I realize that there's nothing inherently better about puzzles that are pangrams and yet it's fun to note when a constructor has been able to use every single letter. Barry C. Silk is a master pangrammaticist. Today's Friday, August 15 puzzle (answers) is his ninth pangram out of 28 NYT puzzles. More importantly, it's full of densely packed, mostly natural sounding words and phrases, with a few doozies thrown in to make a Friday-worthy.
Let's start with my quibble and get that out of the way. Ignore this paragraph if you hate math. You know how when you hear someone talking about something being a "quantum leap" and they mean it's huge and you think, well, that's odd because there is literally nothing smaller than the leap from one quantum state to the next. It's discrete, that's the point, but it's miniscule. I have the same problem with EXPONENTIAL RATE. People use it to mean a "rapidly increasing pace" which it might be, but it can also be as slow as you like in any finite time span. Give me your fortune and I'll be happy to invest it at an exponential rate for you.
Ok, back to the puzzle. "Lumber features": K N _ _ S. It's gotta be knots. NOT! It's not knots but KNARS. Knars means, well, it means knots. That's it. Knots. Not fair, except that this is Friday so anything goes.
Yes, Ian Fleming and his double-nought creation James Bond are both ETONIANs. Write what you know is always the advice. I guess the next fictional character I dream up should be a crossword blogger. Can you imagine anything more dashingly romantic?
"Rail part" is a great clue too; at least it sucked me in completely. A rail is a bird and like other such beasts it is comprised of many parts including a BEAK. "Domino, e.g." is another clue that fooled me even though I well know FATS Domino. ERAT gets a non QED clue, referencing "Sicut erat in principio" meaning "as it was in the beginning."
That famous pornographer D. H. Lawrence wanted to create a utopia at the Kiowa Ranch near, apparently, TAOS, New Mexico. How are we supposed to remember that? I had that same question about the "1923 A.L. M.V.P." but fortunately the only guy I could think of who played that far back, candy bar man Babe RUTH, was the right answer.
Crossword pioneer and one of my personal heroes Stephen Sondheim gets referenced by a song cut from Company called "Multitudes of AMYS." That seems obscure unless you're a fan, although the song does show up in musical reviews.
The most fun clue for me was "soap staple." Soap refers to a TV drama and what would trashy daytime fare be without a VIXEN to stir the pot?
