Donna N
Poughkeepsie
@Kurt - If you missed it, the pilot for the show everyone is talking about will reair on Thursday. It's not made up. Not common perhaps, but a real word.
Enjoyed the puzzle, but aaugh, my streak broken by GAG where GAB gift crossed with Brest. I could not figure out where I went wrong. I thought it might be something about the theme, but I had that figured out. GAG.
@Rachel - Years ago I was in a safari camp in South Africa near the Botswana border. We arrived late in the evening and settled in. In the morning I awoke to a constant tap-tap-tap against the glass door to our hut. A hornbill was on the threshold tapping the glass with his giant beak. Very cool. Loved this puzzle, even though the picture clues were so easy.
Oh, the irony of how Deb's column is all about the pleasure and smiles you get from figuring out a creative crossword theme, and how that experience was ruined for so many solvers by the failure of the Times to show its app users the clues in a usable format. Nobody could think of using parentheses instead of underlines before publication?
@Gus That got me too even though I know the phrase gift of gab. Don't know my ports of western France well, although it seems obvious after the fact.
@mnemonica I think the revealer would have worked better without the shaded squares, but it is a Monday. I liked the repeating tens and ones but the fact that they were on odd numbers didn't help or hinder solving in any way, unless perhaps for someone who got stuck on 53a, the revealer itself.
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