Word of the Day: Oligopoly (51A: Noted example of oligopoly, in brief) —
:a condition in which a few sellers dominate a particular market to the detriment of competition by others (merriam-webster.com) (legal definition)[olig- (from Gr. oligos "little, few") + -poly (as in monopoly)]
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Solid Friday here. Some nice whooshing around the grid via vibrant longer answers. I especially enjoyed the SOUR GRAPES HORSE OPERA that sent me soaring down the west side of the grid. I liked that SMOG ALERTS was up in the air (with the smog?) though BUNGEE JUMP should probably have been plummeting rather than just sitting there up top. "Jump, you coward! Jump!" But no, instead of jumping, BUNGEE JUMP just pushed the SEAWEED SALAD over the edge instead. Bad form. The second half of my solve (the SE / NE) was somewhat less thrilling. Easy to go down, hard to get back up. I think the Sibyl said something like that to Aeneas before he went into the Underworld. And so it was with my puzzle: whooshing down, clawing my way back up. There were two major flow issues for me today. Could not get into the SE because I couldn't parse THIS END UP (29D: Instruction on some packages). For some reason, after THIS SIDE UP, my brain was out of ideas. Also, I wasn't *completely* sure that PRO RATE was PRO RATE and not PRO RATA. So I doubted the "E" in END. And since that "E" was a choke point—no SE access. Really hate when grids have such tiny passageways between sections. Really disrupts the whoosh. But then my whoosh was also interrupted in a much more wide-open part of the grid, as I tried to get into the NE corner from the upper middle. EL NORTE was easy enough, but BURIALS, yeeeeeeesh, that was probably the hardest answer in the puzzle for me (22A: Time capsule events). I can picture a time capsule ... but an "event," no I couldn't imagine what that was supposed to be. I can now. But I could not then, back when I was mid-solve. We did a time capsule in high school. I don't remember any BURIALS, and I don't know which reunion year got to open it. No idea what I put in it, but I'm pretty sure it would be horrifying / embarrassing and that most time capsules should, like the dead, be left in peace.
I got past the two blockages by riding FRONT ROW SEAT down to the bottom to TANSY and BUSY and building back better :( from there. Here is where things started to clank a bit: ADVICE GURU? (52A: Expert with tips). Huge wince from me on that one. Had the GURU and thought "hmmm what kind?" and then I needed Many crosses to get ... ADVICE!?!?! What the ... that's way too generic. Also, redundant—don't all GURUs basically give "advice"? Recent examples from the web (at M-W.com) include a "fitness guru" and a "Democratic PR guru" (!), and I can name a few self-styled "financial gurus," but ADVICE GURU, uck and yuck. I also balked hard at DEMO LESSON (11D: Part of a teacher's job interview). There are teaching demonstrations (or demos, sure) and there are sample lessons, but DEMO LESSON just does not hit my ear right. I teach (college), my wife taught (college, high school), and ... I dunno, I guess I just expected the teaching lingo to be a piece of cake. Instead, I had to scrape for it, and ended up with a Frankenstein's monster-looking answer. DEMOLESSON sounds like what you do when you have absolutely had it as a teacher and decide to blow up your career on the last day by smoking and drinking and complaining about your bosses in a smoky, alcoholic, profanity-laden tirade. "See you in hell, kids!" DEMOLESSON, accomplished.
Super-awkward clues on PAW (18A: What's shaken after the instruction "Shake") and FEARS (12D: They might drive you to a flight). In an attempt at misdirection, both clues get some ridiculous phrasing. I like the idea of shaking a dog's PAW, for sure, but "instruction" (!?!?). You give dogs "commands," not "instructions," they aren't building a model airplane or making a cake, come on. And as for FEARS ... They might drive you to a flight? (12D: They might drive you to a flight). *A* flight?! What's this absurd "a" business? It doesn't even make for good surface sense. Are you trying to evoke the image of someone taking you to the airport??? That would be "your flight?" FEARS drive you to flee, or maybe they drive you to flight (the way your awful in-laws might drive you to drink). But to *a* flight? No. Tin-eared, grammatically clunky garbage, that clue. I don't think I've hated an indefinite article in a clue this much in a long time. But that whole section was at least partially redeemed by PRIVATE EYE (10D: Spade, for one), subject of much of my teaching and beautiful symmetrical counterpart to HORSE OPERA (26D: Movie with saloon fights, colloquially). Mysteries and westerns, that's the stuff! More, I say, more. I guess [Spade] was supposed to be ambiguous in that clue, but when you've read and watched The Maltese Falcon as much as I have, Sam Spade is the expected Spade. Cards Schmards.
Had the TSA tracking baby names at first. Then the NSA (maybe they're tracking them to find some kind of pattern, crack some kind of code, I dunno what these people do!). But no, it's the Social Security Administration (SSA), that makes more sense. Other mistakes include ASIS (instead of FREE) for the sofa sign (15A: Sign on a sofa in the front yard, maybe), KNEW for KNOW (3D: Saint Paul, Minn., radio station whose format really should be all news), and LIMA for YUMA (2D: World's sunniest city, per the World Meteorological Organization) ... only to have LIMA jump out and surprise me at the end of the puzzle after all! (17A: City where the conquistador Pizarro was assassinated). Fun with four-letter cities. Nuisance names were few for me. Really just EVIE, to speak of (47D: Nikki Reed's role in the 2003 film "Thirteen"). I learned of ELIE Mystal the last time he appeared in the grid, and then I started following him on Twitter, so his name stuck (6A: Legal writer and political commentator ___ Mystal). I couldn't tell you anything ASHLEE Simpson has done *except* lip-synch on SNL, but that's all I needed today! (24A: Simpson who was caught lip-syncing "Pieces of Me" on "Saturday Night Live"). Some days, your puddle-shallow knowledge of places and events and people is enough. See you tomorrow.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Downs-only solve)
THEME: MOUNTAIN CLIMBER (55A: One who encounters the last parts of the answers to the starred clues on the way up) — themers are familiar phrases whose last words can also be parts of a mountain:
Theme answers:
WORLD FOOD SUMMIT (17A: *U.N. conference seeking to eliminate hunger)
LOSES FACE (24A: *Suffers humiliation)
SLIPPERY SLOPE (34A: *Gradual, seemingly harmless course of action that ultimately results in bad consequences)
NAVAL BASE (48A: *Place of warship?)
Word of the Day: STREUSEL (3D: Crumbly pastry topping) —
In baking and pastry making, streusel (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtʁɔʏzl̩]) is a crumbly topping of flour, butter, and sugar that is baked on top of muffins, breads, pies, and cakes. Some modern recipes add spices and chopped nuts. The mixture can also be layered or ribboned in the middle of a cake.
The term is also sometimes used for rich pastries topped with, or mixed with, streusel. (wikipedia)
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Well, it had to happen eventually, and today, it finally did: I absolutely face-planted my Downs-only solve. The face plant was all the more face-planty because I was *so* close. *This* close [holds fingers apart only as wide as a layer of strudel pastry, which, it turns out, is a pastry, not a "Crumbly pastry topping," and is definitely not spelled STREUDEL, as I erroneously and fatally imagined]. Long Downs everywhere were already creating a kind of Down-only nightmare, and I had to fight like crazy to get three of the four corners, particularly the NW. But I really thought I had it, and was proud when I finally got the PUMP (!?!) part of IV PUMP to fall into place. "That's it!" I thought. But no "Congratulations" message. So I checked my answers all over again, and checked every Across to make sure everything I'd entered at least formed plausible answers. And they did. Mission accomplished. But still no "Congratulations, you finished your stupid puzzle!" message. So I had to give up and hit "Reveal Grid" or whatever the command is. It was then I discovered that I'd mistaken STREUSEL for STRUDEL *and* misspelled STR(E)UDEL. All the crosses looked good! (MEDS instead of MESS, but ... MEDS is a thing, so it set off no alarms). Sigh. Undone by pastry. And I love pastry. Tragic. What a betrayal.
This theme feels strange, in that you descend the grid ... but then you're supposed to ... reclimb it to make sense of the revealer? Also, I think I don't know the difference between the FACE of a mountain and the SLOPE of a mountain. I'm guessing the FACE is ... higher? Maybe the last steep bit before the SUMMIT? I dunno. I keep trying to google the definition of "mountain face" but all I get are mountains that look like faces, or someplace called Face Mountain (in Alaska), which appears to get its name because, well, part of its peak looks like a face.
[not seeing it]
I also don't think WORLD FOOD SUMMIT is anywhere near a Monday-level answer. Feels like a hyper-specific, not terribly widely known thing that just happened to fit the theme and the grid. The wikipedia page hasn't even been updated since before 2021. Real outlier, familiarity-wise.
The answers that caused trouble today were "IT WAS ME" (1D: Sheepish "I'm to blame") (absolutely no idea how that straightforward statement is "sheepish (!?!?!)); ROOTLESS (2D: Forever wandering) (just ... no clue, for a long time); GYM BAG (I had CLOSET at first) (10D: Holder of sneakers, athletic attire, etc.); ROTTED (12D: Biodegraded) (I wanted something ... fancier-sounding?); and IV PUMP (45D: Medical device that infuses fluids into the body, in brief) (got the IV part easy enough, but then ... YIPE (which should be YIPES!, come on, can we stop this dumb singular YIPE thing!?)—IV ... DUCT? ON-E was tough to infer, as I only wanted ONCE or ONZE ... didn't consider the two-word ON ME until very late). So, yeah, lots of flailing around. But I really thought I had it, in the end. But I did not. Ah well. Hope you fared better. See you tomorrow.
Word of the Day: OH HELL (1A: Trick-taking card game) —
Oh Hell or Contract Whist is a trick-takingcard game of British origin in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid. Unlike contract bridge and spades, taking more tricks than bid is a fail. It was first described by B. C. Westall around 1930 and originally called Oh! Well.[1] It was said to have been introduced into America via the New York clubs in 1931.[2] It has been described as "one of the best round games."[3]
• • •
Hi all -- it's Rafa here back with another blog post for this Saturday puzzle, which I really enjoyed! This is a very Ryan McCarty-esque grid design, with a wide-open chasm in the middle that I usually find very satisfying to chip away at until things nicely fall into place. That was very much my experience today, as this puzzle felt harder than usual, even for a Saturday.
Here are giraffes in a SAVANNA. They look happy tbh.
Such wide-open middles are very hard to fill colorfully, but this was a real masterclass with only ENDEARING being more neutral, and all the other entries feeling fun to me. And outside the middle, things like HANG ON ASEC, GOWHOLEHOG, GIMMICK, SAVANNA, COOLIO, etc, etc, were exciting and kept me powering through the solve.
I had never heard of a TOONIE before, but this is the back of one
There's really not much to complain about here ... the fill is very smooth. HIC is maybe a ding, but I do think this Latin angle really rescues it. INRE and WEN also feel a bit meh, but it's all a small price to pay for the fun and smoothness everywhere else with this ambitious grid design.
I am obsessed with KALE, and this ribollita looks fire
What else? MANCAVE is weirdly gendered but is in-the-language and harmless enough that I don't really mind it ... HORCRUX is ... well ... I won't get into the whole JKR situation. Cluing had big Saturday energy. Nothing totally wowed me, but a lot of nice angles like ACROBAT referencing the "walking on tiptoes" word origin, the ELIASHOWE anagram, nonstandard angle for PENCIL, etc. I could have maybe used a few more wordplay clues? But I think I'm just looking for things to complain about at this point.
Bullets:
OCTET (1a: Four + four) — This being a Saturday puzzle, I *knew* there was no way this could be EIGHT but I still wanted it so so bad. I spend a solid few seconds thinking ... could it be? No! Ugh, but ... maybe?
TERI (20a: Jack Bauer's wife on "24") — I watched a lot of 24 in high school (over 10 years ago at this point) but I absolutely did not remember this name.
ELI (4d: Name in "fuel injection") — This kind of clue is controversial! I don't mind it, but I know some people see it as "lazy" ... here this is sandwiched around a lot of other propers so I understand the editorial decision to go with this angle.
CHAGRIN (11d: Discomfiture) — I think the word CHAGRIN is very fun. That's all.
HANG ON A SEC (49a: "Hold up ...") — This felt familiar, and I realized I had a puzzle in October that debuted HANG ON A SECOND, which I also clued as ["Hold up ..."]!
Word of the Day: Jack Dempsey aka The Manassa MAULER (15A: The Manassa ___, nickname for boxer Jack Dempsey) —
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. A cultural icon of the 1920s, Dempsey's aggressive fighting style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first million-dollar gate. He pioneered the live broadcast of sporting events in general, and boxing matches in particular.
***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION*** (if it's mid-January 2023, that's you!) How is the new year treating you? Well, I hope. Me, uh, not great so far (COVID, you know), but I'm 95% better, and was never terribly sick to begin with, so I have every reason to believe things will turn around for me shortly, thank God (and vaccines). Anyway, it's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. I'm not sure what to say about this past year. This will sound weird, or melodramatic—or maybe it won't—but every time I try to write about 2022, all I can think is "well, my cat died." She (Olive) died this past October, very young, of a stupid congenital heart problem that we just couldn't fix (thank you all for your kind words of condolence, by the way). I'm looking at the photo I used for last year's fundraising pitch, and it's a picture of me sitting at my desk (this desk, the one I'm typing at right now, the one I write at every day) with Olive sitting on my shoulder, staring at me, and making me laugh. It's a joyous picture. Here, I'm just gonna post it again:
I love the photo both because you can tell how goofy she is, and how goofy she made me. Her loss hurt for the obvious reasons, but also because she was so much a part of my daily routine, my daily rhythms and rituals. She was everyday. Quotidian. Just ... on me, near me, being a weirdo, especially in the (very) early mornings when I was writing this blog. She took me out of myself. She also made me aware of how much the quotidian matters, how daily rituals break up and organize the day, mark time, ground you. They're easy to trivialize, these rituals, precisely because they *aren't* special. Feed the cats again, make the coffee again, solve the crossword again, etc. But losing Olive made me reevaluate the daily, the quotidian, the apparently trivial. In a fundamental way, those small daily things *are* life. No one day is so important, or so different from the others, but cumulatively, they add up, and through the days upon days you develop a practice—a practice of love, care, and attention given to the things that matter. If you're reading this, then crossword puzzles are undoubtedly an important ritual for you, just as writing about crosswords for you all is an important ritual for me. It gives me so much. I hope that even at my most critical, my genuine love for crosswords—for the way my brain lights up on crosswords—comes through. I also hope that the blog brings you entertainment, insight, laughter ... even (especially) if you disagree with me much (most? all?) of the time.
[man, I really wear the hell out of this red fleece...]
The blog began years ago as an experiment in treating the ephemeral—the here-today, gone-tomorrow—like it really mattered. I wanted to stop and look at this 15x15 (or 21x21 thing) and take it seriously, listen to it, see what it was trying to do, think about what I liked or didn't like about it. In short, I gave the puzzle my time and attention. And I continue to do that, every day (Every! Day!). And it is work. A lot of work. Asking for money once a year (and only once a year) is an acknowledgment of that fact. There is nothing to subscribe to here ... no Substack or Kickstarter or Patreon ... and there are no ads, ever. I prefer to keep financial matters simple and direct. I have no "hustle" in me beyond putting my ass in this chair every morning and writing.
How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has designed a cat-related thank-you postcard for 2023, just as she has for the past two years, but this year, there's a bonus. Because this year ... the postcard is also a crossword puzzle! Yes, I made a little 9x9 blog-themed crossword puzzle for you all. It's light and goofy and I hope you enjoy it. It looks like this (clues blurred for your protection):
I had fun making this puzzle (thanks to Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty for proofing it for me!). For non-snail-mailers who want to solve the puzzle, don't worry: I'll make the puzzle available for everyone some time next month. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...
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PUKEKO (6)
Greetings from Down Under, the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa, Kiwiville, Middle Earth, what have you. You know, there are all kind of endemic birds here, striking birds, birds with lovely calls, birds you see All The Time. There are tuis and fantails and wood pigeons galore down here on the South Island, so if you were looking for a national symbol that was also a bird, you wouldn't have to look far ... unless one of your criteria was that it be a weird roly-poly flightless thing that you never actually see. If weirdness and ungainliness are what you're after then ... well, honestly, even then, there are more striking birds that fit the bill (!) that are actually part of the everyday landscape. The pukeko ("they're like pests ... people shoot them" said one of my wife's delightfully unsentimental relatives) are striking purple-bodied orange-billed primeval chicken-like things that look like non-terrifying dinosaurs strutting across your backyard. I'd sooner be a pukeko than a kiwi. Kiwi are real enough, I'm told, but I've never seen one. They still seem mythical to me. Like Hobbits (another thing associated with NZ, the fascination with which I do not get). Anyway, I am Team Pukeko all the way. Or Haast's Eagle, have you heard of this thing!?!?! It's extinct (as are a lot of native birds now, thanks, humanity/rats) but in its day ... big as a Buick ... a flying Buick. Haast's eagles were so big, they preyed on moa. Moa! Have you seen a moa?! Well, no, of course, no one has since the Polynesians basically hunted them out of existence (mid 15c.), but they were bigger than me. I actually saw a moa tibia today, alongside a human tibia, at The Museum of Natural Mystery in Dunedin, and ... well, it was bigger, is what it was. Bigger than the human tibia. I also bought this moa t-shirt:
[Have I mentioned it's beautiful here?]
Where was I? Ah, this puzzle! Which, sadly, has no TUI, no KEA, no MOA, no NZ birds at all! Wait, does NZ have TERNS (39A: Forked-tailed fliers)? OMG there's something called a New Zealand fairy tern!!!! Look at this baby:
OK I'm going to pretend the TERNS in the puzzle are fairy TERNS, if you don't mind. That will help me enjoy it more. Not to say I didn't enjoy it. There just wasn't much, in terms of fill, that made me think "ooh" or "ahh." I never know how I'm supposed to spell "WEENIE," so WEENIE ROASTs are always gonna be kind of a bust for me. The clue on THERMOMETER was great (16D: Cold shower?) (it's showing you ... that it's cold), but the clue on SPOT REMOVER, meh, fill-in-the-blank jokes don't really work, joke-wise. Timing is thrown off, so groaners only get groanier (18D: "I spilled ___ on my dog. Now he's gone": Steven Wright). Really like ABOVE THE FRAY, but FAN THEORIES ... ugh, I now associate "fandom" with a horrid narrow online groupthink, buncha gatekeepers and nostalgia freaks, self-appointed brand police—sad mean people, basically, to say nothing of uncritical consumers of corporate IP. It's possible I'm thinking exclusively of "Star Wars" and Marvel fandom, but I doubt it. It's an original answer, that one, and I'm sure some will love it, but it didn't move the needle for me, unlike yesterday's puzzle, which was a sizzling masterpiece. Thursday's puzzle ... was there a puzzle on Thursday? who can remember that far back?
Here was my second big mistake:
My first big mistake was REVS UP for KEYS UP (1A: Psychs), with the "R" seeming correct because RAMA seemed correct at 1D: Hindu god of love and desire (KAMA). So "YOU'RE ON FIRE!" was slow-going. But that was the only slow-going part. The rest flew by (again, unlike yesterday). The clue on RED RYDER was weird, as I thought RED RYDER was the brand, not the BB gun itself (49A: Ralphie's wish in "A Christmas Story"). He doesn't say he wants a RED RYDER. He has a whole spiel, and it definitely involves the word "gun:"
Any tough clues? The ports in 14A: Place with multiple ports are wines, of course. "Retirement" means "sleeping" in 43A: No-frills retirement options? (COTS) (not really sure why that clue even needs a "?"). The "pitcher" in 27D: Pitcher's aim? is someone making a SALEs pitch. That should do it. If you have any other questions, I'm sure the very helpful folks in the comments section can, well, help. That's all for today. Can't tell you how nice it is to have the puzzle come out at 4pm!!!! Liberating. Gonna move here just for the sleep schedule benefits! See you tomorrow (when the puzzle comes out at noon!!!!).
Word of the Day: SQUIB KICK (38A: Football tactic to prevent a long return) —
A squib kick is a term used in American football meaning a short, low, line drive kickoff that usually bounces around on the ground before it can be picked up by a member of the receiving team. The ball is kicked so short that it forces the receiving team's slower players to recover the ball first instead of their faster kick returner. Secondly, the unpredictably bouncing ball may be harder for the receiving team to pick up, allowing more time for kicking team members to get downfield to surround the ball carrier. (wikipedia)
• • •
I don't know who needs to hear this, but the secret to good themeless puzzles is not Scrabbly letters. I feel like somehow in the year 2021, in the fifteenth year of this blog's existence, this idea that Qs and Zs and Js are the special sauce where Friday and Saturday puzzles are concerned still lingers. This puzzle was not bad, by any means, but it seemed more interested in putting up crooked letters than in putting up truly interesting longer fill and creating an overall enjoyable solving experience. It also felt weirdly dated. Slightly WIZENed. SNIPE HUNTs seem quaint and Johnny OLSON is bygone and calling them TUSHES and TOGS seems Nana-ish and wow it is hard to imagine someone under 60 unironically saying "party down" as an exclamation, let alone as a past tense verb phrase (?). Isn't a HYPERLINK just ... a link. Am I on the World Wide Web right now? I don't know. The inclination to showcase Scrabbly tiles plus the overall sensibility of the fill and cluing made this feel a little musty to me. The IPOD is outmoded and ASTANA is outmoded etc. It's a solid grid, it is, but I didn't crack a smile or think "oh, cool" once.
One big comprehension problem today, which was HUSH (1D: Reaction to someone tapping a microphone, maybe). I just assumed that the "reaction" would be the exclamation, "HUSH!," because who wants to hear someone tap a microphone ... but it seemed like such a bizarre clue for such a reaction. It's not like mic tap + "HUSH!" is some classic combo. So it was bugging me, that clue ... until I realized that it's *a* HUSH ... that is supposed to come over the room ... when someone taps a mic. Yes, that makes sense. The "reaction" part of the clue really had me off on the wrong track there. In addition to the one big comprehension problem, I had one big parsing problem: SKI (space) TRACKS (31D: Evidence of having gone on a run). First of all, the "having gone" without any subject was slightly bewildering. The ambiguity of "run," same. But the thing that threw me the worst was having SKIT- in place the first time I looked at the clue. I made two mental errors: assumed it was the front end of a single word (SKITCHES? SKITTLING?), and then assumed that it was something to do with SKITs. No and no. Even after figuring out it was SKI something, I couldn't see what it was til I got most of the crosses. Nothing else gave me too much trouble today. Wrote in SQUAD at 12D: Fleet (RAPID), then wrote in AQABA right next to it, which left me consecutive Qs at the cross, at which point I thought "wow, a double-Q word, this guy really Really likes the Scrabble letters. But there was just one Q. Near a J. Near a Z :(
My favorite mistake was one I knew instantly was wrong, but I still couldn't stop my fingers from making it:
It's the first "landscaping" thing that came to mind. I thought "well, that's unfortunate" and then immediately "well, that's wrong." My proudest moment was remembering ASTANA. Seriously, that was it, that one moment of "it's this, right?!" and then having it confirmed by crosses. It's so rare that trivia like that actually takes root in my brain, this late in the game (i.e. three+ decades into my solving career). Of course I don't know what the *current* name of Kazakhstan's capital* is, but ... I'll take care of that some time in the *next* thirty years. Take care, see you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*It's NUR-SULTAN, which I now very much want to be in a puzzle, preferably as soon as possible so I have a good chance of remembering it.
THEME: "Double-Crossed" — grid contains six rebus squares, inside of which are two sets of double letters, which are to be read in one direction the Acrosses, and in reverse direction in the Downs)
Theme answers:
OVERHEAD DOOR / BLOOD DRIVE (23A: Way into a garage, typically / 7D: Subject of a Sleeves Up campaign)
GLORIA ALLRED / STELLA ARTOIS (61A: Prominent women's rights lawyer / 45D: Part of a college visit, typically)
STROBE EFFECT / COFFEEMATE (76A: Visual phenomenon created by short flashes of light / 66D: Nestlé creamer)
BALLOON ARTISTS / SCHOOL LOANS (104A: Some entertainers at children's birthday parties / 85D: Sallie Mae products)
DAYTIME EMMYS / SWIM MEETS (119A: Awards show that airs at night, ironically / 101D: Pool competitions)
Word of the Day: MIOTIC (73A: Causing constriction of the pupils) —
: relating to or characterized by miosis; [(miosis, n.) : excessive smallness or contraction of the pupil of the eye] (wikipedia)
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I don't know if it's harder or easier than normal to make a puzzle like this. All I know is that it's tiring to solve. It was tiring to enter the double double letters, and it was double tiring that there was no point. This is the kind of puzzle that almost *has* to have a meta-puzzle payoff to be worth it—that is, if the double double letters had ended up spelling out some kind of message, something relevant to the idea of doubling or doubleness or whatever, then you could go "wow, cool, nice." But I tried spelling things and it didn't really work out (though depending on how you write out all the double letters, you *can* almost make the word DOUBLE happen ... but no, there's no message here, ultimately). It would've been slightly nicer to solve this on paper, where at least I could've seen the letters I was entering, but it would've been equally disconcerting in terms of letter order reversal (i.e. the double letters are in one order going Across, and reverse order going Down, for some reason). The concept feels half-baked. The rebus double-letter circles were both the most interesting and the hardest part of the solve, but they weren't as interesting as they could've been, and they stand out mainly because the rest of the grid is lackluster. I like that this puzzle has more ambition than your typical stale Sunday, but this needed another layer, another element, to really stick the landing. As it is, double double, ho hum. Kind of a letdown.
By far the hardest themer square for me was the OVERHEAD DOOR (?) / BLOOD DRIVE one. First one I encountered, and the only one that doesn't have at least one totally transparent cross. Your "way into a garage" is ... through the garage door. Is OVERHEAD DOOR the kind of garage door that retracts and then sorta slides back onto the roof of the garage? OVERHEAD DOOR sounds like some kind of trap door, like you are entering the garage through the ceiling, somehow. No idea what a "Sleeves Up" campaign is, so the BLOOD DRIVE part was also opaque to me. No other theme square posed nearly so much trouble. Wanted EUGENIA instead of EUGENIE, why in the world would I know about / care about Prince Andrew's kids, ugh (57A: Prince Andrew's younger daughter).
I think of them as "college loans," or "student loans," not SCHOOL LOANS, but I guess that's a colloquial expression people sometimes use, so OK. Had LAYIN before LAYUP, of course (108D: Easy two points). No idea what MIOTIC means (73A: Causing constriction of the pupils). "Myopic" (also eye-related), sure, but MIOTIC was a yikes (crosses were easy, though, so no big deal). Does ETHERNET still exist? How is NEODADA "old" and also "neo" (95D: Old genre for 12-Down)? Like ... is it "old" in that Yoko ONO no longer works in that genre? I honestly didn't even know it *was* a genre. It's basically an excuse to lade your grid with vowels, is what it is. I think I like BUM A RIDE and ANTI-THEFT and maybe STEAM OPEN. The rest of the grid is good enough, but not delightful. Again, if the theme had done something spectacular, as I kept hoping it would, we'd be having a very different conversation. Ah well. It is admirably ambitious, but in the end, pleasure-wise, no better (or worse) than your average NYTXW Sunday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. looks like Boswords is gearing up for another online crossword tournament in the very near future. Here's the blurb from co-organizer, John Lieb:
Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament, which will be held on Sunday, January 31 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.
Many of my readers and friends really enjoyed the last one of these, so even if you've never competed in a crossword tourney before, you should consider it. ("Competition" isn't really the point)
Relative difficulty: Medium (not sure, solved on paper in leisurely fashion)
Theme: none
Word of the Day: NOYES (32D: Poet whose name consists of side-by-side opposites) —
Alfred NoyesCBE (16 September 1880 – 25 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright. [...] "The Highwayman" is a romantic ballad poem written by Alfred Noyes, first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The following year it was included in Noyes' collection, Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, becoming an immediate success. In 1995 it was voted 15th in the BBC's poll for "The Nation's Favourite Poems". (wikipedia)
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I see that this grid has a bunch of reasonably modern answers, and yet the smell of mothballs and mildew and staleness on this one is Strong. Puzzle started losing me almost immediately with a. a "?" clue at 1-Across (I wasn't in the mood to start that way) and (more substantively) b. BOFF. If I have to think of this (olde-timey, right?) bit of Broadway slang, it's BOFFO, isn't it? Yes, yes it is. "Extremely sensational," says merriam-webster.com. But BOFF ... BOFF is a verb, and, uh, not a verb you'd expect to see in the NYTXW.
The informal term is BOFF*O* and BOFF is vulgar slang. Maybe somebody sipping SANKA while reading Alfred NOYES and tsking "THAT'S A SHAME" calls a Broadway hit a BOFF, but that answer feels like insular, musty slang. The old-fashioned AURA kept creeping back into this puzzle. I think it's an editorial oldness, like the frame of reference for the clues is super-familiar and 20th-century. High-risk bonds and minor poets and quaint slang and twee French phrases and the like. In short, "youthful" answers like FAN SITES and UBERED and TMZ and POPO are fooling no one. I very much liked SCOOCH OVER (though spelling SCOOCH was an adventure), and ROLEPLAY and BODYSHOT are just fine, but most of the rest of it was without snap crackle or pop. The construction is solid enough, I guess, but the whole frame of reference, in the fill and particularly in the cluing, just felt ... unfresh. Tippi HEDREN, DANNY OCEAN and "ZELIG"—they're all fine, but with no modern cultural counterbalance, they really anchor this grid in the long-ago and the far-away. The EPIGRAMS of Martial and the [Ancient Greek birthplace of Parmenides] aren't helping. The bar is high on Fridays, and this one just didn't clear it. Not enough delight.
I posted my hand-filled grid today so you could be reminded of my terrible handwriting and so that you could see both my annotations and my hesitations. For instance, if you look closely, you can see where I wanted 5D: "C'mon, tell me!" to be SPILL ... something (it's "SPIT IT OUT"), and also where I wanted THEN to be THUS (39D: "And so ..."). Erasures are a map back in time, traces of your solving path and your struggle. The immaculate, software-smooth final grid is fine for public consumption, but there is this way that it hides yourself from yourself. Look up your errors, ye mighty, and despair! Also, if I'm solving in pencil, I can make my puzzle annotations in real time. For instance, that "UGH" pointing to NOYES is very authentic. Could not wait til I was done to write that bit of marginalia in there. Also, you can see how I wrote an "ugh" out of frustration and then changed it to "OK" after I got the actual answer at 41A: "Too bad" (THAT'S A SHAME). I had "THAT'S ..." and it seemed like infinity things could follow, so I wrote an annoyed "ugh" in the margin. But later I had to admit that that was just a frustration ugh and not a "this is genuinely terrible" ugh. As much as software-solving makes my life easier, there's something to be said about the personality-revealing aspects of hand-solving.
The thing that actually made me write profanity in the margins, though (not pictured), is the clue on TENURED (42D: Hard to let go of, in a way). There's something about living through a crisis in which teachers are being denigrated and demeaned, in which huge swaths of the public want to use teachers as lab rats in a return-to-school experiment, in which the OPED PAGE contains condescending calls for teachers to "do their jobs" in the fall, as if "subject yourself to disease and death" were in the job description, as if most teachers weren't actually working twice as hard to figure out how to "do their jobs," as well as *take care* of their students emotionally (which is work nobody talks enough about), yes, there's something about being alive now and being married to a teacher now that makes me not want any part of your cutesy-clued fantasy of firing teachers. Oh, are TENURED teachers "hard to let go"? Are they? THAT'S A SHAME. Hey, you want to know who's *really* "hard to let go," let's talk about the editor of the NYTXW. I mean, if we're being honest. In short, tax billionaires, feed / educate / love children, vote for competent leadership, and STFU. Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. an EASTER EGG is a hidden / bonus feature on a DVD / Blu-Ray, in my experience, though the term might apply elsewhere (35D: Bonus feature, of a sort)
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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