Comedian Margaret / TUES 5-25-21 / Handicraft website / Court cutups / First noble gas to be discovered

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare back for this last Tuesday in May. I’m writing this now as a law school graduate, which is quite exciting! The last three years were a bit of a slog, but now that part is over. Next up is the Bar Exam (save me)! I’m trying to study despite my desire to just sit around and watch sports all day — seriously, with the end of the Premier League (my Liverpool finished off the season strong!), the NBA playoffs, the WNBA getting started, the PGA Championship, NHL playoffs (go, Penguins), and now the French Open starting, there's always something on. Now, I’m procrastinating by doing this write-up rather than relearning contracts. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle...

Constructors: Kristian House and Mike Dockins 

Relative difficulty: Fairly hard

THEME: Colloquial expressions showing disbelief

Theme answers:

• I DON’T BELIEVE IT (20A: “Really?!” 
• NO FRIGGIN’ WAY (24A: “Impo-o-sible!”) 
• GET OUTTA HERE (45A: “Oh, come on now!”) 
• THAT’S CRAZY TALK (53A: “How ridiculous!”)

Word of the Day: STEIG (1D: Cartoonist William who created Shrek) —

William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, and, in his later life, an illustrator and writer of children's books. Best known for the picture books Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto, he was also the creator of Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name. He was the U.S. nominee for both of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988. (Wiki)

• • •

I don’t have a ton to say about this puzzle, other than I didn’t really enjoy it. For the theme, yes, these answers are all sort of colloquial expressions that some people might say. But, there was no real payoff — nothing major tied the theme answers together, and there could be so many different sets of possible answers for each clue. My least favorite of the themers by far was NO FRIGGIN WAY (20A), as I think that “no freaking way” or “no freakin’ way” or even “no frickin’ way” are much more common ways of expressing disbelief. 

I got off to a somewhat challenging start with STEIG at 1D. It’s nice to get him in the puzzle, as Shrek just passed its 20th anniversary (and it’s an all-time classic). I only vaguely knew his name and ended up misspelling it. Then, what started off as one proper noun in that northwest corner multiplied seemingly exponentially throughout the rest of the puzzle. It definitely felt like there were more proper nouns than normal in this puzzle (TARA; BONN; ASTRO; EDIE; STEIG; TONI; ABEL; THE VOICE; ELIZA; ZEKE; OREOS; ETSY; INSTA; THOR; CHO; SYR; WNBA; etc…) 

The thing that sat with me probably the most after I finished the solve was 59A: Hot seasoning made with peppers because I’m still so mad at that clue. A seasoning is made up of crushed herbs and/or spices that you put on chicken to get invited back to the BBQ. A seasoning is not a sauce! CHILI SAUCE is a condiment, so this clue doesn’t work at all. On another note, I’m sure it’s a great school and all, but I think I’ve seen enough of RPI (37A) (and then also ENGR at 17A) to last a lifetime. 

Maybe it was the two constructors on the puzzle, or maybe I was just in a bad mood because the Penguins lost in overtime, but I found the puzzle somewhat disjointed and overall hard to get a foothold in. Then, it felt like the theme offered no spark, and a lot of the fill was overused.

Bullets:

• It was nice to see the WNBA Liberty (29D) get some love in this puzzle! It was especially timely, as they had a great win tonight, and are currently 5-1 on the season, and Sabrina Ionescu has taken the world by storm. 
• Even though I grew up watching Disney Channel, I somehow missed “ZEKE and Luther” (58D) completely. I’ve literally never heard of that show before. 
• If you’re going to have two actresses play the lead role of ELIZA (51D: Doolittle of “Pygmalion”), having Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn do so has got to be one of the best combinations in entertainment history. 
• And, lastly, what would this write-up be without me mentioning that BTS has released a new song called “Butter” that everyone should listen to!! If you can listen to it without 1) wanting to dance or 2) having it stuck in your head for days, you’re not human.  

Signed, Clare Carroll, law school graduate

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Vulcan's specialty / SAT 4-24-21 / Co-star of Apple TV+'s "The Morning Show" / Journalist Parker with a 2018 Pulitzer Prize / Lambert airport inits.

Constructor: Kristian House and Mike Dockins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: None

Word of the Day: PARKER (Journalist Parker with a 2018 Pulitzer Prize) —

Ashley R. Parker^[1] is an American journalist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning White House reporter for The Washington Post, and senior political analyst for MSNBC. From 2011 to 2017 she was a Washington-based^[2] politics reporter^[3] for The New York Times.

• • •

Hi all, Rachel Fabi in for Rex Parker today (and for the early readers, apologies that this is late! That's on me! And because I'm running late, you're getting a Fabi-style writeup instead of a Fabi-imitating-Parker-style writeup-- this format may be familiar to readers of my New Yorker write-ups on Diary of a Crossword Fiend).  I solved this one in a bit of a panic since I knew I was late, so I'm not sure I can give an accurate assessment of its difficulty, but I finished it just slightly above my average time. Whether that's due to the puzzle being slightly more difficult than average or my frantic solve making it harder to see things I otherwise might have seen is unclear. But despite the state in which I solved this puzzle, I still really like it! It's got a cool grid, and some excellent long entries, and a bunch of clues that I really enjoyed. There's some fill I could live without scattered around the puzzle, but in general, I think this is a very solid Saturday offering.

First of all, that grid shape! I love grid designs with long lines of blocks through the the middle, and this one is no exception. I don't really know what else to say about that, other than that I think it looks rad and facilitates a sort of unique way of moving through the grid during the solve. 

The long entries I particularly enjoyed were HARRY STYLES / LADY FRIENDS / POINT OF VIEW / and KRIS KRINGLE. Although HARRY STYLES was clued surprisingly straightforwardly (there's so much you can do with that name, so it seems a wasted opportunity to settle for [19A: Singer who rose to fame on "The X Factor"]!), the other three have either fun or particularly tricky clues that I enjoyed. The clue on LADY FRIENDS in particular [9D: Some boos] likely tripped up some solvers who are unfamiliar with the term "boo" as a modern pet name for one's partner. The POINT OF VIEW clue was also tricky, being one of those one word clues [52A: Take] that could mean just about anything. And [22D: Stocking stuffer] for KRIS KRINGLE is fun because it's just adjacent to what we normally think [Stocking stuffer] means -- this is the guy who *literally* stuffs the stockings. 

Long entries aside, there were a few other clue/entry pairs in this puzzle that made me smile, and one that literally made me laugh out loud for the dad-joke of it all. The dad joke clue [39A: Sticky food?] for KABOB is cute and clever, and I adore it. I also really liked [49A: Coverage of the royal family?] for TIARA, [20D: Real posers?] for YOGIS, and [30D: "Cry me a river!" elicitor, perhaps] for SOB STORY. I got extremely tripped up on [34D: When?] as the clue for NOT IF. Once it clicked, though, I was pretty satisfied by that little bit of wordplay (because the entry fills in the implied blank [___ but when]). 

 

A few more things:

• 58A: Yeah, right: I wrote over the first four letters of I'M SO SURE, like, four times. I tried YEAH SURE, SURE SURE, and WELL SURE before finally landing on the correct set. I guess I was not so sure! 
• 62A: "___ a Pizza" (punnily titled children's book) -- I vaguely remember my little brother reading and enjoying "PETE'S a Pizza" and I like that punny title, so I will forgive the otherwise pet peeve of mine of having what looks like a plural name in the grid. Much better clue than just naming two random PETES!
• Fill I could live without: HRS, ALLI, NITTI (are we supposed to know mafia gangster henchmen by name??)

Well folks, that's all the time we have for today, because it is ACPT weekend and I need to go mentally prepare. Apologies again for the late post-- blame me, not Rex! 

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld

[Follow Rachel on Twitter]  

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

PS. Thank you to everyone who contributed to These Puzzles Fund Abortion! I know many of you did, and I really appreciate it. We've raised $32,000 so far (!!!), which is just unbelievable. If you still want to pick up a copy of the puzzle pack I edited to benefit the Baltimore Abortion Fund, you can do so here!
 

PPS. Even if you are not attending the ACPT today, you can pick up some independent puzzles from the "Virtual ACPT Puzzle Table" that Nate Cardin and I coordinated for constructors to show off their work this weekend. Those puzzles are available here (and includes one free BAF puzzle!). 
 

Read more...