Really fun puzzle, extremely smooth and clean while featuring some colorful long entries. David's last few puzzles have been a bit too ...
read moreReally fun puzzle, extremely smooth and clean while featuring some colorful long entries. David's last few puzzles have been a bit too edgy for me, so I really enjoyed today's assortment which still managed to feel young and current while not going too far. It's fun to see the ROSE CEREMONY of "The Bachelor" (okay, I admit I've indulged in some trashy TV) crossing a SELFIE STICK, along with BOWSER nearby. Some may see BOWSER as an old-timey dog name, but I recognized it immediately as one of the Big Bosses in the Mario Bros. franchise. David confirmed that that's how he clued it! (I bet Will thought that would be too esoteric a reference — understandably so.)
I really like these types of "stair-stacked" layouts. They allow for three fantastic central entries, but also leave each of the corners with the potential for two or three more long entries each. I wasn't a huge fan of LONGING EYES — you looking at someone with longing, but do you ever give someone LONGING EYES? — but MADE IN CHINA and SELFIE STICK make for a very nice duo.
Also impressive was the way David worked the long SERIES FINALE and ROSE CEREMONY through that stack with little to no price to pay. SRS is so minor ... and that's it. Takes a lot of care, finesse, and hard work to achieve that level of cleanliness.
The SW and NE corners don't have quite as much room for goodies as the other two corners — ACID WASH / DO TO A TEE / DRUG WARS / ITUNES with only a NEER makes that very fun region — but I did enjoy BASILICA and MOON ROOF. LOCARNO and BATIKS as an odd plural feel like lost potential, but it is nice that David kept that corner super clean otherwise.
Some great clues that you might have missed:
- [Battery device?] is not a tech gadget, but something that does a batter-y job, i.e. a battering RAM.
- [Summer job?] baffled me, until I figured it played on "summer" as "one who does sums." Love it!