Henry Hook's puzzles strike me as old-fashioned. My Grandfather used to do crosswords and I expect he and Henry would have got along just fine. I raced through most of the Sunday Feb 17 puzzle (answers) but got seriously bogged down trying to finish.
Before I get to what I loved, let me kvetch a little about a few I thought weren't fair. That's such an odd sentiment, isn't it? Who says either life or crosswords are supposed to be fair? And yet, there's this impulse to whine about the tiniest details.
First of all, "Supermarket lines" is nearly a great clue but UPC CODE it's straight from the Department of Redundancy Department. You would be excessively verbose to repeat unnecessary words over again more than once, such as universal product code code. And a good viewing position is COIGN of vantage? I looked it up. It is. News to me. I didn't know a "Jury pool" was VENIRE either. And I never, ever remember that EUTERPE is a music muse. And me a musician, even. "Passing remark" is SCUSE ME? Ok. But who says GAS for braggadocio? Maybe my Grandfather.
In another clue that I'm a lame puzzle solver, I fell into the usual trap of forgetting words can occupy different parts of speech. I know this trap is intentional but I kick myself every time. "Divine" must be an adjective describing godliness, right? Nope, it's a verb meaning FORESEE. When I call out "Rat Bastard," I'm complaining to myself. It's a good thing. A similar thing happened with "Ball handler" which is a great clue for ARNAZ. Do kids nowadays have a clue who that is?
The theme was all about SCRAMBLED PRESIDENT names. It didn't help me at all working on the puzzle but it was fun to go through afterwards and see how many I could suss out. I'm sure the other blogs listed on the left will include a complete exegesis.
My posts have been sparse lately because Robin and I are working on a redesign of the stats site. Coming soon.
Update: I posted quickly and forgot to include a word story I was keen to tell. 34 Across is clued "Bigwig" and the answer is a terrific word: NABOB. If you're like me you can't read that word without hearing Spiro Agnew whine about the "nattering nabobs of negativity" referring, of course, to the so-called liberal press, NYT included. Apparently William Safire of that same publication was the scriptwriter. But here's your fun fact of the day. That wonderful phrase is an anagram of "fat annoying bitter voting base."
