Epitomes of slowness / TUES 8-25-26 / Something told with two hands? / Moon believed to have a subsurface ocean / Free-spirited style, informally

Hello, everyone! It’s Clare for the last Tuesday in August! Hope everyone has been staying cool (and dry, at least, on the East Coast, where it’s been raining around 4 p.m. most days). My big news is that I got to see BTS when they came to Baltimore, and my life got infinitely better — although my sister and I lost our voices completely. I’m now off to Los Angeles this weekend for Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields music festival, which should be a ton of fun. 

Most importantly, before I move on to, you know, the puzzle, I have to plug my sister’s article in The Wall Street Journal!! As I’m writing this, it’s not published yet, but it goes live at 2 p.m. today, Tuesday, in the travel section under the headline, "I Walked 500 Miles on the Camino de Santiago to Find What Comes Next," by Shannon Carroll. I’ll be back to update the link when the story goes live! [Edit: Here it is!]

Anywho, with all that, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Bryan Kaproth-Gerecht

Relative difficulty: Easy-medium

THEME: PLANETS (45D: Celestial "wanderers" ... or what this puzzle's circled letters represent) — The eight planets are listed in the puzzle, with the circled letters representing their approximate distance from the sun

Theme answers:

• MERCURY (34A: 1st) 
• VENUS (28A: 2nd) 
• EARTH (51A: 3rd) 
• MARS (33D: 4th) 
• JUPITER (10D: 5th) 
• SATURN (15A: 6th) 
• URANUS (62A: 7th) 
• NEPTUNE (1D: 8th)

Word of the Day: NO-SEE-UMS (7D: Tiny biting insect) —

Ceratopogonidae is a family of flies colloquially known as no-see-ums, sand flies, or biting midges, generally 1–3 millimetres (1⁄16–1⁄8 in) in length. The family includes more than 5,000 species, distributed worldwide, apart from the Antarctic and the Arctic. Ceratopogonidae midges are also one of the best-studied cocoa pollinators. (Wiki)

• • •

I quite enjoyed that puzzle! The circled letters and the dotted lines showing the orbits were complex, even a tad gimmick-y, but, overall, the construction was very impressive, especially coming from a first-time constructor. The constructor managed to fit in eight planets with different orbits represented — in order — along with additional words that are relevant to the theme such as SUNS (15D: Symbols of fair weather) and TITAN (47A: Moon believed to have a subsurface ocean). 

The theme seems timely, too. The PERSEIDS (16A: Summer meteor shower named for a mythological hero) meteor shower is in the news; there was a total solar eclipse a couple of weeks ago; a partial lunar eclipse is coming up; and there was an alignment of six planets earlier this month. 

I pretty quickly realized the theme and what the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. would represent, so I immediately went around the puzzle typing in the planets. That made this a quicker-than-normal Tuesday solve for me. It did take me quite a bit to figure out what the circles represented; I thought they might represent the first letter of the planets, maybe they created an anagram, etc. Only after creating a little graphic for myself did I realize that the circle letters in each planet represented that planet’s approximate distance from the sun. 

For those of you with not great eyes (i.e., my dad), you might have strained to see the dashes that create the circles representing the orbits. I wonder why there are only seven dashed circles, with URANUS and SATURN on the same orbit — and not one for each of the eight planets. But that’s above my knowledge (or was all the constructor could manage). I didn’t think a revealer was even necessary, given that the theme was obvious, but it’s still impressive that the constructor got ORBITAL (44D: Like the paths of 45-Down, as visually depicted in this puzzle) and PLANETS (45D: Celestial "wanderers" ... or what this puzzle's circled letters represent) in there, too. 

(As a “Psych” lover, I couldn’t help but be sad Pluto wasn’t on there.) 

I struggled a fair amount in the north (middle) of the puzzle, especially with NO-SEE-UMS (7D). I’m not sure I have ever heard that term before, so I was incredibly confused. Combine that with the vague OH DAMN (6D: "Wowza!") that doesn’t really fit the clue, crossing MENSA (24A: Smart set) and AEON (20A: Billion years, astronomically), and it took me a bit to puzzle through. I thankfully know AKON (4A: One-named Senegalese American singer with the #1 hits "I Wanna Love You" and "Don't Matter") very well, growing up listening to his music, but I imagine some people struggled there. 

Along with OH DAMN (6D), there were a few other quotations that I didn’t really like. Like: IT’S A DATE (60A: "I'd love to go"), AW C’MON (25D: "Man, that's hardly fair!"), and THAT SO (48D: "Are you sure?"). They’re part of the category that’s so vague that many things can fit. MIDI (20A: ___ skirt) was also annoying, given it could’ve easily been “maxi” or “midi,” and the clue gave us nothing to go on. I refuse to believe SHIVERY (39D: Like someone emerging from freezing cold water, typically) is a word. WAWA (56A: Drink in a sippy cup, to a toddler) clued like that seems a bit weird. RAT (8D: Creature sometimes trained for bomb detection) gave me pause because I tried “dog.” Even when I got to “_AT,” I took a bit to understand that it had to be RAT, not “cat.” I had enough downs that I got TECATE (58A: Mexican beer brand) quite easily, but that felt like a harder-than-a-normal-Tuesday type word. (My sister, who knows her Mexican beers, said she put Modelo.) 

All that being said, there were still some good words in the puzzle — on top of the fun theme. My favorite word was ENAMOR (32A: Captivate), followed closely by TRILL (19A: Musical flutter). I also liked BARISTA (3D: One known for the morning grind?). It was good seeing IVERSON (2D: Allen who was the 2001 N.B.A. M.V.P.), as he’s the only good A.I. The clue/answer for TIME (38A: Something told with two hands?) was fun (even if I did have _I_E and thought I was very clever when I confidently put in “jive”). 

Overall, the puzzle was an enjoyable solve — and an impressive construction!

Misc.:

• I’ve recently gotten into F1 (after watching the Netflix show “Drive to Survive”), and I’ve been watching the races each weekend. So it feels on point to have PACE CAR (40D: Raceway speed setter) even if it’s called a “safety car” in F1. (Go, Kimi and/or Oscar!) 
• I’d kind of forgotten about AKON (4A) over the years, but he’s apparently still going strong with 41.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and his biggest song, “Smack That,” (with Eminem) has 1.7 billion streams. I was 10 years old when that song came out, and I knew all of the lyrics, including the rap, which, looking back, was rather raunchy. Oops! 
• I loved CHASM (46A: Great divide). First off, it’s a fantastic word. The clue is also the title of the incredible Noah Kahan album “The Great Divide" (which I saw him perform most of last month — from the barricade!). 
• I will always remember the moon TITAN (47A) because I did a presentation in 7th grade science class on SATURN (15A). I learned TITAN is the planet’s biggest moon and is the second biggest in the solar system. (Anything else, I’ll have to brush up on from the Internet). 
• If only there were penalty kicks after a TIE GAME (43D: Reason to go into penalty kicks) in the regular season of the Premier League so my Liverpool team could’ve completed the comeback and actually won our stupid opening game against Newcastle instead of just tying it up in the 100th minute.

I’m also very pleased that my dog, RED (53D: Sunburned, perhaps), made an appearance in the puzzle today (even if it should have been clued to be about her instead!). As I’ve written this, I think she’s brought me eight toys because she wants to play, so maybe she knows she’s being written about.

And that’s all from me! Hope you all have a great September. (And don’t forget to go read my sister’s article😊)

Signed, Clare Carroll, RED’s giant

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