Merl Reagle's puzzle in today's Los Angeles Times was quite clever. Titled "It's Not What It Sounds Like," the puzzle included words and phrases which.....well.....are not what they sound like. For example, MANGANESE was clued with "It's not a language" and TOMCOLLINSMIX was clued with "It's not the full name of a famous cinema cowboy."
EDAM appears quite often in crosswords but Reagle today came up with a creative clue for the word: "Cheese that's literally made upside down?" I could be my usual nitpicky self and say that the word "made" should be in quotation marks. After all, the cheese is not literally made upside down---it's the word "made" which becomes the name of the cheese when spelled upside down.
OPIE, the name of Ron Howard's character in The Andy Griffith Show, appears in a lot of crosswords. Today's puzzle included OPE as a nickname of Opie. That's acceptable because Andy often called his son by that name. But ELIZ as a shortened form of Queen Elizabeth's name? Sorry---I don't consider ELIZ to be an acceptable puzzle word.
And finally, the puzzle included RETSYN, a trademarked name for an ingredient in Certs breath mints. I know you're all waiting with bated breath---pun intended---to find out what Retsyn is. It's a flavored blend of copper gluconate and cottonseed oil. Yummy!
