For the second Sunday in a row, two top constructors collaborate to brew up a fine concoction. The August 3 decapitated delight is by Peter A. Collins and Joe Krozel (answers.) We're back this week to a more typical Sunday level of difficulty and the theme works perfectly both to provide secondary clues once you figure it out and to provide a few giggles along the way.
The theme answers were all good. I liked every single one. They've been carefully fact-checked as well. I looked at all the Tina Turner albums and there's not a sonatina to be found. I'm not certain the parishioners actually ignored the mandate, however. I suspect they just slept through that part of the interminable sermons.
"Johnson and Johnson, e.g." is a terrific clue for VEEPS. There were, in fact, three American Vice Presidents with that last name. Richard Mentor Johnson survived a scandal when he was accused of living with a black woman but eventually became VP serving under Martin Van Buren. Andrew Johnson became president after Abe Lincoln was assassinated. In an odd coincidence, Lyndon Baines Johnson succeeded to the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Mr. REYNOLDS became Sir Joshua when George III knighted him in 1769. He was a portraitist in the "grand style" meaning he air-brushed away his subjects' flaws in his idealized paintings. That's him in the self portrait, only without the warts.
There's a certain kind of clue that's designed to be misread if you scan over it quickly. If you "crossed your i's and dotted your t's" then, sure enough, you ERRED. The insidious aspect of these clues is that if you read them incorrectly the first time, even careful re-reading may fail to correct the original erroneous assumption. "Al's is almost 27" is a variation on that. If you imagine Al is some guy, it can be hard to jar him out to let Aluminum slide into your consciousness.
There are a couple of one-word clues that I particularly admire. Both need to be correctly parsed. "Cross" is a verb meeting MEET. "Pure" means unqualified, as in my UTTER failure to read that clue correctly the first time. Fun stuff.
