Some beautiful entries today, my favorite being the SOUP NAZI from Seinfeld. Kind of a surprise it's taken this long to show its face. ...
read moreSome beautiful entries today, my favorite being the SOUP NAZI from Seinfeld. Kind of a surprise it's taken this long to show its face. What a nice exercise to rack my memory, going through all my favorites: MR MOVIEFONE, NEWMAN, BANYA, FESTIVUS POLE, STEINBRENNER. Love it when a crossword brings a little bit of joy into my life.
It's not often that I get surprised by a seven-letter entry, because it's hard to find debut stuff in the shorter lengths. But HOUSE MD got me with its bizarre ???SEMD ending. Really nice moment when it came to me that HOUSE wasn't just HOUSE at all.
Some beautiful clues today. I've come to love Saturday puzzles (even though I can't always finish them without a little help) because they more often than not are loaded with tricky wordplay clues. "Position papers?" is such a great clue for KAMA SUTRA, and we get another one right below in "Vanity case?" for EGOMANIAC. And then we get my favorite, "Members of a joint task force?" for NARCS, with "joint" in the "doobie" meaning. Really fun.
As with most themelesses, we get a smattering of "glue" type entries. ENOTES has such friendly letters, and Julian/Will do well to try to rescue it with a term actually used by a few internet companies. Still, it doesn't quite hold up to my understanding of modern usage. ETAIL is perfectly fine with me, perhaps because I see that term all the time in the NYT and WSJ, but ENOTES... I'm still not convinced.
The name pile-up in the SW corner is going to get some people, too. It's good that MELLON, CEE-LO, ESSEN, NELLE, and ST BONIFACE are all drawn from different areas, but it's not ideal. A very tough corner to fill though, given the big chunk of white space with FORELIMBS running through it.
Why has NO SOUP FOR YOU never been in a NYT themeless? A travesty! NO SOUP FOR YOU CONSTRUCTORS!