Today's crosswords make a fine feast for food fans. Daniel Nierenberg's
Los Angeles Times crossword included this clue: "Enthusiastic smorgasbord words." The answer was WHATASPREAD. Circled letters in each theme answer spelled the name of a type of spread...and the letters
themselves were spread out:
D
OUB
LECR
OSS - OLEO
POST
AGEME
TER - PATE (properly spelled "pâté")
BO
UN
TYHUN
TER - BUTTER
SEDI
MENT
AR
YR
OCK - MAYO
Peter Collins' crossword in today's
Daily News includes four food items and toppings which can go on them. Each "topping" was immediately above the "food": CHEESE was on BURGER, ONIONS was on HOTDOG, HOTFUDGE was on ICECREAM, and MARINARA was on RIGATONI. Very clever!
I keep track of all those over-used three- and four-letter words (and a few five-letter words). Twice on this site I have posted the results of 30-day analyses of several daily puzzles. Today, Nierenberg used ADO, ALP, ANT, ATE and ERR. Collins used ALOHA, ALEE and ANO (minus the tilde). The NEA crossword included AAH, ALE, AMA, APO, ARIA, ARMS, EASE, EAU, EKE, IMP, OLE and UKE. The Universal crossword included ACNE, ALERT, ALI, ALOE, AMMO, ARGO, ATOM, EEL, OSLO and TSAR.
Combined, today's four crosswords included thirty words which are used far too frequently. Twenty of those words begin with the letter A and only
one begins with a consonant.
And now I have to go get something to eat. I'm suddenly hungry.
