French Sudan today / MON 11-24-14 / Longest river wholly in Switzerland / Shopaholic's indulgence / Beermaking knitting

Monday, November 24, 2014

Constructor: Robert Seminara

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (I mean, yes, easy, but a couple places gave me trouble, which virtually never happens on Monday)



THEME: ROFL (36A: Texter's expression spelled out by the starts of 18-, 28-, 46- and 59-Across) — ROFL stands for ROLLING / ON the / FLOOR / LAUGHING (hence sometimes styled as "ROTFL")

  • ROLLING PINS
  • ON THE DOWN LOW
  • FLOOR MIRRORS
  • LAUGHING GAS

Word of the Day: COZEN (16A: Deceive) —
coz·en  (kzn)
v.  coz·enedcoz·en·ingcoz·ens
v.tr.
1. To mislead by means of a petty trick or fraud; deceive.
2. To persuade or induce to do something by cajoling or wheedling.
3. To obtain by deceit or persuasion.
v.intr.
To act deceitfully.

[Perhaps from Middle English cosinfraud, trickery.] (thefreedictionary.com)
• • •

My first question was "do people still text that?" though I'm guessing that the answer is someone, somewhere still does. Having a texting expression as the revealer gives this puzzle a patina of up-to-dateness, though nothing else about the grid feels very hip or modern or contemporary at all (nice contemporary clue on SCOTLAND, though) (40D: Site of a 2014 vote for independence). I'm currently having a back-and-forth with another constructor about ROFL vs. ROTFL (the version of this same expression that includes the "T" for "the"). ROFL and ROTFL mean the same thing, essentially, as far as I can tell, so I don't see the big deal, but his/her point is that ROTFL is a better revealer—you've got a "the" in your answer, and you say your revealer "expression" is "spelled out by the starts" of the answers, then you should have the "T" in your revealer (since it's right there in the theme answer). ROTFL is more precise. Here, "O" stands for "On the," which is at least a little odd. In the texting expression ROFL, the "the" is elided, but when you get into claiming that something is "spelled out" in the puzzle, now you're on shakier ground. ROLLING / ON / FLOOR / LAUGHING is spelled, but that's not how you'd translate the expression. THE is in your theme answer, but it's not "spelled out" in your revealer. Still, I think the stakes are pretty low here, and I have no real problem with the theme's execution.


I don't know what FLOOR MIRRORS are, and don't think I've seen them in dressing rooms. Are they free-standing, just sitting on the floor? Seriously, I've seen lots of mirrors in dressing rooms, but they're always affixed to walls. Anyway, with no hope at the FLOOR part of that answer, that west section all of a sudden got really hard. Had CMI and TAT and *nothing* else west of LEO. Couldn't get any of the Downs from their first and last letters alone. If I hadn't known ROFL, well, LOL. But I knew it, and things fell into place. Got slowed down by weird AGO clue (60D: "Give it A GO!"), and the pretty awkward cross-reference at 59D: See 58-Down (LAB). Rest of puzzle was OK, though it felt safe and old-fashioned. Tepid. Grid is highly segmented, loaded with short fill, and short on interesting stuff (except BEDSORE, which literally made me say EWW…) (24D: Long-term hospital patient's problem). I like the digital spirit of this one, but overall it's just about average.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

53 comments:

Z 12:06 AM  

CMI? Seriously? How about we play CMXCIX Bottles of Eels on the wall for added fun.

Otherwise, not my cuppa.

Whirred Whacks 12:08 AM  

Liked the theme ROFL and its theme answers. Nice job! (Yes, Rex, people still use that acronym but I mainly see it in tweets not texts.)

Maybe next week there will be a LMFAO puzzle. I'd enjoy seeing the theme answers for that one!

Speaking ROFL, this weekend's 3-minute cold opening of Saturday Night Live featuring the childhood favorite "Schoolhouse Rock" did that for me!

Enjoy your Monday!

Ellen S 12:24 AM  

Yeah, this puzzle had EELS, POCs RRNs, but some good stuff, and at least I didn't have to cheat on a Monday, so I'm happy.

retired_chemist 12:56 AM  

easy. Two of the theme answers went in with no crosses, one needed 2 or 3, and the FLOOR to precede MIRRORS went in with some difficulty. But when you cover that much real estate that quickly it's gonna be a fast, easy solve.

priEd before COZEN, fell before SLID, but otherwise no writeovers I can recall.

Thanks, Mr. Seminara.

John Child 1:14 AM  

FLOOR MIRRORS certainly appear to be a real thing - half a million hits on google for the quoted phrase. The images Google offers show big mirrors that reach to the floor. I had a mirrored image of mirrored floors, which seemed pretty kinky.

Google's NGRAM viewer shows the term most popular in the 1830s with another spike in usage in the 1930s and another peak about 2000.

Mr Seminara's notes address the question of whether THE is part of the phrase and concludes "one cannot challenge the correctness of the theme."

jae 1:20 AM  

Medium for me.  Seemed like solid Mon. with the exceptions of COZEN and AARE which I only know from crosswords and late week ones at that.  

Clever and fun, liked it.

Anoa Bob 1:35 AM  

I'm assuming that the "starts" in the clue for ROFL, "Texter's expression spelled out in the starts of 18-, 28-, 46- and 59-Across" means "the first letter of ...". The "spelled out" seems to support the "first letter" hypothesis. If that's the case then I think the reveal and its clue are spot on.

The fact that the first word in each themer, ROLLING ON FLOOR LAUGHING (no "the" involved) also defines what ROFL means muddies the picture somewhat.

Like @Ellen S, the number of POCS (Plural Of Convenience, where an "S" or "ES" is added to an entry to boost its letter count) in this one got my attention, especially with two themers needing an additional "S" to fit their slots.

Jonathan 1:47 AM  

I don't care the correctness of the "spelled out" aspect of the clue, but I do think ROFL is a bit mystifying as an answer. I've seen people abbreviate it ROTFL countless times but I have never in my life seen just "ROFL".

It doesn't even make sense as an initialism. If you aren't including the article you definitely shouldn't include the preposition. It would be just "RFL". Which would be ridiculous, but slightly less so than "ROFL."

chefwen 2:06 AM  

Puzzle was pretty easy for me, one write-over was hobby before CRAFT, quickly changed when nothing worked off of hobby. Never saw COZEN as it was filled in with downs, that might have given me pause.

Jon looked at me quizzically after he was done with his copy and said "what the hell is ROFL?"
He leads a very sheltered life.

Good start to the week in IMHO!

Lewis 5:39 AM  

ROFL does seem dated, well past its honeymoon stage, but that's how I remember it started out, then at some point the T was added. There's no law that every word of the phrase has to be represented, so the "the" would seem to be subsumed under the "O". I'm fine with that!

At 15, a very large group of double letters. I loved the clue for IRONIC. And the puzzle had a bit more of a bite than the usual Monday yet still remained within the window of easiness Monday calls for -- a good thing!

Lewis 5:51 AM  

Factoid: LAUGHINGGAS (nitrous oxide), it turns out, is a potent greenhouse gas. When compared to carbon dioxide, it has 298 times the ability per molecule of gas to trap heat in the atmosphere. It is not only produced in the lab, it also can naturally be produced in the soil.

Quotoid: "I learned long AGO, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." -- George Bernard Shaw

John Child 6:06 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
GILL I. 6:07 AM  

I so wanted Emoji. I love Emojis...I use them all the time and they are so much cuter than ROFL which sounds awful.
I actually enjoyed this Monday. It felt a lot fresher than the ERR, OLE, ETA group of staple Mondays. Well, I guess I could do without the EAT EEL SEN SUM ENS HIE DMI FEE LAX AGA OCT LEO ORE PER LAB AGO GNU URN and I think there is one last one....TAT!
ON THE DOWN LOW???? well, aren't we progressive....! Like OLDIE hugging POLKA and OOPS staring at UZI. OOPS, I missed that one....
Three letter words...what in the world would we do without them?

John Child 6:08 AM  

@Lewis, that quotoid should go along with "Don't feed the trolls."

Loren Muse Smith 6:46 AM  

I agree with Rex that this one was medium challenging for a Monday. It was still really early, and with only half a cup of coffee down, I kept doing mental checks to make sure it is indeed Monday.

@Anoa Bob – thought of you with ROLLING PINS and FLOOR MIRRORS.

I thought the puzzle was just fine. PROMPTLY (six consonants, one vowel) made me pause for a while.

Anyone else notice EX crossing LAX?

Number two on my Tune Out the Speaker list (after hearing about someone's thyroid medication) is listening to someone's detailed, excruciatingly thorough self-analysis about some subject. This never stops me from doing the same thing, mind you. It's just that when I do it, it's bright, interesting, earth-shattering information. It's when someone else does it that I'm struck with how truly uninteresting it can be. Anyway…

I've never used either one - ROFL or ROTFL. I just don't understand why the linguist in me cannot embrace textese. Sure, I understand most of the common things (LOL "laugh out loud," IDK "I don't know," WTF "Why the face?"*) but I never, ever use any shortcuts. It's the same part of me that cannot order a "Venti" size at Starbuck's. I would feel poserish and conspicuous. Creepy Hipsterlady Wannabe.

So I've just sniffed around google about COZEN. Glad it was the Word of the Day. It rhymes with "dozen?" Who knew? Even with "dozen," I would have rhymed it with "frozen." Whenever we stayed at his house in Charlotte, Lance, my cousin, cozened me into believing his house was haunted by a chicken-legged lady.

Robert – thanks for the crunchy Monday. I especially appreciated the OLDIE POLKA TWEET area (Morning, @Gill!) and HIE next to PROMPTLY. And you cozened me however briefly into thinking it was Wednesday!

*totally stole that from Phil on Modern Family.

Anonymous 7:27 AM  

@GILL I. I hope that list of negatives isn't serious...? I agree on some, but determining good and bad fill is more complex than listing the 3-letter answers. Most of the things you've listed are fine, and some are even good for 3s (LAB, LAX). the fill police need to take it easier on constructors sometimes.

Dorothy Biggs 7:44 AM  

I was still in tentacle mode (arm of the sea) when I saw 11D (Arm of Israel)....and then I was trying to figure out if there was an Israeli named UrI Arm. I still didn't get it even as I guessed on COZEN until after the puzzle was done and made the connection between UZI and an armament. Gotcha.

I've had the ROTFL v. ROFL debate before with friends, not with regard to the revealer in this puzzle, but as an abbreviation. The consensus seems to be it's a matter of choice/style. ROFL is one thumb stroke less and therefore faster, I guess. You've also got your "ROFLMAO" v. "ROFLMFAO." It's just a matter of preference.

I personally use LOL or sometimes the seemingly more common among the youth, "haha." But I've also resorted to emoticons as well: :D

I haven't ever heard of FLOORMIRRORS either....but there's a lot of things I've never heard of. Didn't care for ILLFAME (?) or CMI. I understand that certain letter-combinations dictate the presence of certain words (AARE, for example), but I do grow a bit weary of those rivers with lots of vowels in them (Oise, Yser, etc.)

I liked TOUSLE, POLKA and FLAIL. I liked MOOLA and LUCRE in the same puzzle, but missing "dough."

I had LETRun to start. Also had mARs before TARS.

Overall, not a bad solving experience.

joho 8:03 AM  

I don't think we've had a texting theme before, have we? Plus Robert worked in the bonus answer, TWEET. Nice touch!

II couldn't help but notice the underlying medical theme of RASHES, SPRAINS, BEDSORE and perhaps some broken BONES.

ONTHEDOWNLOW was my favorite answer.

Great start to the week, TY, Robert Seminara!

Mohair Sam 8:10 AM  

Tough for a Monday. Certainly enjoyable. Don't usually learn much on a Monday, but found out that MALI is the former French Sudan and learned the word COZEN.

Don't text much, but have seen ROFL elsewhere.

Hand up for wondering what the Hell a FLOORMIRROR is. Maybe to check out the new shoes?

Snow forecast around here (Eastern PA) for Wednesday. Big travel day - hope they're wrong.

jberg 8:31 AM  

I have no opinion on the larger ROFL vs. ROTFL debate, but in the puzzle the revealer matches the theme answers -- including the T would require another answer starting with THE to match.

Aside from that, my first impulse was to fill up mu URN with EELs, take them to the AARE and release them with some AGAR to keep them going -- but that would be unfair to a puzzle that starts off with the lovely word FLAIL at 1D. So I'll take this for the easy romp it was.

Z 8:53 AM  

@LMS - Don't frozen, dozen, cousin, and COZEN all rhyme? It's that first vowel that is pronounced differently. There is a term for this but I'm not coming up with it..."mid-rhyme" maybe? I have a lawyer friend with the last name "Cosens." Makes me wonder.

As for ROFL, "ROLLING ON FLOOR, LAUGHING," works fine for me. The article is preferred, not required, in my opinion.

My only delay with FLOOR was that there are other options in a dressing room. I imagine a FLOOR MIRROR as a self-standing mirror, possibly that can be flipped over, where one can review the entire effect before going on stage.

"Why The Face," right there with "Shut the Front Door" for when there are little kids around.

Ludyjynn 9:07 AM  

Fascinating to me how the omission of 'T' from ROFL RILES Rex and AROUSES him to LETRIP his nit-picking EDITorial of this puzz.

I think this is a beautifully CRAFTed Monday, and AGREE w/ others that it has a nice bite "for a Monday", esp. COZEN. The fill is not too bothersome and gets the job done, IMO.

OOPS, I had 'extol' before EXALT, but the crosswordese AGA quickly resolved that.

Felix the cat brought a MOUSE inside to play with recently w/o my knowledge and it has managed to escape and hide somewhere because Honey the dog's Milkbones are mysteriously showing up in the oddest places, such as under the oven, all gnawed at! Wish I could find the little bugger, who remains ONTHEDOWNLOW!

Thanks, RS and WS. This was an auspicious start to the day.


Unknown 9:09 AM  

Med -challenging based on my time. No problem with FLOORMIRROR but overall there were many answers that caused just a little more hesitation than I expect on Monday. No complaints, though. I hate zipping through the Monday puzzle because the fun ends too soon.

chefbea 9:24 AM  

I don't text...but it was easy to get.

Better get out the old rolling pin for Thanksgiving pies.!!

Leapfinger 9:36 AM  

@Gill, ROFL is awful but TOUSLE AROUSal.

@Loren, thanks for pointing out the EX-LAX. Reminds me of when I was about 4, discovering the contents of that pretty little blue/red/white box on my dad's nightstand. This was post-war Europe, with chocolate still a rarity, and I couldn't resist scarfing some of it down. Decades later, I mentioned this thievery to my Mom and it was a big Aha for her: the family had never figured out what hit the kid so down low.

Speaking of little blue boxes, I thought the theme was rather like getting a present in a Tiffany box, opening it to find a crackerjack decoder ring. ROFL?
Phoo.

otoh, when I LUCRE round the grid, I AGREE it has good BONES.

Much to do, miles to go. Enjoy!

evil doug 9:36 AM  

I put my floor mirror on the floor wall near my floor bathtub. You know, right next to the floor door....

Evil

Hartley70 9:50 AM  

I thought this Monday theme was great! I liked every answer except ILLFAME which was awkward for me. I get a kick out of the "dated" complaints. COZEN may be dated, the fifties may be dated, but ROLF is not dated in my book. Are we really all that hip?....which is, of course, dated!

Arlene 9:52 AM  

I'm fine with ROFL - the "on the" is essentially considered one word.
I was a little hesitant to put in COZEN, because as others have said, it seemed like a later-in-the-week word. Same for a few others - as others have already commented.

KRMunson 9:55 AM  

AS usual, Rexites never disappoint! I was ROFL (no T) after reading @evil doug's post and I still want to bear his children. Also appreciated @Leapfingers story about EX-LAX.


Unfortuately,I gotta got to work today. BOO.

mac 9:56 AM  

Easy but slow going anyway.... A little dusty feel to this puzzle.

I think the term used is "floor length mirror". The tall mirror on a stand is a cheval mirror.

I'm not cooking on Thanksgiving, but I just have to bake a maple syrup pumpkin pie.

Carola 9:56 AM  

A very enjoyable Monday - clever theme, especially nice theme answers, plus FLAIL, TOUSLE, COZEN, ILL FAME, the SNOOP who PRIED.

@joho - Not to mention GAS :)

Cozen Steve 10:02 AM  

I had AWAKENS first; AROUSES is a whole nother thing.

@joho, I definitely noticed the medical slant also, but after my early diatribe on Tylenol, I hesitated to embark on a wrist vs ankle SPRAINS treatise. Should anyone be RASH enough to want smore on BEDSORE, aka pressure SORE aka decubiti, contact me directly in Derm, NC.

A floor mirror is what I'd call a [free-standing] cheval glass; I suspect a floor-length mirror was what was in mind. @KRM, I'm well past bearing ED's children, but given incentive, I might be willing to badger them.

L. Finger

Bob Kerfuffle 10:21 AM  

I agree that there was something about this puzzle that made parts crunchier than the usual Monday. But there were also so many easier-than-Monday clues that I was lulled into entering MONEY at 32 D before MOOLA.

Good puzzle overall, but if I were looking for nits, I would say that 40 D, SCOTLAND, was the site of a vote on independence, not for independence, and that I would hope that 24 D, BEDSOREs, are only a potentialproblem.

Malsdemare 10:51 AM  

I was thinking that a floor mirror was that little pyramiddy thing in shoe departments, the ones that show only your shoes and spare you the view of other lower parts (do these shoes make my butt look big?)

RooMonster 11:13 AM  

Hey All !
Seemed to have a bit too much crosswordese for me. 23 threes, which is highish, but acceptable on Monday. Slanted more towards having more dreck than good fill. IMHO.

The ROFL/ROTFL debate: I'm with the Non-"T" crowd. Who need it? :-P Also, the FLOORMIRROR debate, also agree it's Floor Length Mirror. FLOORMIRROR sounds like something you walk on.

COZEN seems a Not-Friendly-Monday word. Ok with AARE, though. Had bALI first, took a minute to spell TOUSLE (had TOUSal!!)

OK MonPuz, maybe tomorrow will be better.

PROMPTLY LETRIP
RooMonster
DarrinV

Unknown 11:17 AM  

That MAO did not make a subtle appearance is a major downgrade for this puzzle. Otherwise, yes, I needed a few extra passes and the midweek sussing to bring it home in 16, about 4 min over average.

andy 11:36 AM  

Seems RO/TFL (with O and T occupying the same square would have been easily achievable with a couple adjustments, and appropriate given 28A having ONTHE together. That, however, would take away today's great debate.

Still, that wouldn't have saved today's puzzle for me. COZEN, YESES, AARE, ILLFAME, et al., made me gag.

mathguy 11:42 AM  

@Lewis. Admire your collection of quotes. Not one clunker yet. When I was in my twenties and had ambitions to write fiction, I would write great quotes on 3x5 cards and keep them in a box. I wish that I had kept it up. The author John Gregory Dunne kept a collection like that throughout his life. He was the brother of Dominick Dunne and the husband of Joan Didion. She wrote a poignant memoir about dealing with his death. He wrote True Confessions which was made into an excellent movie with Robert De Niro.

Mohair Sam 11:44 AM  

@hartley70 - Yeah, had the same clumsy feeling about ILLFAME. Can't picture any calendar date living in ILLFAMy, ya know what I mean?

@LMS - Minute I read your research on COZEN, cozen/cousin came to mind for Sunday - if only PB had seen this puzzle a while back.

AliasZ 11:53 AM  


Strangely, the mental picture I got when I saw FLOOR MIRROR was a floor tiled with mirrors. Interesting concept. Let me think about that for a little longer.

Fancy Monday puzzle with COZEN, ILL FAME, TOUSLE, BEDSORE RASHES, EXALT, FLAIL and MOOLA LUCRE. Not your average Monday entries, but quite pleasing to me. COZEN Itt? My COZEN Vinny? My country COZEN? We had LET'ER RIP recently, today LET RIP. I am waiting to LET one RIP. ROFL or ROTFL? A question for the ages. How many more words can we waste on it? I found CMI a much more interesting entry.

I hope you will enjoy this POLKA.

Happy Monday.

Lewis 11:57 AM  

@mathguy -- thank you for your kind words. I do have a collection of quotes I love. I'd like to say they are all on neatly stacked index cards, perhaps arranged by topic, but in reality its a bunch of paper scraps with scribbles in a large envelope. Pulling them out is often an adventure, and usually edifying.

Anonymous 12:20 PM  

Q: What did the BEDSORE sufferer say?
A: Gimmee some skin!

What? Too passe? Oh well, IN ANE ear and out t'other...

Elephant's Child 12:27 PM  

Meeting in Las Vegas, stayed at Caesar's Palace. My room had a ceiling MIRROR over the bed, red&black flocked wallpaper.

Hoo and hah.

AliasZ 12:39 PM  


The year 901 (CMI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

Major events:

America - The Mesoamerican ballgame court is dedicated at Uxmal.
Africa - Abu 'Abdullah al-Shi'i leads the rebellion of the Kutama Berbers against the Aghlabid emirate in Ifriqiya (today Tunisia).
Asia - The Kingdom of Hu Goguryeo (later called Taebong) is established by Gung Ye in the Korean peninsula.
- Fuzhou City is expanded with construction of a new city wall ("Luo City").
- Zhu Wen seizes the imperial Tang Dynasty capital.
- Abaoji is elected chieftain of the Yila Tribe of the Khitan.
- January 25: In Japan, the poet Sugawara no Michizane is exiled to Dazaifu.
Europe - February 15 or February 22: Louis the Blind (c.833-928) is crowned Emperor of Occident at Rome. Berenger of Friuli is defeated and has to seek refuge in Bavaria at the court of Louis the Child.
- June 10: the Aghlabids sack Reggio Calabria.
- July 10: In al-Andalus Ibn al-Qitt and Abu Ali al-Sarraj, call for the small jihad but are defeated by Alfonso III of Leon at the battle of Zamora.
- Fall: Æthelwold of Wessex, rebels against his cousin Edward the Elder and comes with a fleet to Essex, and encouraged the Danes of East Anglia to rise up.
- The first written mention yet found of Shrewsbury.

Religion:
- January 6: Speech of Arethas of Caesarea at the occasion of the Epiphany. He becomes the official rhetor at the court of LEO VI the Wise at Constantinople and is nominated the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia.
- March 1: Nicholas Mystikos, a layman close to Photios, becomes patriarch of Constantinople.

Deaths:
- February 18: Thabit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and mathematician.
- April: Ubayd Allah ibn Sulayman, Abbasid vizier
- July 8: Saint Grimbald
[from Wikipedia]

Things haven't change much in 1113 years, have they?

retired_chemist 1:23 PM  

@ Lewis - yes re NO and greenhouse gas (on a per mole basis I think), but there is so little of it in the atmosphere that it doesn't compete with CO2 in trapping energy. Ditto for methane, which is about 80 times CO2 in that regard.

As ice melts and seas warm, I imagine the methane trapped as a clathrate will increasingly become a problem, possibly outstripping CO2 as a concern.

LaneB 2:01 PM  

This was the first Monday in a very long time I haven't been able to finish. Hung up on the latter part of ONTHEDOWNLOW ( WTF is that??),ROFL and AONE. Glad to see others saw it as difficult. More clues that fit other equal-length words making for more confusion later on. I do not enjoy failure.

Anonymous 2:39 PM  

The puzzle has a "deja vu" feel.

An ROFL-themed crossword appeared in the NYT in 2010.

http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2010/06/tiny-electrical-measure-thu-6-3-10.html

Sfingi 3:57 PM  

Though I got ROFL, had no idea what it was. I'll be 70 in a month, and have a dumb phone. And I moan every time it rings, unlike the kids who can't wait to be on it at all times. Then I see a white bearded fellow who says ROFL is already old! No point in keeping up.

I thought the theme was something with double letters, which applied to 3 our of four LL RR GG.

Also had problems with NW because I had boGiE instead of EAGLE. I try not to know anything about sports but it seeps in and messes things up.

At first, couldn't figure out what LE TRIP was. Was it like LE CAR? Oh, LET RIP.

I do know WTF.

@LaneB - ON THE DOWN LOW usually means in the closet and married to the opposite sex as a cover up.

Mini-them - SNOOP - PRIED.

@AliasZ - beautiful.

Also Anthony TT Kaleas, Patriarch of Constantinople made St. at his death.

Sicily - Islamic rule begins as Taormina falls. Lasts until 1060s when the Normans arrive.

Teedmn 6:16 PM  

Must have been a bit harder than average; since I started hanging with you all, I've been timing Monday and Tuesday solves and I average 8 minutes usually but today was 13+. I'm blaming my one handed iPad solve due to pizza in the other hand :-)

@NCA Pres, dough was in there but it got flattened by the ROLLING PIN.

@LMS, I always thought COZEN was pronounced like Cosby (who seems to have COZENed many) but that's what comes of reading books with words no one ever uses in speech.

Your cousin must have been into Russian folklore, though I guess Baba Yaga's house had chicken legs, not her.

And when I saw FLOORMIRRORS, I thought of those slanted mirrors sitting on the floor in shoe stores, but have never seen one in a dressing room, so anyhoo....

mac 10:06 PM  

@Lewis: I love your quotes.

spacecraft 11:29 AM  

Faintly amusing theme; OK execution. Fill spotty. beside the RRN we have YESES. Any grid containing YESES is in trouble.

One w/o: AwakenS instead of AROUSES. Guess I've discovered another two-way answer a la SCAB/SCAR. If there's an either/or to be had, count on me to guess the wrong one.

Easy-medium; had some trouble accepting LETRIP sans the intervening 'ER of the other day. How about just "Let the big dog eat?" My first try was LETFLY, as in "Cry havoc! And LETFLY the dogs (see what I did there?) of war!"

106. Like this puzzle: coulda been batter.

rondo 1:26 PM  

Lotsa lotsa 3 letter answers including a RRN - dislike 'em.
Seems to me it's a FLOORlengthMIRROR.
Wasn't Francis a LAUGHINGGAS? Nop a talking mule.
If only I was that TAT guy . . .
At least SNOOP wasn't clued as a rapper.

How about a captcha - 1015 = 7

DMG 2:23 PM  

I post with trepidation as strange things have been happening lately Somstime my post which is here when I first look, and then vanishes. Happened to my first post on Saturday. second post vanished. Too. However I just found it on the Sunday log, which I never see excepting when fast-forwarding to Monday. Wonder what will happen today?

As to today's puzzle,my worst hang-up was spelliing once again. PRyED made a mess of the mid north until I caved to what had to be. also didn't like, but accepted FLOORMIRRORS, which I agree with others describes a mirrored floor, maybe at a Fun House of ? repute.

the post I lost had the enviable Captcha of 108. Today I get 4339. Maybe Captcha doesn't like me!

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