Word Count: 64
Average Length: 5.72
Difficulty: 4
Mountain lake, Qaqortoq, Greenland (see 26 Down)
I started this grid with the triple stack of 11s in the middle, which uses two entries from my “need to put these in a puzzle” list (28 and 35 Across). The middle entry in the sandwich came naturally because it’s a frequent and scrumptious presence in our house. Please enjoy, please share, and please feel free to shoot me an email or submit a comment if you’ve got helpful suggestions/comments.
16A: The answer is a bit obscure, but I marvel at this passage, where Shakespeare once again cuts to the heart of a human emotion. Interestingly, the meaning of the answer has changed from its original, time-centered sense to connote a culmination or high point.
25A: Yuck, I know. I couldn’t figure out how to redo this section with a less obscure answer; one alternative would have been to change the “T” to a “D” and clue it as a manufacturer of modernistic watches, but that seems just as obscure, and I prefer the existing 26D to the alternative because it conjures up memories of hiking in Greenland (see photo above).
28A: I first saw this expression in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where someone at the Ministry of Magic says, “we thought it was a [ANSWER] chicken until it started breathing fire.” Apparently, the expression also is in common use across the pond in the muggle world.
Jeff's Puzzles 