Fri., 11/14 Steve Salmon

[magus]

THEME:   commonly misspelled words
   
GOOD ONES:     
This puzzles five longest answers are common ones   MISPELLINGS [including this one!]   
Selling points   MALLS [places, not assets]   
Island loop   LEI [flowers, not travel]   
Sicilian capital?   ESS [the word, not place]   
Attorney's thing   RES [Latin for thing, not belonging to a lawyer]   
Douglas and others   FIRS [trees, not people]   
Place with berth rights   MARINA   
   
BTW:   
As the worst speller in Mrs. Morganroth's third grade class, the "misspellings" made sense to me.      
   
SIPS doesn't get ON:  She sipped the tea; she sipped tea; she sipped on tea?  But, the Koalas chewed on eucalyptus; the rich supped on filet mignon and Spaghetti-O's.   
   
FILS is purely French.

Two gems in a row!   
   
   
RATING:   
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

Another puzzle with Roman numerals, foreign words, abbreviations and initials...but today I have a bigger complaint. I, too, object to SIPS ON, but my complaint involves the misspelling of "MISSPELLING." Five words are deliberately misspelled in today's crossword. The clue for 52 across is "This puzzle's five longest answers are common ones." The answer is MISPELLINGS. Since there is no such word as "mispellings," the puzzle's theme answers can not be mispellings. They are misspellings. The puzzle's creator should have misspelled only four words and then used MISSPELLINGS, spelled correctly, for 52 across.

Mister magus probably remembers when Mrs. Morganroth asked him to spell "weather" and he said "W-H-E-A-E-T-T-H-I-E-R." She exclaimed, "That's the worst spell of weather we've had in a long time!"