Happy Annabel Monday!!
RELATIVE DIFFICULTY: Easy
THEME: TURKEY - The second word of theme answers mean "things that did poorly": bomb, turkey, flop, bust.
THEME ANSWERS:
- LASER GUIDED BOMB (17A: Air Force smart weapon)
- FOSBURY FLOP (25A: Pioneering high jump maneuver of the 1960s)
- ROAST TURKEY (43A: Thanksgiving entree)
- HOLLYWOOD OR BUST (55A: 1956 Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy)
WORD OF THE DAY: STENO (27D: Shorthand writer)
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow) and graphein (to write). It has also been called brachygraphy, from Greek brachys (short) and tachygraphy, from Greek tachys (swift, speedy), depending on whether compression or speed of writing is the goal.
(Wikipedia)
This one was fun! And totally not just because it's the first puzzle I've found easy in a while, for whatever reason. I'm still tired of seeing JILT, always with approximately the same clue, and same goes for ALOE - and the nerd in me is kinda annoyed that SOLO wasn't clued with "Han's first name." (And, for that matter, the feminist in me kinda wishes RICH was clued with "Adrienne!") But those are just SNIT-picks. The fill was good - IONIA, ILSA, ORATES! Plus three whole comic book references. Who knew Superboy had a girlfriend?
The theme was solid for a Monday. I liked how it was accentuated by the showbiz clues like BROADWAY and TV IDOL. I guess if your show makes it to BROADWAY, it wasn't a FLOP?
BULLETS:
- TWIN (15A: Minnesota baseballer) - Hey! Rex's BFFs (my mom and my aunt Jennifer) are TWINs! And it's the five-year anniversary of them sometimes guest blogging here! Without them Annabel Mondays probably wouldn't even be a thing. So yay for twins!!
- RAND (10A: "Atlas Shrugged" author Rayn) - I was once in an English class where we had to read "Anthem." All I can say is "bleh." At least it was one of the shorter ones!!
- AGED (23A: Like good Scotch) - I've been feeling like good Scotch lately, because of my internship at ThinkProgress! Seriously though, having a 9-5 internship at an office makes me feel so old? Anyway, this is a shameless plug, please go to their website and read all my stories because I really love working there so yeah.
- ARLO (59A: With 41-Down, "Alice's Restaurant" singer) - I leave you with a morning tune. If you can call it a tune. 🎵 You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant... 🎵
