Nietzsche's superior man of the future / MON 10-9-23 / Agave-based liquor / Large country house in ancient Rome

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Very, very easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: TECH START-UP (61A: Many a new venture in Silicon Valley ... or a hint to 17-, 26-, 37- and 52-Across) — theme answers "start (up)" with the names of "tech"-related companies:

Theme answers:

• AMAZON BASIN (17A: Vast South American watershed)
• METACARPAL (26A: Hand bone)
• APPLE PEELER( 37A: Kitchen gadget)
• UBERMENSCH (52A: Nietzsche's superior man of the future)

Word of the Day: UBERMENSCH (52A) —

The Übermensch (German pronunciation: [ˈʔyːbɐmɛnʃ]; transl. "Overman") is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. The Übermensch represents a shift from otherworldly Christian values and manifests the grounded human ideal. // In 1896, Alexander Tille made the first English translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, rendering Übermensch as "Beyond-Man". In 1909, Thomas Common translated it as "Superman", following the terminology of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 stage play Man and Superman. Walter Kaufmannlambasted this translation in the 1950s for two reasons: first, the failure of the English prefix "super" to capture the nuance of the German über (though in Latin, its meaning of "above" or "beyond" is closer to the German); and second, for promoting misidentification of Nietzsche's concept with the comic-book character Superman. Kaufmann and others preferred to translate Übermensch as "overman". A translation like "superior humans" might better fit the concept of Nietzsche as he unfolds his narrative. Scholars continue to employ both terms, some simply opting to reproduce the German word. // The German prefix über can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is attached. Mensch refers to a human being, not a male specifically as it is still sometimes erroneously believed. The adjective übermenschlich means super-human: beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity. (wikipedia)

• • •

I really hope some of you gave Downs-only solving a try today, because if ever there was a day to try your hand at it, today was the day. There wasn't a single Down that gave me more than a moment's trouble, and most of them, not even a moment's. None. Zero. The Downs provided letters, which gave me Acrosses, which then helped with the Downs, and so on and so on and I can't remember a time I've ever found solving Downs-only this easy. Opened with six straight hesitation-free scores:

OK maybe there was the *slightest* hesitation as my brain yelled "TEQUILA!" (4D: Agave-based liquor) before realizing it wouldn't fit, but MEZCAL came right behind, so I don't think that counts as a proper hesitation. Anyway, from here I was already able to hypothesize BASIN as the second half of the first themer. AMAZON ___ (five letters)? First thing I thought was BASIN. Mentally supplied those letters and sure enough, all the Downs went right in, no problem. MISHAP was the first of just two answers where my first guess wasn't correct (I wanted HASSLE) (8D: Minor snafu), but pressure from the surrounding Downs made HASSLE impossible and MISHAP inevitable. So, in the end, it was, in fact, truly a minor snafu. METAC- gave me METACARPAL, which made the NE easy to get Downs-only.

The only other wrong answer I considered was AYE (instead of YEA) at 35D: Vote of approval. But again, this is the kind of petty error it takes virtually no time to correct.  Took me a few seconds to figure out what word was supposed to follow APPLE, but again, we're talking about seconds. 

The "hardest" (not actually hard) part of the puzzle was that last themer. I tried to predict what the final "TECH" company was going to be and ... we come to the one real weakness with the theme, which is: I do not think UBER is a tech company, at least not in the way that the others are. The others are tech conglomerates whose business is tech, across many businesses and platforms. Wikipedia has Meta as a "multinational technology conglomerate." Amazon and Apple are similar—they're into *everything*; you can hardly make a digital move without interacting with one of the first three companies. Whereas UBER ... is a ride-hailing app? I mean, huge, yes, and they use "technology" for their delivery and transportation businesses, but ... I've lived my whole life without ever having to interact with UBER. Their official name *is* Uber Technologies, Inc., and they *argue* (controversially) that they're a "tech company" to get around local regulations affecting taxi companies. But ... whatever they are, they aren't "tech" the way the other three are "tech." Not in size, not in reach, not in breadth of "tech"-ness. Real odd-man-out today. And UBERMENSCH is also an anomalous answer—not obscure, by any means, but by far the least universally known thing in the grid. Everything else in the grid is ultracommon knowledge. This isn't a knock on UBERMENSCH as an answer at all—only an explanation of why it was the "hardest" (again, not actually hard) part of the puzzle to get. But as you can see here, I just needed the "-RM-" + the "-SCH" for the term to pop into my mind. Helped that I knew the theme at that point, and that the Nietzschean term was familiar to me.

And that's that. No resistance, no grit, no problems whatsoever. Solid, straightforward theme idea, solid, straightforward grid. Nothing sparkly going on here, and it was really too easy, even for a Monday, but it's well conceived and well made, overall. If you make a new friend while sharing a ride to work, have you MET A CAR PAL? I think you have. Or maybe you went down to the lake and met a carp named Al, who knows? See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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