At a mini-conference last year, the first speaker of the day used the term BUZZKILL, which I connected to my battle earlier that morning with the alarm clock. By the end of her presentation, I had worked out the rest of the theme.
This puzzle is dedicated to Katie, my wife of fifteen years, whom I married in 18-A and who may never forgive me for introducing to the 49-A.
I almost dismissed this as an inelegant, loosey-goosey theme. Man, am I glad I took a second look! I skimmed over the SNOOZE BUTTON clue at first, thinking that the theme was simply "noises that come out of an alarm clock." RADIO, BUZZ, SOUND? Bleh, totally unspecific!
What, you got the real theme immediately? Um, so did I. For all those ninnies that didn't, bear with us:
The SNOOZE BUTTON makes the RADIO go silent, for RADIO SILENCE. It KILLs the BUZZing, as in a BUZZKILL. And it turns OFF the SOUND = SOUND OFF!
Brilliant!
I wasn't sure if it was just me who missed the cleverosity, so I asked Jim for his thoughts on the puzzle. Turns out he glossed over it, too! After chit-chatting about it, we both agreed that it was delightful; such fantastic plays on words that were tightly bound to SNOOZE BUTTON.
Great grid execution, too. Mike didn't try to do too much, sticking with an easy-to-fill 76-word grid. But with a little zazz in STARGAZING, WORD LENGTH, HOT YOGA, even some BUSH SR, UNICORN, ST LOUIS, that's more than good enough for me.
Best yet, such a silky-smooth grid. I love it when I can't find a single short entry to squint at. This grid felt much more friendly to newer solvers than either of the past two days, even given the presence of HOBART. Some might complain about that one, but come on. You gotta at least be familiar with world capitals.
Okay, maybe BORGE crossing KLEE isn't newb-friendly. But that's perfectly fine in a mid-week puzzle. Paul KLEE is an important painter educated solvers ought to at least have heard of.
So, so, so glad I took a second and third look. A fantastic-- albeit delayed — a-ha moment.
1 G | 2 H | 3 O | 4 S | 5 T | 6 E | 7 D | 8 M | 9 A | 10 D | 11 B | 12 T | 13 U |
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14 N | E | W | T | A | K | E | 15 U | N | I | 16 C | O | R | N |
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17 C | R | E | A | T | E | S | 18 S | T | L | O | U | I | S |
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19 R | A | D | I | 20 O | S | I | L | E | N | C | E |
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21 B | 22 O | 23 G | G | S | 24 P | E | C | 25 C | I | A |
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26 A | V | I | A | 27 L | 28 O | A | D | 29 S | 30 W | E | A | T |
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31 B | U | Z | Z | 32 K | I | L | L | 33 Z | O | O | ||||
34 E | M | A | I | L | E | D | 35 G | E | O | R | 36 G | 37 I | 38 A |
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39 N | E | D | 40 S | O | U | N | D | O | F | F |
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41 B | 42 O | 43 R | G | E | 44 H | U | B | S | 45 L | I | S | A |
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46 U | F | O | 47 S | O | L | 48 T | E | N | O | R |
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49 S | N | O | 50 O | 51 Z | E | B | U | 52 T | 53 T | O | N | |||
54 H | O | T | Y | O | G | A | 55 O | U | T | G | 56 R | 57 E | 58 W |
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59 S | T | E | E | L | E | R | 60 O | N | E | T | I | M | E |
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61 R | E | D | 62 A | R | T | 63 L | A | S | H | O | U | T |
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Answer summary: 3 unique to this puzzle, 1 unique to Shortz Era but used previously.
Found bugs or have suggestions?