![]() ![]() Oh, and spelling RABaN wrong confounded things a bit more. Originally having egEst for SMELT and SeIvE for SPILE didn't help the cause. Had the RARE_DEALER, but couldn't get vinyl records out of the ole brain. SW went kinda quick with Startlate-Startslow-to realizing TANG (which I wanted but didn't write in)-to SLOWSTART. But after getting TARO, somehow saw OPIUMDENS and NE fell. Fell for the Spool-SCREW misdirect in NE. This was a tough/easy puz, if that makes any sense. I had INLET instead of ISLET and did not get the carillon clang at the end. Much prefer my answer ANN ARCHER to ANNE HECHE (even if I spelled her name wrong.) Anyway, I figured it all out, or so I thought. (I wonder if those trolls who love this blog so much EAT FAR RIGHT?) OMEN was too up in the clouds for me to figure out easily. I also wanted HARIS instead of LAMAS because I thought Lamas had a lot more to do than teach karma. It's a ruinous start, isn't it? Usually? So I had CRAP START for a while. I don't think of a stumble as a slow start. I'm not versed in the panoply of tools used in Harry Potter, so I had trouble with "Elder Wand." I wanted CHOP for cut of meat and that made SLOWSTART hard to suss out. ![]() That is one clue that skews both old and young. I loved seeing OPIUM DENS, especially in the context of Dorian Gray. I enjoyed this one although some of it was out of my wheelhouse. If you haven't read his book THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, I highly recommend it, despite what some may think of his character or personality. I had a SLOW START, but gathered steam with BOOBOISIE, one of my favorite Menckenisms. CINDERELLA TEAM, CANDY CANE, RARE STAMP DEALER, I BELIEVE I CAN FLY, AMAZON ANT, PICTOGRAM, RITZ BITS, I GOT THAT, OPIUM DENS, SLOW START…. So then the dermatologist got these little tweezers, and man, you’re not gonna believe what he pulled out… It bends backwards and just hurts to look at.ĮLDER WAND was a woe, but it was fairly crossed. Seriously.īest, most elegant part of the grid – TRICK/KNEE. I ended up with a dnf because of the NOOB/BOOBOISIE cross.ĥ7A – five-letter word for “teachers of karma” – teens. Oh, and I had about four different misspelled iterations of “bourgeoisie.” (EATS RIGHT schmeetz right.) This was after I erased “mako” shark as an ingredient in some kind of dish. Like Rex, I was going “Cheezits, trying to remember if they had a little sandwich version and making a mental note to buy some. Pretty easy for me until I got really stuck in the northwest. Here's someone else who got screwed by SPILE (and LEAD) Lasting image of this puzzle for me will be some guy named RENI out checking his SPILEs for sap. But in the end LOAD just felt (and was!) wrong. Could easily have been a Natick for me, as LOAD GLASS seemed like something and RONI seemed like *Much* more or a real name than RENI. DEE? (59D: River that forms part of the England/Wales border) TANG? (53D: Strong, sharp smell) RENI!?!?! (52D: Baroque artist Guido) That "E" in RENI was a guess. Had L- GLASS, and every single cross was bad / iffy. "SPILE!? LOL, OK, whatever you say, puzzle." And worst of all was the LEAD in LEAD GLASS (58A: High-quality window composition). I had to bring the whole puzzle down around 36A: One likely to have a large collection of albums to find the STAMP in RARE STAMP DEALER. But in the end the most dangerous answers were the vague ones. I mean, no, wait, don't forget it, because after ELDER-, I actually guessed WAND pretty easily, but still, niche niche niche answers, everywhere. Only word I could think of was BOOBOCRACY (or BOOBOCRATS?). BOOBO- was never ever gonna give me BOOBOISIE (5D: Ignorant middle class, per H. Problems all over with moving from section to section, because I didn't know most of the long connective answers. Then ISLES (only one letter wrong!) ISTO TACH OSHA and I was in business in the SE. Even the CAND- at 10D: Christmas decoration wasn't telling me much. But then I could not move into the center easily at all. Moved over and dropped SPOOL at 9A: A thread winds around it (as I was supposed to-that is as intentionally-designed a trap as you're ever going to see), but then corrected to RITE / ANTED and finally got moving for real in the NE. the "P"-got POI / TARO right away, but then got nothing in the NW. So strange to be handed ZZTOP and have the only letter that really opens anything up for you be. I honestly don't know what RITZ BITS are or that they come in. I kept thinking of CHEEZ-ITS at 1A: Tiny Cheese sandwiches, of a sort, and ZYZZYVA at 14A: Nest-raiding insect. But strangely, neither "Z" did anything for me. ![]() You'd think that when you get ZZTOP handed to you as a gimme, very early, you'd be in business. Luckily, there were gimmes scattered all over the place, but even then, this was rough going. ![]() Lots of vaguely clued answers, many of them niche slang ( NOOB) or proper nouns ( RITZ BITS). ![]()
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