Rose oil / MON 8-1-2016 / Big band trombonist / IV units / One doing carbon 14 testing / America's Cup sport / Game piece with pips

Welcome back to another Annabel Monday!!!!!

Constructors: Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette

Relative difficulty: Easy, actually. Weird, right? Like this took me 10 minutes less than usual. I'm so proud of myself.

THEME: TO-DO — Theme answers contained "to" and "do".

Theme answers:

• TOY DOLLS (17A: Barbies, e.g.)
• TOUCH DOWN (25A: Land, as a plane)
• TOMMY DORSEY (36A: Big band trombonist)
• TOP DOLLAR (49A: The highest price)
• TO DO LIST (59A: Planner's aid ... or what 17-, 25-, 36- and 49-Across are?)

Word of the Day: ATTAR (53A: Rose oil) —

Rose oil (rose otto, attar of rose, attar of roses or rose essence) is the essential oil extracted from the petals of various types of rose. Rose ottos are extracted through steam distillation, while rose absolutes are obtained through solvent extraction or supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, with the absolute being used more commonly in perfumery. Even with their high price and the advent of organic synthesis, rose oils are still perhaps the most widely used essential oil in perfumery.
...It takes many pounds of rose petals to distill one ounce of essential oil. Depending on extraction method and plant species, the average yield can range from 1:1,500 to 1:10,000.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

This is probably my favorite puzzle so far, actually. I dunno, something about the clues and how it's laid out just work really well, and there's a lot of fun in it! There's LATEST - ASAP - NOW, which reads like a three-word short story about a frenzied news reporter. There's the fact that TOUCHDOWN doesn't have the obvious football clue. There's the way the constructors somehow managed to make DOT, of all things, into an interesting clue. Rex, you can't be totally grumpy about this one, right?!? I did get stuck in the lower left corner for a while, mostly out of a stubborn refusal to admit that ATTAR is a real word (which might or might not be why I made it word of the day). Also, I had DNA for 31A for like a million years. Again, this is why I'm an English major, not a bio major.

The theme was...eh. I'm actually great at checking off everything on a TO DO LIST, but the hard part is making one in the first place! I never know what I actually need TO DO, or what I just want TO DO, or what I should DO later rather than sooner, and in the end I just end up kind of going with everything as it comes. But for those of you who live by them, it's a great Monday theme! You can check off "do the first crossword puzzle of the week." :D

Bullets:

• TEPEE (39D: Conical home for a Plains Indian) — Uh...do you mean TEEPEE? Or TIPI? I've genuinely never seen it spelled this way, and I was very confused.
• DIP (1A: Guacamole, e.g.) — Oh my God I know I already wrote about the cool parts of this puzzle, but I just realize this combines with the corner to make DIP and DOT. Dippin' Dots. Like the ice cream. I love this puzzle.



Picture only slightly related.

• YACHTING (38D: America's Cup sport) — As a sailor, I believe I know what I am talking about when I say the America's Cup cannot accurately be described as yachting. The word "yachting" evokes peacefulness and leisure. The America's Cup is about FEAR AND DANGER.
• OTTER (8A: Playful animal on a stream bank) — Otters have been my favorite aquatic mammal since the third grade. Here is why.

Plus, otters hold hands in their sleep so they don't float away from each other. <3 ...well, I read that on the Internet one time, so it's probably true. It's a cute sentiment, anyway.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Flag carrier of Japan / TUE 2-10-15 / Where redneck gets red / George who signed Declaration of Independence / Higgledy-piggledy

Constructor: Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Sick day — phrases meaning, vaguely, "ailing," are clued as if they had specific relation to some occupation:

Theme answers:

• OUT OF SORTS (17A: The ailing postal worker was …)
• FEELING PUNK (24A: The ailing rock star was …)
• UNDER THE WEATHER (38A: The ailing meteorologist was …)
• WAY BELOW PAR (47A: The ailing golfer was …)
• IN THE DUMPS (59A: The ailing trash collector was …)

Word of the Day: George WYTHE (50D: George who signed the Declaration of Independence) —

George Wythe (1726 – June 8, 1806) was the first American law professor, a noted classics scholar and Virginia judge, as well as a prominent opponent of slavery.^[1] The first of the seven Virginia signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence, Wythe served as one of Virginia's representatives to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.^[2] Wythe taught and was a mentor to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay and other men who became American leaders.

• • •

Tuesday being Tuesday. This was pretty painful from start to finish. Got the first theme answer and just sort of slumped here in my chair. Four more of these groaners *and* I have to blog? So I won't dwell on it. First, puns, yuck. Second, the puns are neither great nor consistent. We've got one (FEELING PUNK) that virtually no one says (anymore? Maybe they said it at some point, but not in my lifetime / in my vicinity). Then we've got another that is an obvious, ridiculous cheat. If you want them all to be parallel (and you do), you can't add "WAY" to beginning of them. WAY BELOW PAR is as real / valid as WAY OUT OF SORTS, i.e. no no no. You feel BELOW PAR. "WAY" is an adverbial cheat to make symmetry happen. No. You have to stop yourself when stuff like this happens and find a better way through the forest. Well, maybe you don't, since the puzzle was somehow accepted and published, but … I'm still gonna say you do.

[This movie is great]

And the fill—well, actually, it's a mixed bag there. I like a couple of the longer Downs (namely SHOOT 'EM UP and STEEL BANDS) (my daughter plays in one of the latter). But the rest of the grid feels like it was filled in a tin-ear, careless kind of way. I'll eat my hat if this was software-assisted—there are just too many weird, rough parts that could've been smoothed out. Multiple HOME PLATES—that's a long answer where you could add color and interest to you grid, and instead all I can think of is "they don't come in sets." You go with that answer only if baseball is a foreign concept to you. And WOMYN, dear lord. I live my life surrounded by feminists of all stripes, and except in some kind of weird, retro '80s/'90s ironical fashion, no one, I repeat, no one, actually calls "Half of humanity" WOMYN. It could make a cute answer a. on a different day of the week, and b. with a much much better, more appropriate clue. But here, with this clue, no. And then, in the massive outlier category, we have WYTHE. Who? PSHAW to that. This is a Tuesday puzzle with familiar, sub-rudimentary fill, and then (completely unnecessarily, as this grid could've been filled infinite ways) you plunk down some guy who signed the Declaration of Independence and was never heard from again? Lastly, there's just the overall quality of the short fill, which is demonstrably poor. ODON SUEY OLES DAT APER ANA ASTO OSAY. This is a 78-worder! That's the max. You are not going to get an easier grid to fill, and you can't (please, I'm begging you) just fill it with "whatever works."

Done.


No, one last thing. FEELING PUNK has a weak connection between clue and answer. All the other clue/answer pairings have close, obvious connections; meteorologists deal with WEATHER, golfers try to shoot under PAR, and so on. But only a small fraction of "rock stars" have anything to do with PUNK. It's like the clue writer doesn't really know the topic and assumes that rock = punk = "whatever, I don't really listen to it." No HOME PLATES for this puzzle!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Jun. 25, 2007 - Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Opposite Options - Four theme answers are things that involve a choice between two opposing options

I have a huge problem with the wording of the theme answers. The OPTIONS are the first parts of the answers - Pass or Fail, Yes or No, On or Off ... these are sets of OPTIONS. The noun that follows these OPTIONS is technically not, itself, an OPTION, though that is how it is clued in every instance:

• 20A: Course option (pass/fail class) - OK, you can OPT to take such a class, I guess...
  
• 37A: Response option (yes/no answer) - [missed-answer buzzer sound] - first of all, the phrase "YES/NO QUESTION" is far far more in-the-language. Second, you can OPT for "yes" or you can OPT for "no," but you cannot OPT for a YES/NO ANSWER. It's just ... off.
• 44A: Electric light option (on/off switch) - OK, here, I suppose you could have OPTED for a dimmer, but instead you OPTED for an ON/OFF SWITCH ... but that does not seem what is intended. The "option" part appears to want to refer to the either/or-ness, and here ... no. Just no no no. You can OPT to have the switch ON, or you can OPT to have it OFF. You OPT for the switch itself only if you are designing a lighting concept for the room.
• 59A: Quiz option (true/false test) - this is the worst of them all. A "quiz" is a TEST. How can a TEST be a "Quiz option?" HOW!? Please don't tell me that you are the quiz constructor deciding from a number of different kinds of quizzes, and thus OPTING for a TRUE/FALSE one.

I guess my primary objection here is that the "option" part of the clues suggests a choice between two, as do the beginnings of every theme answer, only in NO CASE are the beginnings actually the options. I feel as if 10% of you will be with me on this, 20% will disagree, and 70% will wonder how anyone could get so exercised about clue syntax. And on a Monday, no less.

Had some trouble with:

• 8D: Chew (on) (munch) - had the "M" and couldn't think of Anything that would fit
• 15A: Argue against (rebut) - had the REB and blithely entered REBEL
• 42A: Dweller along the Volga (Tatar) - wouldn't come to me at all. Had the T, then the TA, and needed the TAT before I could fill it in
• 38D: Courtroom affirmation (oath) - had the O and could think only OYEZ (my mind = poisoned by crosswords)
• 39D: Western U.S. gas giant (Arco) - it's been too long since I lived out west. This name rings a bell, but only faintly. I'm so used to ESSO as my go-to four-letter gas answer.
• 56D: Outcast (leper) - I had LONER and did Not want to give it up
• 35D: "Go fast!," to a driver ("Gun it!") - had the -NIT and could think only of STEP ON IT. For about one second I thought maybe it could be a rebus answer, with STEP somehow crammed into that one square.

Still, I had an average Monday time. Hoping for smoother puzzle action tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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