Brief in pants / THU 8-20-26 / Nags about noise? / Game of observation for travel / Checks with style / Out with ate, ate, ate / Try to place connoisseurs? / Land of Spot

Constructor: Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: reading backwards — Across clues must be read backwards in order for them to make sense. That's it. There are three related themers that describe this phenomenon in punny ways:

Theme answers:

• PUT IN REVERSE (4D: Shift the gears of, in a way ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)
• FORWARD-THINKING (7D: Visionary ... or what you'll need to return to when solving this puzzle's Down clues)
• TURN OF PHRASE (23D: Distinctive expression ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)

Word of the Day: National Prison Project (10D: One advocated for by the National Prison Project = INMATE) —

The ACLU National Prison Project is dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, and other places of detention comply with the Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles, and to ending the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. We promote a fair and effective criminal justice system in which incarceration is used only as a last resort, and its purpose is to prepare prisoners for release and a productive, law-abiding life at the earliest possible time. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, we work to ensure that conditions of confinement are consistent with health, safety, and human dignity, and that prisoners retain all rights of free persons that are not inconsistent with incarceration. Achieving these goals will result in a criminal justice system that respects individual rights and increases public safety for everyone, at greatly reduced fiscal cost. (ACLU)

• • •

The punny theme answers are By Far the best part here. The actual experience of solving all those Across clues was dreary—not tough, but also not entertaining at all, or rarely so. And beyond a couple of longer answers, the whole grid is extremely ordinary. USENET ISLET NDAS SSN ROO ATON RNA AFAR ARAL DOI ATEAM ESPY OLEG PSI ALT  ESS ... real MEH stuff for sure (side note: in real life, a "C-" is much worse than merely MEH) (41A: Say "minus C"). The one real execution failure here is that for this puzzle to really work, those Across clues have to make some kind of surface sense every time. Take [Sound like heaven]. That one works, because it looks like a real clue, and you can (maybe) imagine a real answer. But [Brief in pants]?? I mean, I laughed, a little ("you've got what in your pants?"). But it's obviously not a real clue. The phrasing makes no sense. Same with [Lines some over draw], unless "over draw" is supposed to be "overdraw," one word, and maybe you're overdrawing your a credit "line" or a checking account or something? Merely running clues backwards is extremely non-interesting. And furthermore, the "trick" tricked me for about ten seconds. All the short Downs in the NW were gimmes, so I had HAR- and TRO- very quickly at 1A and 14A, respectively. The bizarreness and infeasibility of [Brief in pants] got me to TROU because ... well, it's short for "pants," so ... brief in pants ... pants, in brief ... got it! OK, so then [Sound like heaven] is [Heaven-like sound]. Alright, cool. Wait, is that it? Essentially,  yes. There are three long theme answers doing some cute wordplay stuff, but basically this is a Tuesday-level puzzle once you simply read the Across clues backwards. Aside from those three long Downs, all Thursday trickiness was over right ... here:

I wouldn't call solving this a slog, since it was so easy, and since I guess there is at least a novelty in having to read backwards so many times, but reading backwards on its own is not a sufficiently pleasurable activity. The backwards clues should've been funnier, more outrageous, more clever, more ... something. Otherwise, this ends up as a kind of paint-by-numbers puzzle where the magic fizzles out early and you're left to just dutifully complete your box-filling task. Again, thumbs up for those themers, they're the only thing keeping this thing alive. But not alive enough.

A few of the Across clues work, in that they were amusing all on their own, or else yielded a surprising answer. For some reason, I think 65A: Out with ate, ate, ate is my favorite of the clues—I know I said the Across clues should have plausible surface meaning, but if you're not gonna have plausible surface meaning, then yes, sure, go absolutely nuts. [Out with ate, ate, ate] makes no sense on any level ... until you reverse the words (and mentally repunctuate), and then you get a completely plausible clue for PIGGED. I think 49A: Nags about noise? may be the most perfectly executed clue of the bunch. It's got alliteration, it looks like a real clue, it's got the "?" in there. And then you get the very incongruous (-seeming) NEIGH! (a noise "about" nags). The "about" part makes the phrasing a stretch, but ... that is, historically, what the "?" is for. The sad thing is that none of these clues ever get the chance to really trick you or trip you because the entire game is given away so early. This means that "aha"s and "nice!"s are few and far between.

Bullets:

• 51A: Land of Spot (ISLET) — I'm just imagining the dog from Dick & Jane has gone off to found his own island country. "Come, Jane, tonight we sail for the Land of Spot. It will be good to see our old friend again after so many years at sea!" (from The Odyssey of Dick & Jane)
• 17A: Try to place connoisseurs? (TASTING ROOM) — I guess this is for wine connoisseurs. I had TASTING MENU at first ... but I see now that a "menu" is not a "place"
• 25D: Feature of San Francisco's Lombard Street (ESS) — famously curvy, but ESS? That's just like ... one segment of street that winds back and forth repeatedly. I wouldn't call one "ESS" segment a "feature." As you can see ... lots of "S"s. Which one is the "feature"? You don't count off the turns by "ESS"s. Not a real unit:

• 57A: For repentance some feel (RUE) — this is the Across clues at their most Yoda-esque. His voice I hear. Speaking of the Star Wars universe—it's been four days since the last Star Wars clue. I think the record for consecutive Star Wars-free days this year is something close to two weeks, so ... long way to go. 

Had a great first day of school yesterday, but also somehow my neck/shoulder has gone painfully stiff (can't tilt my head to the right very far at all). Residual stress? A chalkboard injury? Who knows. Gonna try to just keep moving and hope it works itself out. That's all for today. Time next you see.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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