Sporty Pontiacs of the 1960s / WED 1-14-26 / Tunes with an irresistible rhythm / German industrial city

Constructor: Joseph Gangi

Relative difficulty: Hard (14:21)

THEME: Sunday in the Park with George — A BROADWAY MUSICAL composed by STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Letters spell out "I made a hat" and also create the image of a hat-- that is.... they made a hat. 

Word of the Day: STEPHEN SONDHEIM (Pulitzer-winning composer and lyricist of "Sunday in the Park With George") —

Sondheim was an avid fan of puzzles and games. He is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords, a British invention, to American audiences through a series of cryptic crossword puzzles he created for New York magazine in 1968 and 1969. Sondheim was "legendary" in theater circles for "concocting puzzles, scavenger hunts and murder-mystery games", inspiring the central character of Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play Sleuth. Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries is evident in The Last of Sheila, an intricate whodunit written with longtime friend Anthony Perkins.

• • •

Hello everyone, and welcome to a Malaika MWednesday! This puzzle was totally out of my wheelhouse. While I do generally like musicals, and have probably seen more than 99% of people my age, this is not one that I am familiar with. (I know the name, but not any of the music, although I have also heard that it is excellent.)

On top of that, the fill and the clues felt a little dated to me. I wonder if the editors did this on purpose, given that the subject matter is from about forty years ago. It keeps things consistent.

A big part of being an editor is deciding if a theme is worth publishing, taking into account whether or not solvers will be familiar with it. In this case, I knew the musical, but didn't know the lyric-- but I can still appreciate the cute wordplay that comes from the letters doing exactly what they spell out. I associate puzzles where you have to "connect the dots" with the constructor Elizabeth Gorski, but this mechanism is a little different from hers.

This has always been my experience regarding an ENDIVE, btw. "Salad green" ?????

The fill that I found hard was the short stuff, like GTOS, TEAT (not hard, but I couldn't believe that was real), ESSEN, PABA, ELA, UEY, and SOU. I was also really slow to get OKAY THEN, what with DID OK literally two blocks above it. I think I would have preferred to see two "OK"s in the grid (or two "OKAY"s) than to see one of each. It felt like pulling back the curtain on constructors! I don't want you guys to notice that I just spell things (omelette / omelet, okiedokie / okeydokey, etc) just based on whatever fits better!! I want things to seem 100% purposeful!!! 

Bullets:

• [Fashion name that's become slang for "excellent"] for GUCCI — The term "name" threw me off here (although of course it's correct!) since I think of it first as a brand. I don't know the exact etymology of it meaning "excellent" but Gucci Mane was making music in the early 2000s, so I'd guess this "slang" has been around over twenty years. The phrasing "that's become" made me think it was something much more recent.
• [Jerry's uncle on "Seinfeld"] for LEO — Jerry's uncle appeared in 15 episodes, or 8% of the episodes in Seinfeld. He last appeared on air in 1998, when I was not quite one year old.
• [Key's longtime partner in sketch comedy] for PEELE — Key & Peele did comedy together for over a decade, but it's also been about a decade since their sketch show aired. I'm leaving my favorite of theirs below.

xoxo Malaika

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