Neat mini-theme in JIMINY CRICKET crossing PINOCCHIO. After reading the [His first major screen appearance was in 1940], I was worried ...
read moreNeat mini-theme in JIMINY CRICKET crossing PINOCCHIO. After reading the [His first major screen appearance was in 1940], I was worried that it'd be an old-timey actor whose name I'd need every cross to piece together, so it was doubly fun to finally crack it. For my money, we don't get nearly enough of these mini-themed themelesses — they add so much to my solving enjoyment.

With not a lot of long material, David had to rely on his 7-letter entries for color. I love stuff like SHOT PAR as entries on their own, and entries like MINARET are made even better with a piece of trivia like [The world's oldest one is in Tunisia]. PRIVATE and CAPABLE are, well, capable entries, but they didn't add much spice to my solve. ILL USES … is that something anyone actually uses? Googling (in quotes) turns up only 16K hits.
I can see why something like ILL USES is in the grid — the SES ending facilitates filling a big chunk of space in the lower right. But struggling with an isolated corner and turning up something like that is such a hollow victory.
JANET Yellen shout-out! As the first woman to hold the Fed chair, she's perhaps one of the most influential people in the country.
My gut was that UMA THURMAN is very gridworthy (iconic "Pulp Fiction" role, famous actress), but after making a bad assumption about OLIVIA POPE a few weeks ago (about 800K Google hits), I wanted to double-check my assumption. Thankfully, Uma gets 10M Google hits. Oddly enough, Zooey DESCHANEL (another proper name I recently commented about) also gets about 10M. I knew Deschanel was popular, but I didn't know quite the extent of it. Curious.
I didn't know the AVESTA, but the clue made me want to look it up. Interesting to read about Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest religions. Thank goodness each of the crossing words made AVESTA easy to piece together!
Some great clues:
- Funny to tie John Cleese and Richard Gere together, as they both played LANCELOT.
- [Position papers?] referred to the positions job seekers are looking for, and the RESUMES that are thusly required.
- SECT is something that comes out of a split decision, or a decision to split.