Crosswise on a ship / SAT 10-28-17 / 1950s politico Kefauver / Architectural features of Greco-Roman temples

Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PAPETERIE (13D: Container for writing materials, such as fancy stationery) —

1.

a box for holding stationery, especially an ornamental one.

(dictionary.com)

• • •

Took one look at the grid and thought "ugh." Ultra-low word count puzzles are rarely any fun. They're often very hard, and the payoff slight or non-existent. This one ... I've seen uglier, but it still wasn't anywhere near enjoyable. At least it was easy—I finished in under 8 without really trying. How? Well, you know, you hack. Put the RE- in at the beginning of 2D: Prepare for a purchase return, perhaps; put the -IC at the end of 3D: Containing element #56; write in AFATE because it's a gimme (4D: ___ worse than death). That last one was crucial. I put in MOVIE for 5D: "M," e.g. (NASAL) (why is "M" capitalized there?), which could've hurt me, but once I had all those little answers / prefixes / suffixes in place, I saw 21A: New York's state motto. Hey, I live in New York state. I know that one. "EXCELSIOR!," I exclaimed, as I proceeded to destroy the NW corner.


But the thing about this kind of grid is that getting one corner is largely meaningless, in that you can't build on it. The tiny little escape hatches mean that every corner is essentially a new puzzle. Yet somehow all of them went down. AMO MOONIE SALTERS REAWAKENS COURSED CAT BALLOU went in without much effort. COARSEN dropped right down into the SE off just the "C" (37D: Make rough). I felt slightly bad about knowing crosswordesey crap like UGO (39A: Actor Tognazzi of "La Cage aux Folles")—feels like cheating—but you take what you can get, and I did, and the SE went down without a fight (in fact, I trounced it so bad that I'm only just now seeing the word ANTAE, dear lord, what? (46D: Architectural features of Greco-Roman temples). That make UGO look (u)good.


So all was left with was the SW corner, but I was not at all hopeful. I was gonna have to back into that corner off of just the very last letters in a couple answers. Unlikely. But then I had another dumb-luck moment: I had been reading about ESTES Kefauver just this morning, specifically about his role on the United States Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953. So boom, ESTES goes in, boom INANE goes in, I infer the "S" at the end of MERCS, I infer the "N" before the "ESS" at the end of TRITENESS, that "N" gives me TITAN, and I fill that corner from the bottom up without much hassle. And thus, despite a daunting-looking grid, as well as a &^$%ing *euchre* clue (20A: Jack of the trump suit, in euchre) that I still don't understand and don't care enough about to look up, I tore this thing apart. Feels good. The success, that is. The puzzle itself didn't feel good at all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. ridiculously bad to have PAPERY and PAPETERIE in the same puzzle

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