The stuff that was supposed to be sassy and flashy just missed me, for the most part. Like, "LATER, MAN" and "REAL ORIGINAL!" both felt ... I mean, they're real expressions, but they just seem a little arbitrary. "LATER, ___" ... MAN, sure, but DUDE, BRO ... GATOR? They all work fine. I don't hate these answers, by any means, but my reaction wasn't "wow, cool." It was more, "yeah, sure, OK." Ideally, you're slangy stuff hits harder than "yeah, sure, OK." I think "CAN I GET AN 'AMEN'!?" is rock solid, the strongest thing in the grid, and therefore perfectly placed in the marquee central position (32A: "Who's with me?"). I really think the clue should have an "!" as well as an "?" since it is a very enthusiastic, rousing question, one that I think of as being shouted or otherwise exclaimed with a loud voice. But still, great answer, nicely placed. I'm also a fan of "SAY NO MORE..." (a perfect little colloquial phrase, first seen last year in a puzzle by, surprise, Nam Jin Yoon, my fav themeless constructor ... or one of them, anyway). I laugh now when I see "MR. SANDMAN" because it appeared in the NYTXW not too long ago and someone, I forget who, one of my readers, I think, told me that they failed to parse the answer correctly and ended up wondering who MRS. ANDMAN was. Oh, yeah, that was the puzzle that had MRS. MAISEL in the symmetrical position (to "MR. SANDMAN"). So that answer amused me. But two other answers did the opposite of amuse me. I find the very idea of a CUDDLE PUDDLE ... I'll try to be tactful and say "off-putting" (34A: Horizontal group hug session). The concept, the cutesy, moist words, just ... yeah, off-putting. And especially off-putting when crossed with the tonally different yet even more off-putting LEPER, which is not a word I would put in any puzzle if I could help it. I had LONER there at first and was very happy with that answer. But the long Acrosses weren't working so I had to pull it and quickly realized it would be LEPER. I'm making a face even as I type LEPER. You can't see it, but you can imagine. I'm also kind of making the face at RES., which I don't think I fully understand. Are "some telephone nos." ... REServed? Ooh, RESidential? That's it, isn't it? Oof. OK. Maybe I'm not going to like RES under any circumstances, then. But I wouldn't have given a thought to so small an answer if it weren't mired in the LEPER CUDDLE PUDDLE (see!? ... off-putting).
I was lucky to know NONPAREIL and DIRNDL and FIFA, all of which really helped me open up the grid. I did not know ALSTON, even though I feel sure I've heard of him before. His crosses were all fair, though STA. didn't mean anything to me (49A: Bank in London, for example: Abbr.). I'm guessing there's a Bank ... Station? And I'm guessing it's in London. I'm guessing it's a train ... station. Ah, looks like light rail and Underground. Even though I've never heard of Bank STA., there was nothing else that "S" could really be, so that's a fair cross for ALSTON. Also didn't know ILYA—had both IVAN and IGOR in there at some point (47D: Slavic form of Elijah). Hardest thing in the grid for me was probably ASNAP, just because I never expect the "A" (53A: Child's play). Had "LIES!" before "LIAR!" but that seems a perfectly reasonable "error," and it didn't hold me back for more than a few seconds or so. I need ("need") to go watch "All That Jazz" now. Because, well, it's on, and the mere fact of on-ness adds an artificial sense of urgency to which I am succumbing. Good day.
Word of the Day: PERCALE (20D: Bedsheet material) —
noun
noun: percale
a closely woven fine cotton or polyester fabric used especially for sheets. (google)
• • •
Expected something a little showier here, but all in all it's decent and clean. The long Acrosses don't really sing, though I do like the juxtaposition in the north, i.e. the idea of someone (I assume drunkenly) twirling in SWEAT PANTS while asking "HOW DO I LOOK?" I finished in just over 6. I don't know if the puzzle was easier or harder or exactly as hard as I rated it because I was aided somewhat in the NW, and mightily in the SE, by that niche knowledge I have only because I solve a ton of crosswords, i.e. by crosswordese. I got a superfast start by guessing AMMO right out of the box (1A: They may make the rounds) and then confirming it with (drum roll) ARNESS! (crosswordese the first) (1D: "Gunsmoke" actor James). And then at the end, in the SE corner, I just had blank space below SPINAL TAP, and got a little panicky. Then I tried ATTILA (42D: Verdi opera set in the fifth century). Now I know squat about opera, and I know zero about ATTILA, but something about the clue jogged the answer loose. I didn't trust it At All, but after stumbling with PHOTON instead of PHASER at 43D: Particle beam weapon, I could see it was all going to work out. Shoulda been able to get GARTH from just the "G"; shoulda been able to get PEPITA from the "PE-" ... but shoulda woulda coulda didn't. ATTILA to the rescue.
Other trouble spots:
Wanted MU SHU at 2D: Kind of pork, but saw the number of squares and wrote in MOO ... SHO :(
Had the "B" at the end of 7D: Baby animal in a parable in II Samuel and wrote in BEAR CUB
Wanted THE KEYS instead of CAR KEYS for some reason (35A: Request to Dad, perhaps)
Could remember only ASNER and ZOOEY DESCHANEL as Ferrell co-stars in "Elf"
Could picture SLUGGO perfectly in my head (I own two fat volumes of "Nancy" comics) but for some reason his name eluded me and it came out BLUTTO (39D: Nancy's friend in the comics).
TEST SCORES is boring and annoying because when I had ___ SCORES, I expected something specific. I wrote in PSAT, knowing full well no one puts those on their actual applications (do they?)
34D: Arm that's tucked away (COVE) — just brutal. Way harder than anything else in the puzzle.
a large tropical marine fish of herringlike appearance. (google)
• • •
This was pretty enjoyable. Had to wrestle with it A WEE BIT, and fell into many traps along the way, but in the end it was slightly more tractable than your average Saturday fare, I think. Couple of nice long Downs, for sure, and then a very solid, serviceable grid, with little in the way of junk. I'd call EDESSA junk (it's certainly high on the list of 6-letter crosswordese), buuuut it really helped me solidify traction in the north, so I'll just give it a polite nod and move along. The proper nouns are a little dated at times (NEVE over BOYER!) but then there's Paul RUDD and BIG PAPI, so maybe things balance out. Oh, ANI. ANI is not good. You can clue it however you like (Skywalker, DiFranco ... some violinist ...), it's always gonna be crosswordese. But the overall state of the grid is strong.
[RUDD]
How many holes did I fall into? Let's count
Had the -OW at the end of 2D: Words of understanding and was *certain* that answer ended in KNOW.
Had the O (from YOKO) and U (from RUDD) in the answer for 27D: Works of a lifetime and *confidently* wrote in OPUSES.
Opened the puzzle with an amazing run of Downs (KTEL! BOO! ADREP!) and then, after getting the -UM part ... PODIUM!! (8D: Oration location).
I don't even feel bad about the MARLINS-for-TARPONS mistake, tbh. I'm only human.
RYE before ALE ... never fail?
Aaaand my favorite wrong answer of the day: for 57D: Appropriate answer for this clue, I had: ANS.
I am in Massachusetts, which I taught myself to spell on the way out here by focusing on the name on license plates, which I had occasion to see a lot of, as traffic frequently just stopped. I'm at the home of my friends Lena and Brayden working on a super secret crossword project. Also drinking. A lot. Oh, and it's raining. A lot. A lot a lot. A lot. We walked home in a storm. Streets deluged. Clothing—head to toe—sodden. Ensoddened. I've never walked for any length of time in anything like it. Heavens opened. Amazing. All of my clothing is in the dryer. I'm now wearing pajamas and drinking an aquavit toddy and sitting at L&B's dining room table, after having solved this perfectly decent Saturday puzzle. We had been drinking, a lot, and so it took a while to get some traction in this thing. ETSY, I think, was first, then GEENA. Gimme and gimme. Later, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW was also a gimme. That is too much of a giveaway. Or ... just enough of a giveaway, I don't know. Anyway, anyone who knows anything about Pynchon knows that title. Nice to have a 15-letter gimme. Hope you enjoyed it.
Hamburger U. is real. It's a real thing. It's 100x more real than Trump U. Here is Hamburger University's website. It has a curriculum and scholarships and everything. "Quality is an excellence all communities recognize and respect." Already you have learned a great deal. Now you can go on to major in Onions. Congratulations. I like MICKEY D'S over IN AND OUT, because it's very hamburgery, though technically it's IN 'N' OUT. Close enough. Here's the thing. YOU'RE is not acceptable as a way into DARN TOOTIN'. It's YER, if it's anything. Otherwise, it's grammaticality becomes oddly hilarious. YOU ARE DARN TOOTING! No. It's YER. Actually, there is a Laurel & Hardy movie called "YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN'," so I guess I'm wrong. But I'm not. YER. Not YOU'RE.
What is an ISMENE? I have never seen that name ever, that I recall. Not in a puzzle, not anywhere. I thought I knew the Oedipus legend. I guess not. What else? Nothing really. BOOZE. Lotsa BOOZE. Good night!
Word of the Day:LEBRON JAMES(35A: N.B.A. M.V.P. who has hosted "Saturday Night Live") —
LeBron Raymone James (/ləˈbrɒn/; born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). James has won three NBA championships (2012, 2013, 2016), four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards (2009, 2010, 2012, 2013), three NBA Finals MVP Awards (2012, 2013, 2016), two Olympic gold medals (2008, 2012), an NBA scoring title (2008), and the NBA Rookie of the Year Award (2004). He has also been selected to 12 NBA All-Star teams (named the game's MVP twice), 12 All-NBA teams, and six All-Defensive teams, and is the Cavaliers' all-time leading scorer. (Wikipedia)
• • •
HERE GOES Laura, your STAND IN for Rex, about to TAP INTO today's ESOTERY.
ANTEATER (12D: Creature that Dalí walked on a leash in public)
This was a pretty snappy themeless that felt like it was made for my first FORAY into crossword blogging. Grid name-checked pop culture phenomena from every decade of my life. Some may know ABE (4D: Vigoda of "The Godfather") as Salvatore Tessio but, CMON, as a kid in the 1970s, I remember him from Barney Miller and its spinoff, Fish. Speaking of 22A: 1970s TV spinoffs, I originally had MAUDE, which was was spun off from All in the Family, instead of RHODA, which was spun off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Moving on to my teen years, we have TONE LOC (16A: "Funky Cold Medina" rapper), a recent name-that-tune answer for my pub trivia team, and Randy Newman's I LOVE LA (50A: 1983 hit song that mentions Santa Monica Boulevard). Then a writer I first read in my late 20s: 56A: Playwright EveENSLER (author of The Vagina Monologues). Something I wore constantly while lugging kids around in my 30s was a BABY BJORN (20D: Swedish-based maker of infant carriers). Many geeky librarians like me have attended a HACKATHON (7D: Collaborative computer coding event). Then, of course, there's 23D: Seedy place to drink (DIVE BAR), where I TRY to go as often as possible. The only NATICK for me was Enid BAGNOLD (35D: "The Chalk Garden" playwright, 1955) -- I knew her only as the author of National Velvet.
Bullets:
GHETTO BLASTER(33A: Source of break-dancing beats) — Look, we've had this discussion before. I won't rehash the points that Rex and others have made, but even Wikipedia calls it "a pejorative nickname which was soon used as part of a backlash against the boombox and hip hop culture." My heart sank a little when I realized it was the marquee answer (is that the term in crossword-ese? That's what I'm calling it). People still breakdance. Their source for beats now is likely IPHONE SPEAKERS.
LETHE (45A: River of forgetfulness) — This is one where having a graduate degree in nineteenth-century British literature helped. It's in the first line of Keats's "Ode on Melancholy": "Oh do not go to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous vine."
VICHYSSOISE (29A: Creamy chilled soup) — Here's my favorite recipe.
THEME:FULL COUNT (63A: 3-2 ... or what's represented by the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — DESCRIPTION
Theme answers:
BALL JOINT (17A: *Car part that works in a similar manner to the human hip)
BALL IN CUP (11D: *Children's toy that tests dexterity)
CANNON BALL (29D: *Cry just before hitting the pool)
STRIKE BACK (37A: *Retaliate)
RENT STRIKE (42A: *Tenants' protest)
Word of the Day:BODACIOUS(38D: Attractive, informally) —
Some of our readers may know "bodacious" as a word that figured prominently in the lingo of the 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Others may recall the term's frequent use in the long-running "Snuffy Smith" comic strip. Neither the creators of the comic strip nor the movie can claim to have coined "bodacious," which actually first appeared in print in 1832, but both likely contributed to its popularity. The exact origin of the word is uncertain, but it was most likely influenced by "bold" and "audacious," and it may be linked to "boldacious," a term from British dialect. (M-W)
• • •
This puzzle really needed ... something else. Something more. What we have here feels like a first idea, a rough draft version. "Hey, what can I do with FULL COUNT ... well, I could put BALL in the grid three times and STRIKE in it twice ... nah, too straightforward, too many repeating words ... what's the fun in that?" That is how the brainstorming session ought to have gone. Then maybe you'd've considered making 3 *clues* [BALL] and 2 clues [STRIKE], or various rebus options, etc., eventually alighting on the best expression of the FULL COUNT concept. This here is remedial. No one answer in the puzzle is offensive or bad. It's just blah, stem to stern. BODACIOUS is almost good, but it feels pretty dated. And the fill: inoffensive and bland. The one thing that the grid has going for it, which no one is going to notice because the puzzle has no way of indicating it very directly, is that the strikes are (like many strikes in baseball) right down the middle, whereas the balls are high and inside, high and outside, low and outside. The word PLATE might've helped here, not sure. [NOTE: just woke up to find out that you can actually *see* the outline of the strike zone in the print version ... so something *was* missing]
I was faster on this puzzle than on yesterday's. Fastest Tuesday in a long time. It's astonishing how a. familiar and b. easily clued all these answers are. Besides the themers, the only place I had any hesitation was 22D: Ruth, for one (YANKEE), because I was thinking Bible, then pity. Oh, and I somehow had either TIDDLE or TITTLE in there for a while at 32D: Amuse (TICKLE). That was weird. Everything else was read clue / write answer, bam bam, fast as I could go (pretty much). So fast that, until a friend pointed it out just now, I didn't even see 55D: Spherical locks. Let's all just be grateful for that.
Word of the Day:LOLITAS(41D: Teases, in older usage) —
Lolita was the nickname of one of the principal characters in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Lolita's actual name was Dolores, with whom the narrator, Humbert Humbert, develops a sexual obsession. In the book itself, "Lolita"
is specifically Humbert's nickname for Dolores. Nevertheless, "Lolita"
and "loli" has come to be used as a general reference to girls
considered sexually precocious. // In the marketing of pornography, lolita is used to refer to a young girl, frequently one who has only recently reached the age of consent, appears to be younger than the age of consent, or child exploitation material depicting the sexual abuse of children. (wikipedia)
• • •
Lolita was 12 years old.
She was extensively sexually abused by her stepfather.
I guess she shouldn't have "teased" him?
See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. if you want something more to read, try this.
Word of the Day:SHIH-Poo(58D: ___-poo (designer dog)) —
The Shih-poo is a small domestic dog. It is a crossbreed between a Poodle and a Shih Tzu. The name Shih-poo is a portmanteau of the two breed names. // Legitimate breed associations such as the AKC, the UKC, and the CKC, do not recognize the Shih-poo, or any other designer cross, as a breed in its own right. However, some major kennel clubs do accept registration of crossbreed and mixed-breed dogs for performance events such as agility and obedience. (wikipedia)
• • •
Pretty much a textbook Saturday. Normal Saturday solving time, normal (satisfactory) Saturday fill, grid shape, etc. At 72 words (the max), it would've been great if the puzzle could've come in a little cleaner and sparklier. PER SE over ALETA (16A: Longtime comic strip queen) made me kinda sad, as did ESE in a puzzle with MALTESE. But, as I say, it's fine. Just fine. It feels slightly dated, in a specifically "I was an '80s/'90s adolescent" kind of way. Maybe when you were a kid you had a FIXIE BIKE (a concept I grasp, but not a term I ever used or ever hear, despite having one as a kid)* and then as a teen in the '80s maybe you start watching "MIAMI VICE" and "Remington Steele" (starring Pierce BROSNAN), and then OFF YOU GO to college where you get into the music of Kurt COBAIN, buying "Nevermind" on USED CD because, well, you're a poor college student and Napster doesn't exist yet.
[EPIDERMIS]
There were several proper noun gimmes today, which was lucky for me, because I really needed them. Thought 1A: Lives the dream was ___S IT ALL, but IDI helped me put the "IT" in the right place, and thus really got things moving in the NW. Erich Maria REMARQUE, gimme. Never read "All Quiet," but I own a vintage paperback copy, and his name is just really memorable. Kendrick LAMAR (18A: Hip-hop artist Kendrick ___) just won a bunch of Grammys last week, I think (I find that particular awards show, and ... well, most awards shows, actually ... unbearable). His "To Pimp a Butterfly" was a huge critical and commercial hit last year. You'll see him a lot in the future. Not as much as ADELE, but more and more, for sure.
I have heard of internet addiction, but not INFOMANIA (45A: Facebook-checking fixation, e.g.). Seems to have some currency, but as with many MANIA-suffixed words, it's hard to tell if it's supposed to be bad or awesome (see WrestleMania, Obamamania, etc.). Is the "sack" in [Salt sack?] supposed to be a bed? Like ... a sailor (salt) sleeps in a BERTH? Might've been a little too cute for me. But again, overall, just fine. My only real problems were EAR PIECE for EAR PHONE (still think EAR PIECE is better answer) (14D: Bit of Secret Service attire), and SHAR-poo for the damn dog. At one point, I seriously (seriously) considered SHIT-poo. Rhymes with SHIH tzu better than SHIH-poo does, that's for sure. Plus the double-scatological angle just felt right.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*[update: I did not have a FIXIE BIKE, it seems. I had a simple one-speed, which you stopped by pedaling backward. A FIXIE BIKE has no free wheel ... no coasting ... I could coast on my childhood bike, but there were definitely no brakes. So mine was single-speed, but not "fixed gear." Look, if you want to know more, go here. I really don't get it or care]
Made a key lime pie today, which was a first. It somehow came out perfect. Near perfect, anyway. I'd give it like a 97/100. I tell you what, America's Test Kitchen is not *%$#ing around. Even a talentless baking hack like me can conjure up deliciousness with their recipes. So with two slices down the hatch—and the lingering effects of an earlier Sazerac cocktail still playing in my brain—I sat down to this themeless puzzle. It opened easily, not to mention improbably. Jarring opening 1-2, as I crossed the father of three major world religions with ... a cheesy lad mag.
Crossing a (literal) Patriarch with a magazine that represents the worst of The Patriarchy as my opening gambit was eerily predictive of a very, very male-dominated puzzle. Only woman in this thing (besides the MAXIM pin-ups) is animated (ELSA). But you've got tons of men, as well as BATTLE / ZONE and "Call of Duty" and TROJAN WAR and TAE BO and REBEL heroes and on and on with the violence and militarism. You'd think that we could at least get some gender balance in the *cluing*, but no. Oh well. This grid is still exceptionally well made. No groan-worthy junk. Not much to ooh and aah at at first, but things heated up once I got down to CASUAL SEX. As it were.
Didn't know RUDOLF (3D: Diesel who invented the diesel engine) or "ETHAN Brand," and didn't recognize RIEMANN or Ira LEVIN until I'd gotten almost all of their respective names from crosses. Could not for the life of me understand how THAI was an [Indian alternative]. I think it's a food thing? Seems pretty arbitrary, but that's all I got. Trouble areas were FAT ALBERT (which I haven't seen in almost 40 years) (50A: Cartoon friend of Dumb Donald and Weird Harold) and ZAPOTEC (the "P" gave me fits, as I had REDO instead of REPO at first at 28D: Take back, in a way). Hardest part by far was the SE corner, because "RIVER...."???? I couldn't wrap my head around what "Traveling show" even meant. Haven't thought about ... wait, is "RIVERDANCE" related to Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley? It is! Haven't heard either name since the '90s. Anyway, I had to go into that SE corner blind, getting traction with TAE BO (speaking of the '90s...) (55A: Program with a "Get Ripped" version) x/w SCRIBE (42D: Journalist, informally). After that, it was over pretty quickly.
I slept like 11 hours! That was fun/weird. Woke to this crossword, which I enjoyed quite a bit. There were some rough patches—mainly, and not surprisingly, the result of the puzzle's odd fondness for marginally famous proper nouns—but mostly I found it interesting and entertaining. The middle section is most impressive. In fact, the corners seem like afterthoughts; they aren't nearly up to the caliber of the center, which (excluding LEONORE) came out all fluffy and clean and gorgeous. Nice stagger-stack of 12s with a cool new 15 (INTERNET ECONOMY) driven right down through it (8D: Google and Alibaba are parts of it). On top of that, none of the surrounding fill is terribly compromised. If QUOD, LEONORE, and ANODIC are the cost of that center, I'll gladly pay the price. Speaking of QUOD, that is the answer that broke open the whole puzzle for me. Unexpected! I had poked at the NW but couldn't find any of the Acrosses, and then I had solved the NE outright, but couldn't throw any of those 12s across the middle of the grid from their back ends alone. Then I stumbled in the Latin clue (32D: Which, in Latin), and while I wasn't sure which "which" it was, I put my money on "Q" in that initial spot, and bang—there went QUOTE UNQUOTE (32A: So-called (but not really)). And PIQUES (25D: Stimulates). And etc. Weird how a throwaway 4-spot can do that to your solve.
I was less than fond of AMINES / NEVINS (3D: Civil War historian Allan) (who?) in the NW, and BAER (45A: Old newspaper humorist Arthur "Bugs" ___) (who?) / PARSEE in the SE. Also the twin vowelly "heroines" IONE / LEONORE. I can never remember which vowels go where, especially whether I'm dealing with terminal As or Es. There should be a pre-20c. heroine cap. That cap should be one. Make it so. I was also kind of iffy on NY YANKEES (58A: Ones getting a Bronx cheer, for short?). Not sure where they appear that way, but certainly not in my mouth, they don't. The Dodgers are actually referred to as the L.A. DODGERS. The Yankees aren't called the NY YANKEES. It's a somewhat legit abbr (as something someone might see in print somewhere), but it's weak as longer crossword answers go. It actually doesn't make much sense as an abbreviation. I mean, if you're concerned about saving space, why not just ditch the NY? Or go down to YANKS, as folks often do? Further, GAY marriage gave me ambivalence. While I'm happy to see GAY in the puzzle any time, I think GAY marriage is just called "marriage" now.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. my blog turns 9 today. Thanks to the 10s of thousands of you who have made the work feel less like work.
Stephen Foster wrote many of the popular songs*
in 19th-century America. I didn't know it when we named our cat, but
Stephen Foster wrote the music for an 1863 song called "Katy Bell." You
can listen to it, and if you're as interested as I was, even find the lyrics as well. *
- The most famous: Oh! Susanna; Camptown Races; Old Folks at Home
[Swanee River]; My Old Kentucky Home; Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair;
Beautiful Dreamer.
• • •
It's like someone rubbed deodorant all over my printer paper because this puzzle is so fresh. AUTOTUNE, GET WEIRD, ONLINE AD and... CANKLES. Look, I know everyone says something like this in their lifetime but I coined the term "cankles." In college. 2005. It was me; I was the first. I am both proud and ashamed because it's really not a nice thing to say at all, but apparently the term has made its way into one of our most prestigious publications. See, there was this girl who was pretty mean and I didn't like her and she had calves that just wouldn't quit in the downward direction. It was before we started Googling everything we think to make sure it's an original thought so I was almost certainly the first person to portmanteau that shit.
Hi, by the way. I'm Lena: the girl who coined cankles. OH HEY LOOK OVER THERE
It's a Hawk! It's a Pelican! No, it's a CAGER. Womp womp. Sports terms, especially ones like that, are not readily within my KEN, as you can see here at the point where both my glass and mental wellspring went dry:
HULA SKIRT was my first entry, leading to DRAG SHOW and all those goodies in the NW. Then onto the NE, where everything made a pleasing KERPLOP when dropped in-- except STAY DRY. Why? Because my brain parsed it as a noun, like a "lean-to" and I thought WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? SOME BRITISH THING? "Let us all have a huddle under the stay-dry and sip Pimm's until this thundershower passes." I was still rankled by the time I got to 28A(a tyre may rub against one) and can only think of one word when it comes to Brits and rubbing and it's not KERB, it's "frot." Look it up, as my mother used to say to me. Still does.
Moving right along, I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed this puzzle. Even the little things, like STAB for (5D: Whack). Not that we served KETEL ONE at the fancypants bar (it was that fancy) I worked at a few years ago, but I should have known that way sooner than I did. It would have prevented me from putting in SEASONAL instead of the correct IN SEASON... wow I am getting boring or what?
Bad fill that peppers you like... bullets!
KEPI(35A: Gendarme's topper) — Nrrrgh
TKTS (30A: Times Sq. bargain booth) — Nrrrrrrrrrgh
OONA ( 27A: Donald Duck cartoon princess) -- Nrgh
But that's it in terms of what I consider nrrghable fill! A very good puzzle to ring in the weekend.
BONUS: if there's a SNO BALL that has a strong chance in hell...
Signed, Lena Webb, Court Jester of CrossWorld
Read more...
Word of the Day: OTTAVA (48D: Up or down 12 semitones in musical notation) —
at an octave higher or lower than written —used as a direction in music. (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
This has some nice moments—there's a liveliness to OH GOD NO and FAKE PUNT and SNARKY—but there's also a certain forced hipness. I lived through the '90s and paid attention to music/pop culture and JOCK JAMS rings only the faintest of bells. MONSTER BALLADS and NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! were all I could think of. I can't see JOCK JAMS bringing a lot of joy to or having much currency with NYT solvers, but I'm not mad at it. Double-J-ness alone makes it respectable. MURSE, however, is absurd in the extreme. It's a non-word. No one but no one uses that word, would claim to own one, etc. Maybe some TV episode or pop culture joke somewhere made the term briefly, unfortunately viable, but please. No. Terrible. MURSE is better as a portmanteau of "male nurse," and it's not good there, either, as male nurses are just nurses.
[even sites that sell "MURSEs" don't actually sell them]
JACKASS has a "look at me pushing the envelope!" feel that I found slightly off-putting. I use the term all the time (in private), so I'm not (at all) offended by the word, but (and perhaps this will be surprising to you), I'm not a big fan of crassness / coarseness in my puzzles. It's sort of how I feel about public use of profanity. Like, go to town if you're at home, or if just you and your friends can hear, but rein it in if you're in line at the grocery store. Blah blah something about public discourse something about I'm becoming an old man. Whatever. I know JACKASS isn't profanity, but I still wasn't as thrilled as I think I was supposed to be.
Basically you have a super-common Friday grid design today—black X (roughly) through the center with 3-wide L-corners all around (that is, 3 longer Acrosses crossing 3 longer Downs in every corner), and the results are mixed. I'd say the fill is mostly good, rarely terrible, but too often mediocre. Entire NE is entirely forgettable. With exception of JACKASS (which is at least unusual), SW isn't much better—lots of AREAARREARSIERRAERR, which is to say it's mostly the same three letters over and over and over. It's an entirely acceptable puzzle, but I wish there were more stand-out answers, and I wish the fill were somewhat smoother. REJIGGER is not and will never be a thing. Also, TEENTSY does not and will never contain that second "T." It hurts just to look at. POO, also, never acceptable.
Look how terribly I started out. I got so frustrated that I just plowed ahead, bull-in-china-shop style, refusing to stop until I'd traversed the entire grid from NW to SE. As you can see, horrific start suddenly gives way to impressive grid-spanning streak:
First four answers in the grid were wrong. Yeesh. I still don't really get how [Give a turn] makes sense for JOLT, but I'm sure that some idiom somewhere can be stretched to make that meaning work, somehow. After ARABS, though, I cut right through this thing. Doesn't mean it got Easy all of a sudden—just means it got doable. At this point, I actually wasn't at all sure about JOE or PILLS. Got screwed up by writing in NO NO NO for OH GOD NO, which made ELDEST impossible to see, which made me doubt both JOE and PILLS. Again, the elephant in the grid is REJIGGER, which is still not a thing. But once I got the NE settled, I came down and realized that all my first instincts (shown above) had been right. I made a few more mistakes along the way—GULE (?) for ORLE (53A: Edge on a shield), DIRE for DARK (55D: Forbidding), WAIT A SEC for JUST A SEC (38A: "Hold on")—but except for the WTF-ery of OTTAVA (48D: Up or down 12 semitones, in musical notation), nothing else held me up much. Puzzle took some work, but no more than you might expect on a Friday.
Word of the Day: György LIGETI (62A: Composer György whose music was featured in Kubrick films) —
György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor[ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time".
Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen. (wikipedia)
• • •
Very hard, but a weird kind of hard. The kind of hard that was mostly easy but then dead-stop. Then medium and then Dead-Stop 2: The Revenge. The dead-stops came, not surprisingly, in the dead-end alleys in the NE and SW. Those were like completely separate, self-contained, wholly different experiences from the broad swath of puzzle from NW to SE. Just brutal. And things started out so well. Here's what my puzzle looked like just 5 seconds in:
OK, yes, it's SKRILLEX, not SKRILLAX (1A: Leader in electronic music with multiple Grammys), but the fact that I was 87.5% right on that answer right out of the gate meant that I had traction galore. I figured this would just be one of those days where the constructor and I were on the same pop culture wavelength, and I would sea voyage to victory. This was before I enter chamber of horrors 1: the NE. I had the bottom part of that section from STRATEGO and SAME-SEX, but DFW clue (12D: Notable features of David Foster Wallace books) meant nothing to me and -AGE was zero help with 'ROID RAGE and … something BOX. I wanted SMALL. I then wanted SWEAT, but couldn't convince myself that was a thing, or a metaphor based on a thing. But the real super duper horrible problem for me up there was the horrible quicksand I fell into with a pair of wrong answers: LODGES for 9A: Elks and others (ORDERS) and LOP for 9D: Cockeyed (OFF). Yes, it's ALOP (if it's anything). I see that now. But it *really* felt right. So I sat a long time. Keep in mind that LODGES got me the "D" for DROOP, which only hardened my commitment to LODGES. Gah. Finally tore everything out and tried END NOTES for the DFW clue. From there, I brought back SWEAT BOX and everything worked out. Sigh.
Back to the fun middle! Sailed almost too easily around the bend in the SE and over to the entrance to the SW corner, which, like the NE, didn't want to let me in. Here, I have to quibble with the clues on the gateway answers (i.e. those Acrosses across the top of the SW section). [Space racers] is screaming for a "?" The U.S. and the SOVIETS were indeed involved in a Space Race, but no one in the world, let alone outer space, would call either party a "racer." Come on. That's nuts. And bananas. Banana nut bread, that is, without the deliciousness. And then "CHOCOLAT" (42A: 2000 film set in France that was nominated for five Academy Awards) … oh, actually "CHOCOLAT" is fair. Arcane, to me, but fair. It's the clue on ATLAS that irked me—34D: Global superpower? How? I get that it contains maps, which makes it kin to a globe, but what is this "superpower" of which you speak? It's a big book. It can't fly and doesn't have heat vision. In fact, it has no powers, beyond the powers that any books have. "?" is not saving that one [Ed.: Whoops. My bad. It's ATLAS the guy mythologically holding the "globe" on his back … clue is fine, brain is not. Carry on].
Even after I got the top part of the SW: trouble. If it hadn't been for the outright gimmes of AYN (45A: First name in Objectivism) and VONNEGUT (39D: Author who created the fatalistic optometrist Billy Pilgrim), I'd never have finished. Even with them: trouble. A bygone Secretary of Energy? A bygone movie music composer? A SCAPULAR?! And AD UNIT? Nixon memoir? I really wish the payoffs had been stronger in these tough spots. Instead of the exhilaration I felt early on, I ended up feeling exhausted. It was also unfortunate to finish up in the weakest part of the grid (which wasn't terribly weak, but still—no joy but VONNEGUT down there). I love the buzz and energy (and relative cleanness) of most of this puzzle, but ultimately found it slightly too proper-noun heavy overall. Still, it's only truly faulty in the SW. There are different kinds of hard. NE was Hard-Good. SW, Hard-Mean.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Should "notable" be in the clue for an answer that contains the word "NOTES?"
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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