Constructor: Dana Motley
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: none
Word of the Day: John CABOT (
1A: Contemporary of Columbus) —
John Cabot (known in Italian as Giovanni Caboto; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italian navigator andexplorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the mainland of North America since the Norse Vikings visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland. (wikipedia)
• • •
Whoa ... faster than either Friday or Thursday. Played somewhere between Wed. and Thur. for me. Very frustrating, then, to get to the very end and have to make a blind guess at a letter. I don't know who this
CABOT guy is. Sincerely, never heard of him. Or, I *have* heard of him, and completely forgot about him. One or the other. At any rate, I guessed the "T" in his name because
CABOT is a recognizable name, unlike CABON, the other answer I was entertaining. Only after I finished the puzzle did I see how
TAG = [
Put out, in a way] (baseball). I would be put out of someone kept NAGging me. But that was the only scary moment. Otherwise, I started with
OSSIE (once crosses ruled out GEENA) (
46A: Davis of "Bubba Ho-Tep," 2002), and worked off crosses straight through the whole damned puzzle. No jumping around or rebooting or nothing.
HALTER TOPS off the HA- (
57A: Summer wear for women).
REEBOKS off the -KS (
22D: Alternatives to Filas).
NUT TREE off the -EE (
28D: Almond, for one). Just not Saturday hard. Given the clue,
BETSY ROSS (33D: A 1952 3-cent stamp honored her 200th birthday) was a cinch w/ just a cross or two. Few letters at the end of
LADY GODIVA and she turned right up (
17A: One barely riding?). There are no obscure or even strange words in the whole thing—which I guess is a plus, but somehow it all felt a little boring. Maybe the cluing was what was lacking. Maybe
SPIELER (42D: Pitching ace?) next to
ONE SHARE (37D: Minimal market purchase) and
AMATOL (
45D: Powerful explosive) is just snoozy stuff. Maybe I don't like the idea of more than one KROGER (
38A: Some markets = KROGERS). Dunno. But this didn't do much for me, despite its smoothness and solidity. At 72 words, I expect some zing. With a few exceptions, or w/ slightly different cluing, this puzzle could've been from 30 years ago. Maybe more. Themelesses usually have seed answers—stuff the puzzle gets built around because it's Awesome. I don't know what those would have been today.
Lots of actresses today, only one of which I knew (
13D: Cagney player on TV = GLESS).
ALANA (
14A: Actress De La Garza of "Law & Order") and
BEA (
33A: Lillie with a Tony) were new to me, but easily gettable via crosses.
YMA is common crosswordese, so that was a gimme (
50A: First name among exotica singers), and
MERL is uncommon crosswordese, so ditto (
63A: Keyboardist Saunders). No idea what
Crockett Hotel's neighbor was, but it sounded westerny and I had enough crosses to make
ALAMO the obvious choice. I guess "Rendering" is in the clue
31D: Rendering on Connecticut's state quarter is there because "Tree" would be too easy ... ? But I hardly think it mattered, and "rendering" is ugly (and long) as a clue word. There must be some happy medium between "tree" and "rendering." Improbably, I wanted SATIE at first for
48D: "The Liberty Bell composer" (SOUSA). I *always* want SATIE for a 5-letter composer (esp. starting w/ S). He's reasonably common. So is
SOUSA, it's true, but I'd rather listen to SATIE, so ... SATIE wins, clue wording be damned.
I really like the clue on
MAVERICK (8D: Sarah Palin, self-descriptively), but it's a Wednesday clue—if not outright obvious, certainly obvious after a cross or two. Whole puzzle suffered from this pushover quality. If there were such a thing as a Wednesday themeless, this would be a good example and I would've enjoyed it a reasonable amount.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Read more...
.png)
