![]() It's only one COIN, and it's disappearing, not rebus-ing. It was a truly stupid blunder: If I'd thought about it a bit longer, I would have figured it out. Since I didn't know ANSARI (76A), I put COINS as a rebus in the S square, followed by URE instead of SURE. But I thought it was pure blue, not greenish blue. I kept looking and looking at -YANS, and I still didn't see it. Much I hadn't heard of: PEACE duck (!) CONIES and I wanted AQUAS or TEALS where CYANS goes (85A). What's more, the rest of the fill is challenging, so there was a lot of crunch. Clever, lively, and with every trick different, so that figuring out one won't help you with the next. The best Sunday puzzle I've seen in ages. And I appreciated that all the descriptions of the tricks were in the ING form. I was kinda looking for some kind of rabbit – “Peter” or “Roger” crossing upwards out of “showboater” maybe.Įric – I really got a kick out of this one. Rex – you included the quintessential magic trick with your picture of the bunny ears coming out of the hat. Never eat anything you can’t lift - another one, I think, from Miss Piggy. I tried to think of other pairs where the card would move up one slot, but could only find one where the card would move down one: JACKET to TENET. For some reason, the fact that KING goes to ACE like that just made my day. But BUT… I was stunned when I saw the solution. So PEACE/PEKING wasn’t gonna happen, no way no how. I had “yowie” and never thought to change it. Like Rex said, that PEKING duck area was brutal. It would have been great to have the COIN more hidden like, say, in TOBAC CO INDUSTRY or some such. (Hi, least favorite themer was the COINSURE. Otherwise, it’s mystifying that anyone would think that word is fusty and old. ![]() Yeah – I kept reading and rereading Rex’s deal with GRANDDAD thinking I must be missing something. So I started in the southwest with NOT BE. I got the essence of the deal really early in – almost immediately – with SYRINGE/STRINGBEAN since I do the fill-in-the-blanks first and work from those. Solve sample puzzles and sign up for a free weekly puzzle here: All my love to the non-Nazis of Charlottesville. That said, Eric Berlin is in general an excellent puzzle-maker *and* he is one of the only people I know making top-notch puzzles *for kids*. Anyway, I like the ambition but it was too rough and wobbly for me. I guess I would've gotten in there eventually once I noticed the theme clue indicating a CHANGING CARD but yowie that hurt. I stalled for what felt like a long time. I thought I was going to die in that section. Changing KING to ACE at 55A: PEACE was absolutely brutal, especially considering that section was already blarghishly tough, what with GYM SHOES (I had OLD SHOES) and GLYPH (?) and is-it- LOA-or-is-it-KEA (worst magic trick ever) and the utterly ridiculous, please-take-it-back-and-smash-it YOWEE. What is that? I know that Blaine has appeared to make himself levitate, but is that the LEVITATING MAN. but it's no SAWING A LADY IN HALF, in terms of iconic magic tricks, I'll tell you that. I mean, I'm guessing that the magician somehow makes a card appear to change. That is not a trick I know or have every heard of. It was very interesting to see how the various theme answers played out in their respective parts of the grid, but awkward theme phrasing + DUDS aplenty in the fill meant the overall solving experience wasn't so hot. Or to actual old terms *signifying* oldness like GRANDDAD. ![]() Or to bygone things like the ACE AWARDs or to arcane things like TRIOLETS. you don't ever want to give your long answers over to such awkward phrases. There just wasn't nearly enough snappy fill to rescue this thing. You can tell what the tolerance level is going to be for elder-fill pretty soon after starting a crossword. ERGOT LAH IBN OTOE ANNI and I hadn't gotten out of the NW yet. The short bad stuff becomes a major issue when it's not offset by a preponderance of wonderful fill and/or a great theme. But too often the phrasing on the themers felt quite off, and the overall quality of the fill was on the low side. ![]() This is ambitious and, at times, very clever.
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