Up to Their Old Tricks
by chandi
- Play it ↗
- Difficulty: medium
Another day, another themeless. I had a great time with about 90% of this
puzzle, with that final 10% leaving me a little frustrated. There's one corner
in particular that I think needed an extra edit pass (LAO-SAO, anyone?). I
appreciate the longitudinal shape of today's grid, but it does come at the
expense of some bad fill.
The more crosswords I solve, the more I appreciate my ability to guess random
trivia. For example, take "City where you say 'takk' in thanks". I don't know
any Norwegian (though I have been to Norway, so maybe there's a subconscious
element here) but seeing that the answer occupies 4 squares, the language
"sounds" Scandinavian, and knowing that OSLO is exceedingly common fill, I
slotted it straight away. Half of the game of solving harder crosswords is
recognizing common words so you're nearly immune to clue variations.
Then again, I floundered on TLC so have I really learned anything?
"'Waterfalls' trio" was giving me no hints, so in my desperation I looked at the
TL_ and assumed the C. That C proved critical since MEATSAUCE followed, then
USUALSUSPECTS, and now we're cooking with gasoline.
I found nearly every corner in this grid to be fairly easy, at least compared to
some of the longer acrosses like PHOTOOP and MIDDLEC. One corner in
particular absolutely kicked my butt, with the LAO-SAO combo in the
middle-right. I started off with HUTS, grew into MIDDLEH (I don't know
notes, sounds plausible?), and got stuck on "Squares on diamonds". And boy, it
took me a loooong time to finally fill BASES. Maybe part of my problem is that
"diamonds" is plural for seemingly no reason. Is it weird that the clue isn't
"Squares on a diamond" or is it just me?
Overall the clues in this grid are interesting and unique, even if they don't
always agree with my taste. There are a lot of clever misdirects and interesting
compositions (e.g. "Occasion for a round of shots?" PHOTOOP) that are super
solid.
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