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Solving => Today's Puzzles => Topic started by: magus on November 09, 2014, 09:19:32 AM
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THEME: intrusive IT in names and phrases
GOOD ONES:
Diminutive flower? PETITE ROSE [Pete Rose]
Musician to feel sorry for? PITIED PIPER [Pied Piper]
Departure from the bookstore? EXIT LIBRIS [ex libris]
Middle of England? CENTRE [that's Brit spelling of synonym for middle]
Brief reply? ANS.
West of Georgia KANYE [a rapper even I heard of]
Kitty with no fur POT
Round fig. CIR. [I thought est.]
Destroyer of some castles TIDE
Outlet site WALL [I thought MALL]
BTW:
Sneaky chuckle HEH [seems half a chuckle to me]
Insolence, in modern slang TUDE [heard of DIS, but TUDE is new to me --- need to get back to the inner city schools from which I came]
RATING: ;D ;D ;D
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun
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Merl Reagle's puzzle in today's Los Angeles Times was quite clever. Titled "It's Not What It Sounds Like," the puzzle included words and phrases which.....well.....are not what they sound like. For example, MANGANESE was clued with "It's not a language" and TOMCOLLINSMIX was clued with "It's not the full name of a famous cinema cowboy."
EDAM appears quite often in crosswords but Reagle today came up with a creative clue for the word: "Cheese that's literally made upside down?" I could be my usual nitpicky self and say that the word "made" should be in quotation marks. After all, the cheese is not literally made upside down---it's the word "made" which becomes the name of the cheese when spelled upside down.
OPIE, the name of Ron Howard's character in The Andy Griffith Show, appears in a lot of crosswords. Today's puzzle included OPE as a nickname of Opie. That's acceptable because Andy often called his son by that name. But ELIZ as a shortened form of Queen Elizabeth's name? Sorry---I don't consider ELIZ to be an acceptable puzzle word.
And finally, the puzzle included RETSYN, a trademarked name for an ingredient in Certs breath mints. I know you're all waiting with bated breath---pun intended---to find out what Retsyn is. It's a flavored blend of copper gluconate and cottonseed oil. Yummy!