Did I finish it without help? Yes, but it wasn't an unqualified success...
Did I check puzzle? If yes, how many letters were wrong? 1. Blast. I don't want to talk about it, it was a stupid mistake.
Commentary:
I feel like I need to label this post with a *spoiler alert* because the theme takes you by surprise! Halfway through, you realize that...the clues at the bottom are the same as the ones at the top! "Mirror Reflection" was a real mind-blower. I don't really think I liked it, though--I agree with Rex's summary today. One redeeming quality was that every time an answer we liked turned out to be wrong on the top, it ended up being right on the bottom. E.g., "Wait a minute, Egyptian queen isn't Cleopatra? Nefertiti I guess..." [15 minutes later] "Oh, it's Cleopatra too! Nailed it."
I'm too young for this $h*t
- 32 and 113A One of Frank's wives AVA and MIA. I admit to Sinatra being a bit of a blind spot for me, but I am truly not interested in learning about all of his philandering. I have no joke to make here because I don't want to read the Wikipedia article. (We are talking about Frank Sinatra, right?)
Really?
- 56 and 85A Anagram of the letters O-N-D. Is this the worst clue of all time? This is the equivalent of, say, cluing "snorkel" as "rhymes with shmorkel."
- 15D Suffix with schnozz OLA. For those times when calling someone's nose a schnozz just isn't hilarious enough.
- 51D Raise again, as a flag REHOIST. This is not a thing.
- Australia exports both tin and rum. What a boring fact.
- Side note: I thought the Caribbean had rum exporting on lock--TRIANGLE TRADE, FOOLS. (My dad sang this song repeatedly while I learned about this concept in 7th grade, and now I will remember triangle trade forever. Thanks, Dad!)
- Xoth is the home star of Cthulhu. Yikes, that is a geeky thing to have learned. I mean, I like being a nerd, but come on, you have to draw a line somewhere.
- 12A Old German ruler nicknamed "The Short" OTTOVI. If anyone knew who this was, you deserve a prize. The Wikipedia article on this guy is quite brief. It doesn't even say how short he was.
- Fun fact: My sister, who is 6'3", calls me Shorto. I am 5'10", which is far above average for a woman. So, don't be so quick to assume that our friend Otto was diminutive!
- A redan is a V-shaped fortification. Through subsequent wiki-reading, I have learned that the term is also applied to a certain type of golf hole construction: "Macdonald's oft-quoted description from Scotland's Gift: Golf is as follows: 'Take a narrow tableland, tilt it a little from right to left, dig a deep bunker on the front side, approach it diagonally and you have a Redan.'" Wikipedia author, I think you and I have different definitions of "oft."
- Elul is the month after Av in the Jewish calendar.
- 90D City that, despite its name, is smaller than Little Rock BOULDER. This is a pretty funny clue, and I learned that Boulder is not very big. Or Little Rock is quite big? I don't really know anything about either of them, turns out.
- Ferenc Molnar is an author, and he wrote the play Liliom. Which, as it turns out, is the basis for Carousel, so that's your second sweet musical reference of this post.
A new section! Things I learned in other weeks that came back today: a jab at crosswordese. [This section sponsored by the Otoe.]
- This only sort of counts: 5A Tinker, for one, in olden days SHORTSTOP. I've seen Tinker in the context of "Tinker to Evers to Chance" in a previous puzzle, but it wasn't enough for me to remember his name. Just got SHORTSTOP from context of other letters. I suspect Evers is the MVC (most valuable crosswordese) of these 3 really old baseball players. File also under "too young for."
PS: for those wondering, I didn't win my fantasy football game last week. But I only lost by 13 points!
No comments:
Post a Comment