THEME: Stuff of People — familiar phrases following a "___ OF ___" pattern are clued as if the word following "OF" were someone's first name. Thus:
WORK OF ART = 18A: Man's labor?
CRACK OF DAWN = 23A: Woman's flippant remark?
ARTICLES OF FAITH = 37A: Woman's journalism?
BUNDLE OF JOY = 53A: Woman's package? (?!) [if you discovered the woman you picked up had a "package," I doubt you'd think of it as a "BUNDLE OF JOY" ...]
BOARD OF ED = 59A: Man's plank?
Word of the Day: TINO Wallenda (41D: One of the flying Wallendas) —
The Flying Wallendas is the name of a circus act and daredevil stunt performers, most known for performing highwire acts without a safety net. They were first known as The Great Wallendas, but the current name was coined by the press in the 40s and has stayed since. The name in their native German, "Die fliegenden Wallenda", is an obvious rhyme on the title of the Wagner opera, "Der fliegende Holländer" ("The Flying Dutchman"). [...] Tino Wallenda, Karl's grandson, started on the high wire at age seven. He is the family patriarch of the Flying Wallendas and is still performing (2008) the Seven-Man Pyramid with his daughters and son, his brother-in-law Sascha Pavlata, son-in-law Robinson Cortes and family friend Jade Kindar-Martin. (wikipedia)
• • •
Not much to say here. Fine and forgettable. This felt much easier (both in terms of content and cluing) than most Wednesdays. Didn't set any record times, but was a good minute faster than last week. All the clues felt exceedingly straightforward. The only things that threw me were [Spiral shape] (I had CURL not COIL); [Like some amusement park passes] (I had ALL-AGE not ALL-DAY); [Conk] (I had BEAT not BEAN); and the Wallenda clue (like I know all the damned Wallendas, come on—my TINO started out as a TINA). The best part of this grid is clearly IN A JIFFY (40D: Right away), though I also like EX-WIFE (6D: Splitsville resident)—something about the odd "XW" combo (also, great clue). Honestly, I can't think of a damned thing to say about this puzzle that I haven't already said, so maybe some bullets, and then goodnight.
Bullets:
15A: Added, in commercialese (XTRA) — "commercialese" is not a word I've seen much, if at all. Wonder if it would fly as an answer in its own right.
34D: 1974 John Wayne film ("MCQ") — would never have known this movie existed were it not for crosswords. Other grid regulars include RUHR, INCA, GTO, LUAU, and HEDY Lamarr.
45D: The Clash's "Rock the ___" ("CASBAH") — That's Monday-easy for me. You just handed me all those delicious first letters in the SW corner. Too easy to tear through a puzzle that's so generous with its cluing.
46D: American Leaguer since 1954 (ORIOLE) — mildly interesting, in that the clue sort of appears to want a specific human being, but the answer is instead a team mascot. [On second thought, as someone pointed out in Comments, that "specific human being" would have to be very, very old for a Major League ballplayer... maybe this hypothetical "human being" was a ballplayer who went directly on to coach and manage ... in the American League ... and is now roughly 80 ... ?]
THEME: AT SEA (71A: Clueless ... or where the answers to this puzzle's starred clues were all first used)
Word of the Day: LEND-LEASE (8D: War aid program passed by Congress in 1941) — Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11)[1] was the name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945 in return for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British West Indies. It began in March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the war in September 1939. It was called An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States. This act also ended the pretense of the neutrality of the United States. Hitler recognized this and consequently had his submarines attack US ships such as the SS Robin Moor, an unarmed merchant steamship destroyed by a German U-boat on 21 May, 1941 outside of the war zone. (wikipedia)
-----
This was a fun puzzle to solve, but as I was solving, I had no idea what the longer phrases had to do with one another. They sounded kinda slangy, but their connection seemed tenuous. Then (as if by design ...) I hit the final Across clue at the very end of my solve, and all became clear. "Huh ... interesting." The concept seems a bit straightforward, since there's no wordplay and nothing binding the phrases except the very general fact of their nautical origins, BUT ... I do love repurposed crosswordese, and this has to be the best use to which AT SEA has ever been put in a crossword puzzle. Further, the idiomatic theme phrases are all colorful, and there are crammed CHOCKABLOCK inside the grid, so high marks for construction prowess. The non-theme fill is kind of dire, but the fine execution of the theme mostly makes up for this.
39A: *Junk (deep-six) — I always get this phrase confused with "eighty-six," which also means to "junk" or "scrap" something (originally, unwanted clientele at Chumley's bar in N.Y. — oh no, that's wrong. Dang. Leave it to World Wide Words to shed a light on the origins of idiomatic expressions: see note on "eighty-six" here).
25D: *Jammed (chock-a-block)
61A: *Inviolable, as rules (hard and fast)
Same basic grid shape as yesterday — or rather, same theme answer placement, with each theme answer relegated to a corner with an extra theme answers stuck in the middle, only this time that middle answer has long answers running through it connecting it to other theme answers. So it's actually a somewhat more restrictive grid than yesterday's, and that shows in the non-theme fill, which is decidedly sub-Gamache. Leaving aside crosswordese, there's a lot of suboptimal stuff:
ALKA
EPI
CPI
NONONO (OK, it's fun to say, but it's not much of an answer)
IFAT (I think I said this after finishing off daughter's birthday cake this past weekend)
XII
TADAS (really? More than one?)
TSA
AAH
ARTHRO
AWEE
One thing I will say about NONONO and AAH — they make for interesting parts of the puzzle's lone sex scene: "NO NO NO, HARD AND FAST! AAH ... OH YES." I would add that HARDANDFAST, AAH, and OH YES are interpenetrating, but that would be overkill.
Bullets:
1A: Moth-repellent closet material (cedar) — tripped on this, since I was looking for the material that moth balls are made of, and not the material that the closet itself is made of.
6A: Osprey's claw (talon) — lots of raptors up near the woods where we walk every day. Doubt there are ospreys, though, since they are sea hawks and we are quite far from the sea. Mostly we get ... land hawks. And owls.
38A: Sleuth, slangily (tec) — no one really says this. It should be put in the moth-repellent closet.
56A: Three-stripers (sgts.) — a fine abbrev., but part of the worst section of this grid: the far east. VIENNA is By Far the prettiest thing over there (50A: _____ Boys' Choir).
4D: Marketers' "language" (adspeak) — I like this a lot. I'm working my way through season 1 of "Mad Men," all about the advertising industry in 1960. Great stuff.
13D: Roster at the Oscars (stars) — "roster?" I had SLATE.
22D: Collette of "The Sixth Sense" (Toni) — speaking of the Oscars ... I mean the Emmys, TONI Collette just won one for "The United States of Tara," which hardly anyone has seen 'cause it's on "Showtime." The fact that TONI Collette is a great actress only somewhat mitigates my anger at the failure of the Emmy voters to give the award to Ms. Applegate of the unjustly canceled "Samantha Who?"
24D: Big chipmaker (Intel) — computer chips, not tortilla chips.
47D: Healthful claim on labels (less fat) — lots of trouble interpreting this one quickly, for some reason. Plural "labels" might have been part of it, but I think overall density on my part was the bigger factor. I wanted LESSONS (!?).
54D: Any Beatles tune, now (oldie) — I was thinking something like the Opposite of this word, given that no band has been more in-the-news of late, what with the remastering and rerelease of their entire catalogue (an instant sell-out), and the release of The Beatles: Rock Band across multiple gaming platforms. [Any Dave Clark Five tune, now] would have felt more solid, though the given clue is true enough.
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!")
.png)
