Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Adesina O. Koiki

Constructor: Adesina O. Koiki

Relative difficulty: Challenging (NW corner alone put me well over my normal Tuesday time) (I think ... clock wasn't on)

THEME: TENNIS COURT (56A: Playing area usually having one of the surfaces seen at the starts of 16-, 28- and 43-Across) — GRASS, HARD, and CLAY:

Theme answers:

GRASSHOPPER (16A: Insect with powerful hind legs)
HARD KNOCKS (28A: Difficulties in life)
CLAYMATION (43A: Film technique used in old California Raisins ads)

Word of the Day: HATTON Garden (1A: ___ Garden, London district known for diamond trading) —

Hatton Garden is a street and commercial area in the Holborn district of the London Borough of Camden, close to the boundary with the City of London. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who established a mansion here and gained possession of the garden and orchard of Ely Place, the London seat of the Bishops of Ely. It remained in the Hatton family and was built up as a stylish residential development in the reign of King Charles II. [...] Hatton Garden is famous as London's jewellery quarter and the centre of diamond trade in the United Kingdom. This specialisation grew up in the early 19th century, spreading out from its more ancient centre in nearby Clerkenwell. Today there are nearly 300 businesses here in the jewellery industry and over 55 shops, representing the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK.The largest of these businesses was De Beers, the international family of companies which dominated the international diamond trade. Their headquarters were in an office and warehouse complex just behind the main Hatton Garden shopping street. (wikipedia)

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Pretty straightforward stuff here, themewise. I have been in Queens, with today's constructor (at a Mets game), just before he was scheduled to cover the U.S. Open (Adesina is a sportswriter and broadcaster), so it was fun to solve this and finally discover the theme. It felt very ... him. (Sidenote: Adesina makes puzzles regular for the Vox crossword, so you'll want to check those out if you've somehow got time left in your solving schedule) My only issue with the theme is more an issue of colloquial usage, which is to say, players play on clay and they play on grass but you wouldn't say they "play on hard." I would call that third surface "hard court." The "court" just doesn't come off it in common speech the way it comes easily off "grass" and "clay" (which are definable substances, whereas "hard" is some kind of ... polymer ... something? What do I know? Read about it here. The brand name is Laykold. Please don't put that in a puzzle). My only stumble in theme territory came when I tried to make the California Raisins (commercial scourge of my California childhood) STOPMOTION instead of CLAYMATION (which, in my limited defense, is a *form* of "stop-motion" animation). So there you go, all the first words are surfaces, all the surface types are covered, bing bang boom.

The puzzle felt much more like a Wednesday than a Tuesday. I haven't struggled that hard to start a Tuesday puzzle in I don't know how long. 1-Across (HATTON) was totally unknown to me, and uninferrable, and that corner was so large that it was hard to get traction: few short toeholds, and one of those (OUSTS) was completely opaque to me. Should've noted the hyphen in "Red-cards," then maybe I would've realized the clue wanted a verb, and then maybe, Maybe, I would've realized that the verb that the clue wanted was OUSTS (not a word I associate with getting ejected from a soccer match). The bottom of that corner had another short answer I thought I could use to get started, but Jeanette LEE, yeah, no chance there (30A: Jeanette ___, billiards legend nicknamed the Black Widow). I know less about billiards than I do about golf. She seems a fantastic LEE clue, but for later in the week. Unless the general public is way way more billiards-savvy than I am, which is absolutely possible, as it would be hard to be less so. This is all to say that that corner took me as long as a typical Saturday corner. Once I got beyond my billiards and diamond ignorance, things settled down to normal Tuesday levels.

KPS as a plural noun is not great (63A: Mil. mess personnel), and REE is one of those bottom-of-the-barrel answers I never like seeing (as clued) (20A: Riddle-me-___), but the fill seemed quite solid overall. I like that the clues are pointing (pointedly) to Black people and culture this week—makes Black constructor week (which we're in the middle of) something more than just a matter of constructor identity. Because of course the issue with how exclusionary the NYTXW has been (and in so many ways continues to be) is not only, or even primarily, a matter of who's making the puzzles; it's also a matter of who and what is included in the puzzle's cultural worldview. Every crossword is in some small way an assertion about what matters, about who "we" are. You make the puzzle more broadly inclusive not just by putting "new" names (and places and terms and events etc.) in the grid, but by expanding your way of cluing names (and places and terms and events etc.) that have been in the puzzle all along. You could easily clue RIOTS, NEON, ROC, and even BOP in completely different ways and drain the Blackness right out of the puzzle. Happens every day. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. happy Groundhog Day, and happy 80th birthday to my father :)

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