Body Temperature

Constructor: vriska

A great entry from the Open Submission Week. Even though I got hung up on the upper-right corner this might be my favorite puzzle in the batch.

The theme is an apt pair with HOTHEADED/COLDHEARTED, intersecting at the E. I sent myself down a wild-goose chase by filling IMPATIENT for "Having a short fuse", impacting my time with some overzealous solving. After I realized the theme there was definitely a "oh, duh!" moment of reflection.

The upper-right corner absolutely roasted me. I started strong by plonking OSIRIS; I'm familiar with the mythology and have some lingering memory of its connection to a brand from middle school.^[1] CITE wasn't so tough and ERIE is a gimme for regular solvers. That's about where my luck started and ended.

LUPINE and DRIEST were the source of my troubles, the former clue seems a little easier but I had tried forcing some variation of CANINE in its place. The problem really stems from the downs, ISUREAM and TIPI. Without word separators, ISUREAM is just a spaghetti blend of letters. Not to mention that the clue "That's absolutely true about me!" is accurate, but a bit colloquially distant. Throw that together with an alternative spelling to tepee that I didn't know existed, and you've arrived at my hint usage for the day.

But hey, all that aside I still had fun. I love the SEGA clue, "Company that 'does what nintendon't'", referring to this Genesis commercial. The themer "Difficult to move?" also provides some nice wordplay (COLDHEARTED).

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