Fri., 7/25 Jacob McDermott

[magus]

THEME:   car brands are found "rented" or cut in phrases
   
GOOD ONES:     
Wheels on loan… or as the circles show…   RENT-A-CAR [my newspaper had no circles making the job tough for me]   
One concerned with show horses?   BETTOR [win, place or show]   
Kind of pain?   ROYAL   
Demand upon reaching the other side   KING ME [I thought ocean not checker board]   
Rains hard?   SLEET   
   
BTW:   
TEMA = bad Italian;  CIAO = good Italian   [because we do use CIAO, but we don't use TEMA]   
   
Ella, in the States   SHE [sorry --- Ella in the States is a girl's name, not a foreign pronoun never used in English]   
   
ER staff member   EMT [really?  Maybe in M.A.S.H. units, but I believe the hospital board would be shocked]   
   
   
RATING:    
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

I, too, was perplexed by today's puzzle in the Times. With the circles omitted from the grid, I didn't immediately notice the broken-up names of automobiles. My first thought was that the "circles" were the many appearances of the letter "O" but I couldn't figure out what to do with them. A few months ago there was a puzzle that included names of cars within the long answers and the word underneath each car name contained two O's separated by another letter. The O's represented the cars' tires. Awww, how cute! Anyway, I enjoy filling in the words of a puzzle...but today I also had to fill in those missing circles! Who can we blame?

[magus]

Obama; I blame him for everything else.