Sue Fracker author page
1 puzzle by Sue Fracker
with Jeff Chen comments
See the answer words debuted by Sue Fracker.
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I nailed "Name That Theme" today! Who doesn't want a CORNER ROOM, with its prestige, privacy, and—
Huh? That's a CORNER OFFICE?
Yes, but my office has been my room for the past two years.
Okay, fine. It must be ... ROOM DIVIDERS. Beautiful, these bent rooms look like individual folds of a room divider.
To the back room, I go.
Lovely revealer, ELBOW ROOM hinting at types of rooms making an L-shaped L-bow. And all the rooms are properly-proportioned Ls! Sue could easily have bent (ha) the rules and done something like RA(GU) / VISIONQ(UEST), but that would have been one squat-looking L. Sue's five Ls look L-egant as L.
Will Shortz has said he's not taking these types of puzzles as much anymore since having to fix so many circles into place forces so many challenging grid constraints. I wouldn't call it SUPERGLUE, but it's not a great trade-off when you need the outdated SSTS around a themer.
AGUE always gives me fevers, although Jim Horne (the learned half of the XWord Info duo) argues ague-tly that it's something he often sees in his bookshelves.
As fun as it was to have a themer run through ELBOW ROOM itself, I would have enjoyed simply the other four Ls without this one since ROMPER room feels like "which of these is not like the others," in that it has a strong association with a TV show.
Overall, Sue used excellent wordplay in her interpretation of ELBOW ROOM, and the resulting capital Ls left me capitally L-ated.