Silver Lining
by Olivia Mitra
- Play it ↗
- Difficulty: hard
After two days of easy puzzles Puzzmo brings back the big guns with a toughy. I
appreciate the effort that the constructor put into this puzzle, the cluing is
well-paced and I enjoyed the solve. It's important to notice the amount of fill
that could be clued as a gimme but is instead clued to mislead, e.g. "Go down"
(HAPPEN) or "They're never free of charge" (IONS).
My main complaints for this puzzle come down to the theme. Don't get me wrong, the wordplay is clever: Silver Lining hints that the chemical symbol for silver, Ag, "lines" the themers by taking the first and last letter. But in practice, the theme only influences two letters per themer. They're just words that start with an A and end with a G. Kind of boring?
AJANAOMIKING is probably the most interesting of the themers, but I found it
incredibly hard to piece together due to unfamiliarity with the show and
actress. It also doesn't help that I have word-break hints turned off in my
Puzzmo settings, which I imagine would be very useful for a three-part name. As
for the other themers, ANTSONALOG is a bit of a snooze since it comes up in
regular crosswords from time-to-time and APPLEPICKING feels a little awkward.
I do have to give some serious kudos to the constructor for not violating one of
the TXW rules of crosswords, instead cluing APP as
"Smartphone download". Genius. The clue for INKY is another standout:
"'Pac-Man' ghost that sounds like it should be jet black (but is actually light
blue)". Talk about a fun fact.
Last thing, I promise. WTF is a "Fracas" (ADO)? Is this a thing normal people
say? I mean, EGADS is bad enough for old-timey words that aren't used by human
beings but fracas is rubbing it in.
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