Word of the Day:Robert MUELLER(7D: Robert ___, F.B.I. director from 2001-2013) —
Robert Swan Mueller III (born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer. He served as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). (wikipedia)
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Yes! Finally. A delightful, bouncy, playful, entertaining offering. What it lacked in Saturday-bite it made up for in liveliness and joy. Right off the bat, right along the top of the grid: FOOD COMA and FAT LIP. Alliterating colloquialisms! My first thought at 1A was FOOD BABY but that's only because constructor Finn Vigeland taught me that disturbing term and I now can't get it out of my head every time I think about eating too much. But I decided a BABY probably wouldn't be clued as a "woe," so then COMA went in and when several crosses worked out, I figured I was on to something. FARCE seems a rather high-falutin' (albeit accurate) word for what "Broad City" is (1D: "Broad City," for one), but I do love seeing "Broad City" in the puzzle—especially in semi-symmetrical relation to "BABY MAMA" (61A: 2008 Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy)—different generations of female comedy duos. Good stuff (the "Broad City" comedians, by the way, have Fantastic crossword names: ILANA Glazer and ABBI Jacobson). I normally hate all things poker, but I loved "A(AAAAA)ND I'M OUT" (15A: "That's it ... too rich for me"); somehow the addition of the conjunction makes it feel much more alive—like something coming out of actual people's mouths. The big winner of the day, though, is "I CAN'T EVEN" (13D: "This is too much"), which looks partial but is quite complete and totally captures the "OMG" zeitgeist of the social media world.
PASS A TEST (14D: Prove one's worth) is about one step up from DRIVE A CAR in terms of stand-alone-worthiness, and I can't recall ever seeing a single LINER NOTE (12D: It may be a credit to the band) ... but those answers are propping up I CAN'T EVEN, so I can't (even) stay mad. I had no idea KIBOSH was a stand-alone verb (59A: Put an end to). I have only ever heard "put the KIBOSH on..." something. That was weird. Love the clue on REY'S (46A: "___ Theme," tune from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"), as it takes what is essentially a terrible foreign plural and gives it a new spin. Not that a possessive (clued as a title part) is Fantastic, but it's at least interesting (and contemporary). I have a picture disc of "REY'S Theme" that I got on Record Store Day back in April.
I had BIG DOGS instead of TOP DOGS (40A: Head honchos), primarily because of a t-shirt my sister got me a long time ago that said "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch." It was ridiculous. But memorable.
Word of the Day: ODESA (46A: City south of Kyiv) —
Odessa or Odesa (Ukrainian: Оде́са, [oˈdɛsɐ]; Russian: Оде́сса; IPA: [ɐˈdʲesə]) is the third largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,003,705. The city is a major seaport and transportation hub located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. Odessa is also an administrative center of the Odessa Oblast and a multiethnic major cultural center. [So … just ODESSA … in Russianish … like Kyiv is "Kiev" in Russianish? … ugh]
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This was a jarring mix of great and horrible. Thought the stacks in the NW and SE were mostly wonderful, even though I have no idea what SALT SPRAY is (55A: Product that puts waves in the hair)—I assume it's a thing. A thing I don't use, not least because I don't really have hair—certainly not hair you could put waves in. Elsewhere, though, things get a bit more wobbly. Don't love the 15s. Well, NASAL CONSONANTS is fine—not exciting, but certainly a real thing. "IS IT GOING TO RAIN?", on the other hand, is a question one might ask, but so is "DID YOU LEAVE THE STOVE ON?" or "WHEN IS DINNER?" and I don't think either of those (or most random questions) fly as crossword answers. It's a "green paint" question—i.e. it's something an English-speaking human might say, but it's Not A Thing. Then there's SORRY I'M NOT SORRY, which struck me as the Worst thing in the grid. Just derailed the puzzle for me. The expression … everyone who knows the expression (a fairly recent meme, in fact) knows it thusly: SORRYNOTSORRY. It's a damned hashtag. The formal "I'M" there just makes things ridiculous and odd and strange and weird. When something is so common in the real world as one thing, and then the NYT tries to get in on the act (belatedly) and steps all over it, man, that's irksome. Maybe most NYT solvers live in a world where ubiquitous memes never reach, and where all expressions must be grammatical or else. But the expression is "sorry not sorry." #sorrynotsorry. I ain't even the first sorry for pointing this out.
[WARNING: Profane as f***!]
Then there's the fill, which goes to hell in places. Seriously, constructors, take ALER(S) out of your damned databases. NLER(S) too, while you're at it. And one-S ODESA too. Just … delete it. I'll wait here. . . . OK, good. OYER, painful. ALTE, not much better. Most of the rest of it is tolerable. Certainly adequate. This is promising work, but you can't whiff on two out of three 15s. And your gutter fill, esp. in a themeless, has got to be RARE to non-existent.
[I apologize for party rocking]
Loved MANSPLAIN, and the LUSITANIA / UBOAT cross-reference was pretty cool, if a bit morbid. But I faceplanted pretty badly right out of the gate when, presented with IM-T- at 15A: "You got me" ("I'M AT A LOSS") I went with I'M STUMPED. It fit. It was apt. It was wrong. Luckily I fixed it quick because NASAL CONSONANTS are my jam. First real hold-up came in the SW, where I couldn't make any sense of the divisible leap year clue (icky and forced way to get to the rather non-specific RARE—if we leap year every four years … wait, when do we *not* leap every fourth year? I can't remember ever not leaping on a divisible-by-four year … anyway, RARE seems like an understatement here). Real problems, though, were a. OLSON or OLSEN, and b. TACOS—which was the answer I knew had to be right for 48A: Food items in shells (TARTS). That is a deliberate and Not Very Apt trick clue. Don't TARTS have crusts? Do you ever call them "shells" w/o "pie" preceding? Blech. This was the issue I was having with the puzzle—it was just queasily off in places, both fill-wise and cluing-wise, so that many answers don't *land*. They just kind of … shuffle in and shrug at you.
As you can see in that screen grab, my brain could not accept ALERS (as all healthy brains cannot), so I had TEAMS in there. You can also see where I had AMID at 45A: About before PROTEAN forced the change. After I pushed through there, though, it was pretty much just a diagonal shot across the grid from SW to NE…
And then ran the terrible SORRY *I'M* [ugh] NOT SORRY down into the SE for the big finish.
The takeaway: know your memes, and get the phrasing right. Also, ALER and NLER got TO GO. Far away. To ODESA if need be.
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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