Brief in pants / THU 8-20-26 / Nags about noise? / Game of observation for travel / Checks with style / Out with ate, ate, ate / Try to place connoisseurs? / Land of Spot

Constructor: Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: reading backwards — Across clues must be read backwards in order for them to make sense. That's it. There are three related themers that describe this phenomenon in punny ways:

Theme answers:

• PUT IN REVERSE (4D: Shift the gears of, in a way ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)
• FORWARD-THINKING (7D: Visionary ... or what you'll need to return to when solving this puzzle's Down clues)
• TURN OF PHRASE (23D: Distinctive expression ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)

Word of the Day: National Prison Project (10D: One advocated for by the National Prison Project = INMATE) —

The ACLU National Prison Project is dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, and other places of detention comply with the Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles, and to ending the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. We promote a fair and effective criminal justice system in which incarceration is used only as a last resort, and its purpose is to prepare prisoners for release and a productive, law-abiding life at the earliest possible time. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, we work to ensure that conditions of confinement are consistent with health, safety, and human dignity, and that prisoners retain all rights of free persons that are not inconsistent with incarceration. Achieving these goals will result in a criminal justice system that respects individual rights and increases public safety for everyone, at greatly reduced fiscal cost. (ACLU)

• • •

The punny theme answers are By Far the best part here. The actual experience of solving all those Across clues was dreary—not tough, but also not entertaining at all, or rarely so. And beyond a couple of longer answers, the whole grid is extremely ordinary. USENET ISLET NDAS SSN ROO ATON RNA AFAR ARAL DOI ATEAM ESPY OLEG PSI ALT  ESS ... real MEH stuff for sure (side note: in real life, a "C-" is much worse than merely MEH) (41A: Say "minus C"). The one real execution failure here is that for this puzzle to really work, those Across clues have to make some kind of surface sense every time. Take [Sound like heaven]. That one works, because it looks like a real clue, and you can (maybe) imagine a real answer. But [Brief in pants]?? I mean, I laughed, a little ("you've got what in your pants?"). But it's obviously not a real clue. The phrasing makes no sense. Same with [Lines some over draw], unless "over draw" is supposed to be "overdraw," one word, and maybe you're overdrawing your a credit "line" or a checking account or something? Merely running clues backwards is extremely non-interesting. And furthermore, the "trick" tricked me for about ten seconds. All the short Downs in the NW were gimmes, so I had HAR- and TRO- very quickly at 1A and 14A, respectively. The bizarreness and infeasibility of [Brief in pants] got me to TROU because ... well, it's short for "pants," so ... brief in pants ... pants, in brief ... got it! OK, so then [Sound like heaven] is [Heaven-like sound]. Alright, cool. Wait, is that it? Essentially,  yes. There are three long theme answers doing some cute wordplay stuff, but basically this is a Tuesday-level puzzle once you simply read the Across clues backwards. Aside from those three long Downs, all Thursday trickiness was over right ... here:

I wouldn't call solving this a slog, since it was so easy, and since I guess there is at least a novelty in having to read backwards so many times, but reading backwards on its own is not a sufficiently pleasurable activity. The backwards clues should've been funnier, more outrageous, more clever, more ... something. Otherwise, this ends up as a kind of paint-by-numbers puzzle where the magic fizzles out early and you're left to just dutifully complete your box-filling task. Again, thumbs up for those themers, they're the only thing keeping this thing alive. But not alive enough.

A few of the Across clues work, in that they were amusing all on their own, or else yielded a surprising answer. For some reason, I think 65A: Out with ate, ate, ate is my favorite of the clues—I know I said the Across clues should have plausible surface meaning, but if you're not gonna have plausible surface meaning, then yes, sure, go absolutely nuts. [Out with ate, ate, ate] makes no sense on any level ... until you reverse the words (and mentally repunctuate), and then you get a completely plausible clue for PIGGED. I think 49A: Nags about noise? may be the most perfectly executed clue of the bunch. It's got alliteration, it looks like a real clue, it's got the "?" in there. And then you get the very incongruous (-seeming) NEIGH! (a noise "about" nags). The "about" part makes the phrasing a stretch, but ... that is, historically, what the "?" is for. The sad thing is that none of these clues ever get the chance to really trick you or trip you because the entire game is given away so early. This means that "aha"s and "nice!"s are few and far between.

Bullets:

• 51A: Land of Spot (ISLET) — I'm just imagining the dog from Dick & Jane has gone off to found his own island country. "Come, Jane, tonight we sail for the Land of Spot. It will be good to see our old friend again after so many years at sea!" (from The Odyssey of Dick & Jane)
• 17A: Try to place connoisseurs? (TASTING ROOM) — I guess this is for wine connoisseurs. I had TASTING MENU at first ... but I see now that a "menu" is not a "place"
• 25D: Feature of San Francisco's Lombard Street (ESS) — famously curvy, but ESS? That's just like ... one segment of street that winds back and forth repeatedly. I wouldn't call one "ESS" segment a "feature." As you can see ... lots of "S"s. Which one is the "feature"? You don't count off the turns by "ESS"s. Not a real unit:

• 57A: For repentance some feel (RUE) — this is the Across clues at their most Yoda-esque. His voice I hear. Speaking of the Star Wars universe—it's been four days since the last Star Wars clue. I think the record for consecutive Star Wars-free days this year is something close to two weeks, so ... long way to go. 

Had a great first day of school yesterday, but also somehow my neck/shoulder has gone painfully stiff (can't tilt my head to the right very far at all). Residual stress? A chalkboard injury? Who knows. Gonna try to just keep moving and hope it works itself out. That's all for today. Time next you see.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Top three sights in Fiji? / WED 8-19-26 / Immature high score initials on an arcade game / Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies / Three unnamed things, in shorthand / 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot / The word "salary" derives from the Latin for this / ___ royale (champagne cocktail) / Female friends from Fuenlabrada

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BURIES THE LEDE (57A: Hides one's central point, in a way ... with a doubly homophonic hint to 20-, 30, 38- and 48-Across) — the "lead" word in each theme answer is a type of "berry":

Theme answers:

• GOOSE FEATHERS (20A: Natural pillow filling) (gooseberries)
• ELDERCARE (30A: Services for senior citizens) (elderberries)
• STRAW POLL (38A: Unofficial vote) (strawberries)
• BLACK BART (48A: Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies) (blackberries)

Word of the Day: BLACK BART (48A) —

Charles E. Boles (c. 1829 – ? Last seen February 28, 1888), also known as Black Bart, was an English-born American outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies. Often called Charley by his friends, he was also known as Charles (or C. E.) Bolton. Considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication, he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s. [...] In 1867, Boles went prospecting for gold in Idaho and Montana. In a surviving letter to his wife from August 1871, he told her of an unpleasant encounter with some Wells, Fargo & Company agents and vowed to exact revenge. // Boles adopted the nickname "Black Bart" and proceeded to rob Wells Fargo stagecoaches at least 28 times across northern California between 1875 and 1883, including a number of times along the historic Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon. Although Boles became widely known for the poetic messages left behind after his robberies, he wrote only two poems–left at the fourth and fifth robbery sites–but this was enough to ensure his fame. Black Bart was quite successful as a highwayman, often taking in thousands of dollars a year. // Boles was afraid of horses and he fled from all of his robberies on foot. He was invariably polite, never using foul language except in his poems. He dressed in a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat, using a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes as a mask. He brandished a shotgun but reportedly never once fired it during his years as an outlaw. All these became his trademarks and he quickly gained notoriety. (wikipedia)

• • •

Weird. I always thought BLACK BART was fictional. I wonder why ...

Gonna have to be short a write-up today (I swear), as today is my first day back at school for the Fall semester, and I ... still have a little work to do. Not a lot. A little. But because it's not done and I have to stand in front of a class in [checks clock] seven hours, it feels like a lot. So I gotta get a move on. The puzzle was funny today because it felt like it was accusing me, personally, of not getting my second syllabus finished in a timely fashion. It's throwing things at me like STUDENT (47D: Lecture attendee) and UNIT (16A: Section in a textbook) and CURRICULUM (10D: Set of courses offered) and ASS (as in, "why aren't you totally prepared, you ASS?") (54A: Immature high score initials on an arcade game). I laughed it off. What else could I do? One thing I couldn't do: understand the the damned theme once I'd finished the puzzle. The puzzle was easy to finish, and the themers all easy to come up with, but I had no idea how BURIES THE LEDE was supposed to be singly homophonic, let alone doubly so. I kept trying to read the clue cryptically, so I was looking for something "buried" in the answer ... maybe a word that meant "lead"? But the middle of each themer (i.e. the letter "buried" at the heart of each themer), taken in order, spells ERWK, so ... no luck there! No matter how hard I looked, there was nothing "buried" in those damned theaters. Finally I had a look at the "lead" words in the theme phrases and noticed that they were all types of "berries" (!!!!!!). Not a pun I was looking for (clearly)! Is LEDE a pun? Since LEDE basically means the introductory (or "lead") portion of a news story, it indicates primary status (i.e. firstness) just as well as "lead" does. Doesn't seem nearly as "punny" as the bury/berry thing. Anyway, first words "berries," very clever, liked it. I do wonder if the Pronunciation Police are going to come out today. "Bury" and "berry" sound the same in my ear, but I have this suspicion that that may not be the same for everyone. Still, it's close, and it's crosswords, and as with horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts.

The fill was wobbly to start. "I'M NOT OK" feels ... unsolid. "I'M OK," all day long, no problem, solid as heck. "THAT'S NOT OK!," same. "I'M NOT OK" gets me some songs (?), and ... I guess it has some currency in mental health contexts. I can imagine someone saying it, but I can imagine someone saying lots of things. Lots of other fill just felt ordinary and tired: ARID SKORT PSATS (plural) UNSEE ERR ERS URSA etc. But the themers were all interesting, and sometimes the short fill picked up (PUFFY next to SNEEZE—successive answers! (Why weren't these tied together the way URSA and ASIA ([___ Minor]), or LOWER and DIP ([Drop]) were? You've got PUFFY tied to allergies—that's a set-up for a SNEEZE tie-in if there ever was one). FAN BASE and LOST CAUSES also liven up the grid. The only real difficulty I had today came with trying to understand the theme. Oh, and remembering which spelling of AVA/EVA to use for AVA Max (39D: ___ Max, singer of the 2018 hit "Sweet but Psycho").

Bullets:

• 10A: Private sleeping accommodations? (COTS) — So ... "Private" in the Army.
• 24A: Three unnamed things, in shorthand (XYZ) — nearly wrote in XXX, but that's a porn movie, or else the letters on a jug of hooch.
• 67A: 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot (WALL-E) — WALL-E stars in commercials for Lavazza. Or his double does. Hulu can't/won't stop showing me ads for this new coffee system they have called TABLI (5!). And if the robot from Short Circuit and WALL-E had a baby ... well ...

[my ads are English, but this'll do]

• 4D: Top three sights in Fiji? (DOTS) — now this is cryptic. The word "Fiji" has three DOTS at the top (the top of the "i" the "j" and the "i")

That's it. Gotta run (to make coffee). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

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