Basic linguistic unit / THU 10-13-16 / Magical creatures in Jewish folklore / French locale of fierce WWI fighting / Baked chocolaty treat / Part of NYC once derisively called Hell's Hundred Acres / Emily Dickinson self-descriptively / Old-fashioned fashion accessories

Constructor: Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: two-word phrases where second word is found embedded in the first —

Theme answers:

• WHOOPIE
• GARBAGE
• EARTH
• MADE
• PALE
• SHOUT
• AVERAGE 
• INSTANT 

Word of the Day: EARTH ART (25A: Creative works utilizing the landscape) —

Land art, earthworks (coined by Robert Smithson), or Earth art is an art movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. It is also an art form that is created in nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (logs, branches, leaves), and water with introduced materials such as concrete, metal, asphalt, or mineral pigments. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is the means of their creation. Often earth moving equipment is involved. The works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works, created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents. They also pioneered a category of art called site-specific sculpture, designed for a particular outdoor location. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sure, OK. I don't know. It's a puzzle. The theme was easy to pick up and not that remarkable. Some of the themers are cool (SHOUT-OUT!), most are dull, and MADE MAD is just made-up; only slightly less made-up than MADE ADE would be. Fill is not terrible, but also not at all interesting. Even coming up with a Word of the Day proved challenging. So much blah. NE and SW corners, wide open and very isolated, provided some challenge, but the rest was a cake walk.


I gotta make this short, as I have a long, early day tomorrow. I made a series of mistakes in this puzzle, some of which make sense, some of which don't. Firstly, I came right down the middle of the grid, from RAPS through a bunch of crosswordese and down to 35D: Halloween costume. Having H-- and thinking "clothing," I wrote in HAT (in my mind, it was a witch's HAT), and then off that "T" at 46A: Magical creatures in Jewish folklore I fairly calmly wrote in TROLLS. So those were errors 1 and 2. Error 3 was imagining that 31A: Cleaner brand (D----) was a drain cleaner and writing in DRANO. This error was compounded, badly, by two more errors (4 and 5) in that NE corner. Off the terminal "H" I wrote in SLOTH at 9D: One of the seven deadly sins (WRATH), and then "confirmed" it by writing in ALGERIA at 16A: French locale of fierce W.W. I fighting (ARGONNE). But themer up there was transparent, and so even with three errors (!) in one corner, I got out of there without too much struggle. Only other screw-up was spelling SPECTER Britishly (49D: Spirit). I think of a CARAVAN as something that goes across the desert, not on vacation, so that was puzzling (42D: Vacation vehicle), but the rest was Tuesday-easy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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