Nancy Serrano-Wu author page
1 puzzle by Nancy Serrano-Wu
with Jeff Chen comments
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| F | A | N | T | A | S | Y | D | R | A | F | T | S | ||
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| R | E | S | O | L | E | C | U | T | E | E | R | E | ||
| P | E | N | A | L | T | Y | S | H | O | T | S | |||
| A | S | H | E | S | I | A | O | W | E | S | ||||
| S | T | A | R | P | I | T | C | H | E | R | S | |||
| A | I | D | A | M | O | K | L | E | T | S | U | P | ||
| P | R | I | M | P | S | A | M | C | U | N | A | |||
| T | R | I | P | L | E | D | O | U | B | L | E | S | ||
| P | R | A | Y | E | U | R | O | S | A | T | A | T | ||
| A | C | L | U | N | A | I | R | A | B | A | S | E | ||
| W | A | L | K | T | U | N | E | L | A | N | E | S |
My annual FANTASY basketball DRAFT is the day I most eagerly await — but also dread. If my co-manager and I bid up salaries for the right players, we're in for five months of fist-pumping glory, celebrating with STAR PITCHERS of ale. This year's results are still in progress, but at least we're not drowning ourselves in PENALTY SHOTS like we did five years ago, when we tried to participate in the draft while simultaneously taking care of naptime, feeding, and poop issues (of our kids, not our own). "Make mine a (triple) DOUBLE" was painfully appropriate.
This puzzle was so meant for me!
Neat that Nancy was able to find four sports terms that could also be applied to sports bars. FANTASY DRAFTS is such a great choice to headline the puzzle.
It would have been great to get more specific with the themer clues. How about FANTASY DRAFT as a sports bar purchase … that Severus Snape might make at the Leaky Cauldron? (Because he's the potions professor at Hogwarts, duh.) PENALTY SHOTS could be slugs of tequila pounded for rooting against the home team?
Okay, maybe this is all too much of a stretch, but something along these lines would have goosed up the playfulness factor.
Fantastic clue for LISZT. Why go with something so boring as [Hungarian composer Franz] when you can obfuscate by pointing to his music being featured in "Tom and Jerry"? Another clever bit of wordplay in [Sugarcoated, in a way] — that's a literal way, with ICED cookies.
Solid gridwork, not the easiest task with themers of the awkward lengths of 12 and 13. And in a debut! More fantastical themer cluing, and I would have called for a round of STAR PITCHERS.