Finding the HEX atop YOU instances was more of an afterthought for me. I think the best stacked-themer puzzles are ones where you need to figure out the theme in order to finish the puzzle. I don't like ENRY much, but I felt it was a price worth paying for the wide-open goodness packed with juicy answers. BASE HITS / ASTROPOP / APERTURE, yes! ANIMALIA / TROOPERS / SYNOPSIS, triple yes! That's the way to use those relatively unconstrained sections of a grid. I did appreciate the big corners in the SW / NE. BURL or NONU I might let slide if they were the only offender, but I'd work mightily to make sure there wasn't some better option. Here, I think moving them inwards one row apiece could have helped, giving Pete and Bruce more flexibility in filling around all those letter pairs.įor me, EOUS would automatically force me to restart a puzzle. Typically, placing long theme answers in rows 3 / 13 (third to last) is the smart choice, giving yourself the most space possible. Pete and Bruce made the grid 16 rows high to center MATH EXAM / JOYOUSLY, but I'd have been as happy with MATH EXAM in the center of a 15x15, with something like YOUTH below it. See: EOUS in top stack, and AIT in close proximity. So many pairs of letters to work through! They're both long entries, though, and stacking pairs of long theme answers can be problematic. And CORN C HEX was a good way to finish it off.ĮMPT Y OUT did a good job of obfuscating YOU, JO YOUSLY as well. MAT H EXAM probably made others wince, but this former mathlete approved. TOOT H EXTRACTION made me reflexively wince, but it's a solid answer. Even though HEX and YOU are both shorties, they're tough to disguise, so some nice finds. (And no, FRENCH being in the grid at 94A was not my way of making a prediction.I PUT A SPELL ON YOU = HEX atop YOU, three times in the grid. Who are you predicting to win today’s final match? I’m rooting for Lionel Messi to win in what may be his final World Cup, but France has looked very, very good (arguably a better team than Argentina thus far) and it wouldn’t surprise me if Kylian Mbappé takes home the Golden Boot trophy. A pair of World Cup-related clues at 111D: which is OLÉ and at 114D: which is NET.It’s odd how just last week I had another senator from yesteryear in STENNIS and I went to a wordplay angle with him, too. 97D: is SMOOT, who becomes the word MOOT if you delete the S.I guess Words of the Year doesn’t come off right even when it’s a two-word phrase. I was tempted to give it a Miami Heat clue since it’s nearby BRON at 29A. This is about the Disney characters, not the band. I thought it might be fun to spruce up this answer by imagining a conversation that two kids might have on the playground where one of them might say DID NOT. 120A: is “ DID NOT.” The “childish reply” category of answer is a bane for many solvers and constructors, probably in part because there are so many of them (like AM SO, IS TOO, IS NOT, etc.) and they’re almost always clued the same way.File this under “thing I didn’t know existed until I wrote this puzzle.” Using the city of Nice as a misdirect for a French word is an old standby for crosswords. I’m picturing that these ants take part in little military parades, with tiny drums and fifes. You can’t do that in a crossword they say. That would be ITT and LURCH, respectively. In the case of crosswords, the suspension of disbelief becomes important when solvers are confronted with a theme that they have never seen before. 34A and the next Across answer at 35A have the same clue.I also didn’t know until now that you can learn it on Duolingo. I hadn’t known until now that it’s been around for over 130 years. I learned that from this New Scientist article from June 2021.
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