THEME: GO BANANAS (61A: Flip out ... or a hint to the beginnings of 17-, 27-, 39- and 51-Across) — first words of theme answers can follow "banana" in a familiar phrase:
Theme answers:
BOATHOUSE (17A: Crew building)
BREAD BOX (27A: "Is it bigger than a ___?")
SPLIT DECISION (39A: Close boxing match outcome)
SLUGFEST (51A: All-out boxing match)
Word of the Day: "GIRL" (32A: Beatles song with the lyric "She promises the earth to me") —
"Girl" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. "Girl" was the last complete song recorded for that album. "Girl" is considered to be one of the most melancholic and complex of the Beatles' love songs. [...] In early 1966, "Girl" was issued as the B-side of "Michelle" in several European countries, reaching number one in Finland. It was also released as the A-side of a single in Italy, backed by "Nowhere Man", which reached number seven on the nation's Musica e Dischi singles chart.
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A very straightforward and old-fashioned theme with a mildly kooky revealer. I liked it fine. It's a little too heavy on the short stuff—so lots of nooks/crannies, lots of 3-4-5s, but there are also a bevy of long Downs to brighten up the grid, so ... things balance out a bit. The long Downs were the most challenging part of the grid, from a Downs-only solving perspective. Actually, a few of them were gimmes (I BEFORE E, MERMAIDS), but STEP COUNTER took me some time because I (stupidly) guessed CAMINO instead of CASINO—I mean, of course it's CASINO, why would it be CAMINO, that's so much less likely!? The toughest of the long Downs to get (with very little help from inferred crosses) was "I'LL START" (41D: "Let me go first!"). As you can see by the cursor placement in the grid printout above, "I'LL START" is the very last thing I got. The "I" and the "S" and the "A" were the only things I knew for sure, and I kept wanting it to start "I'M" or "IT'S." Finally realized the only thing SHE- was likely to be was SHEL. SHEL helped me see "I'LL" as a possible opening, and from there "I'LL START" seemed obvious. My only other issues were minor. Wrote in ELKS instead of GNUS at first for 6D: African antelopes—again, a truly bad guess. That clue on HIND is a toughie (18D: Female red deer). I know the term from 17c. poetry, but yikes, you'd think on Monday you'd just go with [Rear] or [Posterior] or [___ legs] or something like that. In fact, that's what every constructor has done with HIND since 2005. This is only the third HIND-as-female-deer clue in the entire Shortz Era (and both the others were on Sundays). Bizarre choice. But the puzzle is still Monday-easy overall, so why not go with a deep cut for HIND, I guess.
Speaking of deep cuts ... I know this will come as a surprise to Baby Boomers, but not everybody knows every word to every Beatles song ever (anymore?). I never saw the clue on "GIRL" because I solve Downs-only, but if I had, I'd've been baffled. I know the song, it turns out, from years of classic rock radio-listening as a teenager, but that lyric, yeesh—it does nothing. "GIRL" was not even released as a single in the U.S.—it was the B-side of "Michelle," which I just learned was also not released as a single in the U.S. (!?!?!?!?!?!), which seems impossible, since it's iconic—also, it won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1967. But nope, not a single in the U.S. So "GIRL" was a B-side to a single released only in various European countries (not the UK!?) and New Zealand. If you had to name two dozen Beatles songs, you would not name "GIRL." No, shh, you would not, please stop. As with HIND, the clue on "GIRL" today is baffling. More baffling. But as with HIND, the crosses are all fair, and easy, so ... whatever.
Bullets:
47D: To be, in Barcelona (SER) — Spanish words have been a mainstay of U.S. crosswords for a while now, but ... how many is too many? I'm gonna say four (4!) is too many (SER, ISLA, ENERO, SI SI). If I left one out, that means there are more than four (4!), which would still be too many. More so.
34D: Word hidden, aptly, in "teen's language" (SLANG) — from relatively obscure deer terminology and minor Beatles B-sides to this—child's placemat-level gimmes. Boo. Also, if you really want your puzzle to seem old, make a quaint joke about "teen's language"
51D: Animal that sleeps upside down (SLOTH) — wanted KOALA. Actually wanted BAT but as you can see, doesn't fit. Doesn't a SLOTH do everything upside down? "[T]ree sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down" (wikipedia). Let's see if this is true ... yep, checks out.
51A: All-out boxing match (SLUGFEST) — it's a minor thing, but I think it would've been better to take this clue away from "boxing" specifically, since the preceding themer is already using "boxing match." A high-scoring baseball game is often called a SLUGFEST, you could go that direction.
That's all for today. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[all proceeds go to WFMU, the best listener-supported radio in the whole dang world]
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THEME: "Thinking Inside the Box" — theme answers are actually clues to eight four-letter answers sitting inside a box at the middle of the puzzle, unconnected to the rest of the grid:
Theme answers:
24A: Certain group of orchestral winds (FLUTE SECTION) => 66A: [24-Across] (STEM)
Word of the Day: Isle of EWE (53D: Isle of ___ (Scottish locale whose name sounds like an expression of endearment)) —
The Isle of Ewe (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Iùbh) is a small Scottish island on the west coast of Ross and Cromarty. The island is inhabited by a single extended family, the Grants, who have lived at the current settlement on the leeward NE side of the island since the 19th century.
The island is privately owned by GBB Estates Ltd and Crofted by the Grants. The island previously had more families, but these left during the Second World War, when Loch Ewe was used as an important naval anchorage. The isolated position of the island meant that the children had to endure a round trip each day of about 26 miles (42 kilometres) by boat and bus to attend school.
The island remains off grid for electricity and water with this being generated by renewables and back up generators. There remains a single phone cable to the mainland which services the current households and is the only physical connection to the mainland.
Residents and visitors to the island use the Pier at Aultbea daily to travel back and forth for work and supplies.
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I am ready and willing to upgrade the star rating of this puzzle somewhat if anyone can give me an answer to the question, "Why?" That is, "What is the point? What makes the theme cohere? Why are those words in the center and not, I don't know, literally any other words?" I am baffled. Without any clear rationale to the words in the center box, I am left to wonder: why is this interesting? Why is it interesting to have extremely straightforward clues for theme answers that are themselves clues? Why am I enduring barely-a-thing answers like FLUTE SECTION and GIANT SNOWMAN (?!)? I completely understand how the puzzle works, mechanically, but what the point is, where the interest lies, where the hell all the fun is?—I cannot answer any of these questions. I see that the themers, i.e. the clues to the answers in central box, appear in order (i.e first themer is for first Across in the box, second themer for second Across, etc.), and that the themers change meaning when they become clues—that feels like an added layer of difficulty. Structurally impressive, yes, but in the service of what feels like a whole lot of nothing. The puzzle was very, very easy, so I don't know if it will elicit much in the way of negative reaction, but ... as I say, I'm at a loss. If anyone wanted, they could do another puzzle exactly like this, with different theme answers and a different 4x4 box at the center. Every week. For all the Sundays to come. I mean, it would probably take you some time to make it all work out, structurally, but you could do it. Because this puzzle has no actual theme beyond its structure (that I can see). STEM TAXI AKIN YETI? STAY TAKE EXIT MINI? Help me decipher these mystical runes? What am I missing? STAY and STEM are synonyms (meaning, roughly, "stop" or "staunch"). Is that ... something? If I am, in fact, missing something, I pre-apologize and will update the write-up accordingly. But from where I'm sitting right now, this puzzle looks like it's desperately shouting "NOTICE ME!," but has nothing (besides its unusual structure) to show.
The puzzle does have some interesting symmetry. Something about the black square placement in the puzzle was making me mildly queasy, and I briefly thought it lacked any kind of symmetry, but then I noticed that it actually has mirror symmetry along the SW-to-NE diagonal. Don't see that very often.
MONK MODE? Ugh, what are we doing here? "Lifestyle trend"? I cannot sigh hard enough. The very phrase makes me tired. This is insulting to monks. Is this where you go on some kind of no-media diet or retreat? Can you see me rolling my eyes or hear me booing you. "Monk"? Yeesh, please stop. Also, SCORIGAMI, LOL, what? "Coined in 2014"? Why is that information salient? Why are you making me look this up? If this doesn't involve folding up a scorecard to make a crane, I'm going to be very disappointed ...
In sports, a scorigami (a portmanteau of score and origami) is a final score that has never happened before in a sport or league's history. The term was coined in a 2014 article by sportswriter Jon Bois for American football scores in the National Football League (NFL), and is primarily used in this context; it has also been applied sparingly across other sports leagues. (wikipedia)
OK, but ... why is the pun on "origami????" Origami ... has happened before. I did not know these "first ever game scores" had a name, and now I wish I still didn't know. I have no idea what an ATLAS MOTH is, either, but at least that sounds real. The only moth species I know is the IO MOTH. I think. I don't spend much time lepidopterizing, I'll confess.
53D: Isle of ___ (Scottish locale whose name sounds like an expression of endearment)(EWE) — "Isle of EWE" => "I Love You"
86A: Another name for Vishnu, translating to "the remover" (HARI) — it's surprising how easy this puzzle was given that this is, what, the fourth answer, at least, that I've never heard of—one that, like AYTON and SCORIGAMI, I couldn't even begin to infer. The only HARI I know is Mata. (In case you were thinking of the phrase "Hare Krishna," as you can see, the spelling is different)
117A: Source of the word "tuk-tuk" used for a motorized rickshaw (THAI) — wanted URDU here. This was in the AYTON STOMP corner, adding to the difficulty of said corner.
134A: Co-Stooge of Larry (MOE) — OK, I like "Co-Stooge," thumbs up for that "word."
6D: Scampered away (SKEDADDLED) — easily my favorite answer in the grid. It's got a bounciness that most of the rest of this grid is lacking.
3D: Cornet lookalike (FLUGELHORN) — like SKEDADDLED, this one's just fun today. (Because of kerning issues, I keep reading this clue on my puzzle print-out as [Comet lookalike])
25D: Mabel Mora's portrayer on "Only Murders in the Building" (SELENA GOMEZ) — SELENA GOMEZ was in a clue for MABEL at the end of last month, and now here we are in a reverse situation. Nice full-name appearance for Ms. Gomez, whose name I misspelled as "GOMES" for some reason, my apologies to her and her cosmetics empire.
That's all for today. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. a reminder—on Thursday, September 17, at 7pm in Jersey City, NJ (just across the Hudson from Manhattan), I'm doing a little fundraising event for the world's greatest radio station, WFMU, hosted by DJ (and avid crossword solver) Evan "Funk" Davies. It's the WFMU Crossword Meet-Up! Longtime NYTXW constructor Gary Cee will also be there. We'll be sharing our WFMU-themed crosswords and talking about crosswords and generally just hanging out and having a nerdy good time, so if you're in the New York metropolitan area and have the time and inclination, please come out and say hi. More information here.
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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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