Very nice longer answers. A very (almost aggressively) current puzzle, very much in the tech-boy universe. Feels like it was made by/for math-science boys who went to college in the '00s. It's got DATA SCIENTISTs and MINECRAFT and the actor who played Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" and the host of "The Daily Show. There are only two women in the puzzle and they're huddling together in the SW corner. Oh, sorry, forgot about LENI (whoever that is). Anyway, the few female answers all TINY four-letter names. Very MALE, is what I'm saying. But well made, I think. MENA is ick and BOITO is obscuroito (to me), but there's not a lot of other junk, and the skeleton on this one is solid—good, strong longer answers holding this thing together.
I did this in fits and starts, racing at times, dead-stopped at others, getting JESSE EISENBERG from *that* clue wasn't easy for me, and the first bit of his name I got was the "EEI" string, which looks wrong / insane (5D: Oscar-nominated actor who has written several humor pieces for The New Yorker). And then DATA SCIENTIST didn't (and still doesn't) sound like a thing. I wanted ANALYST. Bah. But the worst problem came at the end, with my last corner—the SE. And it was all MINECRAFT's fault. I have a 12yo nephew who is ObSessed—goes to conventions and everything. But I just don't think of MINECRAFT as a "video game." That's a label I associate with stand-up console games like "Donkey Kong" or home console games like "Mario Kart" (which fits). And maybe "Myst," I guess. But you play a video game—like, there are clear objectives. It's relatively finite and goal-oriented. I think of "MINECRAFT" as more like a virtual world in which you explore and build ... I don't know. Are there points? Can you score? Win? It's obviously technically right, the clue, but ugh, again, the vagueness. So I had MINIKARTS at some point (and JOE KOOL!). And then TRIBES for 42A: Concerns for sociologists (TRENDS). Gulf of RIGA? Never heard of it. Got rescued by a blind guess at TARS (after I'd pulled MINECRAFT). Not so fun down there. TRUST ME. But fun overall.
Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (all easy *except* NE corner, where I got stuck for a bit)
THEME:none
Word of the Day:PONIARDS(1A: Small, slim daggers) —
Poignard, or poniard, (Fr.), refers to a long, lightweight thrusting knife with a continuously tapering, acutely pointed blade and crossguard, historically worn by the upper class, noblemen, or the knighthood. Similar in design to a parrying dagger, the poignard emerged during the Middle Ages and was used during the Renaissance in Western Europe, particularly in France, Switzerland, and Italy. (wikipedia)
[let google write the clues for you!]
• • •
I was loving this one until the very end. It's not so much that I got dead stuck (though I did); it's that once I got unstuck, the revelation of the problem-answer was more an "ugh" than an "aha" moment. Apparently MAC PRO is a thing that exists. I am only just learning this. I owned a MAC*book* PRO for years, so that, I'm familiar with. But MAC PRO? No. Wikipedia tells me that "It is the high-end model of the three desktop computers in the current Mac lineup, the other two being the iMac and Mac Mini." So there we are. I would've gotten IMAC and MACMINI, for the record. MAC PRO, ugh. What really makes me angry is that of course the *first* thing I thought of on seeing the clue 9A: Apple variety was computers. It's Saturday, so of course it's computer apple and not apple apple. Only, not knowing this brand, I went back to apple apples ("Clever move, puzzle—going all Monday when you know I'm *looking* for Saturday," I thought). And so I was looking for the edible kind of apple. Like some kind of rube.
[too late]
I surrounded that NE corner on both sides, then saw right through the feint at 18A: Extremely fast? and threw across STARVE with no problem. But then things just broke down. And then stopped altogether for a while. In retrospect, RAVAGE should've been easy, but POROUS was very hard to see, and I wanted FOOL (?) at 22A: "Poor little" one in Coleridge's "To a Young Ass" (FOAL) and TICS at 26A: Jerks (TUGS). Yipes. I think FOAL was the first missing answer to occur to me up there, and it brought RAVAGE and down went everything else. So my last impression of the puzzle was "Oh ... MAC PRO ... that's ... a thing ... I guess." Not a great way to end an otherwise very nice puzzle.
Got a very fast start. Guessed at AFT and RIGS and then tested my first Acros—bam: SIGHT GAG (17A: Many a Harpo Marx joke):
[just ignore the typo, thanks]
I thought the longer answers here were fantastic, and that's what you want them to be in a themeless. Well, any time your answers are fantastic, that's great, but since you aren't hemmed in by theme material on themelesses, you really should be able to deliver "fantastic" (as opposed to just "solid") at least a few times. I didn't cringe at anything here. I can take a little crosswordese (EES, ONE-A) when everything else is humming. It was really, really easy though (NE corner notwithstanding). ELENA Ferrante, Dennis RODMAN, the DYNAMIC DUO—all this stuff is right in my wheelhouse. I went through the bottom half of the puzzle like it was Tuesday or Wednesday, esp. the SE, which was a blur.
[not TRACI]
Wanted: NOGOZONE (instead of -AREA) (3D: Place to be avoided). ARID (instead of ARAB) (25A: Like Egypt). Otherwise, no issues outside of that NE corner.
THEME:cold people puns — famous names turned into winter-related puns (I think)
Theme answers:
EDWARD SNOWED IN (20A: Informant trapped after an icy storm?)
JODIE FROSTER (26A: Actress with an icy stare?)
CURT CHILLING (44A: Pitcher of ice?)
BARRY COLD WATER (52A: Next Republican nominee after Dwight D. Ice in Shower left office?) (wording of the clue is very important here; Nixon was 1960 nominee, but DDE was still *in office* at that point.)
Word of the Day:"VEEP"(16A: HBO hit starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus) —
I imagine the constructor first noticed the Snowden / "SNOWED IN" pun, then tried to find way to build a puzzle around it, and this is the result. EDWARD SNOWED IN is interesting. It's kind of funny. The others are less so, on both counts. JODIE FROSTER doesn't even make sense. What's a "froster?" Someone who frosts cakes? No, that's not in keeping with the winter theme. Seriously, when would you use "froster" in relation to cold weather? Or at all? Weren't there better answers out there? No EDDIE BLIZZARD (or WOLF BLIZZARD, I guess, but that's pretty awful)? FRIGID BARDOT? SLEET ULRICH? CLAMMY DAVIS, JR. (I guess the puns are all last names, so those wouldn't be consistent)? LASSE HAILSTORM? JAKE CHILLING ALL? BUSTA RIMES? AARON BRRR? Pick one. There are probably (many) more. I don't think having some form of "ice" in all the clues works either, as "icy storms" rarely "snow" anyone "in." Also, Dwight D. Ice in Shower is so bad it's not even groanworthy. It's grotesque. This puzzle wants desperately to be cute, but hits the mark only with its first theme answer. After that, the whole thing comes apart quite a bit.
I blazed through the non-theme parts of this—cluing seemed very Monday—but I couldn't even understand the theme for the longest time. JODIE FROSTER took forever, even with most of the crosses, for reasons largely explained above (i.e. WTF?). What I like about the puzzle is that the longer Downs seem to have been chosen with care, and with an eye to novelty. Well, most of them, at any rate. THE REAL ME andNEW IN TOWN are both nice, and BAD WORD and PHRYGIA (41D: Realm of King Midas), bring a colloquial and classical quality to the grid, respectively. This is important, because the rest of the fill is kind of subpar (With so much 3- and 4-letter stuff, this isn't terribly surprising). I couldn't make any sense of EXOD. for way too long (22D: Gen. follower) (abbr. of "Exodus," in case that wasn't yet clear). Mostly the fill isn't cringeworthy so much as it's dull—of the OLLA / ATAD / APSE variety. Puzzle skewed old, but not painfully. I suspect plenty of people will find the icy puns enjoyable. I am just not one of those people. Probably because of my icy, icy heart. Oh well.
Phoebe Snow (10)
Edgar Winter (11)
Robert Frost (11)
Vanilla Ice (10)
There's a weak theme I just made up. It's all yours. You're welcome.
Word of the Day: ORGANA (40D: "Star Wars" surname) —
The House of Organa, also known as the Royal House of Alderaan, the Royal Family of Alderaan, or simply House Organa, was an Alderaanian Noble House that dated back to the earliest days of Alderaan's colonization. Throughout history, the Organa dynasty was the one that ruled over their homeworld the longest. Throughout several millennia of existence, the House Organa sired many well-known figures of the pan–galacticpolitics. Two of its most renowned scions were ViceroyBail Prestor Organa and his adopted daughter, PrincessLeia Organa. Following the destruction of Alderaan in 0 BBY, the name of Organa died out. (wookieepedia)
• • •
This seems a fine puzzle, but it is radically misplaced on Friday. This was the hardest puzzle I've done in a very long time. I got stopped cold at least three times, the last time resulting in my staring at a smallish patch of grid for something like five minutes. Cluing difficulty overall was jacked way up, and there were a couple crucially placed WTF? proper nouns that made both the NW and the SE (or parts of them) seem like death traps. Also, FLECHE? Only vaguely familiar to me as a French word, and I had seven years of French. Other things I just didn't know:
KILOBAR (got the KILO—and then just got the rest from crosses) (4D: Metric pressure unit)
ATS (I'm never going to remember this cruddy thing) (9D: Cadillac model that debuted in 2012)
POGOS (it's a dance now?) (26D: Dances by jumping in place)
JAMAL (after the "-AL" I actually "knew" it, but kept doubting it and taking it out when I couldn't get crosses to work; more on that in a bit) (23D: Crawford who won the 2014 Sixth Man of the Year Award)
ANNE Hutchison (no hope) (34D: Colonial heretic Hutchison)
FLECHE (as I said) (46A: Fencing move that means "arrow" in French)
AIR BOAT (got the BOAT—and then it was just a guess; had no idea those boats w/ giant fans were called that) (42A: Everglades transport)
LTGEN (honestly didn't know that was even a rank; can't remember ever seeing it in crosswords) (45A: Geo. Washington was the U.S.'s first)
CITRON (that's a real fruit?) (39D: Fruit historically used for medicinal purposes)
"THE CAT" (hahahaha no) (20D: 1960s Robert Loggia series about a burglar-turned-bodyguard)
ORGANA (hahahaha no) (40D: "Star Wars" surname)
I got this far without too much difficulty:
[You can just ignore that stray, incorrect ACT up there in the NE—that's just a reflex entry from seeing the phrase "When Romeo says…" in the clue]
As you can see, I couldn't make the turn out of the NW and so had to start over completely in the SW, where HEROD was a gimme (or so I hoped when I wrote it in) (43D: Villain in a Nativity play), and HATRED was a good guess, and I gained traction from there. Once I finished the SW and threw THIS OLD THING across, I figured I was good to go.
But … no. I ended up with two Spots of Brutality: the J-SHAPED / "THE CAT" (!?!?!?!) crossing, and the single answer, ORGANA. In the first case, there was a pile-up of problems. J-SHAPED (23A: Like many hooks) was totally unexpected and the JS- looked wrong, so JAMAL went in and out a lot. "THE CAT" … I can't even say. Utter unknown. Blank. Ridiculous obscurity. But I was able to infer it, eventually, so … fairish? Then there was the brutal clue on nearby PALETTES (26A: Studio mixing equipment), which also made this little part hard to solve. I totally fell for the fake-out in that clue (imagining a music studio, not an art studio), so even with much of the answer filled in, I had no idea what was going on. Not knowing PALETTES meant I kept taking out and putting back in the "P" in POGOS. GOGOS? Who knows? So that section was a face-slap.
But the SW corner was worse. I was sure I had it. SCOURGES and TUBE TOP went in and I figured everything in their grasp would be mine. But the AIR- in AIRBOAT, no; LTGEN, no (out of desperation I almost tried USSEN, even though I knew a. that was wrong and b. that is not an acceptable abbr.). If I listed a million fruits, CITRON would not be one. I was running fruits like mad: CHERRY? CRAISIN? Is that a fruit? Gah! Could Not think of a fever-producer ending in "-O" (I wasn't considering abbrs., I guess, because no such thing was indicated). The worst thing here, though, is ORGANA. I wager than something way south of 5% of solvers had any idea there. I had none. Zero. I have a framed "Star Wars" poster on my living room wall. I'm guessing that this ORGANA crap is predominantly if not exclusively in those SCOURGES now labeled "Episodes I, II, III." Anyway, zero hope there. Only way I solved that corner was by finally shoving in ERAT and SNAP and *refusing* to take them out. Then I tried --GEN for the Washington answer, then just *guessed* that LTGEN was a thing. Can't believe I couldn't remember my cigarette brands, esp. a brand as familiar as SALEM(S). That might've made a big difference. But with AIRBOAT LTGEN CITRON ORGANA all barely or not at all known to me, hoo boy, that was rough.
Again, I think the grid is pretty solid. Lots of colloquialisms. Lots of zip. I am biased against this thing because it was misplaced on Friday and because its difficulty came excessively from proper nouns that I either had no way of knowing ("THE CAT"!?) or should not have to know because all "Star Wars" prequels are utter garbage (ORGANA).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Despite some fabulous fill here and there, this puzzle was generally irksome. The main problem for me: clues trying way way way too hard to be clever and cutesy. Sometimes the "?" clues, and the ones with deliberately misleading wording, can be entertaining. Today, for whatever reason, I was not amused. While I didn't mind the clue for STRIP POKER (18A: Game in which players barely bet?), I think I mainly just like STRIP POKER so much as an answer that I'm willing to overlook the clue. Not so with the clues for PLURAL (19D: Like apples and oranges), FAMILY ROOM (3D: TV station?), PARTED (45A: Having a headline?), MRI (8D: Hand pic, perhaps), INNIE (30D: It doesn't come out of the stomach) or USDA (61A: Certified letters?). I do have to give it up for the MARXISM clue, though (7D: School concerned with classes?) - as with any good trick clue, when I got the answer, I was forced to admit its genuine cleverness - I was thinking something to do with fish, but no.
There were also some clues that just seemed off. Take 54A: Much of high society (jet setters). What? Those terms belong to some other era. The fifties, perhaps, when "High Society" was a big hit and BOAC instituted the world's first commercial jet service. Don't clue a dated term with a dated term unless the fact that they are dated is at issue. I am confident that last sentence made sense, though I don't care to explain it. Further, the clue on SCANNERS (50A: Needs for 8-Downs) is just weird, and unnecessarily forced. No doubt the MRI machine has a SCANNER as one of its components, but ... you know what you need for an MRI of your hand? An MRI machine. The idea that you "need" SCANNERS for an MRI is just oddball. Plus the move from singular MRI to plural SCANNERS is grating here.
The real bummer for me was I had never heard the term NICAD (9A: Certain dry cell, briefly), which is now a word I officially hate. NIckel CADmium battery. Seems common enough when I google it, but if I've seen it or heard it, it's been only in very quick passing. Maybe the odd xword where I knew all the crosses and thus didn't notice it. Problem - I could not figure out the first letter of CAKE (11D: Stick together). So I had NI-AD and -AKE and I ran through the alphabet and eventually went with ... "T" - if something TAKES it sticks, sort of. NITAD ... whatever. I didn't know. Eventually I could see that TAKE was just way too forced, even for this puzzle, and so I sat there befuddled until eventually stumbling into the "C" for CAKE, which caused me to smack my forehead and say "D'oh!" NICAD ... sounded more right than NITAD.
Rest:
1A: Beach nos. (SPFs) - clever, but again, it's like the cluer is trying Soooo hard to hide the answer.
5A: Scorer of a record 158 goals (Hamm) - PELE? Anyone?
15A: Target of a 1989 E.P.A. investigation (alar) - one of a handful of common crossword answers with slightly fancy clues. See also OSAGE (16A: Language related to Winnebago) and SHAQ (1D: Three-time M.V.P. of the N.B.A. finals, familiarly). I wonder when crossword constructor Kevin will ever be famous enough (in whatever capacity) to be the clue for DER (13D: Overseas article). I hope so. "Hey, I know that guy."
20A: Makeshift (quick fix) - great great answer, obviously, but I don't think of QUICK FIX as an adjective. I guess it can be, though.
24A: Yupik relative (Inuit) - Learned "Yupik" when writing a short piece about the word INUIT. Learned (and probably forgot) more than I ever wanted to know about native northern folks.
28A: Emphatic response during a drill ("SIR, NO SIR!") - yeah, that's good. Nicely done.
35A: Horizon happening (moonset) - is this really a phenomenon such that one would watch the horizon for it? And by "one" I mean a non-astronomer.
37A: Dealmaker's delight (closing) - reminds me of "Glengarry Glen Ross" - "ABC. Always Be Closing!" (foul language ahead):
42A: Beneficial thing to release (genie) - ick. In fiction, maybe.
43A: Gator rival (Seminole) - sporty clue; see also ESPN (62A: "Pardon the Interruption" airer)
46A: Pulitzer-winning writer Sheehan and others (Neils) - Wanted GAILS, but that's SHEEHY.
2D: Indiana town where Cole Porter was born and buried (Peru) - news to me.
9D: Macho credo ("No Pain, No Gain") - didn't know this was particular to men.
25D: Salome, to Herod Antipas (niece) - "Antipas" makes me think of "Antipasto."
26D: Spelunking aids (lamps) - I guess this is true. I was looking for some kind of gripping thingie or ax or something. LAMPS = so basic I didn't see it coming. Didn't see it ... that was not a pun or play on words of any sort.
48D: Pop singer De Sario (Teri) - who??? Let's find out ... OMG, you will be sickened ... but will dance in spite of yourself:
54D: Funerary receptacle (jar) - ugh, the trickiness. You wanted URN, I wanted URN, we all wanted URN. Instead we got something peanut butter comes in.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
PS For those of you who don't read me M-Th (and what's up with that, anyway?) - please check out the VP debate-themed puzzle, "Don't Blink," which I co-wrote with PuzzleGirl (with an editorial assist from Orange)
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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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