Word of the Day: PEZIZA (43D: Cup-shaped forest fungus) —
Peziza is a large genus of saprophytic cup fungi that grow on the ground, rotting wood, or dung. Most members of this genus are of unknown edibility and are difficult to identify as separate species without use of microscopy. The polyphyletic genus has been estimated to contain over 100 species.
Peziza may come from the term for foot in Romance languages, perhaps in reference to their general lack of a stalk. (wikipedia)
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This is pretty bad. I mean, as a themeless, it's adequate, but it's kind of inexcusable that anyone thinks making a themeless puzzle into a PANGRAM is an accomplishment. It's a non-issue. It's like bragging that your Sunday-sized puzzle is a PANGRAM? Not hard, no one cares. The problem with PANGRAMS (61A: They use every letter FROM A TO Z) comes when you force them on a puzzle that already has a theme. Themes exert pressure on grids. PANGRAMS add extra, unnecessary, stupid pressure. But in a themeless—do whatever the hell you want, who cares? Why would you highlight a non-accomplishment like this. If anything, once again, we see how perverse fascination with high-value Scrabble tiles (for their own SAKES) leads to junk fill that, in another iteration of the grid, would be non-existent. ODA ACED IT DERATE LOM ITASCA PEEDEE (ugh) LLD MIL INASEC MIR ANON. An excellent themeless has a suboptimal list about half that long. As I said, the puzzle's adequate—I've seen worse. But honestly, it's on the low end for themelesses. There are constructors out there who combine artistry and database management to produce some pretty great work. This doesn't compare.
Once again, I had very good luck with a wrong answer, right off the bat:
Actually, I'm not sure if that was good or bad luck, since MIL did nothing for me except convince me that ANEMIC was right for a while. The only way I broke that NW corner open was by getting MOB and ANON correct and then somehow, after several passes, figuring out that the "quaint" in 17A: Quaint raid targets must refer to ICEBOXES. NW was not hard after that breakthrough. Managed to get up into and around the NE pretty easily, but couldn't bring the puzzle down the west coast. Here's why:
See that. I fell into the trap I probably was supposed to fall into, imagining that 8D: Spiced up, say required a past-tense, -ED ending. So though I was deeply unhappy with ZESTIED (!?), it seemed like a "word" that this particular puzzle would have, so I stuck with it. Luckily, I was able to get into that SW corner from the back end of most southern Acrosses—not always doable, but, thankfully, doable today. DANTE and ACED IT were gimmes, and I went from there up the west and finished with the "P" in VAPOR / PEC.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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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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