Meghan Morris author page
3 puzzles by Meghan Morris
with Jeff Chen comments
Meghan Morris is an appellate public defender in Denver.
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LETS THINGS SLIDE is a great marquee entry. Usually, I'd categorize OBSESSED OVER as more neutral than an asset, although crossing it with LETS THINGS SLIDE is fun — Type A personality crossing Type B.
REAR TIRES doesn't stand out, but its clue sure does. [Couple in the back of a car], heh.
I hadn't heard of THE PALE HORSE, but the clue did a nice job nudging me toward it. I'm sure there are Agatha Christie zealots who are composing murder notes to me for not knowing this one.
Often, I'd point out the awkward -S entries in ELSAS and WOMANS, but you wouldn't argue if you had just seen eight-hundred eleventy-nine ELSAS at Halloween, your daughter among them. And that quote, "A WOMAN'S place is in the House, and in the Senate," is excellent.
If you've never seen Shaquille O'NEAL and Charles Barkley go at it on Inside the NBA, they're brilliant. Outstanding NBA stars who are even better as TV commentators.
72-word themelesses need to 1.) utilize every long slot to max potential, and 2.) have near-zero short glue, so neutral ATTENUATE and excess of VAR entries — especially THS as a suffix — isn't great.
However, some excellent clues, especially innocent wordplay like [Novel content]. If you're looking for great PROSE, both Jim Horne and I enjoyed The Plot — a novel about not-novel prose!
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This numbers junkie always sits up straight when the crossword invokes mathiness. As soon as I uncovered BEING OBTUSE, I was hoping for KNEW ALL THE ANGLES as a revealer. I jumped down to the bottom set of circles and filled in ACUTE. A quick check at 44-Across showed that the A did indeed fit with AISLE.
So much for knowing all the angles.
It's neat that the word ANGLE shares its E with that of OBTUSE and ACUTE — I'd never noticed that before. It's a shame that the word RIGHT doesn't end with an E to make everything elegant and tidy, but the shared G does work.
I paused in the center, though, wondering why we were forming a plus sign with ANGLE and RIGHT. It's not as picture-perfect as the others, since there are not just one, but four right angles in that center cross.
Some excellent bonuses in the grid. LIFE GIVING is inspiring, SETS ABLAZE is good, THE LATEST is fun, and not only is W.E.B. DUBOIS an important figure in American history, his name makes for great crossword material, since the *BDU* string of letters goes from baffling to a neat a-ha.
Some prices to pay, due to having to build around the diagonal ANGLEs and all those long bonuses, though. It's not a surprise that LIX shows up around one of the ANGLEs, as does NTWT, URE, and LTRS. Too many dabs of crossword glue, but I appreciated that Meghan used her flexible corners to try to make up for it with extra color. JULEP, JAVA, UNIX, VIZ all add in the rare-letter flair, the JVXZ worked in smoothly.
Will Shortz doesn't often accept puzzles that repeat words in circled letters, because this makes it too easy for solvers to plunk in the same thing over and over. I like that the ANGLEs go in different directions — one backward, even — addressing that issue.
Some inelegances in execution, but I enjoyed picking up that neat coincidence about OBTUSE, ACUTE, and ANGLE all sharing the terminal E. Makes for a nice visual, more interesting in some ways than the last ANGLEs puzzle from a few years back.