I'm always impressed when a puzzle maker can come up with a theme that involves various combinations of the letters of a particular word. I'm impressed that he can come up with the idea in the first place and I'm impressed that he can come up with the theme answers and I'm impressed that he can make them fit in the puzzle. That's a lot of being impressed!
Today's puzzle used four brand names, names which used to be taboo in crosswords: IBM, ATRA, QUIK and USA (as in the newspaper USA TODAY). One of the phrases in the puzzle was NOTIME, clued with "Seconds flat." People often say that something was done "in no time at all" but that isn't possible---everything takes some amount of time. That's the logician in me speaking.
Today's New York Times crossword by Samuel A. Donaldson was even more impressive than the puzzle mentioned above. The theme answers were ARODEF, TEMLEH, ORERBMOS, EKLUMRAY and REKLATSREED. The clue for 61-across was "Go crazy---or a hint on how to enter five answers in this puzzle." Get it?
The answer: FLIPONESLID. Flip one's lid, "lid" being an old slang term for a hat.
