Kim
Australia
Thought this was a good Friday puzzle, the kind where the first pass makes me think ‘this is impossible’ but by chipping away at it it all comes together. Add me to the list of people who wrote and erased YURTS many times.
@Bill in Yokohama I didn’t know many of those clues in that list definitively outright, but by working through and filling in answers I did know and using a combination of logic and educated guesses I found this was very solvable. I do find obscure trivia a big downer in crosswords - but none such trivia in today’s. Just a solid crossword with a fun theme and a range of clues to give people different access points.
For someone reason after reading the first three themed clues my brain went to “ah yes the theme is reviews of national parks as if by bears”
@Jen F. For better or for worse when I was in school in the 00s students were still writing 5318008 on their calculators and flipping it upside down for a giggle
Appreciated the theme answers/symmetrical letters, but like others wish the whole puzzle didn’t contain such clunky/esoteric fill elsewhere. If I learn new words through crosswords I’d rather they not be basically obsolete - ABSYM? LIMN? Not to mention some very specific proper nouns, made the whole thing less fun
@Daily-Solver I think it’s using a verb meaning of land as in get/acquire, like ‘I hope I’ll land(/net) this job’
Nothing to REVILe about this puzzle from me. Some nice clueing and fun finding what words would work to rearrange to fit the theme answers.
Great puzzle, lots of fun wordplay! Usefully I was already familiar with the STARNOSEDMOLE thanks to having come across the endearing and educational Natural Habitat Shorts animations. You can get a sense of the mole’s starry snout in all it’s unsettling glory here: <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/N0GL3JWgN4s?si=sulqNUoa1qzRIplb" target="_blank">https://youtube.com/shorts/N0GL3JWgN4s?si=sulqNUoa1qzRIplb</a>
Maybe it’s my late-on-Sunday brain or maybe I’m missing some American cultural reference but 95D is not making sense to me… ACELA… on the fast track?
@SEAN It’s most commonly a response, but it’s not not used as a question - most commonly used as if to ask “really?”
@pmom it seems the puzzle accepted either the letter (from “I was framed”) as a normal in the down clue, or you could fill in that square as a rebus with the artist’s name from the across clue
@Byron I believe the clue uses the word foreign as it’s a type of clue common in later week puzzles where common phrases are clues to answers unrelated to how the phrase is regularly used (indicated by a question mark). It’s not trying to say the phrase isn’t used in English, but play on the term ‘foreign exchange’.
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