![]() ![]() ![]() I appreciate the consistency here in that all these words that follow HOLY make for interjections, not standard phrases like Holy Land or Holy Grail. Holy cow, holy smoke, holy guacamole, and holy Toledo! Ha! A fun set. Don’t think I’ve heard this term before, but it checks out. That makes a lot more sense since the revealer is HOLY (71a, ). But clicking through I saw the actual correct title is “Hallowed Words.” Looking first at today’s puzzle on the main WSJ puzzle page, the title of this grid is “Halloween Words” which I thought was odd for the third day of January. Sujata Fretz & Jeff Chen’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Hallowed Words”-Jim P’s review The 23a clue for YES LETS seems almost too specific – I wanted the answer to have something to do with dancing.I know PEROT mainly from crosswords, but I didn’t know until I read the 68a that he had an H in his name rather than just being named Ross.I’ve only seen clips of Fantasia so 42a as HIPPO was not a gimme for me (I almost put in “rhino”).Even after years of solving crosswords I have absolutely no idea what order the greek alphabet is in, so this was a fun twist on a not very exciting word to clue. None of these taken individually are a problem, but if a solver didn’t know any of them (especially as NIGEL and ANNIE as clued both come from the photography world) they might have an issue finding a foothold. I worry a bit about the southeast corner in terms of fill – there’s a big pile of names there with ANNIE, NIGEL, and ARIE, and MOIRE is a pretty difficult word on Monday. But I like all of the theme phrases that were chosen ( ALL OVER THE PLACE in particular is a nice spanner), so that’s a very minor nitpick.īy far my favorite thing in this puzzle is EGG BAGEL, I enjoyed the slight misdirection on 22d for STAMP – my mind immediately went to something like a diamond ring! I also like YO DUDE and THE GAP down at the bottom. Speaking of, does “gut” here just refer to the feeling being in the middle of the phrase? If so, it might have been elegant if the feelings were hidden in the exact middle of the words rather than just “not the start/end” as they are here. When I got that the first two theme answers hit DREAD and RAGE, I thought that the revealer was going to be something much darker than GUT FEELING. It’s nice that the feelings all span at least two words, which makes finding them as a solver feel much more satisfying. I thought this was a solid execution of a classic “hidden word” theme type. Happy New Year, everybody! And happy NYT debut to Beth Rubin, one half of the construction duo for today’s puzzle! As someone who loves to construct with other people, I always get excited when I see a co-constructed puzzle because I firmly believe getting to talk through and play with theme/fill/clue ideas with someone else prior to submission makes a puzzle better. New York Times, 01 03 2022, By Beth Rubin and Trent H. ![]()
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