Wed., 12/31 Alex Miller

[magus]

THEME:   phrases ending in IV
   
GOOD ONES:     
Northeastern educational octet {& theme}  IVY LEAGUE [pronounced /I-V/]   
See the sites?   SURF [note spelling]   
Kings and queens   BEDS [of course I thought playing cards, royalty, etc. but not beds]   
   
BTW:   
Holiday lights site   EAVES [What are holiday lights?  Guess it's better to be incorrect than to use the real word Christmas, which oddly may be "politically incorrect" or to some "offensive."  What I find offensive is ideologically based semantics.]   
   
Pontificate   ORATE [nope, pontificate means to speak as if one is always right; ORATE does not have that component]   
   
Carpentry tool   AWL [it's a leather or cane worker's tool used by other tradesmen]   
   
Some, in Seville   UNAS [but not in Brighton]   
   
   
RATING:     despite the above BTW's, there was much good about this last offering of the year.  Anyway, Happy New Year.

[Thomps2525]

Mister magus, you'll be surprised to learn that I found something good in this puzzle: the "Ivy League" theme and the four answers ending with IV. One was ROYGBIV, clued as "Colorful mnemonic." As children, most of us learned the colors of the rainbow by remembering the name of Roy G. Biv: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. I've often wondered if there really is a Roy G. Biv somewhere.

But, lest anyone think I have no complaints, I must mention the many foreign words and abbreviations (ADM, AVE, ENER, PBS, POLLOI, STA, STE, UNAS, USA) and the much-overused OREO and AVA (Gardner). But the puzzle also included some seldom-seen names: ALIBABA, Daniel Boone star FESS Parker, Star Wars' Princess Leia ORGANA, and singers MYA and k.d. LANG. (k.d. lang, in the true e.e. cummings tradition, spells her name with small letters.)