Hugo-winning Hothouse author Brian / WED 3-30-22 / Computer language that sounds like a literary intro / Philosopher Zeno's birthplace / Gotham City supervillain in a cryogenic suit / Old French coin / Sedative in a blow dart gun, informally / Houseplant that some think brings luck and prosperity

Constructor: Jack Murtagh

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: PUNS — famous people whose first or last names end in -N are clued as if their first or last names actually ended "-IN'" (that's "I" "N" "apostrophe," as if the "G" were yokelishly dropped from an "-ING" ending"):

Theme answers:

• HOLDIN' CAULFIELD (17A: Cradlin' a Salinger protagonist?)
• KEVIN BAKIN' (21A: "Footloose" star cookin' a fresh batch of brownies?)
• ABRAHAM LINKIN' (34A: The Great Emancipator sharin' URLs on his blog?)
• OWIN' WILSON (51A: Bein' in debt to a "Wedding Crashers" co-star?)
• ELIZABETH WARRIN' (57A: Massachusetts senator wagin' conflict?)

Word of the Day: Brian ALDISS (13D: Hugo-winning "Hothouse" author Brian) —

Brian Wilson Aldiss OBE (/ˈɔːldɪs/; 18 August 1925 – 19 August 2017) was an English writer and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.

Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss was a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He was (with Harry Harrison) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (1969), the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence(2001). Aldiss was associated with the British New Wave of science fiction. (wikipedia)

• • •

What is happening? Like, to crosswords, I mean. This week in particular, what in the world is happening. Yesterday's was a total nonentity (seriously, I'm sitting here now and cannot remember it ... I just remember the feeling that there was no there there). And now this. What is this? The PUNS are so basic and so corny. Soooo corny. And not clever either, just predictable as hell. Truly awful. This is the kind of theme idea you come up with and quickly discard because you realize (if you're self-aware) that only you and like a half a dozen other people are going to "like" these puns, and fewer than that are going to "like" finding them in their crossword. The clues are pure torture, honestly. I wouldn't even let my eyes read them fully after a while. I just glanced over the clue for the literal part and filled the puzzle in accordingly (you can see in one of the screenshots, below, that my brain wouldn't even let me do the dumb -IN' thing at times—I wrote in KEVIN BACON normally because ... my brain just refused to accept this torturous hickspeak pun stuff). The theme set is totally arbitrary. Where are the Karens and Darrens and Barons and Nixons etc.? Actually, don't answer, because even the perfect theme set (whatever that is) wouldn't have made this enjoyable. But it might've made it bearable. I can sometimes at least endure a theme that is well done but is just not to my taste. But this one is so corny that it definitely needed ... more. Not more PUNS, dear god. Just more coherence. More importantly, much much much more importantly, it needed better fill. This is the worst filled grid I've seen in a while. The warning alarms went off early, with INURN, and this time, the bells were Not Wrong. Just one wince-inducing answer after another, all the way down the grid:

That's not all of it, but it's a strong sample. And it's not like the baseline fill quality was high to begin with. I mean, lots of SACRAL ELEA SYSOP ... either "OK, that's kind of a word" or "oh, right, this answer again." I'm still reeling over GOTAC (oh, where have all the GOTADs gone? whither GOTANF?) and NTILE!? I mean, at least QTILE or ZTILE is trying to give you a letter you can have fun with (note: please don't put QTILE or ZTILE in puzzles, tho, please—better than NTILE isn't necessarily "good"). And then we get INURN (ugh) and INTER. Because arcane corpse-handling verbs are fun? And then an absolute juggernaut of ... texting initialisms? Right at the end, BTW, FWIW, IMO, bam bam bam, like a series of wet slaps at the end of an I Don't Know What, I've lost my capacity for metaphor. SAVE ME! For real. I'm clinging to MR. FREEZE the way you'd cling to a rock in a cold, roiling ocean, waiting for someone to rescue you. It's the only thing keeping me from going totally under. Hey look, capacity for metaphor is back. Thanks, MR. FREEZE! (32D: Gotham City supervillain in a cryogenic suit)

What else? It was easy, I'll give it that. I didn't have to spend too long inside it (though I do have to blog about it, so its briefness provides only so much solace). Ugh I just realized that SAVE ME crosses SPARE ME, GAH, are there other "VERB-ME"s lurking around this grid ... no, just a stray NOT I. I had "trouble" exactly once: when I misspelled ELIA and also couldn't readily come up with either VERB (23D: Crow, but not magpie) or TERM (31A: Sentence ... or something found in a sentence). I wanted something like BRAG for the crow/magpie clue, but was rewarded with the much more generic VERB. TERM was invisible only because I had that "I" in ELEA, I think. There were no other trouble spots in this grid. And now it's over. And I'm out. Hope you (and I) get something ... else, tomorrow. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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