Wednesday January 23rd 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 15:24
Wednesday Average: 15:24
Best Wednesday: 7:09

OK, this theme took me a long time to parse, but now that I've figured it out, I kind of love the oddness. As the revealer clue wordily explains, the theme answers are GENDER NEUTRAL "vis-a-vis the female-sounding phrases they're based on?" Of course, I'm just reading through that thinking, "female sounding?" By this, they mean that the common phrases normally end with "-ess," which is a feminine ending for words like sorceress or seamstress, and then this ending is replaced by "-er" for the wacky answers.

  • "Maternity ward worker who counts each day's births?" DELIVERY ADDER. (Delivery address)
  • "Dairy item thrown in a food fight?" FLYING BUTTER. (Flying buttress).
  • "Dynamite?" BLOW UP MATTER. (Blow-up mattress).
The KREWE/ELKS cross was the killer for me and cost me about 4 minutes of random guessing. I should have known the latter of those two, but I've never heard of "krewe" to describe a social organization that puts on a parade or ball for the Carnival season, usually associated with Mardi Gras. That is news to me. I also don't know MEEMAW for Granny in the South and I'm only passingly familiar with MANX cats, which apparently have short/no tails and are from the Isle of Man. Neat!

"Foe of Russia, with 'the'" is the WEST? I guess, but do we have to perpetuate that? I also just object to people using "The West" without ever really discussing what it actually means. 

Comments

  1. ArraJanuary 23, 2019 at 4:29 PM

    Solved easily. Could not figure out the theme without looking here and “there”.

    ReplyDelete

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