![]() ![]() It is a challenge to catagorize: part crime adventure part medical saga part romance novel part coming-of-age story part morallity play. I’ll sign off by saying, in the name of Apollo (god of the sun, music, and poetry), please enjoy the puzzle and come back Wednesday for Mostly Musical Mini 18. by Jeffery Higgs A Review Tick is a first-effort novel by retired mining engineer and executive, Jeffery Higgs. He showed up at my house after three years of training and asked if I wanted to spar. Finally, as noted in the clues, after I finished the grid I somehow ended up with five entries clues relating to Greek mythology. One of my friends, Jeff Higgs, another Navy SEAL, found a gym in San Diego and started training for real. Two years into his service Jeff began his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training with a Navy Seal Instructor who trained with the Torrance Academy. No apologies for the groaner of a clue for 26 Across I figured I’d work the poetry angle into a pun to draw attention away from the fact that the answer is arrant crosswordese. Instructor Jeff Higgs’ roots in Coronado go back a long way when he served in the Navy as a member of Seal Team One from 1991-1995. There are certainly simpler ways to clue 16 Across, but I wanted to use a lyric from all-time favorite Joni Mitchell, who recently made an inspirational return to the Newport Folk Festival. (The book we’re currently reading, which I also strongly recommend, is a remarkable family history by Ingrid Rojas Contreras entitled “The Man Who Could Move Clouds.”) Higgs is a thought-provoking, entertaining British writer who seems to know brilliant, creative, cool people in all areas of human endeavor. I encountered 12 Across in a very good book my son and I read as part of our 2-person book group: “The Future Starts Here: Adventures in the Twenty-First Century,” by John Higgs. Both are lines from well-known poems that are powerful and devastating, in very different ways. I’ve been on a poetry-reading kick for several months inevitably, that newfound interest is seeping into my grids, which accounts for the grid-spanners at 18 and 51 Across. Difficulty: Whose words these are I think you know/My themeless puzzles challenge though/There is no need for you to fear/You always can to Google go! (With apologies to Robert Frost.) Theater of Dionysus, Athens ![]()
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