Relative difficulty: Challenging (well, for me, because I use AcrossLite, so there was a "Note" with mine, and I never ever read "Notes" because I think it's cheating, but this one (which I read after finishing) was like "certain visual elements could not be reproduced blah blah blah" so ugh—they should stop offering the puzzle in AcrossLite format if this is gonna keep happening ... anyway, I don't know what "visual elements" you all had, but I did not have them) (11-something minutes!?!?)
THEME: IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY (28D: Indirectly ... or how some of this puzzle's answers should be entered?) — the middle of the grid is supposed to be a traffic (?) "roundabout" ... so answers enter it and then kinda go around and then head out in a different direction, at a ninety degree angle to where they entered:
Theme answers:
RALLYING CRY (14D: *"Vive la France!" or "Free Tibet!")
POWER OUTAGE (37A: *Reason for resetting a digital clock)
I NEED A BREAK (46D: *"Whew, that's enough for now!")
SPROUT WINGS (33A: *Become angelic, figuratively)
Word of the Day: BRACERO (54A: Seasonal migrant worker from Mexico) —
noun
a Mexican laborer allowed into the US for a limited time as a seasonal agricultural worker. (google)
• • •
Holy cow, you all got arrows and circles and *&%$!????
Wow. Must've been nice. Solving without it was a nightmare. Even when I was done, I didn't know exactly what was going on. I thought the black square in the center (which you'll see, in my grid, is an actual black square—no circle) was where the connecting "roundabout" letters disappeared ... but then eventually I noticed that no, they're right there in the corners (?) of the so-called roundabout, which, honestly, makes the whole thing even *less* like an actual roundabout somehow. The Whole Point of a roundabout is smooth, rounded transitions—no sharp angles. A crossword grid is perhaps the worst possible medium for representing a roundabout. The idea that you enter and then do three quick 90-degree jogs—absurd. I have to say, though, that the arrows on the grid from the app are very stupid and have nothing to do with a roundabout. They are extra, confusing information. I see that they indicate the direction in which the "theme" answer is headed, but still ... those arrows have no traffic meaning, and so ... well, you tell me, but they seem confusing rather than elucidating. Great ambition here, but it just doesn't work as well as it thinks it does.
If I've seen BRACERO before, I totally forgot it, and that was a rough answer to forget, because TYE (?) was a total unknown (51A: Actor Sheridan of "X-Men: Apocalypse"), and so I had to work that area right down to NYC in order to make any sense of it. Also hard: ANITA Hand. Also hard: SALADS, which ... I guess I eat some pretty substantial salads, because the clue was not at all resonant for me (42D: Some light bites). I had NOSHES (and NAPA Valley instead of SIMI). LACKWIT made me laugh (23D: Blockhead). Do you all have that word? And by "you all" I mean "you people who don't teach Early English Literature for a living." Actually, I'm not sure I've ever seen the word in the stuff I teach. It just sounds very 17th/18th-century to me. Sounds like a character in an allegory, like a morality play or Pilgrim's Progress or something. ABREEZE also kneed me pretty hard. Not looking for that indefinite article, no siree. And TEA LADY ... I'll just take your word for it that that is a thing. Thought maybe TEA LAD(LE) and ... the puzzle was some kind of rebus? Dunno. OOLITES was also a mystery but the egg thing made "OO" gettable.
NATASHA Lyonne solves crosswords so she'll undoubtedly be delighted to see her name here (60A: Actress Lyonne of "Orange Is the New Black"). LYONNE seems like it could be useful fill as well.
THEME: ANIMAL / CRACKERS (54A: With 56-Across, lunchbox snacks ... or a hint to the black squares before 18-, 29-, 35- and 45-Across) — those black squares "crack" (?) (as in "break into two pieces) the names of different animals. So:
Theme answers:
MCGREGOR ILL ASK
PERSIMMON KEYED
IN A DAZE BRANAGH
STELE PHANTASMS
Word of the Day: STELE (42A: Engraved pillar) —
A stele (/ˈstiːli/, STEE-lee) is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument. Grave steles were often used for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae as slabs of stone would also be used as ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines. // The surface of the stele usually has text, ornamentation, or both. The ornamentation may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted. (wikipedia)
• • •
Weird. I was taking my time with this one, waiting for the gimmick to present itself, but it never did, and meanwhile I was writing in answers as soon as I looked at clues, zip zing. Couldn't figure out what the hell was going on? Why is my Thursday puzzle so weirdly easy?, I wondered. I finished in the high 3s—very fast for a Thursday ... and then remembered that tomorrow is Wednesday, not Thursday. Thaaaaaat ... actually makes sense now. This theme is essentially invisible, and having the revealer reference the "black squares" actually makes the whole endeavor kind of awkward. Further, those black squares don't "crack" the animals—they *break* them in two. If I crack a plate, it isn't in two pieces. I finished never having seen the damned animals, and then when the revealer told me, "Hey, look!", I looked and didn't care. Those sure are animals. *Broken* animals. Thanks for putting STELE in my grid. Hope you're satisfied.
Weird to have rows 2 and 14 not be themed when their adjacent rows (with identical white/black square patterns) are. AJOKE is a pretty bad partial. I don't really believe SMAZE exists in real life—I have only ever seen it in crosswords (and I spent a good chunk of my young adulthood in southern California). I had NO-GO ZONE instead of AREA at first, despite the fact that the clue has "zone" in it (that's how much better NO-GO ZONE is as an answer) (3D: Forbidden zone). Just watched "Clueless" last week, so STACEY Dash was cake (would've been cake even without the rewatching, to be honest; I know that movie really well). PALSY-walsy is an absurdity, both because people rarely say it in the 21st century, and because the clue word has 80% of the same letters (in the same places) as the answer word. "I HOPE NOT" and "OH COME ON!" are pretty lively answers. But they weren't enough. From a real-time solving standpoint, this was essentially a dull themeless.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. about those successive [Cars are "parked" in it] [Cars are parked in it] clues (49A, 50A). That is very cute, except, *again* from a real-time solving standpoint, the cuteness is not visible—unless you are either a neophyte or a psychopath and solve your crosswords by reading the Across clues in order (?). Successive *Down* clues have a much higher chance of actually being read successively, because successive *Down* clues will often be in the same general section, whereas successive Acrosses *never* are.
THEME: DOUBLE TAKE (60A: Surprised reaction ... or a hint to what can preced both halves of the answers to the starred clues) — two-word themers where both parts can follow "take" in familiar phrases:
Theme answers:
HEART SHAPE (17A: *Valentine outline)
COVER CHARGE (24A: *Cost to enter a bar, maybe)
DOWN HOME (32A: *Folksy)
BACK AWAY ( 40A: *What to do when coming face to face with a bear)
AFTER EFFECT (47A: *Delayed consequence)
Word of the Day:SUNDOG(43A: Partial rainbow near the horizon) —
Sun dogs (or sundogs), mock suns or phantom suns, meteorological name parhelia (singular parhelion), are an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a pair of bright spots on either horizontal side on the Sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring known as a 22° halo. // Sun dogs are a member of a large family of halos, created by light interacting with ice crystals in the atmosphere. Sun dogs typically appear as two subtly colored patches of light to the left and right of the Sun, approximately 22° distant and at the same elevation above the horizon as the Sun. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sun dogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the Sun is close to the horizon. (wikipedia)
• • •
One of my New Year's wishes is no more of this theme type (which we've seen recently—I expressed similar sentiments then). The word-that-can-precede/follow-both-parts type theme is hoary and results in bland-at-best, forced-and-weird-at-worst answers. The revealer is like a solution to a riddle you didn't really care about in the first place. A bajillion things can follow "take" in a familiar phrase: action, advantage, advice ... you can see I'm still pretty early in the alphabet here. There's just a bland, so-what quality to the whole endeavor that's not really worthy of NYT-caliber puzzles. The puzzle also just plays old, in general, with its LICK for [Spank] (?) and its ALINEs and EGADs and IRMAs and OGDEN NASHes. It's a phoned-in puzzle from 30 years ago, with SUPERMOM and SUNDOG its only, uh, bright spots. Not AOKAY. About as AOKAY as that spelling of AOKAY. ISAO AOKAY, OK? No. Not OK.
The thing about STEPS (54D: Staircase parts) is you can *take* them, so the puzzle is essentially flaunting the fact that the whole Take ___ concept is astonishingly loose. AMARE is really bad fill, esp. for a Tuesday (7D: Verb that's conjugated "amo, amas, amat ..."). Kind of inexcusable. I mean, AMO AMAS AMAT is time-honored garbage that I expect to see, but the Latin infinitive? AMAR'E STOUDEMIRE was a six-time NBA All-Star. I'll take him, if I have to take that answer at all, which, again, I shouldn't have to, on a Tuesday. What happened to the "K" in SMART ALEC(K) (3D: Know-it-all)? Either spelling appears to be legit, but crosswords really flog ALECK as a stand-alone, so I've grown accustomed to its face. ALEC, of course, can be and usually is clued as a man's name when it stands alone. No one ever named their kid ALECK (apologies to the few of you whose parents did, in fact, do that). Isn't an AFTER EFFECT just ... an effect? Don't effects, by definition, come "after." Had some trouble getting into that SW corner precisely because I couldn't imagine what could come before EFFECT at 47A. I have no idea who RHYS Ifans is, but if he's famous enough to be in crosswords, I'm slightly stunned we haven't seen IFANS before (67A: Actor Ifans of "The Amazing Spider-Man"). iMac, iPad, iPod, iPhone ... IFANS! It'll fit right in.
The HALF GONE clue seems both cruel and weird (38D: Suffering from senility, say). Maybe I'm just not into slangy terms for people suffering with dementia and other age-related brain problems. I've not heard the term used the way the clue indicates. I'm honestly not sure I've heard the term at all, except possibly related to drunkenness.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
PS this guy's debut puzzle a couple years back had a quote theme. The quote was by ... OGDEN NASH.
THEME: DRY MARTINI (49A: Cocktail made by combining the ends of 17-, 26- and 38-Across) — theme answers end in GIN, VERMOUTH, and ICE ... there's also a tacked-on answer that's supposed to be a martini-related pun: OLIVER TWIST (60A: Dickens classic ... and, phonetically, two garnishes for a 49-Across)
Theme answers:
EXTRA VIRGIN (17A: Like some top-quality kitchen oil)
RIVER MOUTH (26A: Delta locale)
DIAPER SERVICE (38A: Exchange program for preschoolers?)
Word of the Day:Joe ORTON(29A: "Loot" playwright Joe) —
John Kingsley "Joe" Orton (1 January 1933 – 9
August 1967) was an English playwright and author. His public career was
short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years
later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused
audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is sometimes used to refer to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. (wikipedia)
• • •
I drink martinis from time to time, so I like the way this puzzle thinks. I just ... don't like the way this puzzle executes. At all. First of all, there is nothing, nada, zero about this particular set of ingredients (GIN, VERMOUTH, ICE) that makes a *DRY* MARTINI. It's just a martini. Those are the basic ingredients of a martini. A martini martini. There is nothing—I repeat, Nothing—"DRY" about the martini recipe hidden at the ends of the theme answers. "DRY"ness has to do with the amount of vermouth. The less vermouth, the more "DRY" (you use "dry" vermouth, but more vermouth actually means a wetter martini ...) But, again, without ratios to guide us, who knows what kind of martini we're dealing with? So the whole puzzle is a lie, or at least a misrepresentation. It's important to get these things straight. Your ingredients say martini, your revealer says a specific kind of martini. Boo. Second, that OLIVER TWIST pun, yikes. Tacked-on and groan-worthy. Also, it's clued Terribly. "Olive or twist?" is a question, not "two garnishes." The "or" makes the clue flat-out wrong. "Olive or twist" is, grammatically, one garnish. "I can't decide if an olive or twist works best in this drink." See, singular. Then there's the ICE answer. I mean ... All the gin in the world won't make the taste of diaper go away. Was there no other ICE-ending answer? A diaper-free one? (A: there were, and are, millions).
The fill has its moments—the one I liked best was the POP MUSIC / AUTOTUNE juxtaposition. Nice. Apt. Other places, not so great. I was grimacing and kind of listing to one side as I worked through the IEVER / NAE / READE section down there. Nothing says "I give up" quite like that clue on PART V (7D: Fifth installment of a miniseries). And when's the last time anyone drank Sanka, let alone multiple SANKAS (!?!)? A couple answers stunned me, though not in bad ways. I would not have thought MORAINES a common enough word to be in a Wednesday puzzle (23D: Deposits of glacial debris). Can't remember why I know it. Maybe some scary documentary about the impending end of the planet due to ice melt-off? I was also surprised to see AMA, as clued (59A: Online Q&A session). Are there AMAs outside of Reddit? And what does it even stand for? Ask ... Me ... Another? Hang on, I'll look it up... ah, it's Ask Me Anything, and the internet is telling me it's basically *exclusive* to Reddit, so ugh to that. I mean ugh to "online" when you mean "Reddit and only Reddit." "Online" does not equal Reddit, though Reddit is a subset of "Online." This is basically my point about martini / DRY MARTINI, by the way.
Hi!!!! I had to miss the last couple puzzles because I was sick, then busy, finals were kicking my REARMS...okay that doesn't really work, especially since it's supposed to be "re-arms"... but anyway, as I'm sure you've already figured out by the mention of finals and the number of exclamation points that have been used so far, it's finally another Annabel Monday!
Constructor: Herre Schouwerwou
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: "PFFT" — Theme answers are two words, each beginning with the letters P_____F_____.
Theme answers:
PINK FLOYD (3D: "The Wall" rock band)
PARTY FAVORS (18A: Gifts for guests)
PILLOW FIGHTS (27A: Friendly scuffles at sleepovers)
PETIT FOUR (35D: Small frosted cake)
POUND FOOLISH (48A: Not good with large sums of money, in a saying)
POPPIN' FRESH (62A: Real name of the Pillsbury Doughboy)
Word of the Day: SADA (43A: Actress Thompson of TV's "Family") —
Renowned and highly respected actress Sada Thompson has earned
critical acclaim both on stage and TV for her noble, strong-minded
matrons, but her more challenging and compelling work has come when her
characters have displayed darker, more neurotic tones.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, she was the eldest of three children of
magazine editor Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss Gibson.
After a family move to New Jersey, Sada developed an interest in acting,
performing in school plays. She subsequently studied drama at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology.
(IMDB)
• • •
What a fun puzzle to come back to! It had tons of the things I love to see in Monday puzzles: hints that the puzzler had something in particular on his mind (poker and poetry - ANTE and I FOLD for the former, EPOS and OCTET for the latter), good music (PINK FLOYD), even Down clues that were part of the theme so the Down-only solvers get to see the theme too. I always worry that they'll feel like they're not in on the fun on all those Mondays where there's no Down theme clues. I also worry about them all those Saturdays and Sundays where the theme makes it so some of the Down answers are nonsense words. I just think about Down-only solvers a lot. How are you guys doing? Everything okay? Do you want some cinnamon rolls?
Anyway, like I was saying, this was a good puzzle! Some of the clues were a little lackluster; I felt like ONUS is wasted if you're going to refer to it as ON US rather than a single word, and that analogy clue for EWE was kinda boring. (Also, there are better SETHs than MacFarlane, but that's a whole 'nother rant about how all his shows are identical unfunny Simpsons rip-offs and--oops, see, don't get me started OAR you'll have to read paragraphs and paragraphs of this.) It would also be cool if there was something that tied the theme together, but since it was such a casual theme, I think it's okay the way it is. And the fill was definitely good for a Monday.
Also, seriously, I keep thinking about POPPIN' FRESH. Who knew the Pillsbury Doughboy had a name? And what kind of a name is POPPIN' FRESH? How'd he get it? Does he have a nickname? Maybe he introduces himself like this: "Yeah, my name's Poppin', but my friends call me Pops or P-Fresh."
...Okay, maybe I shouldn't look that much into it.
Bullets:
SNOOT (32A: Hoity-toity sort) — I couldn't stop giggling whenever I looked at this one, because it reminded me of "I'm gonna give you a boop on the snoot!"- AKA, I'm gonna poke you on the nose. It's really cute.
PSIS (27D: Letters between chis and omegas) — OK, so the reason I immediately knew this one was not because of my immense knowledge of the Greek language, but because of how geeky I get about EarthBound. It's a pretty-well-known RPG for the SNES from the 90s, and it's really cute. Anyway, in the game you can use these PSI abilities, which are psychic or something, and here's a video of the cool sounds they make. (Warning for flashing lights!!)
ICY (38A: Dangerous, as winter sidewalks) — Sigh...I wish it was ICY! We had a 70-degree Christmas here in Maryland, which means I totally have not gotten to go sledding or anything so far this year. Fingers crossed for tons of ice and snow once I get back to Boston.
SPINAL (15A: Backbone-related) — The clue might as well have been ______ Tap, because that was all I could see once I looked at the puzzle.
THEME: [Pickup line?] — same clue for all themers …
Theme answers:
17A: "NEED A LIFT?"
24A: "CLEAN YOUR ROOM!"
39A: F-SERIES
52A: "SO WHERE WERE WE …?"
63A: "IT'S FOR YOU"
Word of the Day: IRENE RYAN (35D: Granny player on "The Beverly Hillbillies") —
Irene Ryan (October 17, 1902 – April 26, 1973) was an American actress, one of the few entertainers who found success in vaudeville, radio, film, television and Broadway.
[Note: a version of this theme has been done before, with two of the same theme answers, back on Aug. 22, 2007, by Patrick Blindauer. Check out my (now-vintage) write-up.]
This works pretty well. It's a bit of a victim of poor timing, from my perspective, because there was a phenomenal "line"-related puzzle in the Indie 500 tournament in D.C. on Saturday—but that's an unfair comparison, on several levels. This one is, in most ways, different from that way, and this isn't meant to be a marquee puzzle; it's a mid-week puzzle, and it's doing its job just fine. The core concept works. All of the lines seem like actual lines, not forced or roll-your-own type dealies that you often see when a concept is stretched to its limits. Ironically, or aptly, or both, or neither, the one answer that isn't a (spoken) line is the one that I liked the best—the one that I struggled with, and that (pleasantly) surprised me: F-SERIES. Sometimes, inconsistency works. It's the shortest, it sits in the center with no symmetrical counterpart, and it's like "screw all y'all, i'ma do what I wanna do." I like its attitude. You be you, F-SERIES!
Fill is not great today, but it's up from yesterday, so I'm gonna keep comments to myself on that front, for once. I think of BEEFCAKE as a general category. I do not think of male models as individual cakes of beef (3D: Hunky guys). Speaking of oddly individual thing, we saw an individually (plastic-)wrapped pickle at a Sheetz yesterday. Speaking of SHEETZ, I wish it (they?) were less regional (I've only ever seen them in PA and MD). It would make a nifty crossword answer. (Sheetz is a gas station / food store chain, for those who aren't familiar.) … SO WHERE WERE WE? Ah yes, BEEFCAKES. Also, ENDALLS. That is not a plural I believe in.
Bullets:
59D: State made up of two state postal abbreviations (COMA) — I love this clue, but it felt Friday/Saturday tough. That "state" meaning switch, mid-clue, is hard / impossible to see.
13D: Manhole emanation (STEAM) — for reasons I'm not sure I can articulate, I'm finding the clue [Manhole emanation] … disturbing. Upsetting, even. I have to stop thinking about it now.
14A: Israeli conductor Daniel ___ (OREN) — Whoa. That's new to me. Terrible fill, but interesting trivia. I tried and tried to get BARENBOIM to fit.
THEME: Famous people (or, once, a fictional character) + other word (except in the case of HERR KERR, where the pattern's reversed for some reason) = wacky phrase that sounds like actual phrase. Oh, and they all rhyme with "air" (again, HERR KERR seems like an outlier here, but I guess "KERR" = "CARE," which I would never have guessed). Looks like all the (alleged) "-air" sounds are spelled differently. Was that the goal? — I don't really know if that's an accurate description, but it's the best I got.
Theme answers:
POEHLER BARE (polar bear)
CHER WEAR (shareware)
BELLE HEIR (Bel Air)
HERR KERR (hair care) (??)
THOREAU FAIR (thoroughfare)
Word of the Day: NON-METAL (41D: Any of about 18 elements on the periodic table) —
In chemistry, a nonmetal (or non-metal) is a chemical element that mostly lacks metallic attributes. Physically, nonmetals tend to be highly volatile (easily vaporised), have low elasticity, and are good insulators of heat and electricity; chemically, they tend to have high ionization energy and electronegativity values, and gain or share electrons when they react with other elements or compounds. Seventeen elements are generally classified as nonmetals; most are gases (hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, chlorine, argon, krypton, xenon and radon); one is a liquid (bromine); and a few are solids (carbon, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and iodine). (wikipedia)
• • •
No time for a full write-up today.
This was a weird one. I found it hard, despite the fact that when I look over the grid now, there's nothing hard-seeming about it, except that theme, which is bizarre. FREAKY, even. Fill is pretty clean, which, as you know, I like. But the theme … it doesn't hold together well at all. I like its wacky spirit, but despite the "-air" rhyme thing, it's got virtually nothing holding it together. The people involved aren't even all people. The non-people words are all different parts of speech, and one of them comes first (HERR KERR), where every other time they come second. People don't have anything in common besides being reasonably well known (again, for the third time, HERR KERR is an outlier—I had no idea what that guy's name was. I think he's from a generation before mine. I couldn't tell you his first name. All I want to say is "Jerome" … it's "Graham"). Grid is strangely built, with giant corners and ultra-choppy middle. No harm done there, as those big corners are cleanly filled. They did add some difficulty to the solve.
So the theme is very loose and inconsistent. It is also responsible for most of the difficulty (big corners and tough cluing responsible for rest—lots of one-worders and vagueness). If theme had made more sense, I would've enjoyed this one.
THEME: Quote by Ogden Nash, with punctuation included:
Theme answers:
"I COULD HAVE / LOVED NEW YORK / HAD I NOT LOVED / BALTI-MORE"
Word of the Day: DORY (41A: Flat-bottomed boat) —
The dory is a small, shallow-draftboat, about 5 to 7 metres or 16 to 23 feet long. It is usually a lightweight boat with high sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows. They are easy to build because of their simple lines. For centuries, dories have been used as traditional fishing boats, both in coastal waters and in the open sea. Variant spellings are doree and dori. (wikipedia) [note to constructors: please immediately forget that you ever saw those variant spellings, thank you]
• • •
THURSDAY'S PUZZLE — Needs More John Waters
Here's the thing about quote puzzles—the quote amuses you or it doesn't. That's pretty much that. There's nothing to think about or plan, from the constructor's end. Sure, you have to worry about layout, but here the constructor cleverly / cheatingly (depending on your point of view) fudges things to get the layout to work, so with that settled … yeah, you either enjoy the quote or you don't. I thought it was OK, I guess. Not Nash's finest hour. I really do think the "punctuation" angle is cheap rather than interesting. I mean, who cares about a hyphen? It doesn't add anything. It's "clever" only insofar as it allowed the constructor to pull off quote symmetry. It has no other cleverness. And other, less fortunate punctuation marks go sadly unacknowledged. "What about me?" cries ILLSAY. "When will I get full representation!?" wails EER. The LIL TMEN are probably saying something too. I'm just saying there's no value added w/ that damned hyphen square. I was fully prepared to leave that square blank, until I went back and read the theme clue more closely. I'm bugged by the fact that the quote doesn't appear to be a poem—it has no rhyme, no metricality. Or maybe you elide the second "I", which would leave you with something vaguely iambic. Also, I'm not sure why loving BALTIHYPHENMORE precludes your loving New York. I myself am municipally polyamorous. Don't judge.
[More]
Speaking of cities, UTICA. That was my first entry. Clue says it's a city in New York, it's five letters long … UTICA! Good ol' UTICA. Gateway to … somewhere north of here, I'm sure. After I got going there in the NW, I sort of sidled down the west side of the puzzle and then up into the middle until I had shot through much of the quotation. Then I inferred (most of) the quote and finished the remaining couple of corners thereafter. Cluing seemed toughish in parts, perhaps because it had to be to keep this thing at all Thursday-worthy. For some reason [Sports division] seemed a really vague clue for EAST, and I had to start running the alphabet to get the "B" at 52A: Trust fund? (BAIL) / 52D: Exhibit some immodesty (BRAG). I'm not familiar with Stephenie MEYER. She really, really sounds like the person who wrote "Twilight," but I suspect not. Oh … wait, she *is* the author of "Twilight," and I totally misread the clue. I somehow processed ["The Host" author Stephenie] as ["The View" host Stephenie]. Well … that was disturbing. I wonder what other massive emendations my brain is engaged in on a daily basis.
Though I didn't care for the theme today, I do admire the way the constructor handled the long Downs. Lovely pairs in the middle and then longer bookends in the NE / SW. All colorful and interesting. Grateful for the '80s throwback MOON BOOT (37D: Fashionable 1980s item resembling a bit of astronaut's attire). I'd forgotten those existed. Would've been better in the plural, but I'll take this. It offsets the clue/answer pair at 6D: Bamboozle (EUCHRE), which I nominate for the olde-timiest puzzle entry ever. EUCHRE's already a pretty marginal / bygone card game, but slang for "bamboozle," which is itself pretty olde-timey?! That's … nuts. When was the last time anyone used EUCHRE to mean "bamboozle," keeping in mind that I won't believe you if your answer is any later than 19-aught-5.
Knock knock. OUSE there? Good night.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Read more...
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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