![]() ![]() Slacking: PLINTH - Pretty shocked that this has 27 prior appearances in the Times. FIXing is a tall order, but I can FUTZ with the best of them. That’s obviously arbitrary, but something to think about.Ĭracking: FUTZ - I am a professional FUTZer around the house. I don’t know the minimum number required to be considered idiomatic - Bruce Haight once told me he thought 400k was the cutoff. This played tough mostly because of the fill - ZEN KOANS was not easy to parse, and yields only 125k Google hits. Slight incongruity in the theme with the final entry missing “the”, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy coming up with a better 14 letter alternative. Pretty clever in that they matched common phrases with literal examples of X missing from Y, and clued each item with the missing components as blank spaces. HOLD IN CONTEMPT - COLD S_U_ER (hold missing from cold shoulder).PAIN IN THE ASS - _EABR_ (pain missing from pea-brain).ACE IN THE HOLE - CRAWL SP_ (ace missing from crawl space).KICK IN THE PANTS - _N_ERS (kick missing from knickers).Today’s theme: X in the Y (plus fill in the b_ks) ![]() 4.25 stars.Ĭhase Dittrich and Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword-Zachary David Levy’s reviewĬhase Dittrich and Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword,, 1102 If you’ve read her memoir, please share your thoughts below.įun wordplay in the theme, fun fill, and fun clues. I know she led a remarkable life coming from war-torn Czechoslovakia at a young age and rising to be the highest-ranking woman in American politics at the time. I wonder if it was ever spelled Exchester and the Brits just shortened the pronunciation and spelling. ![]() So Exeter was the site of a Roman fort on the River EXE. What I didn’t know was that the name Exeter is similar to the names Dorchester and Gloucester and that the suffix – ceaster comes from the Roman castrum meaning military camp or fort. Luckily for me, I know that Exeter is in Devonshire. Don’t think I’ve seen this tough cluing angle. Oh, and BIG AIR, “ NO NEED,” “ OH YEAH?” and even ET ALIA, which is redeemed with a clever clue (see below). Yes, it results in ESSE, NOBU, and MRES, but those are all gettable and not beyond the pale, it being Thursday and all.Įlsewhere we find OTHELLO, “ SAYS YOU,” PEACOAT, ASTAIRE, RICOTTA, and ELLY MAY (I thought it was ELLY MAE). You almost never see such long fill answers sandwiched between theme entries. Check out the NW and SE corners where we have LAUNDERS and DO NO HARM stacked between theme answers. And the fact that there is only one E in each clue is a necessary-but still elegant-touch.īeyond that, the fill is quite impressive. But these are all well chosen and the fake clues are completely plausible on their own before the aha moment reveals all. To be fair, the theme is still rather loose there are a lot of potential theme clues and entries that could work. The revealer then set me straight, and I was off to find the other answers. I put in TESTING ROOMS which seemed to fit the clue as stated. In my case, I found myself at the final theme answer just before getting to the revealer. ![]()
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