Relative difficulty: If there were a day *before* Monday, that is how easy this was ... bizarre
THEME: 4K? K4? — four examples of what "K" can stand for:
Theme answers:
STRIKEOUT (20A: K, in baseball)
THOUSAND (27A: K, in a salary listing)
BLACK INK (!?) (42A: K, on a printer cartridge)
POTASSIUM (53A: K, on the periodic table)
Word of the Day: STANDPIPE (34D: Vertical water conduit) —
In North America, a standpipe is a type of rigid waterpiping which is built into multi-story buildings in a vertical position, or into bridges in a horizontal position, to which fire hoses can be connected, allowing manual application of water to the fire. Within the context of a building or bridge, a standpipe serves the same purpose as a fire hydrant.
In many other countries, hydrants in streets are below ground level. Fire trucks carry standpipes and key, and there are bars on the truck. The bar is used to lift a cover in the road, exposing the hydrant. The standpipe is then "sunk" into the hydrant, and the hose is connected to the exposed ends of the standpipe. The bar is then combined with the key, and is used to turn the hydrant on and off. (wikipedia)
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This may be one of those days where someone else has to show me some cool thematic element that I missed, because sitting here now, at 4:30am, just after finishing the puzzle, all I see are "four things 'K' can stand for," and that just doesn't seem like much. Worse, the theme is not just thin, it's got one theme answer that feels very, very forced—very "Which of these Four is Not Like The Other"—i.e. BLACK INK. The other three "K"s are iconic ... whereas I have replace BLACK INK in my (two!) printers for *decades* and never noticed that "K" stood for anything. I'm absolutely guessing here, but I bet that if you ask any ordinary person to name four things that "K" can stand for, they can probably name ... three. The three non-BLACK INK answers that are in this puzzle. But BLACK INK, yeesh. OK, if you say so. That is, I'm sure you're right, but ... no. But even that weird version of "K"—hell, even STANDPIPE (no idea)—couldn't get this puzzle up to a respectable level of difficulty. I was stunned at how easily I moved through the grid at first. I got every clue I looked at, without hesitation, from 1A: Target of modern splicing (GENE) all the way to here:
That is, I wrote in SEEKS at 22A: Looks (SEEMS) and quickly found out I was wrong—but even *that* wasn't "hesitation" so much as a brief erasure and correction. I didn't actually completely balk at an answer until I was staring at -STY (48D: Maybe too amorous). My brain went "TASTY?" And then I shrugged and kept going. STANDPIPE was by far the oddest thing in the grid (I wanted both STEAM PIPE and STOVE PIPE before I got it), and even it did very little to stop my hurtling forward momentum. As usual, the "word with / before / after / before and after"-type clue baffled me (43D: Word with spare or sea = CHANGE) so I couldn't flow easily into the SW, but I just jumped in, got OMAN no problem, and was done a few seconds later. I have no idea what was supposed to make this a Wednesday as opposed to a Monday. Maybe BLACK INK? STANDPIPE? BERM!? (I don't know how I even know that term) (38A: Road shoulder). This was a ho-hum, 20th-century grid, at both the thematic and overall fill levels, and it was easier than any NYTXW Wednesday should ever be. I know they're deliberately making the puzzle easier over time (that has become self-evident), probably so that more of their many many subscribers can feel "successful" on a regular basis, and OK, capitalism, whatever ... but it's starting to feel a little shameful.
There's not even any interesting fill to comment on. I liked BUZZSAWS and DIRT CHEAP very much. The rest of it was mostly just there. Clean enough, no strong complaints. Just kind of 3-4-5 Blah, all over.
Happy end of November!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Lots of people weighed in on the alleged technical inaccuracy of yesterday's clue for DNA (6D: Molecule whose structure was discovered by Rosalind Franklin). The most level-headed of such responses came to me via email, and here it is:
Hey Rex, Scientist here. The clue for DNA (6 dn) "molecule whose structure was discovered by Rosalind Franklin" is wrong. Besides the sort of pedantic point that structures are not 'discovered', Franklin took an X-ray of DNA that was important and for which she certainly deserved to have been given more credit. But she didn't solve the structure, as far as anyone knows. I suppose you could argue that giving a woman more credit than she deserves is ok karma-wise and that taking some credit away from James Watson is even better. But in the end I think keeping to the historical record as best we can is the right approach. My three cents. ~T.B.
THEME: coded message — I guess this is supposed to have something to do with ALAN TURING (25A: English computer scientist who pioneered the breaking of ciphers generated by the 98-Across) and the movie "IMITATION GAME" (40A: 2014 movie portraying the work of 25-Across, with "The") in that the grid contains a CRYPTOGRAM (114A: Sort of encoded message found in this puzzle's grid [SEE NOTE]), but if this is what an ENIGMA MACHINE is (98A: W.W. II-era encoding device), I could not be less impressed—basically all you do is a translate the circled squares via a simple letter-substitution code, which is just handed to you in a "note" ... like ... what? This is child's placemat stuff.
A four-year-old probably couldn't solve this crossword puzzle, but a four-year-old could damn sure "crack" this "code" if you actually just hand said four-year-old the code. Did you ever see "A Christmas Story"? Well I am basically Ralphie after realizing that all that his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring does is tell him "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE," only in this case the hidden message is "CODES ARE PUZZLES, A GAME JUST LIKE ANY OTHER GAME" (which is nonsense, why would you make your big reveal complete nonsense!?)
The code:
JITSU / EASED / LOOKS / EVERS / CLUNK / BY SEX / PINGS / AVERS
A goitre, orgoiter, is a swelling in the neck resulting from an enlarged thyroid gland. A goitre can be associated with a thyroid that is not functioning properly.
Worldwide, over 90% of goitre cases are caused by iodine deficiency. The term is from the Latingutturia, meaning throat. Most goitres are not cancerous (benign), though they may be potentially harmful. (wikipedia)
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This was grim. Grim. I honestly can't get my head around the idea that anyone thought this would be "fun" to solve. ("OVALTINE!? A crummy commercial!? Son of a b—!") Basically I solved the entire puzzle, easily, with no need to decode anything. If I didn't have to write this here blog, I guarantee you I would not even have bothered to do the letter-by-letter "decoding" to get to the "hidden" message, which is one of the great non-messages in the history of messages. What a banal and also inaccurate observation. "Like any other game!?" Games are different from one another. So many games, all of them with different rules and conventions and everything. "Just like any other game," bah. What an absurd generalization. And what does it reveal to us? What about it is unexpected or insightful or interesting or Anything? I guess I am supposed to be impressed that the "code" was rendered in the form of eight symmetrically arranged 5-letter words. Sure, congrats, but from the solver's perspective, there is zero, nada, nothing intriguing about writing in BYSEX or AVERS. It's just ... fill. Ordinary. Unremarkable. The longer "theme" answers are ... well, there are only four of them, and they are cohesive but mostly they just take up space—the bit we're supposed to ooh and aah at is all the code stuff, and it's hard to imagine a more anti-climactic outcome than solving this particular code. Not even worth doing. I'm told that the app does the code-breaking for you? Like ... maybe once you finish something software-y happens and you're supposed to ooh and aah at that? I'm just baffled at the idea that solving this would be anyone's idea of a good time. Looking at it, admiring its architecture, maybe. But solving it? Grr.
What's worse than the theme is the fill, which stopped me in my tracks multiple times, so unpleasant was it on the whole. INATEXT!? LOL what? That is a terrible prepositional phrase, and esp. bad since you've already got INOIL in the grid, practically right next door. I went INATEXT, INOIL, INRI ... and I had to take a deep breath, because it's like the puzzle was deliberately trying my patience. It gave me nothing in the way of sparkle or pizzazz. RESEATS RENEGE REEXAMINE ... where is the joy? Probably the most fun I had during this solve was figuring out how to spell DUMMKOPF (Two "M"s!? Wow, OK!). I also kinda like ERNIE PYLE, but when your spiciest answer is ERNIE PYLE, it's possible you have a spice problem. Maybe I'll throw ANNA WINTOUR in there too. But OF YORE!? LOL, man, did I BLINK AT that, for sure. It's hard to do a Sunday puzzle well—it's hard to do any themed puzzle well, but to have to do it over that much terrain (21x21) is a tall order. I sympathize. But I have rarely felt like a Sunday puzzle whiffed so bad, on both theme and fill. It's not even that the puzzle was *bad*, exactly. It's like it was very committed to an idea of *good* that I could not fathom. Everything was riding on that code, and ... well, from where I was sitting, that gamble just did not work out.
Notes:
87D: Bird of the Baltic (SMEW) — on the one hand, I am always happy to see more bird names in the grid. On the other, more important hand, SMEW is crosswordese OF YORE and so I was not entirely happy to see it return (I needed every cross—I'd actually forgotten it existed—used to get it confused with its crosswordese cousin SMEE all the time).
89A: What a "Wheel of Fortune" contestant might buy when looking for _NSP_RAT_ON (AN "I") — the ANI, like the SMEW, is a crosswordese bird OF YORE. It was so named because its call bears an uncanny resemblance to the voice of singer-songwriter ANI DiFranco. The only thing I want to say about today's ANI clue is, what kind of ... person ... stares at _NSP_RAT_ON and thinks "Uh ... I dunno ... I better buy a vowel"?
74D: Alvin ___, first African American to be elected Manhattan's district attorney (BRAGG) — we need to know *district attorney* names now!? That is a tall, tall order. U.S. Attorneys General, sure, those are national. But municipal DAs!? Pfffff, OK ...
61A: Thin porridges (GRUELS) — when's the last time, or any time, you saw this word in the plural? Aside from right now?
THEME: I AM — people associated with phrases that contain the words "I am" (or "I yam"):
Theme answers:
JEAN VALJEAN (24A: "Who Am I?")
GLORIA / GAYNOR (37A: With 39-Across, "I Am What I Am")
RENÉ DESCARTES (49A: "I think, therefore I am")
POPEYE (55A: "I yam what I yam")
YAHWEH (56A: "I Am that I Am")
Word of the Day: "I Am that I Am" (56A) —
"I Am that I Am" is a common English translation of the Hebrewphrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye; pronounced [ʔehˈje ʔaˈʃer ʔehˈje])– also "I am who I am", "I will become what I choose to become", "I am what I am", "I will be what I will be", "I create what(ever) I create", or "I am the Existing One". The traditional English translation within Judaism favors "I will be what I will be" because the imperfective aspect in Modern Hebrew is normally used for future tense and there is no present tense with direct object of the verb "to be" in the Hebrew language. // אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye) is the first of three responses given to Moses when he asks for God's name in the Book of Exodus. The word אֶהְיֶה (’Ehyeh) is the first person form of hayah, 'to be', and owing to the peculiarities of Hebrew grammar means 'I am', 'I was', and 'I will be'.[3] The meaning of the longer phrase ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh is debated, and might be seen as a promise ('I will be with you') or as statement of incomparability ('I am without equal'). (wikipedia)
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Only two of these five "I (Y)AM" phrases resonated for me at all, so this had no real chance of being a puzzle I'd enjoy much. I guess I can see how there might be something amusing about lining up a bunch of different "I (Y)AM" phrases like this, but for me the solve was slightly awkward, slightly confusing. The first problem was not the puzzle's, but my software's—it can't do italics and so all the theme clues were in quotation marks, which meant *double* quotation marks on every clue (since the clues are all quotations to begin with). But leaving that technical glitch aside, there are a few other problems. The main one, the huge one, the absolutely glaring one, is that GLORIA / GAYNOR is famous for precisely one song, and that song is not "I Am What I Am" but another, much much (much much much ad inf.) more famous "I" song: "I WILL SURVIVE." I lived through the "I WILL SURVIVE" era. That song was, and remains, iconic. It was a juggernaut. It went to No. 1 on the US charts. It won the Grammy for Best Disco Recording in 1980 (the only year that award was given). It's the queen of female empowerment anthems (OK, maybe co-queen with Aretha's version of "R-E-S-P-E-C-T"). So ... "I WILL SURVIVE" has Cartesian, Popeysian levels of fame. Whereas "I Am What I Am" ... doesn't. That song ... peaked at No. 102 (!!!!) on the US Hot 100. In 1983. It did hit No. 3 on the US Dance charts, and No. 13 overall in the UK, but when you line that song up against the likes of "Les Misérables," Descartes, Popeye, and (!) Yahweh ... it falls a *little* short on the recognizability scale. "I WILL SURVIVE" has indeed survived, and to this day it is the only GLORIA / GAYNOR song 99% of the population, including me, can name.* "I Am What I Am," on the other hand, sounds like a confession / apology: "Hey, I'll admit, I'm no 'I WILL SURVIVE,' but I Am What I Am, alright? Give me a break." So even if you thought this theme was cute, you gotta admit, one of these five is not like the others. Jarringly so. Not knowing the JEAN VALJEAN song and being only kinda sorta familiar with that YAHWEH phrase, those are personal blindspots, but that GLORIA / GAYNOR song, that's everyone's blindspot. The singer's name is famous (again, because of that *other* song), so the obscurity of the song in question doesn't affect the puzzle's doability much in the end. But it's weird to have your *central* theme clue be *this* much less famous than all the others (as well as this much less famous than the song that actually made the answer famous in the first place).
Outside the theme, the puzzle feels like it was made in OBAMA's second term, when hashtag TEAMJACOB and PABLO Sandoval were peaking, famewise. To see them here was mildly time-warpy. Original "Twilight" fans (TWIHARDS? Are we still doing that?) are pushing middle-aged now (I kid! You're very young!), and that whole franchise, and particularly the "fan debate" about Jacob v. Edward, feels very much of the past (last book came out in '08, last film in '10). And I love seeing PABLO Sandoval here, actually, but if "two-time All Star" is the only bar you gotta clear for crossword fame, hoo boy have I got some names for you. Let me put this in perspective: Mike Sweeney, Jimmy Key, and Travis Fryman are all *five*-time All-Stars, and unless you really really follow baseball, you don't know who those are. Sandoval was in the league more recently than any of those guys (through last year), but still, his last All-Star appearance was in 2012. Again, I'm not mad at PABLO's being here; open the baseball floodgates, by all means. Just ... be prepared for chaos if a mere two All-Star appearances, neither of them very recent, is the only criterion for crossword inclusion.
Outside of a few of the themers, there were no real trouble spots for me today. Wanted SHEEP and maybe STEED (?) before STEER (35A: Ranch animal). I know LA SALLE more as a University than an explorer, but crosses helped jog my memory (8D: French explorer of the Great Lakes). If you don't know OLY (short for "Olympia") by now, you really should pack it away in your crossword beer cooler (9D: Classic beer of the Pacific Northwest, familiarly). It's not exactly common, but you do see it regularly. All three-letter brands are gonna show up here eventually. Not much else of interest going on in the fill, so I'll stop here. Have a nice day, see you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*correction: Ms. Gaynor also had a big hit in 1974 with her cover of the Jackson 5's 1971 hit "Never Can Say Goodbye." Gaynor's cover hit No. 9 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart. I know the song better in both Jackson and Communards form, but Gaynor's version was legitimately popular.
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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