them's crossing words

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Bug Rate

by erik

Whew, Puzzmo finally gave me a break. My last 5-ish crosswords have all been over 15 minutes so it's nice to have one that's sitting at an easy 6 minutes, 50 seconds.

Today's crossword is the ideal medium-difficulty puzzle. On my first past I managed to fill about 75% of the grid, helped by some very generous clues like "Great Salt Lake's state". The spots leftover were still a lot of fun to puzzle through, nothing completely blocking my progress but just enough friction to lead to some good aha moments. DVD crossing VENUE comes to mind as an example.

The theme is an apt pair with THEDAILYMOTH and FLYBYNIGHT, pairing both FLY v. MOTH and THEDAILY v. BYNIGHT. I think the grid also resembles a moth? Or a fan. Either way, THEDAILYMOTH is a great themer. It's one of those rare ones that is fun to fill (daily + moth = good) and fascinating to research afterwards.

FLYBYNIGHT I don't feel as strongly about, partly because I don't recognize the idiom, partly because LPN and HILT were both really tough for me. At this point in the solve I had pieced together the "Bug" connection, but not the "Rate" connection, so I felt pretty desparate on my last two crosses. SIGHT? DIGIT? LIGHT? In retrospect, "Someone who studied the blade (while you were partying) might have a solid grasp on this" is some good stuff.

Some other clue highlights. "'Traffic' circle?" (DVD) is a good idea but falls a bit flat because the band Traffic is way better than the movie Traffic. Just throwin' that one out there. "Word that can replace each yadda in 'yadda yadda yadda'" (BLAH) wins on uniqueness. I also liked "Dua Lipa single with an accompanying workout video" (PHYSICAL), because it hints at the answer via "workout video" without requiring any knowledge of the artist.

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