ACPT 3/4

Do you think Cathy Millhauser would appreciate the irony if I felt like strangling her while working on her puzzle? This is not to say it was a bad puzzle. Far from it, actually. It was, as usual, a wonderfully punny theme, and once I got the idea, it wasn't too hard. There were just a lot of moments where I was staring at the grid, not knowing the answers, and I needed to lash out at someone. And it was either her or the cats.

Interesting thing about the puzzle (which I almost finished)--it seemed to have two themes going on. The first was the obvious 'death' answers like "Looney Tombs" and "I'm a bereaver," but then there seemed to be a sub-theme in two of the other answers: Bier One Imports, along with Morgue and Mindy had the 'one' and 'and' both rebused-up in a single box. At least I think so. Since there's no other bagged candy that is M__M's besides M&M's, it had to be the case. And that threw me for a loop, making me think there was something like that going on throughout the puzzle, which I didn't seem to notice. So....it should be interesting to see how I did on that in the end.

In the end, I can say I enjoyed the puzzle. I liked 'kookier' as fill, along with the ore/o'er/oar trio. And it's odd, because a lot of the puzzles I've been doing outside the Tourney stuff has been popping up in the Tourney puzzles and vice-versa. Just before I did these two, I worked on a puzzle with 'skiff' as an answer. And there it was in Cathy's puzzle!

I actually finished Mike Shenk's puzzle before time was up, so that was nice. I liked the visual rebus spelling out the word rebus at 40-across. And "pass go" as a way to earn $200 was really clever.

So two more on tap today. Can't wait.


And how about Root Beer last night, starting that DP with Yadi? And yay for Chris Duncan, who seems to be the only guy who has remembered how to hit.


Dave