Frances
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Western Mass
Really nice to see Rich Norris. Putting in LOCAL PAPER straight off the bat was a lovely start in more ways than one. Lots of the short fill was kind of in the usual fare area, but the long entries made up for it. Nicest one I’ve done in a while.
94a: if anyone is interested in small charming talks on the history of hats, there’s this guy making vids over on YT: <a href="https://youtube.com/@hathistorianjc?si=GJxuMTa-nPaldLXl" target="_blank">https://youtube.com/@hathistorianjc?si=GJxuMTa-nPaldLXl</a> Mostly less than 15 minutes and quite entertaining and also nonpolemical.
@Joe Puppets are the group of representative objects in theatrical settings that can be moved by an operator. in the Japanese Bunraku theatre those are referred to as puppets in English. Marionettes are manipulated from above with strings.
@Andrew and Rachel Absolutely use the archives to get your average time down. For one thing unlike the current puzzle you can approach the puzzle when you choose, and can just pause it and come back another day to refresh your thoughts. But also old puzzles are of a different zeitgeist; like reading a bestseller from a period that you don’t have any experience of you get hints of the culture of the time. The world of 1993 was a different place.
Some thoughts: 3d: Having grown up where almost every watermelon is round, this rubs me up the wrong way. 27d: the two people getting married and hence ELOPing have nothing to do with pews, only the altar and at a stretch the aisle. In fact, as they are the sole ministers of the sacrament of marriage, the furniture of a church means nothing to the validity of the sacrament. I don’t really know much about marriages in other religions, maybe they use (are they called pews?) hmm. 70a is incorrect monarch butterflies have a chrysalis, famously. 1a: what? I can imagine the sentence where this word would be used but only just, and I would rephrase it. I don’t understand 18a at all. Is it a FB thing? Not a huge fan of this one.
29d had me almost sick up my hole, but the description sounds like it could be better than I was imagining. Thanks for that. I wanted Napolitan an actual dish that’s been around since I was a child. It was often cooked on a hot griddle so the spaghetti charred slightly, like Assassina. Not enough letters. On to the cryptics.
A bit slow getting HORNBILL as I wanted something like Horned Lark. I think that would have worked with the other theme answers better, but then I don’t care about theme placement symmetry. Revealer meant very little to me. Also DEPOnE for DEPOSE, which I’ve never been able to tell the difference between. Will go look it up. Fun fact: HORNBILLs and toucans are an example of convergent evolution. They are not very closely related.
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