Gun-regulating grp. / WED 8-7-24 / Denver-to-Omaha dir. / Communicate like a Sphynx

Constructor: Meghan Morris

Relative difficulty: Hard (13:17)

THEME: OUGH "homophones" — The theme plays with a classic quirk of the English language, which is that the letters "ough" can be pronounced in a variety of different ways, without any obvious pattern or rule. These words are arranged symmetrically throughout the grid, and form a sort of a cyclical "ladder" or "loop"-- each connects to the last.

Theme answers:

• Given the way ROUGH (Uneven) is pronounced, you'd expect BOUGH (Main branch of a tree) to rhyme with it; instead we have the word BUFF (Rhyme of 49-Across, but not a homophone of 19-Across)
• Given the way BOUGH is pronounced, you'd expect COUGH (Attention-getting sound) to rhyme with it; instead we have COW (Rhyme of 19-Across, but not a homophone of 46-Across)
• Given the way COUGH is pronounced, you'd expect DOUGH (It gets baked) to rhyme with it; instead we have DOFF (Rhyme of 46-Across, but not a homophone of 21-Across)
• Given the way DOUGH is pronounced, you'd expect THROUGH (By way of) to rhyme with it; instead we have THROW (Rhyme of 21-Across, but not a homophone of 43-Across)
• Given the way THROUGH is pronounced, you'd expect ROUGH to rhyme with it; instead we have RUE (Rhyme of 43-Across, but not a homophone of 49-Across)

Word of the Day: LIGHT OPERA (Many a Gilbert and Sullivan work) —

Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries.

• • •

Hi friends, it's Malaika on a Regularly Scheduled Malaika MWednesday! I had a lovely fish-centric dinner with a friend tonight, and then tried to take the train back to my place. To my despair, it was out of service and I had to walk twenty minutes home in the pouring rain. I patted myself dry with a kitchen towel and immediately began my duty of solving and reporting on the crossword puzzle. I live to serve!!

This puzzle is missing something to me. It took me several minutes to figure out what was going on. I'm not a huge fan of clues that give you zero "free" information, though they are common enough in all puzzles and I will confess that I have even included them in some of my own. What do I mean by zero "free" information? An example (unrelated to today's puzzle) would be saying something like [Anagram of X-down] rather than something like [Food that anagrams to X-down]. In this puzzle we get information about what it rhymes with, but no pure clue. This might cause problems! I could see someone who isn't a Pear Expert and has forgotten the term "homophone" putting in "how" instead of COW, for instance.

I think my biggest problem is that the puzzle goes to a lot of lengths to keep some cyclical elegance to this theme, but the crossword isn't ultimately the ideal way to display this. I hope I was able to convey that cycle in my theme bullet points above-- it's cool that the first and last instances of the theme are both ROUGH. And it's also cool, if not genuinely amazing, that every single one of these entries was able to be arranged symmetrically in the puzzle. But I feel like a grid just isn't the right vehicle for this!! I wish this could have been some sort of round or swirling or looping variety puzzle that visually connected these terms in the way they deserve. I've spoken before about how I feel constructors should pitch every creative and outlandish idea they can think of, and editors should reel them in-- I think the editors should have redirected on this one.

Because of the constraints of the theme answers, the grid had to be pretty segmented, with lots of three-letter words. I don't mind a high number of three-letter words (I've definitely made puzzles with 20+ of them!), but I do mind when I notice it while solving, which is what happened in this case. Awkward stuff like AWS, ORS, RNS, and ENE stood out to me, and (due to the nature of the theme) there weren't even a lot of fun longer answers to balance them out.

Of the longer stuff, I was a fan of FEDORA and FUSILLI. My joke is that "I like my pasta like I like my hair-- curly." I always have a packet of gemelli or cavatappi or FUSILLI in my pantry; I love how the sauce clings to the twists. Other entries like SOPHIES, HR ISSUE, and ONE NAME didn't feel in-the-language to me.

Cavatappi is legit my favorite pasta shape. What's yours??

I'm very curious to hear what y'all thought of this puzzle, as I can sense it's going to be divisive! Please remember to be kind and constructive in your critiques <3

Bullets:

• [Key that might be part of a chain] for ISLE — This took me a second as I am more familiar with the spelling "cay" because of this novel. But "key" is very valid as well; I'm sure many of us have heard of the Florida keys.
• [Marshland] for FEN— While we're on the topic of books, one of my favorite favorite favorite books is called The Magicians and features a minor (not even secondary-- maybe tertiary??) character called FEN. When I have this entry in a puzzle that I've made, I am always tempted to use that cluing angle, and I always decide not to.
• [Exerciser's target] for FLAB — Is this true? In my experience, you lose FLAB by changing your diet, unless you're doing enormous amounts of cardio. To me, exercise is more about building strength (or having fun!!)
• [Park in N.Y.C., e.g.] for AVE — The misdirect here is that Park AVE is a pretty famous street
• [Leopard's spot] for LAIR — Do leopards famously hang out in LAIRs?? Am I missing something? I thought they slept in tree branches.

xoxo Malaika

P.S. Here's today's homegrown tomato:

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