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I feel there ought to be a limit on the number of trivia permitted in a given crossword puzzle. Too many proper names, for those of us who don’t care to keep up with pop culture, just makes it a slog. Wordplays, puns, anything that challenges my creative language skills is so much more fun and satisfying than just knowing some obscure brand name or a flavor-of-the-month celebrity.
Ok I have to comment on this one. On my first pass I had so little filled out that I was sure I’ll need help on this one. I figured the circles were rebuses but it was still not making sense. Until I got to 69A and had the aha moment. Then it was trying to match up the colored circles on my iPad mini screen, which is a bit of a pain as the color changes if it is highlighted…but I got there with not too much trouble, and then going back and forth through the wormholes! Thankfully there were not too many obscure clues to make up for the tricksy theme. I can’t even begin to imagine how this would be constructed - just happy to have figured it out with no lookups and just slightly over my average solve time. Thanks to the constructor for a fun ride!
@Oikofuge Color me unreasonable…I found it absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing! For a moment I thought I’d stumbled upon a modern-day Enry Iggins. I’m even more inspired to find out that you contain multitudes. — Sincerely, A New Fan.
@Sierra Wow! Congratulations!! How long did it take you?
When I started I thought I’d definitely need to lookup at least a few, but was pleasantly surprised when my perseverance paid off and I actually finished in below average time! Lately I’ve decided that LIFEISTOOSHORT to waste time chasing the gold star, but it’s still kind of nice to get one when least expected.
@Matt in spite of knowing some Italian I got tripped up with COTTo/HIYo. In Italian the adjective usually agrees with the noun in gender and number so Cotto/a/i could all be correct. Similarly I thought Hiyo is a possible casual greeting, so in spite of going through my completed puzzle twice over I didn’t catch that one. Had to resort to “Check Puzzle”. Not a fan of this one. Le Sigh…
@Vernon I am a female from San Francisco and I enjoyed this puzzle.
@DW 100%. That threw me off so much that I didn’t even grok the overall idea in spite of solving the revealer and most of the puzzle, as I was stuck on wondering how Simulated could mean Simulcast.
@Oikofuge PS - as a non-native speaker of American English, it took me a while to figure out how the “Squirrelled” fits in.
@BC same here, on my iPhone as well as iPad. On WiFi.
@HeathieJ and @Barry Ancona Thanks. It makes more sense now. 19D is AR + CANE, not R + A CANE. Some of the picture-words happen to be spelt correctly (cane, cape, tray) whereas the others (knit, road, mitt, pie) use homophones. BTW It’s not about whether I like it or not, I was just trying to understand the internal logic of this puzzle. Oh well - now I can move on to what’s left of my Sunday… haha.
@Momerlyn Big Jasper Fforde fan here - I never cease to be amazed by how endlessly inventive he is! Love the wordplay and humour. Have you read Shades of Gray (not to be confused with the other book that unfortunately came out around the same time IIRC.)? As an artist I was particularly tickled by all his references to names only those who have studied colour theory would get.
While I appreciated the concept, I found the theme entries inconsistent and therefore unsatisfying even after having solved most of them. The issue maybe because the very first one was quite straightforward - “circled letter a cane”. But some of the others had an extra letter - what is an etray, an ecape, or an epie? (setting aside the extra homophone complication). I scanned most of the comments and didn’t find any remarks on this seeming inconsistency so maybe I’m missing something…
As a person of Indian origin I found the clue about the king of fruits very odd. I’m sure there are non-Hindus in India (or elsewhere) who also hold that fruit in the same high regard. While I’ll be the first to admit that relishing a perfectly ripened specimen can be akin to a religious experience, I don’t believe that it’s limited to any one particular faith.
@John glad I wasn’t the only one who got stuck on Sasta! Wasted a few minutes and was so sure about Sure that I had to look up the answer key (D’oh!). Still came in under my average, though not without earlier lookups for a couple of proper names so don’t know if it counts…
@ad absurdum hahaha you made me comme…nt!!
@Xword Junkie Ohhhhh now I get the wordplay in the clue. Har. I had HAh for 54A which caused 52A to become WhIST. It made no sense, but neither did Wrist at the time so I flyspecked my entire puzzle and finally came here to try and understand what I’m missing. Har indeed.
@Adam YES!! I feel the editor should’ve caught this
What is HEADSTO? I get the theme and the Thursday twist, but all the other answers make sense as words or phrases even if they don’t directly relate to the clue. I first thought it’s a rebus puzzle, and put in ONE in the last square but then didn’t see anywhere else that would fit. Overall I thought this puzzle was “meh”. Clever, yet somehow unsatisfying after I finished it.
@G Never having played “the game”, I needed 4 hints to solve it :-(
@HeathieJ Oh, I got Espy and the crossing. But e(s)py was meant to be a homophone of e(s)pie, and my question is about that extra E if I've read the down clue literally.
@DK I get that. Taking just the Down clue, the circled letter is S, and PY = Pie. Then you add the E to make it work with the across clue, but for the down clue the E makes no sense. As I wrote in my original comment, 19D being the most straightforward (R + A CANE), and others using homophones with extra letters thrown in makes it seem inconsistent. I appreciate everyone explaining how it works, but that wasn’t initial point. I got how it works and 99% of the puzzle, I just felt that the theme wasn’t applied consistently or clearly.
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