I used to read a fair bit of sci-fi, but never heard of him. I should probably show more interest in stars, but I just don't care who any of them are in real life.įrederik POHL seems like he had a good career. I met OLIVIA Munn (another pretty actor). Most of the puzzle grokked itself, but I spent more time Googling than usual for a Thursday, so I ask myself, "Was it worth it?" Sadly, the etymological origins of EUREKA have nothing to do with the Sioux, or North America at all: near Idaho?") and the idea that you'd be thrilled to discover said potatoes that is, I wrote in EUREKA! (which is a city in Washington). I had -EKA at 36A: City whose name is Siouan for "good place to dig potatoes" ( TOPEKA) and my brain decided to completely disregard the "Siouan" part of the clue and focus instead on "potatoes" ("hmm. The other bit of "difficulty" I had was just pure idiocy, a mistake I made that amused me more than anything in the puzzle did. I just went down from the top through SCRUB UP and then went back and made sense of that whole lower NW area. Combine that with a brutal (but brilliant) clue on MIRROR (23A: Compact disc?), and then my only 75% certainty about David CARR, and then, oof, an extremely random Holy Roman emperor with extremely random Holy Roman numerals in his name (easily the worst thing in the grid), and you've got Stucksville, population me. I had one little area of trouble because I didn't realize that SPORTED was a themer. With the exception, possibly, of the theme answers with omitted letters, there was nothing at all challenging about this puzzle. The theme isn't bad, by any means just flat. This is like four different ideas for a puzzle all crammed into one puzzle without much thought for how fun it would be to solve. But DISCIPLES is just a thud (it's etymologically closely related to DISCIPLINES, so it hardly reorients the word at all). I'd say that HOME ICE is the one first answer of the four that has something like sufficient zaniness-the new phrase is really, really new and different and completely reoriented. Pretty straightforward, not at all amusing. But there wasn't much "aha" there, since I could clearly see that "IN" was missing from what should've been DISCIPLINES. I guess the "joke" is in the second answer to each pair, the verb phrase that explains the first answer in the pair. They don't fit the clue, but that failure to fit yields zero pleasure, which I guess also means zero cringing, but I'd rather a puzzle go for the joke and fail than not go for it at all. In typical drop-a-letter / add-a-letter (or letters)-type puzzles, though, there's some wackiness, some attempt to at least try to make the "incorrect" answers funny by having the answers be obviously, zanily wrong, and having the clues be of the loopy "?" variety. The same act is involved every time-dropping letters-so there's a consistency there. In today's case, we get a kind of speed version, with four different "revealers" instead of the more typical lone, final revealer. Many a puzzle has been built around a single phrase like this, which acts as a revealer with each of the theme answers conforming to the instructions. They are sometimes served either dusted with powdered sugar, lightly glazed, or with a coat of icing. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt mold. Pound cake is a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. Word of the Day: pound cake ( 63A: One of the pounds in a pound cake). ![]() FLING (64A: Brazenly disregard) / STRIKE OUT (66A: Flail at home plate.HOME ICE (48A: Workplace with no commute / TAKE OFF (50A: Leave.SPORTED (29A: Backed financially) / SCRUB UP (31A: Prep for surgery.or what to do as you enter the answer to the previous clue) DISCIPLES (17A: Punishes / CUT IN (19A: Interrupt.THEME: phrases of omission - four pairs of answers (each pair appearing on the same line) for each pair, the first answer appears to have letters missing, and the second is a phrase describing (literally) why the letters in the first answer are missing, or "what to do as you enter the answer to the previous clue":
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