Flour ground in a chakki / SAT 12-10-22 / Cricketer's 100-run streaks / Website with adoptable virtual creatures / Rock-forming mineral that makes up over half of the earth's crust / Bhikku's teacher / Geographical heptad

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Challenging ... then suddenly very easy)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (44A: Mildred D. ___, author of "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry," 1977) —

 

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1977 novel by Mildred D. Taylor. Part of her Logan family series, it is a sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees. It won the 1977 Newbery Medal.

The novel is the first book in the Logan family saga, which includes four sequels (Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981), The Road to Memphis (1992), The Gold Cadillac (1987), and All the Days Past, All the Days to Come (2020)) and three prequels (The Land (2001), The Well: David's Story (1995), and Song of the Trees (1975)) as well as two novellas (Mississippi Bridge (1990) and The Friendship (1987)). In the book, Taylor explores struggles of African Americans in 1930s Mississippi through the perspective of nine-year-old Cassie Logan. The novel contains several themes, including Jim Crowsegregation, Black landownership, sharecropping, the Great Depression, and lynching. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this was really all about the NW for me, at least in terms of struggle. I spent as much time there, at the beginning, as I did with the rest of the puzzle. More, probably. When 1-Across is easy the puzzle tends to skew easy and vice versa and today, WOOF (!), I had tons of trouble with 1-Across (1A: Eye exam you need to pass? => IRIS SCAN). Never got where they were going with "pass" and couldn't parse the phrase to save my life. With STAKES and SUPER and CRED nailed down, I kept wanting it to be something that broke between the second "S" and the "C," like CLASS ... something. You have to "pass" tests in school, so CLASS ... felt ... possible. I am always terrible with "word that can follow or precede or that goes with X"-type clues and today was no different. [Word with...] gives you no indication how it is "with," whether the answer comes before or after or what, so AIR shmair for me, for sure. ESCAPE ROOM was transparent (my god crossword people seem to love these things, I do Not understand—virtually any room I'm in with more than two people for any length of time quickly becomes an ESCAPE ROOM, so I do not understand subjecting yourself to forced enclosure with other nerds like you (and me), but hey, enjoy). But even having ESCAPE ROOM didn't help much with parsing ICE STORM and REST AREA (the rare 8-letter crosswordese!). CENTURIES was one of those words that I didn't know until I saw it and then I thought "oh yeah, right" (I know jack about cricket, but my wife is from NZ and they care a whole bunch, so I've picked up terminology by osmosis, mostly based on the handful of trips we've taken there, the next of which begins next week, woo hoo!). 

Thank god for NEOPETS (has anyone ever said That before?) (8D: Website with adoptable virtual creatures), because getting out of that corner was also dicey. Took me nearly to the end to see MATCHES (29A: Exact hits). And SOLES, yikes, I had no idea until nearly all the crosses were in place (14D: Flat bottoms). Singular "flat" for "shoe" was rough. I was thinking first that "flat" was an adjective and then that "flat" was an apartment. Anyway, that NW corner was not the hardest corner I've ever done, by a long shot, but it was hard, and way way Way harder than the rest of the puzzle. I went from getting very little traction at all to running a full lap around the SE before I'd even really started trying:

After that, there were a few things I didn't know, like TAYLOR and FELDSPAR, but it seemed like I had toeholds everywhere, so the SE played like the Evil (or Good, or ... Opposite) Twin of the NW, and then the SW, like the NE before it, ended up being very easy, almost incidental—though it did contain my two favorite clue/answer pairings of the day: 30D: Let-them-eat-cake occasion? (CHEAT DAY) crossing 43A: Mug shot subject? (LATTE ART). I hate the idea of diets, so I hate the idea of CHEAT DAYs, but I can't deny the cleverness of that clue. I also hate (or don't love) the whole "take a picture of your food" phenomenon, but again, the clue is masterful in its wordplay and misdirection. I couldn't pull my brain away from the idea of "mug" as "face," so that even when the answer seemed to end in ART, I was thinking, like, face tats, or maybe an injection that you get in your face, like botox, I don't know. LATTE ART (pleasantly) surprised me.

Notes:

• 18A: Flour ground in a chakki (ATTA) — Didn't know "chakki" but didn't need to because "flour" = ATTA. See also 43D: Bhikkhu's teacher (LAMA)—"teacher" was enough.
• 20A: The Father of ___, moniker for the inventor Leo Baekeland (PLASTICS) — wow that is an awful clue. Couldn't get more trivia-y and dull if it trued. I guess we're supposed to recognize this dude's name by its resemblance to "bakelite" (which he invented), but yeah no that didn't happen. Father of [absolutely random word] as far as I was concerned.
• 28A: G, in C (SOL) — do re me fa SOL la ti do ... if you're playing in the key of C, then SOL is the musical note G ... I think I have that right.
• 38A: Rock-forming mineral that makes up over half of the earth's crust (FELDSPAR) — really sounds like a brand name. Has that nightmarishly dull corporate ring to it: "FELDSPAR: Tomorrow's Agriculture Today!" or "FELDSPAR: Business Growth Solutions!" or some such nonsense. Also, SPAR crossing SPAR (in MAKESPAR) was ... below par (or above par ... whichever one you think is worse).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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