THEME: "Power Ballads" — clues are all [some superhero's favorite band/singer] and then there's some apt jokey answer. Final themer imagines them all together for a SUPERGROUP (114A: What the musical artists in this upzzle would form if they performed together?) (because they're super ... heroes ... YA DIG?)
Theme answers:
BILLY OCEAN (23A: Aquaman's favorite singer?)
ARCADE FIRE (25A: The Human Torch's favorite band?)
GREEN DAY (35A: The Hulk's favorite band?)
COLDPLAY (44A: Iceman's favorite band?)
TAYLOR SWIFT (55A: The Flash's favorite singer?)
METALLICA (68A: Magneto's favorite band?)
THE SPINNERS (78A: Spider-Man's favorite band?)
LIL WAYNE (89A: Batman's favorite rapper?)
MC HAMMER (99A: Thor's favorite rapper?)
FRANK ZAPPA (112A: Electro's favorite singer?)
Word of the Day: ELTON Brand (49D: ___ Brand, two-time N.B.A. All-Star) —
I was in Ithaca tonight seeing Maria Bamford, so I did not see the Sunday puzzle when it first came out. Early tweets about it suggested it wasn't the greatest, so I was not looking forward to getting home late and having to solve Yet Another tedious Sunday. But honestly, this one seems far less tedious than average, esp. of late. I mean, it was very easy, and conceptually simple, but it worked. It wasn't inconsistent. It had a solid final answer / punchline (I wouldn't really call it a "revealer"). My only real issue with the theme was: who the hell is Iceman? All the other heroes are pretty famous. Half of them are downright iconic. But I teach a course on Comics and don't even know what an "Iceman" is. Oh, I see he is in fact one of the original X-Men. If I cared about / paid attention to Marvel more, I'd surely know that. Anyway, my not knowing Iceman hardly affected my pleasure—I just accepted that Iceman existed and COLDPLAY was obvious, and on I went. The fill in this one was pretty good, especially for a theme this dense. SAN FRAN! (38D: City by the Bay, informally) That clue on ALLEGEDLY! (3D: [legally covering our butts here]). I dunno ... it felt about what I wish an average Sunday puzzle were—a pleasant, living-in-this-century, competently-executed diversion.
Here were my main trouble spots (they weren't that troubling, for the record):
When I started, I couldn't get TSA (1A: Agcy. for Kennedy and Reagan) or TABS (1D: Things the police may keep on suspects), and thought "uh oh, this isn't promising." Kennedy and Reagan are airports! Who knew? I mean, I knew ... but I didn't know when first reading this clue ... you get the idea. Later clues were not so befuddling. I just wrote in PREGNANT at 28A: With child, informally, neglecting the "informally." I find the word PREGGERS off-puttingly cutesy, so my brain will do anything to keep me from having to deal with it, including causing me to misread clues. Anyway, PREGNANT caused SEDATE instead of SERENE (10D: Untroubled), so that took a little time undoing. But NAY / "YA DIG?" was by far the toughest and most baffling, both because the clue on NAY was inscrutable (93A: Not only that but also) and because "YA" is not a "word" I am used to "spelling." I hear "Feel me?" in other people's conversations, but "YA DIG?" less so. Anyway, I had to get that section right down to the last letter before I finally threw in the "Y." I had RECALIBRATE for RECALCULATE (67D: What 14-Across will do if you miss a turn) and despite years of practicing yoga I totally blanked on TREE pose. Whoops (109D: What the upright yoga pose vrikshasana simulates).
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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