9/21/2023 0 Comments Simple geometry puzzlesMy run lasted 45 minutes, and I had all five theme entries finished by the time I got home - with none of the usual googling, database hunting and hand-wringing. ![]() Without the Wright brothers, it would’ve been hard to pull this puzzle together. The vocational “wright” just doesn’t arise much these days. WRIGHT was the most challenging to make work, both in terms of identifying a seed phrase that actually contained it, and coming up with another phrase that playfully integrated it. SOUNDS GOOD became the revealer, and then I got started brainstorming the RIGHT swaps. Early in the run, I settled on “sounds right” as a revealer before I realized that “right” and its homophones would be better spread across four theme entries. But I set out with the specific goal of developing a theme that hinged on the sounds of words. I’m not sure which puzzle I’d recently solved that inspired me. This puzzle came together over the course of a single run along the foot of the Horse Heaven Hills in the lower Yakima Valley. “Many links” has a number of possible answers, and I sniffed out one of its wrong ones, getting stuck with “web pages” for far too long. No archaeology degree is needed for this abbreviated form of “Dirt-digging research”: OPPO is short for opposition research, as in looking into an opponent’s dirty laundry (and maybe whether he or she is selling it online for money).ģ9D. For another shining example of a question-mark clue, look no further than “Lightens up?” The answer is IRRADIATES.ģ7D. ![]() His revealer asks us for a phrase that means “It’s a plan” and also “might be said of 17-, 23-, 35- and 48- Across.”Ģ8D. Slonecker manages to craft his theme using reasonably modest materials, much the same way “Canning tomatoes” (26D) are simmered into a rich, flavorful marinara. As far as I know, it hasn’t yet caught on, but please feel free to use it. I should add that a friend of mine once notably referred to that flap of skin hanging from her triceps as her “bon voyage,” inspired by the way it seemed to wave farewell after her every movement. ![]() Here I am, flush with the knowledge of how to refer to a jiggly bit on a cow and at a loss for a word I need.īlake Slonecker’s crossword contains a bevy of non-bovine vocabulary, mind you, and much of it is the sort of stuff that actually comes in handy. WEDNESDAY PUZZLE - It seems unfair that the “Flap of skin hanging from a bovine’s neck” (43A) should have a name, as well as a prominent mention in the New York Times Crossword, while the flap of skin that has been hanging from my arms since I turned 30 has neither.
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