THEME: CABLE BOXES (64A: TV adjuncts ... or a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — rebus puzzle with the 3-letter abbr. of four different "cable" channels hidden in boxes throughout the grid:
Theme answers:
DREAM CATCHER / TEAM CREST (what the???) (17A: Native American charm made with a willow hoop / 4D: Image on a soccer jersey)
"UGLY BETTY" / GLOBE THEATER (21A: Popular TV dramedy based on a Colombian telenovela / 11D: Setting for Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar")
WISHBONES / DASHBOARD (39A: Some gridiron formations / 24D: Place for a clock or a radio)
"SAUSAGE PARTY" / GENIUS AT WORK (47A: 2016 comedy that takes place mainly in a supermarket / 28D: Facetious sign in a lab or office)
Word of the Day: "SAUSAGE PARTY" (47A: 2016 comedy that takes place mainly in a supermarket) —
It was the first American CGI-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA. The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest and the film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016, by Columbia Pictures. (wikipedia)
• • •
I liked this one fine. Any time you've got a rebus where the contents of the rebus squares are different, and not symmetrical, the whole grid becomes a kind of minefield, and gets a whole lot tougher even if the clues themselves aren't particularly hard. I was able to track 3 of them down pretty easily, but the GENIUS AT WORK / "SAUSAGE PARTY" one took a lot of doing. I really had to pin that last rebus square (USA) down before it would reveal itself—it was just about the last square I filled in. Never saw "SAUSAGE PARTY," but I certainly knew it existed, and *might* have had a shot at it if the words "animated" or "Seth Rogen" or "anthropomorphic food" had appeared anywhere in the clue. And GENIUS AT WORK, forget about it. Tough enough as a straight clue/answer, virtually impossible with an invisible rebus square somewhere inside it. I should say that both these answers are original and inventive. The placement of the rebus square just made them tough. I figured the rebus square would be in the symmetrical Across answer (so, in AS WE SAY, to parallel the one in UGLY BETTY), but I guess the idea is that the long Downs (11D, 28D) are the primary theme answers, i.e. parallel to one another the way DREAM CATCHER and CABLE BOXES are. Thus there is symmetry in the involved answers, if not in the actual boxes themselves.
I was totally thrown by there not being a rebus square in IN A PIG'S EYE, but now I see why. The phrase CABLE BOXES fairly screams "make a rebus puzzle based on me," so I'm slightly surprised someone hadn't done it sooner. DREAM CATCHER was mercifully easy, so I knew there was some kind of rebus pretty early on (after stumbling with STAT instead of ODDS at 1D: Sports figures, plural!!!). I hesitated in stunned disbelief that for the second time this month I was going to be asked to write in BIC PEN (???) (6D: Product advertised withthe slogan "Writes first time, every time"). I wrote the goddess of peace as IRENA and then couldn't figure out the D&D characters (ELVES) and even second-guessed IN A PIG'S EYE, thinking maybe it was in his EAR (...something about a sow's ear...) (29A: "Fat chance!"). Not too many tricky things here, besides the rebuses. Oh, there will undoubtedly be some solvers asking this question:
Just pick up your phone and look at the number keypad. Specifically at the number "8"—voilà! Our phones pretty much dial themselves now, so general familiarity with the concept the keypad and its features is diminishing precipitously, I'd imagine.
Relative difficulty: Easy (note: grid is oversized at 15x16)
THEME: DOWN FEATHERS (11D: Warm winter coat contents ... or what is present in the answer to each starred clue?) — different birds are embedded in the long "down" answers. Birds have "feathers" ... and the answers go "down" ... so there you go.
Theme answers:
WAYNE GRETZKY (25D: *Sports legend who was an M.V.P. for eight consecutive seasons)
A GAME OF INCHES (5D: *Baseball, according to some)
"TELL ME ANOTHER ONE" (7D: *"A likely story!")
BRAVE NEW WORLD (22D: *Dystopian novel set in the year 2540)
Word of the Day: down (11-Down) —
noun
noun: down
soft fine fluffy feathers that form the first covering of a young bird or an insulating layer below the contour feathers of an adult bird.
synonyms:
soft feathers, fine hair; More
soft fine fluffy feathers taken from ducks or their nests and used for stuffing cushions, quilts, etc.; eiderdown.
fine soft hair on the face or body of a person.
"the little girl had a covering of golden down on her head"
short soft hairs on some leaves, fruit, or seeds. (google)
• • •
This puzzle has one major (maybe not fatal, but major) flaw, and that's that the revealer is an awkward redundancy. As you can see from the Word of the Day definition, "down" *means* feathers. So ... DOWN FEATHERS ... !?!? Your revealer needs to be snappy and in-the-language and bang-on, and this one just flomps. That's when you "flop" in a "lump" on the ground, I think. DOWN FEATHERS was the answer I finished on, and unlike the rest of the puzzle, it took a bunch of work because ... again, DOWN FEATHERS, not a good phrase. "Down comforter," "down coat," etc. The word "feathers" is absurdly excessive. It's sad because there's potential to this type of embedded-word puzzle. You just need the right revealer, and this wasn't it. Also, as I've said before, with embedded words, the ideal is that every word in the theme answers touches said word, so there are no uninvolved words. WAYNE GRETZKY is a *perfect* embedded-word answer. Beautiful. Who knew EGRET was in there!? A revelation! The rest have extraneous words. A GAME, not involved, TELL ME, not involved, WORLD, not involved. And then there's the revealer. So if you solved left-to-right, as I did, this went from promising and possibly delightful to frowny-face disappointing.
The grid is chock full o' crosswordese (I mean, that first row is paradigmatic ... actually, the second row doesn't get much better ...), so that was unfortunate, but I've definitely seen worse grids. ARIOSE and LIENEE, despite being look-uppable words, are gruesome crosswordese to me (I only ever see them in crosswords, they are only here because of the favorable letter combinations they provide, not because someone thought, "ooh, that'll look nice..."). I have to say, though, that the clue on APOSTROPHE is a hall-of-famer. A perfect use of the "?" clue. Evokes one thing, actually clues something *entirely* different. Aggressively, unexpectedly literal clue. Also, I like bourbon. So that clue, like bourbon, warms my heart.
Bullets:
6A: Site of Zeno's teaching (STOA) — OK, so just now I learned that there are two Zenos. That ... hurts. (e)How did I not know that?? There's Zeno of ELEA (the answer I wanted here) (he's the ZENO of "Zeno's Paradoxes"), and then there's Zeno of Citium (!?!?!) (c. 334 – c. 262 BC), the founder of (wait for it ...) STOIcism, so-named for the place where he taught: the Stoa Poikile in Athens. STOA is here a proper noun. It is also a regular noun meaning "a classical portico or roofed colonnade" (google).
65A: Pasta used in soups and salads (ORZO) — always have to stop and think which one is ORZO and which one is OUZO (the anise-flavored Greek liqueur)
38D: Mortgagor, e.g. (LIENEE) — the clue and the answer are competing in a "who's uglier?' contest. Too close to call.
9D: Longtime Syrian strongman (ASSAD) — well, at least they called him "strongman." I'd've gone with something ... stronger. Actually, I'd probably not use him in a grid at all. Bygone tyrants, I can tolerate in my grids somewhat. Active ones, less so.
THEME: MIDDLE AGE (34A: Crisis time, for some ... or a hint to each of the circled words) — circled letters in the "middle" of four answers are all words that can precede "age" ...
Theme answers:
ELECTRIC ENGINES (ICE)
LOST ONE'S MARBLES (STONE)
ADIRONDACK CHAIR (IRON)
MACHINE WASHABLE (NEW)
Word of the Day:ODORANT(38D: Aromatic additive to natural gas) —
noun
noun: odorant; plural noun: odorants
a substance giving off a smell, especially one used to give a particular scent or odor to a product. (google)
• • •
This is poor on several levels. The basic theme conceit isn't stunning (circled squares in the middle of theme answers spell a bunch of things that have something in common, revealer does something hamfistedly punny, tada!—) but it's the kind of familiar, been-done-before, salvageable concept that should be able to get you to Average if you work at it—that is, if your themers are great and your hidden words make a tight set and are properly "hidden." And while you could argue that the themers themselves are perfectly fine answers (all 15s), beyond that, things fall apart. As I've said more, good craftsmanship standards in a "hidden words" puzzle like this dictate that the "hidden" word should touch all elements in the theme answers, i.e. normally, stretch across two words (the way ICE stretches across ELECTRIC and ENGINES in the first themer). But here, not one but *two* of these damned things fail here, and one fails terribly. At least STONE is "hidden" somewhere (between LOST and ONE'S), even if it does have MARBLES just hanging out there in the wind; IRON isn't even trying. It just sits inside ADIRONDACK, cleverness nil, CHAIR just waving from the sidelines. Further, and worse, the set of "hidden" words goes yes yes yes *clunk*, i.e. three actual "ages" and then stupid figurative crystal-wearing bad-music-suffused NEW. No. No to NEW.
The fill is the repulsively rich icing on this lopsided cake. I circled all the tired-to-bad fill and my puzzle printout has a nearly unbroken swath of ink all the way from the SW to the NE corner. Grid is very choppy, esp. toward the middle, and the three- and four-word onslaught gets pretty dire. Once again, I could tell before exiting the NW that things were going to be bad. It was slightly sad how easily I was able to put in the dreadful IREFUL / RELEE crossing. Puzzle's can't even sneak up on me with its blecchness any more. You can just say some of the lines straight across to get a feel for how bad the fill is. OBE EOS MCML!! POS POO RAS CEO! POO on top of "ERES TU," indeed. So, to sum up, workable concept, poorly worked, filled like a landfill.
THEME:BOXING DAY (37A: Present time in England? ... or a hint to each set of circled squares) — December 26 is both the present time, that is, now (or tomorrow since I'm writing this on Sunday night) and a present time, according to the OED: "a holiday on which post-men, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas-box." Each set of circled (shaded on the iPad app) squares is shaped like a box and name-checks a certain kind of day: LEAP, ELECTION, SNOW, GAME, PATRIOTS, and HUMP.
Word of the Day:ETAPE(54D: Tour de France stage) —
L'Étape du Tour (French for 'stage of the Tour') is an organised mass participation cyclosportive event that allows amateur cyclists to race over the same route as a Tour de France stage. First held in 1993, and now organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), in conjunction with Vélo Magazine, it takes place each July, normally on a Tour rest day.
L'Étape du Tour is normally held over mountain roads in either the Pyrenees or French Alps, up climbs such as the Col du Galibier, Col d'Aubisque, Mont Ventoux or the Col du Tourmalet.
Around 15,000 riders participate - many travelling from other countries
to compete - and the event takes place on roads closed by the police to
other traffic, with refreshment stops and medical support provided
along the route. (Wikipedia)
• • •
Laura here again, guest-posting for Rex while I drink an IPA (10A: Brewpub offering, for short). I just got back from a delicious Chinese dinner, where we had some EDAMAME (1D: Sushi bar finger food). I've also heard that we have lost yet another beloved POPSTAR (66A: Bruno Mars or Freddie Mercury) -- this time 80s icon George Michael. And since tonight is the second night of Hanukkah, I've been thinking a lot about freedom and faith.
Theme answers:
A note on PATRIOTS DAY: I'm curious as to how many solvers have ever even heard of Patriots' Day as a Thing; it's celebrated as a state holiday only in Maine, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. It is also traditionally the day when the Boston Marathon is held, hence the name of the recently released (and controversial) movie about the 2013 bombing, starring local actor Mark Wahlberg. I had never heard of Patriots' Day until I moved to New England, and given its association with the Boston Marathon, I'd say it qualifies as a Natick.
This generally felt fine, went smoothly, and I had few problems, although there were a few proper names the obscurity of which pushed the fill into weekend territory. Lots of regular denizens: NIKITA (50A: Soviet premier Khrushchev), sure; UMA (64A: Actress Thurman), always; XENA (25A: TV warrior princess), welcome back. Even NASTASE (47D: Ilie who won both the U.S. and French opens) we've seen before. But some real rarities with ANATOLE (63A: Literary critic Broyard) and NIEBUHR (45D: Theologian Reinhold who wrote the Serenity Prayer). God grant me the serenity to solve the puzzles I can solve; courage to blog about the puzzles I can't change; and the wisdom to know the difference.
Bullets:
GET RICH (59A: Hit pay dirt) — I wanted this to be a proper name too. Some dude named Getrich. Maybe he's been nominated for Secretary of the Treasury.
MUSERS (27A: Reflective sorts) — Needed all the crosses for this one. Wanted MIRROR or MISERS or something else. Do MUSERS reflect? on themselves? Still musing.
SEABEES (24D: Naval engineers) — I'd vaguely heard of SEABEES, and I assumed there were engineers in the Navy, but had never made the connection. Per Wikipedia the word SEABEE is derived from the abbreviation CB, for Construction Battalion.
EARFLAP (40D: Batting helmet part) — Is that really an EARFLAP? I think of a FLAP as something, I dunno, flappier. I'd think the ear-covering thingy on a batting helmet needs to be more substantial, if it is to do its one job of protecting the ear.
THEME:TREASURE MAP (59A: Pirate's guide that's hinted at phonetically by the starts of 17-, 29- and 44-Across) — beginnings of theme answers phonetically make out "X MARKS THE SPOT" (EX / MARX / DESPOT-)
Theme answers:
EX POST FACTO (17A: Retroactively, at law)
MARX AND LENIN (29A: Red giants)
DESPOTICALLY (44A: How Ivan the Terrible ruled)
Bonus themers:
BUCCANEER (11D: Pirate)
OLD SEA DOG (35D: Pirate, informally)
Word of the Day:Ken STARR(50D: ___ Report (political document of 1998)) —
Kenneth Winston "Ken" Starr (born July 21, 1946) is an American lawyer who has also been a federal judge and U.S. Solicitor General. He is the former President and Chancellor of Baylor University, and currently holds the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law at Baylor University Law School. He carried out a controversial investigation of members of the Clinton administration. [...] Starr served as the president and chancellor of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from June 2010 until May 2016. On May 26, 2016, following an investigation into the mishandling of several sexual assaults at the school by Starr, Baylor University's Board of Regents announced that Starr's tenure as university president would end on May 31. The Regents said he would continue as Chancellor, but on June 1, Starr told ESPN that he would resign that position effective immediately. He continues in the Louise L. Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law in Baylor Law School. He also serves on the board of trustees of the Baylor College of Medicine. (wikipedia)
• • •
Yes, yes, we all see BROADS there, very cute (33A: Women, impolitely). I guess he wants us to know he doesn't have a tin ear after all. He knows exactly what he's doing. Good for him. If putting "impolite" things about women in your puzzles is what turns you on, then fly that flag, by all means.
["... without them what would little boys do?"]
Dumb pun stuff today, so if you're into that kind of stuff, hurray, and if not, pfft. This one does have this interesting bonus theme answer feature, with BUCCANEER and OLD SEA DOG in symmetrical down positions, as well as the ARRR at the end, and the fill doesn't suffer *too* much for all the theme-stuffing, so that's nice. After the MARX AND LENIN answer, I thought there was going to be a red stars green stars blue stars joke theme (mostly because [Red stars] seems like the kind of clue that should have a "?" after it—there are "red stars" in astronomy after all, aren't there? Or are they only known as "red giants"? [Correction: clue is actually [Red giants] and my brain impishly refused to read correctly, as is its occasional wont] Either way, I thought the theme clue was cute and that the theme might continue the cuteness. And then I thought DESPOTICALLY might be some kind of Tom Swifty joke I wasn't getting. And *then* I thought I was dealing with some kind of belated 4th of July theme wherein the puzzle mocked failed Russian systems of government (Communism, Tsarism, etc.). But none of that was right. Just first syllables, that's all that mattered. The OLD in OLD SEA DOG seems gratuitous ("sea dog" *means* "old or experienced sailor", but you gotta make your symmetry work somehow). Dictionary doesn't appear to give "sea dog" any specific connection to pirates, but maybe it's a horseshoes / hand grenades situation.
Screw-ups:
ON EMPTY (23D: Risky way for a car to be running) — took a long time to parse, especially since the answer appeared to start with ONE ...
IRENA (27A: Lady in Spenser's "The Faerie Queene") — to give you an idea of how fast I'm scanning the clues sometimes, the first answer I wanted here was DIANA. Also, IRENA, twice in a week? That's some Maleskan regression, NYT. Come on, now.
REFLEX (6D: Involuntary action) — had REFL-, went with REFLUX.
YOLK'S(38A: "The ___ on you!" (classic gag line)) — this was the funniest thing in the puzzle, mostly because I read the word "classic" in a totally sarcastic voice
THEME: CROSS-REFEENCES (34A: "See also" notations ... or what can be found in the circled squares in this puzzle?) — OED (Oxford English Dictionary, a major "reference" work) crosses OED four times in this grid
Notable crosswordese:
OTOE
AMO
ENERO
Word of the Day: LAR gibbon (29D: ___ gibbon (zoo primate)) —
The lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), also known as the white-handed gibbon, is a primate in the gibbon family, Hylobatidae. It is one of the better-known gibbons and is often seen in zoos. (wikipedia)
• • •
There are some things the English language just doesn't want to do, and one of those is have "OED" all lined up in a single word. So we get pelted with past tenses, and the "OED" strings so painfully restrict adjacent fill that it cries out in pain. That NE is an atrocity, from LAR (!?!) to CHRON to CHOU, but it would be very hard to fill any better, given the OED placements. In the SW, the ramifications are somewhat less dire: just crosswordese like TSKED and OTOE, and then whatever BROCA is (!?!?!). The OEDs are handled somewhat better in the two other instances, but still, the fill suffers tremendously, everywhere: AEIOU NNE TEAC ENERO IDES AMO LEROI ECTO TROU (in addition to the aforementioned stuff). The longer Downs are pretty shiny—even the "OED"-containing ones—and the revealer is decent, with a nice metacrossword, self-referential aspect to the cluing. But the basic concept was a. too easy (you can fill in all the circles once you pick up the gimmick) and b. too restrictive for the fill to come out nice and tasty. I mean, jeez ... LAR? Jeez...
This puzzle pretty much exhausts the _OED options: TOED, HOED, COED—just to give you an idea of how severely limiting the "OED" letter string is. There's an odd strain of stupidity running through the grid, with IDIOTs and DODOS and a DENSE guy (on a SEAT in the corner). The climate is DRY. ARID, even. Like my house in ENERO (i.e. right now). HIDE is also a Facebook action, and would've completed the FB trifecta (along with TAG and POST) nicely. The roe deer all want to know why they were left out of this puzzle, as do the all the robots in the ROBO-education classes. Robots and deer, amassing on my lawn as we speak, asking "Why!?" Gonna put on ORNETTE Coleman now, and sip some bourbon ON ICE. Happy January 6th.
THEME:COMPRESSED [AIR] (29D: Gas station supply ... or what acan be found eight times in this puzzle) — The letter string "AIR" is "COMPRESSED" (i.e. rebusized) into 8 different boxes in the grid.
Word of the Day: Bagatelle (BAUBLE (1A)) —
noun
noun: bagatelle; plural noun: bagatelles
1.
a thing of little importance; a very easy task.
"dealing with these boats was a mere bagatelle for the world's oldest yacht club"
2.
a game in which small balls are hit and then allowed to roll down a sloping board on which there are holes, each numbered with the score achieved if a ball goes into it, with pins acting as obstructions. (google)
• • •
Wow. It's been a big week for Adele Astaire. Which says everything about the NYTX's cultural center of gravity of late. (73A: Sibling duo in "Lady, Be Good!," 1924)
The theme concept here is solid. Nice revealer that literally explains what's going on the grid. But once you turn up the trick, the puzzle is a slog—a longer-than-average slog, as this grid is 'roided up to 16x15 (likely to accommodate that central themer with the two rebus squares, "UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS", which, at 14 squares long, can't sit squarely in the middle of a standard 15x15 grid). Fill is not horrendous, but it's once again overly familiar, prone to datedness and arcana, full of SCH ENE ERGS-type stuff. ESO NOS. INE crossing the -INE of OVINE. Just lots of little things that add up to a certain joylessness. AIR is sometimes (properly) hidden / buried, sometimes not. I'm looking around for something remarkable or noteworthy. I'd say the most noteworthy thing, besides (but related to) the grid's bigness, is the word count. 83!? That's nutty. Max on a 15x15 is 78. I'll give you a full three extra answers for your additional row, that gives you 81. Max. 83 ... may be part of the reason the puzzle plays so dull. Hard to do much that is interesting when your grid is chopped all to hell and you have mostly 3s, 4s, and 5s to work with. Result: reliance on good ol' reliable tried and true seen-it-seen-it-seen-it stuff.
Anything happening on the clue front? Not really. 17A: Great Plains tunneler is *almost* a good misdirection, in that "Great Plains" is a descriptor I'd associate with people, not animals, but what kind of people tunnel on the plains? No kind, I think, is the kind. There's at least some attempt at cleverness at 27A: They rarely cover more than two feet in one day (PAIR OF SOCKS). I had SHOES, so ... at least my forward progress was stopped for a bit. I weirdly liked the clue for OVINE (32A: Like the breeds Kerry Hill and English Leicester) because I had to think about it. I forget that there are breeds of sheep as there are dogs, cattle, etc. And OVINE usually gets some dumb clue like [Sheepish?]. There's some trivia, if you're in to that. Didn't know OTTO meant "wealthy," didn't know UPTON SINCLAIR wrote anything called "Dragon's Teeth"—seriously, I can name a bunch of his novels ... oh, no, crap. I'm thinking of SINCLAIR LEWIS. OK, no, I know only "The Jungle" by UPTON SINCLAIR. So, "Dragon's Teeth" ... interesting. I wonder if it is about a dragon's teeth. Oh, no, it's about Nazis. Alrighty, then...
A friend of mine just hypothesized on Twitter that one of the crosses in today's puzzle might pose a problem for some solvers: "For tomorrow's NYT crossword: I have a hunch that the cross between 42-Across [DADO] and 23-Down [SNERD] is really gonna stump people." My guess is that he is right, but mainly for under-40s who have no real experience with Mortimer SNERD. Also, DADO is not a common word for most folks (outside the crossword). But the core NYT solving demographic will have no problem: even if they don't know DADO, SNERD will come marching creepily forth, as dummies will. Maybe we can try to make *this* meaning of SNERD happen...
Hey, did you see the great crossword retort to Slate's attack on the NYT's "Mini" crossword yesterday? Joel Fagliano, who makes the Minis, responded to the Slate article "The New York Times 'Mini' Crossword Is an Utter Disgrace to the NYT Crossword Brand" with this neat little custom-made puzzle. See if you can see the hidden message:
The author of the Slate piece, Ruth Graham, to her enormous credit, immediately recognized the brilliance of Joel's reply, tweeting this:
... and then writing this appreciation of Joel's Mini-puzzle rebuttal. I love that both Ruth and Joel are so passionate about puzzles that they took the time to get mad, and get even, respectively. The whole back-and-forth made me irrationally happy. Now I'm gonna do the Mini regularly just to find the hidden messages. Don't Disappoint Me, Joel!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
PS If you are a fan of Hayley Gold's webcomic about the NYT Crossword Puzzle, "Across & Down," you should know that she is considering stopping, since she will no longer be able to get the puzzles early. She is listening to feedback and suggestions about what she should do going forward. Here's her initial plea for advice, and here's her first post thereafter. Oh, and here's her webcomic (the latest one's about today's puzzle!), which, if you don't know about it yet, you might enjoy.
Er … no. This is loaded with problems. I don't care if you love the movie—that's not the point (I'm going to bet that most solvers have barely heard of and likely never seen the movie … I mean, not you, of course—you're quite the movie buff. But most.). The point is 1. word ladder, yuck. The worst of ladders. A hackneyed puzzle conceit if there ever was one. 2. BROMANTIC COMEDY is not a thing. Sorry, but no. Check out its wikipedia page—front-loaded w/ warning flags. I see that a few publications have used the term, but it's simply not common enough to qualify as a "modern-day genre" (which is already a deeply awkward way to refer to the genre of a *1952* film—how can a film be in a genre that didn't exist? Confusing.). Google "bromantic comedy" => 108K hits (also, for the record, autocorrect made it "romantic" just now). Now google "bromance," an *actual* "modern-day genre," and you get 9 million hits. There's the difference: fake portmanteau v. real portmanteau. So …. yuck to the whole awkward mess of that answer and its clue. 3. theme answers are just trivia, who cares? 4. OMG the fill is superbad. Not the good kind of "superbad." The bad kind. OPES! ALINED! ANIS APER A ON! A tent full of TAMERS! How many TAMERS!? MMCCC TAMERS! Can I get MMCCC AMENS? Thank you.
Further, ill-conceived grid construction leaves you with YODER, which is an Absurdity on a Tuesday. But the way the grid's built, you're locked into that Y---R sequence, and making an actual, viable, reasonably early-week answer out of Y---R is nigh on impossible. In fact, the whole thing is clearly too theme dense (what w/ the word ladder and all) for the constructor to smoothly handle. So it's a hot, rough mess. This thing just tries to do too much, and gets too cute, with a not-important old film, and so I didn't care. Killed it (just north of 3 minutes), but didn't care.
THEME: CORNERSTONE (36A: Where one might find a date … with a hint to this puzzle's theme)— rebus puzzle with "STONE" in every [… wait for it …] corner.
Theme answers:
STONEWALLS / STONEHENGE
STONEMASON / GEMSTONE
TOUCHSTONE / STONE AGE
RHINESTONE / GRINDSTONE
Extra theme answers
INSCRIPTION (30A: Writing on a 36-Across)
TIME CAPSULE (43A: Something found behind a 36-Across)
Word of the Day: ISTRIA (44D: Adriatic peninsula shared by Italy, Slovenia and Croatia) —
While I can't find a CORNERSTONE puzzle in the cruciverb database, the CORNER-type theme is old, old hat. There's a CORNERLOT puzzle in the NYT a few years back, with "HOUSE" in every corner (that was pretty good). There's a New York Sun puzzle from a while back (god I miss that puzzle…) that used FOUR CORNERS as its revealer and put the two-letter postal codes of the states involved (UT, CO, NM, AZ) in all the corners. So, it's been done, often, and usually more interestingly than this. This incarnation of the corner-theme is just too basic. The revealer gives away too much. "So … I just put 'STONE' in every corner? … OK." The attempt to liven it up with bonus theme answers only adds excessive pressure to the grid, which (not surprisingly) buckles. Repeatedly. The fill is good in places, but deeply unpleasant in others. OSA CRIT ISTRIA / TOPE POEME / TER SIMI SAMI LIENOR ISH / ET ALII ITO. Lots of ugly groupings. Long Downs look pretty great, but they aren't nearly enough. Dullish theme and subpar fill keep this one from passing.
I also didn't know CORNERSTONEs were so intimately associated with TIME CAPSULEs. This is a phenomenon of which I was unaware (though piecing together the answer wasn't hard at all). What else was I unaware of? ISTRIA's existence, for one. I have a hard time being happy learning new things when those things are so obviously desperation fill. Will try to be grateful for the new geographical knowledge, but it's not going to be easy. No idea what "Idiotest" is, either, so GSN was slow in coming (24A: Cable channel that has "Idiotest," for short). Not amusing that there is not one but two channels in the puzzle (see also TBS at9D). There oughta be a limit. Thought LAC was MER, but didn't have too much wrong-answer trouble, otherwise.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: POST OFFICE BOXES (39A: Mail conveniences … or a hint to eight squares in this puzzle) — eight PO boxes, one at the beginning of each word in four two-word theme phrases:
Theme answers:
POWER POLITICS
POLE POSITION
POISON POWDER
POPCORN POPPER
Word of the Day: MESNE (47A: Intermediate, in law) —
Very easy, as rebus puzzles go. Once you grok the concept, you can sail through this thing pretty easily. There is a certain elegance to the execution here, as the "PO" boxes follow a pattern. More often (I think … I may be making this up, but I feel like it's more often) rebus boxes are more haphazardly arranged in the grid, balanced in terms of overall dispersal, but not perfectly regular and predictable, as they are today. As a solver, I tend to like the unpredictable arrangement better, but there' something to be said for tying your one little letter pattern ("PO") tightly to the longer "theme" answers. I can't decide today if the predictable positioning makes the puzzle more or less dull. There's a certain repetitiveness that sets in once you figure out the rebus pattern you're searching for. Once you realize you're just hunting "PO"s … yeah. Then that's what you're doing. At least the four longer answers give you some kind of additional structural integrity. You're not just playing "find the PO"—you actually get results at the end where "PO" matters. Still, there was something workmanlike about this. Maybe it's that the puzzle was just too easy, or the answers weren't interesting or the clues clever enough. There just wasn't any "ooh" moment.
Biggest problem here was probably the fill, which is below average in too many places. I can take an ITER on the chin now and then, but when you give me an ITER / MESNE combo, I'm gonna get a little PO'd (20A: Roman road + 47A: Intermediate, in law). I think AMERE is one of the worst partials (5 letters) I've ever seen (7D: "___ bag of shells" (Ralph Kramden malapropism)). ALAW is a pretty strong contender in the 4-letter category (14A: Is ___ unto oneself). Actually, now that I really look at it, the rest of the grid is solid enough—it's just dull. SOPORIFIC (ironically, the most exciting answer in the grid, along with MAKE A FIST) (8D: Sleep-inducing + 3D: Prepare to give blood). The whole thing was a walk around the block—nice, but insufficient exercise, and I'll have forgotten about it 15 minutes after it's done.
I don't think POISON POWDER is a thing. Or, rather, I know that it *is* a thing, as I googled it. But if the first (entire) page of results is any indication, it's exclusively a Pokémon thing. According to pokemondb.net, "Poison Powder causes the target to become poisoned. Poisoned Pokémon lose 1/8 of their maximum HP each turn." Whatever that means.
I really wish this theme had been tied to the police. I mean, POPO describes this theme a helluva lot better than POST OFFICE BOXES does. Hmm, there appears to be a Mr. Popo in the Dragon Ball universe. Before I explain what Dragon Ball is and how it does and does not relate to Pokémon, I'm just gonna sign off.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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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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Sausage Party is a 2016 American-Canadian adult computer-animated comedy filmdirected by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It features the voices of Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek. The film, which is a spoof of Disney and Pixar films,[8] follows a sausage named Frank who tries to discover the truth about his existence and goes on a journey with his friends to escape their fate while also facing his own arch-nemesis, a ruthless and murderous douche who intends to kill him and his friends.
It was the first American CGI-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA. The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest and the film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016, by Columbia Pictures. (wikipedia)
