Tony Orbach and Patrick Blindauer are at it again, this time with a 10 K run through their Sunday, June 29 puzzle (answers) called Ten Grand Surplus.
One of the most common theme types is technically called "the old add or remove the same letter or phrase from each long answer to create something amusing." This time we add a thousand or two to each in the form of a K. This letter is short for kilo which, with the exception of the place it's most commonly used, means 1000; kilogram, kilowatt, etc. K becomes problematic when you're talking computers, though. If you're buying RAM it probably means 1024 for technical reasons nobody cares about anymore. If you're buying a hard disk, the useable amount might be something less than 1000 for similarly arcane reasons. Still, it's a nice shorthand. A picture is worth a kiloword. The surprise theme answer that requires more than one additional modification is no surprise either by now. In fact, we'd be disappointed if that wasn't the case.
An advantage of this theme type is that you can often infer it from the title, confirm it in the first theme answer, and then quickly fill in the rest. Today's was better for me because the answers required a little more thought and were more amusing than average.
I wonder about PLANK AHEAD being a warning on a pirate ship, though. That would be good news. The warning ought to be something about no plank ahead. It's after the plank ends that the trouble starts and the crocodile who has been following you for years finally gets dessert.
The Wizard of Menlo Park is known for his inventions but "stock ticker" isn't the one that most quickly comes to mind, making that a refreshing clue. Looking back at all the definitions for EDISON, he's been credited in NYT puzzles for inventing the microphone, the phonograph, the kinetoscope, and the flouroscope, founding General Electric and holding 1,093 patents. I bet he would have been good at crosswords too.
I like MINI BAR being clued as "Traveler's temptation." I never succumb but those little goodies always look alluring at the end of a long day on the road. 113 Across is "what a rake does" but rake is not a garden implement. It's the guy who's always after a skort.
I've done a little more cleanup on my stats site and added Ellen Ripstein's blog to my Blogosphere roundup page. I hadn't included her because she doesn't post every day but it turns out I always read her so now I have an easy way to know when she's published something new.
