THEME: BINGO! (66A: "You got it!" ... or a possible cry after hearing the calls hidden in the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers have parts that sound like Bingo squares (specifically "B" followed by a number)
Theme answers:
RUBY TUESDAY (17A: *Restaurant chain named after a Rolling Stones song) ("B-2")
BENIGNLY (26A: *Without malice) ("B-9")
"THAT'D BE WONDERFUL" (34A: *"What a great idea!") ("B-1")
UNBEATEN (48A: *Having a perfect record) ("B-10")
BABY FORMULA (55A: *Similac or Enfamil) ("B-4")
Word of the Day: James IJAMES (9D: Pulitzer-winning "Fat Ham" playwright) —
The revealer came as a total surprise. I solved this as a themeless—no clue what was going on—and was repeatedly surprised at how stuck I kept getting. I don't know if it was the cluing or what, but man this played slow for me today. The only answer I can point to as definitely harder-than-Wednesday material is James IJAMES (a name I'd never seen and had no hope of even partially inferring). Otherwise, nothing in the grid was unknown to me. I simply kept struggling to get answers quickly. Things like AFEW for 53D: Three or four, say, or OARED for 63A: Got in a row? (surface meaning = confusing—am I supposed to hear "row," rhymes with "cow," like a British "row," to-do, dust-up, quarrel, etc.???) (I know that the punny meaning is "row" rhymes with "tow" ... no idea by what possible mental gymnastics "got in a row" can be said to mean simply "rowed," i.e. OARED, but ... here we are). I found BOW OUT hardish (26D: Take one's leave). I found TUTU oddly hard (41A: You might take a spin in this) ("I" might not, actually). Even LANGUOROUSLY didn't come easily to me from its clue (16D: Indulgently lazy). Not sure why "lazy" doesn't compute for me there. So I was like "is this really Wednesday?" for much of the puzzle. I can't say I had a very good time. But (and it's a big but), the revealer did really work some magic. I suppose I could've just looked at the revealer clue at any time and begun trying to piece things together, but I was never *that* desperate, and anyway, I'm not sure knowing the theme would've helped much with getting the themers (which weren't, themselves, that hard to get—didn't struggle with them at all). It's an OK grid with a wonderful (!), surprising theme lying underneath. I think I just had a bad morning. I slept fine. But last night was my first night alone in a very long time (my wife Penelope is in the sky as we speak heading to NZ for a funeral). So ... loneliness. I blame my solving sluggishness on loneliness (the cats are now looking at me all offended, like "hey, we're standing right here!").
[Frank and Bing(o)!]
About IJAMES, though ... Must be very cool to see your name in the grid. And I think I would've been happy to learn that name ... on a Saturday. But on a Wednesday, I was like "how in the world do I not know the name of a famous playwright!!!?" Turns out, I don't know the names of literally any of the playwrights who have won the Pulitzer for Drama since the '90s. Oh, sorry, I do know one. I only have to go back to 2008, when Tracy LETTS won for August: Osage County. But even LETTS, who is quite famous as playwrights go (he's also an actor, married to another actor (Carrie Coon), and has Tonys for both writing and acting), even he, at a grid-friendly five letters long and with extremely grid-friendly letters, has appeared in the NYTXW just once (!). 21st-century playwrights don't have quite the cultural penetration that their predecessors did. The list of Pulitzer winners for Drama in this century is loaded with people whose names seem like they would work very well in crosswords. There's EBONI Booth (2024), and KATORI Hall (2021), and SANAZ TOOSSI (2023) (I know neither of those name parts has been in the grid before!). Lynn NOTTAGE has won twice! (2009, 2017). And yet, NYTXW appearances: zero. Does my knowledge of playwrights fall off because I got old and stopped paying attention? As late as the early '90s, the Drama Pulitzer winners seem like titans: KUSHNER! SIMON! WILSON! And of course the king of crossword playwriting, Edward ALBEE (Three Tall Women, 1994—his third win)! I suppose with a daughter currently studying at the Yale Bleeping School of Bleeping Drama,* I should probably brush up on my playwright knowledge. I wonder if she knew IJAMES. I'll ask. I'll bet she did.
Bullets:
5D: Meal cooked in simmering broth (HOT POT) — easy enough. My only beef here is with the crossing answer, PANT, which has the word "Hot" in the clue (20A: Make like a hot dog). Weird / bad to pivot from HOT POT to a clue with "hot dog" in it.
27A: ^ (CARET) — there are officially too many ways to spell "CARE-utt." I went with CARAT today. I knew it wasn't KARAT, and there weren't enough letters for CARROT. But CARET never occurred to me. I see the mark "^" all the time, or at least not infrequently. But I rarely see it spelled. As I said, slow morning for me.
59D: That's the kicker! (LEG) — love this, but this is what I'm talking about with the clues today—they are auditioning to be Fri/Sat clues and you can feel it.
62A: Save on wedding invitations, in a way (ELOPE) — again, brain not work right. I read "save" as a noun, like "thing you should save," as in "the date." "Save the date!" Invitations still say that, right? Man I need coffee.
18D: Country known for luxury tourism, in brief (UAE) — well, how's that going for you? Luxurious enough?
1A: Young grasshopper (NYMPH) — 1-Across really set the tone for me today. Just ... no idea. None. Zero. I never think about young grasshoppers or what they are called. Bizarre to name them after sexy nature deities, but I'm sure entomologists have their reasons.
Gotta run. See you next time.
*It's actually the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University but I just can't
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Medium. Liked it. Certainly liked it a lot more than @Rex did. I appreciated that the "BINGO calls" weren't highlighted, so the revealer brought a genuine "Aha". * * * * _
Overwrites: Considered olay or ulta for the 19A cosmetic name but waited to get AVON from the V in 11D (so not a true overwrite). DAcca before DAKAR for the African capital at 35D
One WOE, the Fat Ham playwright James IJAMES at 9D
Challenging puzzle with an interesting theme that me with the solve. I live in a senior-age residence where BINGO is played often, so I got the trick quickly (even though the "B" calls weren't spelled consecutively), Needed one cheat, for OUIJA/IJAMES cross, and a lucky guess for CTA. QUESTION: How is PANT making like a hot dog (showoff?)?
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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4 comments:
Medium. Liked it. Certainly liked it a lot more than @Rex did. I appreciated that the "BINGO calls" weren't highlighted, so the revealer brought a genuine "Aha".
* * * * _
Overwrites:
Considered olay or ulta for the 19A cosmetic name but waited to get AVON from the V in 11D (so not a true overwrite).
DAcca before DAKAR for the African capital at 35D
One WOE, the Fat Ham playwright James IJAMES at 9D
Challenging puzzle with an interesting theme that me with the solve. I live in a senior-age residence where BINGO is played often, so I got the trick quickly (even though the "B" calls weren't spelled consecutively), Needed one cheat, for OUIJA/IJAMES cross, and a lucky guess for CTA.
QUESTION: How is PANT making like a hot dog (showoff?)?
Dogs pant when they’re hot
I like GIMME, as in “Gimme Shelter”, touching corners with RUBY TUESDAY.
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