Brazilian people / WED 3-25-15 / Food additive banned in 1976 / Eight days after nones in ancient Rome / Thou aloft full dazzling Whitman / Film whose sequel is subtitled Sequel / So-called Giant Brain unveiled in 1946

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Challenging

THEME: NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE NO. 2 — circled letters "descend" the grid, spelling out that title, and then two other random themers are thrown in:

Theme answers:

• 28D: Like the work spelled out by the circled letters (AVANT-GARDE)
• 12D: Event at which the work spelled out by the circled letters was first exhibited in America (ARMORY SHOW)

Word of the Day: DELAWARE / BAY (7A: With 31-Across, Cape May's locale) —

Delaware Bay is the estuary outlet of the Delaware River on the Northeast seaboard of the United States. Approximately 782 square miles (2,030 km²) in area, the bay's fresh water mixes for many miles with the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean.

The bay is bordered inland by the States of New Jersey and Delaware, and the Delaware Capes, Cape Henlopen and Cape May, on the Atlantic. The Cape May-Lewes Ferry crosses the Delaware Bay from Cape May, New Jersey, to Lewes, Delaware. Management of ports along the bay is the responsibility of the Delaware River and Bay Authority.

Delaware Bay

The shores of the bay are largely composed of salt marshes and mudflats, with only small communities inhabiting the shore of the lower bay. Besides the Delaware, it is fed by numerous smaller rivers and streams, including (from north to south) the Christina River, Appoquinimink River, Leipsic River, Smyrna River, St. Jones River, and Murderkill Rivers on the Delaware side, and the Salem River, Cohansey River, and Maurice Rivers on the New Jersey side. Several of the rivers hold protected status for their unique salt marsh wetlands bordering the bay, which serves as a breeding ground for many aquatic species, including horseshoe crabs. The bay is also a prime oystering ground.

The Delaware Bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on May 20, 1992. It was the first site classified in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. (wikipedia)

• • •

This thing gets points for effort and originality. But it gets almost no other points. This is a picture-perfect example of a fine idea botched all to hell. So many problems, but I'll start with the first: the circled letters fill themselves in, especially if you start in the NW (as humans often do) and have even a passing familiarity with major artworks of the 20th century. Here is my grid, very early in the solve:

Now at this point, I can go either way on this puzzle. I love the idea of basing a puzzle around a painting, I love this Duchamp painting in particular (though I confess to not knowing there was a "NO. 2" on the end). But I can already see that the fill on this is heading toward terrible (ANO was my first thing in the grid :( and then TUPI!?!?!), so I'm basically waiting for this puzzle to wow me in the corners—to become something less straightforward and less easy and a bit more clean. Sadly, none of those things happened. No, I take that back—it did get less easy. I foundered in the SW because the ultra-vague 49D: Utterly yielded nothing even though I had ST-. I wanted STONE, as in "STONE fox" or "STONE drunk." But no. Even with STA- I had no idea. Then there's the 62D: Amount to be divided up … starting with a "P" … three letters … so clearly it's POT! (Not!). [Little nothing] was super-ambiguous as well. I had TWEET. Yeah. I know, pretty sad. But that corner's not bad, fill-wise. In fact, it's the best part of the grid, fill-wise. Problems were more in those EENSY little W and E sections. The 3x3s.

The fill in the far west section has a problem that much of the fill in and around the circled squares has: it's bad. AHA ASA ALA all jammed together like that? Individually, those are suboptimal but forgettable. Together, they're a blight. True, fill toward the middle of the grid is worse—*far* worse. ONEON, AST, ASIM (!?!?!?) and CRS (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?$#@). Those last two shouldn't be allowed to play in any puzzle, ever. But western section has no good excuses. At least fill on the staircase can argue it was coerced. AHA ASA ALA … well, the themer placement isn't doing them any favors, but still. But minor point, probably. At least that section was easily gettable. Unlike its eastern counterpart. This is what my grid looked like at the end:

Looking at it retrospect, I don't know what I didn't guess SHOW. Oh, no, I do. Because 40A: Prepare for planting, say looks like SOW. So I wrote that in. Then I also wrote in ART at 45A: "Thou ___ aloft full-dazzling!": Whitman. And then I was just stuck. In a stupid little 3x3 section. Here's what I resent most about that—"NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE" is a widely known title. AVANT-GARDE is a widely known style. ARMORY SHOW … I guess if you are an aficionado, you know what that is, but general recognizability plummets with that answer. That answer screams "I Am Desperate For Symmetrical Answers Related To This Painting Because MARCEL DUCHAMP and DADA and FUTURISM Just Aren't Working!" So, design-wise, ARMORY SHOW gives you a painful outlier in your theme set. Overall: Good idea, terrible fill, ill-considered execution.


The fact that some solvers will, in fact, know ARMORY SHOW doesn't change the fact that most solvers will never have heard of it. Whereas all will have heard of AVANT-GARDE and most will have head of the painting in question (which is at least inferable with the help of crosses).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld