Agape/Agaze

Anonymous Remarks from Solvers:

I had AGAPE/PEAL. When the applet didn't accept it last night, I spent about 20 minutes going over the grid to look for errors and finally gave up. 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

I had agape and peal. Was even surprised to find it was wrong when I checked out your puzzle. Ah, well...
I too had agape and peal and while I'm not in your class, I've been doing crosswords for a long time! I usually get there in the end, just not nearly so quickly as you.

I, too, had AGAPE, PEAL. Fooie.

I also had agape. I'm not as offended by zeal - it does make sense and would probably be in a thesaurus list.

AGAPE it was.

I guess I'm in the (lucky) minority who put in ZEAL first before even looking at 48D. Actually I had ADAZE for the longest time

Had ZEAL and AGAZE even though it just looked wrong. Could not make PEAL fit in any way I could think of.

AGAPE and PEAL are the correct answers. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This was the hardest Thursday I can ever remember, and my memory goes back a long way with these. Way too much popcult. Of course I had AGAPE; AGAZE is really marginal and screwed up the SW.

I started off with IN AWE then decided on AGAPE

Add me to the agape group.

Agape and peal work aswell or better than agaze and zeal.

A tougher-than-usual Thursday puzzle, I thought. I too had AGAPE/PEAL but changed it to AGAZE/ZEAL because ZEAL was better fill for "Fire" than PEAL.

I didn't fall into the agape/agaze trap only because zeal was my first fill in that corner.

ZEAL as an answer to "fire" I had no problem with. Describing a zealous person a someone with "fire in the belly" is common enough phrasing, is it not? Thus I never got caught up in the AGAPE thing.So, I had A_AZE before I got GODBLESSAMERICA. I went through the alphabet for A_AZE, and did consider AGAZE, but I didn't write it in right away, because it just sounded too goofy! But, when GODBLESSAMERICA finally flashed on me, I had to accept AGAZE. Crossword puzzle authors seem to have a fondness for picking obscure words where an A has been tacked onto the beginning of verbs to make them into adjectives. So it is with AGAZE, which can be found in some (but not all) onlone distionaries.

Nobody ever said ZEAL was wrong or bad as an answer for [Fire].

Count me in the AGAPE/PEAL crowd too.

I will have to disagree with the professors about AGAZE. It certainly is in my dictionary (RHUD2), and it has 10 appearances in the cruciverb db. I don't see any problem with the word. You could argue that the clue "Riveted" could be either AGAZE or AGAPE (I think it works better for the former), but "Fire" can only lead to ZEAL. PEAL means "loud sound" or "make a loud sound" and it just does not mean "fire." If I had tried to clue PEAL as "Fire" I would expect to hear a rather unpleasant peal coming in my direction.

Yep, "agape" and "peal" shouldn't count as errors. Who sits "agaze"?

Yeah, I'm with the horde that found the AGAZE/ZEAL crossing implausible. I spent my last few seconds staring at AGAPE/PEAL. After finally deciding that PEAL was just too unlikely I ran through the entire alphabet to Z. Hmm? Now ZEAL looked good but AGAZE was dicey. In the course of this I tried T, which makes perfectly good words both ways, but of course they don't fit the given clues at all.

You can add me to the agape and peal crowd too.

I did not fall into the AGAPE/PEAL trap

I got stuck on AGAPE/PEAL too

Add me to AGAPE/PEAL.

What's all this talk about PEAL/AGAPE? Everyone knows it's PEEL (me) AGRAPE.

No problem with agaze/zeal here,

Me too with PEAL/AGAPE.

ZEAL/AGAZE aside, which hung me up as well, I thought this was an excellent puzzle.

Thanks John Farmer for your comments, but I too fell into your unintentional trap. I only learned about my error reading His Majesty's blog. "Peal" didn't feel right, but "agaze" didn't either.

I had agape/peal also.

Yep, I had agaPe/Peal as well. One of the benefits of doing the puzzle on paper is that you may never know you're wrong

Add me to the agape/peal contingent. I was thinking along the same lines as Rex - a peal of gunfire or a peal of cannons.

AGAPE is always in puzzles and for it to be AGAZE was warmly welcomed in my world..

Had trouble with TMEN/GMEN (don't know Spanish) and AGAZE/ZEAL (also had P instead of Z).

I made the same mistake on AGAPE/PEAL as you did

Add me to the AGAPE/PEAL list. I wasn't really thrilled about PEAL.

I didn't even make it to agape/peal. I had Heat for fire and was trying to get some odd spelling of aghast to cross it. Agaht maybe?

AGAZE is a pretty low blow...

I meant AGAPE/PEAL. I never did figure out AGAZE.

I also fell into AGAPE/PEAL. Didn't love PEAL, but really hated AGAZE.

Amazing! I'm agape!