Narrative arc?ĭoug Burnikel and Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal crossword, “Insect Sound”-Jim P’s reviewĭespite the title, the theme has nothing to do with buzzing or clicking. The reason is that I have a few shorthand concepts from history that I feel explain human behavior and the notion of astronomers persisting in postulating more and more epicycles to explain the orbits of the planets is one of them. Whenever I see clues like this, my first thought is never tri- or uni-, it’s epi. Hey, wanna know what that translates to in French? rôti! I found a facebook post asserting that it’s a fitting name because (1) the birds are mostly solitary, only pairing up only during the breeding season, (2) males and females have distinct vocal ranges, so when they call to each other there is a duet quality. Some very notable examples: 59a is the portmanteau MANEL, 65a SESH gives us no question mark or qualifier, 5d GOLD STAR, 27d EACH. Overall the cluing has a freshness that imparts a real liveliness to the puzzle. It’s also the only one that isn’t presented as a negative, extreme negative at that-”absolute worst”, “extremely poor”, “woefully inadequate”. SORRY CHAR ( sorry, Charlie).Īfter recounting the themers, I see that the first one is an outlier not just because it’s a weak original phrase.
The original phrase is, as Amy sometimes says, roll-your-own. We’ve dropped a trigram from the themed entries. Patrick John Duggan’s New York Times crossword-Amy’s recap I also did not know that Lorde’s debut album was PURE HEROINE, that Viola Davis is a LEO, or that Brie Larson starred in ROOM.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: MOTHER OF DRAGONS. Props to Nova Qi and the Inkubator team for using to cue LEE.For more real PA content, check out John Fetterman’s Twitter feed. Split and Dubrovnik are definitely cashing in on GoT-related tourism and there were lots of dragons. I know this largely because we spent some time in Croatia in June. I was able to infer MOTHER OF DRAGONS because I do know that there are DRAGONS in GoT. I didn’t have to get completely from crossings.Inkubator puzzle, August 18, 2022, Nova Qi, “Themeless #34,” solution grid