Sunday, September 23 - David Levinson Wilk

Good Sunday morning, everyone! Evad behind the blogger desk for a vacationing Linda G. today. And welcome to fall...summer officially ended early this morning with the Autumnal Equinox *sighs* How many of you did all the things during summer that you had hoped to?

Today's theme is a shout out to one of the icons of departing summer, Flip-flops.
The theme entries take phrases that have the word FOR in the middle and switch what precedes the FOR with what follows it; in essence, doing a flip-flop around the word FOR.

The theme entries were a bit awkward, but a few gems were to be found:

- BROKE FOR GO - "Rolled sixes while on Water Works, in Monopoly" which is a pretty long clue for a short phrase...the mathematician in me wonders why Water Works was chosen--it's 12 spaces away from "Go", so one could possibly get there in one roll.
- KEEPS FOR PLAY - "Doesn't throw away, as a stage prop?" I'd prefer a "the" before play to have this make more sense
- COMPLIMENTS FOR FISH - "What a sushi chef loves to hear?" Getting better with this one

- THE BEST FOR WORKOUT - "'8 Minute Abs,' according to some?" Well, not me--I can hardly expect anything taking 8 minutes to be a good workout!
- A DAY FOR KING - "January 15" another good entry
- LOST TIME FOR MAKEUP - "Was late to an appointment at the cosmetician?"
- KNOWLEDGE FOR THIRST - "What scientists working for Gatorade have?" Here, the "for" is trying to work as "about" and isn't as effective
- APPLES FOR BOB - "Dylan not liking Dell computers?" What would Bob Dylan be using a computer for, one wonders?
- ALL FOR FREE - "Like pro bono work?" Hurrah for those who work for the underprivileged!

That's a lot of theme to stuff into a 21x21 grid--125 squares by my count. Despite that, some nice fill ties it all together. JUMBO SIZE and APARTHEID straddle the central theme entry, with the trio of GOOD OMEN (anyone know why the Greeks think birds flying by on the right is one?), UNKEMPT, and NO EVIL; and then the corresponding PARTERRE (which, along with a rear seating section in a theater, can refer to flower beds of different sizes), WISTFUL and HENRY I standing guard at the far corners. I've heard of a papal NUNCIO, but didn't know the term was derived from the Latin for "envoy." Speaking of foreign words, the foreign dictionaries did get a bit of a workout (and more than 8 minutes for me!) this morning: BUONO, JOIE, EIN, BAJA, BASTA, FLOR, FINI, and OUI OUI all find their ways from foreign shores to our puzzle today.

Some good clues--I always enjoy the "40% of fifty?" clue (EFS, or the letter "F"), TOTAL for "Unadulterated" (I think of pure first, but I see that absolute or out-and-out are related meanings), and GOSSIP for "Dish."
COCKLE shells remind me of my father, who loved the Irish ballad of sweet Molly Malone with the line, "Crying cockles and mussels, Alive, Alive-O." We learn that TET is a "Three-day holiday" (American puzzle solvers probably know more about TET than the Vietnamese do!) I also learned about the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Shirley Ann GRAU, who hails from New Orleans. A clunker for me was TENONER, which seems like a made-up word for something a carpenter does at times.

So, here's the filled-in grid. See you folks on Thursday, when I fill in for Linda again. And let's give it up for the other guest bloggers who will guide you through the other puzzles while she is away.