or what to do to the various eggs in this puzzle's circled squares) - circled squares contain animals that lay eggs. I never even saw the clue for WAY until someone just now asked me what the hell it meant. I keep looking at AND SOON to remember what the clue was, only to remember, 'oh right, it's AND SO ON' ( 23A: Et cetera). I had PAPA before PAPI-last letter in the grid! That's one that requires confirmation from the cross. This, for instance, is my favorite song:īut when I see the title 'I Put a Spell on You,' this is what I hear: Her version is Great, as is virtually everything she does. I love NINA / SIMONE so was very frustrated to have struggled to get her today because the song used to clue her is not what I think of as iconically hers. Maybe I'm just too close to the world of that abbr., but it makes me cringe. Not complaining here, just wishing the answer had been something it ultimately wasn't. HEADSLAP is practically the same thing as a facepalm, and certainly HEADDESK is more a 'relative' if we are judging relatedness by how relatively modern-slangy the terms are. Also, I hope I'm not the only one who got HEAD- at 4D: *Relative of a facepalm and wrote in HEADDESK.

From my old-ass POV, it just seemed like a random phrase whose meaning was obvious but whose stand-alone cred seemed wobbly.

But I'm assured by my self-described 'zillennial' friend Jenna that it's very much a thing right now, and I trust her. It doesn't feel like 'modern lingo' to me-just a phrase anyone might've said at any point in the last, say, forty years. Those are big corners-ironically, they're also the parts of the puzzle I liked the best, with ' MAY I CUT IN?' and especially TEEN VOGUE being my favorite answers.Īpparently FAKE DEEP has currency right now as a phrase. Also, just felt structurally weird to have absolutely no theme action in the entire SW and NE corners. So, on the theme front: old theme type, adequate themers, awkward revealer. Three+ is a 'group.' I thought maybe the fact that the themers intersected other themers was what made the 'shots' ' GROUP / SHOTS' (four 'shots'!), but that's probably being generous. What is the 'group.' Is two a 'group'? If two people were in a 'shot,' I would not call it a 'group shot.' But the starred clues have answers that have two words in them, two 'shots.' Two is a pair. The revealer tries to raise things out of 'dad puzzle' territory, but I think it actually muddies the waters more than it clarifies.

That's a thing that is true, but it's not like the array of themers is particularly stunning. OK, so 'shot' can follow all those words. The theme type is old, and not particularly interesting from a solver's point of view. But I have very high expectations for Erik's puzzles, and this just felt. I don't feel negatively toward it, exactly. This puzzle is going over very well with crossword Twitter but I was not really feeling it.

Slangy sweetie crossword clue