Speaking of PHILIPPIC – this was the big take-away this morning. I’m probably the smarmiest, most two-faced teacher in my building, all nicey-nice team player until I can let down with a trusted colleague and show my true, resentful, whiny little inner baby. That hot mic could make a REPLY ALL pale in comparison. How many times do I double check that I’m muted during a meeting if another teacher is in the room with me. I would add that ZOOM is even more of a minefield. The REPLY ALL button can be spectacularly dangerous, as can the SEND button, especially after a couple of galvanizing martinis. I liked the admonitions today to be very careful with your email behavior. PUBLIC UPRISING, though, is a 14, and it's not as colorful as PLAYED CUPID. Rex - I agree on CUP's not being split up. I have to disagree with Rex - setting 'I's on top of words meaning 'prize' was absolutely worth it for me. When I finally saw MEDAL, TROPHY, CUP, I whooped. (We have other expressions that single out one of a pair a bold lip, the blink of an eye, fleet of foot), so I was considering each I in isolation, looking at the letter under it and trying to spell some kind of something out of T Y C P M L P E. I keep whispering this phrase with eye s, and I stumble. Keep your eye on the prize, buddy it’ll be worth it.

Ok so here’s the thing – I know the expression as eye on the prize. the 'I's have it today, and by 'it' I mean 'a swarmy, exhausting quality.' The wordplay involved in the revealer phrase is not without cleverness, but in the end, I don't think just setting 'I's on top of words meaning 'prize' was worth it. AYE ay ay! Hook up my *I*V LINE and get me my *I*PAD. By the time I finished with that SE corner, with its CIARDI ETAS ADZES ESE, I was done. The 'I's also explain why we get the bygone names we get, specifically the 'I'-ending YANNI and CIARDI (apologies to YANNI, who is not actually 'bygone,' but I haven't seen a reference to YANNI outside of crosswords in thirty years, since roughly the time of the whole Acropolis concert thing). Every 'I' really narrows the possibilities for both the Down and Across it appears in. Now maybe we can blame the 'I's, which must have brought considerable pressure to bear on this grid a stray 'I' here and there may not seem like it should complicate matters, but every letter you fix in place makes the grid that much harder to work out cleanly. it just felt considerably less fresh and clean than a puzzle with this little theme material should feel. The grid felt creaky and musty right from the jump, with IPASS SHE'S MITRE and LEOI setting a tone and then CRU ENS ILE ESO EDSEL. And while it did give me a definite 'aha' moment when I finally saw how it worked, that 'aha' did not end up feeling worth the journey. Once I saw it, it was obvious, but it's definitely more of a later-week theme, conceptually. I wonder if the app somehow gives you more visual indication of how the theme works. Then there's the theme, which actually took me a while to see. Totally unknown-to-me COHAN ( 14A: 'The Walking Dead' actress Lauren) crossing not-your-typical-Tuesday-fare PHILIPPIC ( 9D: Damning verbal attack) next to not-too-familiar-to-me CIGNA ( 25D: Big name in insurance) slowed me down enough that my overall experience actually felt like a toughish Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday. I, however, did not finish appreciably faster than usual, despite the fact that the puzzle was just giving 'I's away. First, it's undersized (14x15), so if it seemed like you finished more quickly than usual today, there's one reason.

Trivial synonym