Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the first Tuesday of the month! I had a good excuse for missing last Tuesday — I was taking the bar exam. But I’m now done with that endless studying, and fingers crossed that I passed! Since I finished, I’ve just basked in watching any and all of the Olympics that I can. I was able to watch a lot of the swimming, which was quite fun. (Go, Caeleb Dressel and Katie Ledecky!). And, now, the track is incredibly interesting. Whatever you do, make sure to tune in to watch the women’s 400m hurdles final tonight — two Americans (Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney McLaughlin) who have been trading wins and world records are up against each other, so the race should be absolutely epic.
Anywho, I’ll try to focus on this write-up instead of the track — we’ll see how that goes!
Relative difficulty:MEDIUM
THEME: CORNER THE MARKET— Each corner of the puzzle contains the words “the market” scrambled
Theme answers:
- KAT;ETH;MRE
- wHET;hARK;iMET
- HTMl;AREd;KETo
- HAT;MRT;EKE
Haman (also known as Haman the Agagite or Haman the evil) is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who according to the Hebrew Bible was a vizier in the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, commonly identified as Xerxes I but traditionally equated with Artaxerxes I or Artaxerxes II.As his epithet Agagite indicates, Haman was a descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites. Some commentators interpret this descent to be symbolic, due to his similar personality. (Wiki)
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I don’t have a ton to say about the puzzle today — maybe it’s because I was simultaneously doing the puzzle and watching the Olympics or maybe the puzzle was just particularly meh. I did really like the theme revealer of CORNER THE MARKET— it’s fun and clever and feels fresh. But, the result of the theme was some really quite ugly corners. And, I, at least, found the corners to be the hardest parts of the puzzle — especially the northeast and southwest corners. I didn’t know WHIP IT (10D: 1980 Devo hit) or HAMAN (11D), which put me in trouble in the northeast corner. On top of that, I tried to put “deck” instead of HARK for 16A: Start of a carol title, so I really did have some trouble up there. Then, with the southwest corner, I found DETRE (50D: Raison __) and A RED (65A: Run __ light) to be particularly ugly.
Some of the longer answers were my favorite part of the puzzle. SERAPHIM (9D: Attendants at a heavenly throne) is unusual — and fun. I also enjoyed seeing WESTEROS in the puzzle (though, like every other Game of Thrones fan, do not get me started talking about what a disaster season 8 of that show was!). And, having GRATIS above REBATE was a nice touch. Looking back, I also noticed a bit of a religious theme with HAMAN, HARK, SERAPHIM, and EASTER.
Other than that, this sort of just felt like a standard Tuesday to me!
Misc.:
Misc.:
- Watching some of these events in the Olympics, I’m convinced these athletes are where the phrase ABS (6D) of steel came from. They are very fit people!
- Is SLOVEN (48D: Unkempt person) a real word? Google tells me it is, but I think of “slovenly” as the right form of the term.
- I remember TKTS (13D: Times square sign for B'way fans) on Broadway very well from when my sister and I were absolutely desperate to see Hamilton and waited in line for a long time but, sadly, did not get to see the musical (until, of course, it was released on Disney+ and was the greatest thing ever).