And man, that lower right corner is a real standout. A bit too many entries out of my wheelhouse - I like learning, but too much learning in one puzzle feels like a lesson instead of entertainment - but David sure managed to pack in a lot of interesting entries, only needing a bit of EDO, AMBI crossword glue. I love me some alchemy, so this was fun to read about. Apparently, this was one of the "four bodily humours" in medieval science, the one associated with a peevish temperament. Loaded with connotations! Immediately brings up images of Prohibition, the "wets" and the "drys" fighting a battle for the very soul of America. Along with fresh-ish terms like "bae," I like knowing what this means now. Seems to have become commonplace in music tons of rap songs come up in Google search. I don't remember young people ever using the term, but considering two of my hobbies are crosswords and bridge. Trying hard to believe that this is modern lingo - it sounds so silly to me. Again, not surprising that I didn't know this, but very cool that these guys were into wordplay enough to create a palindrome. I guess it's catchy, in an annoying sort of way? But as a #1 hit, I'm glad to put it in my mental arsenal of crossworthy titles. Tough for this pop music idiot to figure out. And DC CAB is outdated, but those two are minor blips in an otherwise standout corner.Ī lot of terms/names I didn't know in the rest of the puzzle: CARTE feels like a minor ding, but "a la carte" is super common. What an awesome lower right corner! David makes such great use of all his limited slots, with 1.) vivid, colorful answers in JURY BOX, BBQ SAUCE, and LOVERBOY, and 2.) three rare letters finessed in. LARGE TANK FOR HOLDING LIQUIDS OR SOMETHING IN LIQUID IN THE PROCESS OF BREWING. I also hope everyone in the crossword community has a wonderful Christmas Eve and start to Hanukkah! Free Online Anagram Solver, Crossword Solver and Crossword Help. I hope solvers take this in stride, though, and realize that my intent was to be fresh but not demeaning. I'm still happy with the freshness, Scrabbliness, and relative smoothness, but the fill is a bit heavy on "17-year-old-guy" entries (SHAWTY, INCUBI, and even LOVER BOY and SHOWGIRL) for my current tastes. Looking back on this puzzle two years later, I honestly have mixed feelings about it. My original lower left had YOUR FACE (clued as "Juvenile comeback"), but Will and Joel felt there was too much modern lingo in the grid, so I reworked that part. I wasn't thrilled with DC CAB but decided to cut my losses and move on to the lower left. In the lower right, I added a LOVER BOY to balance out the SHOWGIRL and BBQ SAUCE for some Scrabbly flavor. I was pleased to incorporate TRY-HARD and the bizarre-looking OLE ELO in the crossings. Next came the upper left, where I started with SHAWTY and HAM ON RYE (which just so happens to be an anagram of EHARMONY). When I saw that I could stack MALWARE and EHARMONY on top of SEXY BACK and work in Y'KNOW, I knew I was rolling! I started in the upper right with Justin Timberlake's SEXY BACK, which I had been listening to a lot at the time. At the time, I was building a lot of themelesses with stacks of 9s, 10s, and 11s, so I went with 7s and 8s in this grid to switch things up.
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