Constructor: Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: A Thousand Words — Theme answers contain synonyms for "image" and are clued using images.
Word of the Day: WACO (City that calls itself "The Heart of Texas") —
Theme answers (all clued with images depicting the first word of each answer):
I loved this puzzle. Fun, novel theme type. Solid, in-the-language theme entries. Super clean fill for a Sunday. Novel cluing angles all around. 10/10. It's possible some of this enthusiasm comes from me beating my long-standing record time for a Sunday puzzle. It's hard to find fault with a puzzle you breeze through, but I really did think this one was excellent.
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: A Thousand Words — Theme answers contain synonyms for "image" and are clued using images.
Word of the Day: WACO (City that calls itself "The Heart of Texas") —
Waco (/ˈweɪkoʊ/ WAY-koh) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States.[7] It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the state.[8] The 2022 U.S. Census population estimate for the city was 143,984.[9] The Waco metropolitan statistical area consists of McLennan and Falls counties, which had a 2010 population of 234,906.[10] Falls County was added to the Waco MSA in 2013. The 2022 U.S. census population estimate for the Waco metropolitan area was 283,885.[11]
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- 23A: CHARACTER SKETCHES
- 38A: SPITTING IMAGE
- 49A: COMPUTER ICON
- 66A: LEGAL REPRESENTATION
- 82A: LOTTERY DRAWING
- 95A: MOVING PICTURE
- 114A: SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
Hi all! It's Rafa here filling in for Rex.
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| Huskies are beautiful |
Let's get into it. First, the theme. All entries are consistent, and all standalone legitimate phrases (COMPUTER ICON being the iffiest to me, but still very much a thing), and all clued with a picture drawn by the constructor herself (!). It's refreshing to see something totally different here, and it was executed well. I hope most people who solve digitally had an updated-enough version of the app to enjoy the image clues.
Bullets:
Signed, Rafa
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| Look, it's a SNAIL. Why were 106A SNAIL and 33A MAIL cross-referenced with highlights in my app? No idea! |
Now, fill. It's no joke filling a Sunday puzzle around 7 theme entries. This one felt significantly cleaner than average, and clean fill is so important to my solving experience. There's hardly anything to call out (unusual MISSORT, awkward plurals in LYES and IANS, if I had to) -- it really shows when a constructor takes care to keep her puzzle clean like this.
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| The Taj Mahal is in AGRA, Uttar Pradesh |
Onto clues. Lots of wordplay to love here. I was particularly fond of [Red alert?] for STOP SIGN and [Soul proprietor?] for KIA. But what I really noticed during this solve was novel angles for very familiar fill. It's easy to just default to [Recess in a church] for something like APSE, so it was fun to see a new (to me) angle in [Mihrab : mosque :: ___ : church]. Similarly with [What might follow a recitative, in music] for ARIA, and other clues I enjoyed for TEE ([Start at the end?]) and MAT ([Easily removable part of a car's interior]). I'm still waiting for someone to invent a new cluing angle for EKE / EKES / EKED though ... we'll have to be happy with [Squeeze (out)] for now.
Bullets:
- 47A SAO: Title in Portuguese — I grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, so I will never tire of seeing SAO in crosswords.
- 23A: CHARACTER SKETCHES — I cannot read Chinese script, but iOS lets you copy text from images these days. So I took a screenshot of the image in this clue, copied the text, and put in into Google Translate. Turns out the text says "hello" ... in case you were interested!
- 55A COVEN: Charming bunch? — Enjoyed this clue.
- 62A PIPE: Portal in Mario games — I recently bought a Nintendo Switch to play the new Zelda game (highly recommend!) and also have been playing Super Mario Odyssey ... so this clue felt particularly relevant to me.
Hope to see more innovative puzzles like this soon!