. Still was able to get them all right without looking up any answers or hints.
I don’t care where ideas come from if they make a good puz, and I thought this was just fine. Maybe even EASIER than OFL’s medium.
I’m not coming up with much for additional reverse answers except house warming and warming house, but no spelling change there, so . . .
I recalled a poster/print that an old girlfriend had on her wall with all of those Es and Fs in OKEEFFE, so no surprise on spelling the PAINTER’s name there for me.
Any Bond girl or Angel gets the auto-yeah baby from me, such as Ms. LADD.
AMPED up for Opening Day? We’ll see what the Twins CANDO this year.
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