Another one from the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class, led by Ian Livengood. It's really cool in itself to see a group of retirement-age folks ...
read moreAnother one from the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class, led by Ian Livengood. It's really cool in itself to see a group of retirement-age folks come up with a crossword puzzle worthy of the NYT, and even more so that they integrated so much right-up-to-date terminology.
A snazzy themeless with a current feel, especially strong work in the tricky seven-letter lengths. My favorite was K THX BYE, which if you don't know, typically is slapped onto funny cat pictures, also known as LOLcats. The rumor that I spend 2.34 hours browsing I Can Has Cheezburger and YouTube videos of cats on treadmills is wholly and utterly not filled with liesome truthiness. Ahem. I've not seen K THX BYE used in chat / texting as much, but it's a certainty that every one of the J.A.S.A. Class members is cooler than me (I still use my 2002 Motorola Razr), so I defer on that point.
I did notice the preponderance of three-letter words today, 16 of them. Most themelesses keep the count down to 12 or so, as three-letter words tend to be a little dull, as most all of them have been used so often for crossword glue. I usually don't mind a little more than normal because it usually means I get more great long answers, but today the NE and SW bothered me a little. Having four three-letter words in a row is a bit visually unappealing to me — totally a subjective call — and the tough clues for them made unearthing K THX BYE very difficult.
Everything came easily to me in the SW, although now that I look back at it, having PDF, AVI as a prefix, JDS, and ACH isn't as elegant as I would like. Perhaps if AVI had been clued as the Newbery Award-winning author? I would love to see the day that Young Adult and Middle Grade authors get the recognition they deserve when it comes to crossword fame. (Avi's "Poppy" is a favorite of mine.)
Finally, a clue/answer pair that stumped me so bad I had to look it up after I finished: Tony Danza is one of my favorite sitcom characters (on "Taxi"), but in this case, "danza" is the Italian word for "dance", which is an ARTE, the Italian word for "art." Tricky!
Looking forward to more from the JASA Class! They're just a Monday and a Wednesday away from hitting for the cycle.