Constructor: Tom McCoy
Relative difficulty: Too hard
![]()
THEME: Abbreviate one word in each theme entry and see what happens
Word of the Day:
![]()
Matt Gaffney here, filling for Rex this week. Apologies right off the bat for the late post; despite Rex checking in with me yesterday, I still managed to forget that my blogging duties began today. But we're rolling now and I'll be punctual with my posts for the rest of the week. But note that I've run into some technical difficulties, too -- Blogger isn't letting me overwrite Rex's original post for some reason, so we've got two posts today. We'll try to merge them at some point. I'm the worst substitute crossword blogger in recorded history thus far.
Theme answers:
PS Rex's ultra-brief post from earlier in the a.m. is HERE.
Relative difficulty: Too hard
THEME: Abbreviate one word in each theme entry and see what happens
Word of the Day:
PAULIE -- Paulie is a 1998 Germany/American adventurefantasy film about a disobedient bird named Paulie, starring Tony Shalhoub, Gena Rowlands, Hallie Eisenberg, and Jay Mohr. Mohr performs the voice of Paulie and also plays a minor on-screen character.
• • •
Matt Gaffney here, filling for Rex this week. Apologies right off the bat for the late post; despite Rex checking in with me yesterday, I still managed to forget that my blogging duties began today. But we're rolling now and I'll be punctual with my posts for the rest of the week. But note that I've run into some technical difficulties, too -- Blogger isn't letting me overwrite Rex's original post for some reason, so we've got two posts today. We'll try to merge them at some point. I'm the worst substitute crossword blogger in recorded history thus far.
Theme answers:
- FIRST PERSON SING (23A: "Belt it out, Adam!"?)
- DON'T GIVE AN IN (38A: "I forbid you from providing special access"?)
- POP DENSITY (42A: Your father's blockheadedneses?)
- TURN OF THE CENT (66A: Coin flip with a penny?)
- APT COMPLEX (92A: Emotional problem that is surprisingly fitting?)
- CUT QUITE A FIG (94A: Prepared some amazing Mediterranean fruit?)
- LOOK OUT FOR NO ONE (112A: Do a bad job as a watchman?)
- Too subtle for me -- I had to read another crossword blog to understand the theme. Not a good sign! You abbreviate one word in each entry and wackiness ensues, it turns out.
- Is "cent." the right abbr. for "century"? I think of "cen." or just "c." for that. The others make sense in retrospect, but the theme entries weren't very entertaining and the frustration of not grokking what was going on made for a rather joyless solve.
- The fill sported a lot of nice multiword entries: AND SUCH, TAKE TWO, NAME ONE!, SNEAK OUT, TOO TRUE, PINCH HIT, FAR LEFT, AM I LATE? HANG IN THERE balanced symmetrically by I'M OUTTA HERE, PREY ON, and ALL IS LOST.
- I do letter grades when I PINCH HIT for Rex, and this one gets a C-. Theme didn't do it for me. The constructor is very talented, though -- he won my Crossword of the Month for another Times puzzle last November.
PS Rex's ultra-brief post from earlier in the a.m. is HERE.