Archaeological handle / TUE 12-19-17 / Fate who cuts thread of life / 2000s teen drama set in Newport Beach

Constructor: Andrew Kingsley

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)

THEME: CANDY CANE (36A: Christmas tree decoration ... or a hint to what the circled letters form) — circled squares form four cane shapes, each of which contains the name of a brand of candy. Top of the grid has related answer pair: SWEET / TOOTH (4A: With 14-Across, weakness for sugar):

THE CANES:

• AIRHEADS
• STARBURST
• BIT O' HONEY
• POP ROCKS 

Word of the Day: ANSA (33D: Archaeological handle) —

noun, plural ansae

[an-see] 

1.

Archaeology. a looped handle, especially of a vase.

2.

Astronomy. either of the apparent extremities of the rings of Saturn or of other planets, especially when viewed from the earth or from spacecraft under certain conditions, when they look like two handles. (dictionary.com)

• • •

I'm sitting here wondering how, in nearly 2018, so much Maleskan garbage is being allowed into a Tuesday crossword grid. I haven't seen this much super-archaic crosswordese in one puzzle in a while. So: LEU (44D: Romanian currency) and ANSA (33D: Archaeological handle). Can we talk about LEU and ANSA? I mean, we all agree -ETIC is god-awful (the price you pay for trying to cram SWEET / TOOTH in there, I guess), but LEU and ANSA are at least words, so perhaps people will not understand their terribleness. LEU is a word that only hardcore solvers and actual Romanians know. Please don't try to convince me otherwise, because I will immediately ask you "OK, then what's bani?" (it's the plural of ban; there are 100 bani in a LEU; bani is also the Romanian word for "money"—see how smart the internet makes me!). You used to see it back when Maleska thought "People should learn things! Exotic, obscure 3-letter things!" You hardly ever see it now, because a combination of software and good judgment has caused constructors to have to rely less on "it's a word somewhere!" junk. Those of us who have been solving for 25+ years can pull LEU out when we have to, but ick. Ick. So many EWS (also a terrible answer, btw). ANSA falls in the same category as LEU. Old-timey solvers: "Sigh, let me pull out of my Uncle Gene's Big Bag of Crossword Arcana and ... dig around ... yep, here it is ANSE ... nope, that's a Faulkner character, I think ... ASE ... nope, she's in some opera, maybe? ... ABIE ... nope, that's the Irish Rose guy ... here we go: ANSA. Good ol' ANSA. Who could ever forget ...?"


So this puzzle apparently had a theme, one which was both dense enough to crush the Fill Quality under its weight, but inessential enough to be totally invisible until the end. I could feel the circles aplenty, and I could also feel myself not caring (this is the bad fill's fault, not the theme's fault). When you get super-ambitious and full of your grand ideas, you start excusing all the consequences, all the junk that starts popping up in your grid. It all starts looking Just Fine to you because "OOH, my Big Idea, the Precious!" Sadly, I gotta solve all your ideas, small and big. And since I didn't even see the big, the small ... man, the small just destroyed the experience.


Plus this puzzle is totally misslotted on a Tuesday. I was 50% over my normal Tuesday time. And even if I adjust for sunrise solving (always slower), still, rough. The whole SE corner! Just getting in there was rough. Totally forgot the Gilmore girl; RENTAL has one of those stupid "it" clues on it (41A: I'm not buying it!), so no hope. BURST's clue was no help (54D: Succumb to pressure?). SIT's clue—yet another "?" clue—also no help (67A: Put an end to something?). I'm not even sure I get how it fits SIT.*** And "TANGLED"!?!?! I saw that movie in the theater and still couldn't get it. It's a normal word. It's Tuesday. That corner is already a *&%! show. It's Tuesday. Black sheep are RARE!? That is ... not how I think of them, idiomatically. And what is this phrase, "shore dinner"? (64A: Part of a shore dinner) Like ... a dinner you eat on / near the shore? "Shoreside," maybe? Also, shouldn't that clue have a "perhaps" on the end? Or is there some specific MUSSELS requirement now for shore dinners (whatever those are)? #notallshoredinners ... Now I'm looking over at ATROPOS! (40D: Fate who cuts the thread of life). LOL, wow, OK, sure, *Tuesday* puzzle, whatever you say. Seriously, you can hear the puzzle straining under the weight of its theme. I'm worried the whole grid is going to collapse any second. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

***Re: that SIT clue, my wife just realized that [Put an end to something?] probably refers to putting your *rear* end ... to ... something that I hope is a chair. Or Santa's lap. Something!?  Anyway, what a horrible clue.

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Computer programmer disparagingly / MON 12-18-17 / Nascar devotee / Light friendly punch

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: INNER DEMONS (61A: Personal struggles ... or, literally, features of 17-, 26-, 36- and 52-Across) — "DEMON" can be found embedded in every theme answer:

Theme answers:

• CLAUDE MONET (17A: "Water Lilies" painter)
• PRIDE MONTH (26A: June, in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement)
• MADE MONEY (36A: Profited)
• CODE MONKEY (52A: Computer programmer, disparagingly)

Word of the Day: CODE MONKEY—

noun

informal

noun: code monkey; plural noun: code monkeys

1. a computer programmer, especially an inexperienced or unskillful one. (google)

• • •

As an example of this very common type (embedded words with a revealer of INNER whatever and such), this one is pretty solid. You got a good set of themers here—that is, the answers are colorful all on their own, with PRIDE MONTH being the strongest and MADE MONEY the weakest. The only time I really went 'ugh' was at AYS. I mean ... no. AYES, yes. AYS!?!? That's idiotic. But as I say, everything else holds up OK. Despite relatively open corners (which often spell trouble, time-wise), I cruised through this one very quickly, *except* in the SW, where I dead-stopped a couple of times trying to get in, largely because CODE MONKEY was unknown to me (and I had no idea of the theme at this point). Also, the phrase AT A TIME didn't seem at all apt for 48A: Simultaneously, perhaps because 99% of the time you hear the phrase AT A TIME, it's immediately following the word ONE ... which does little to convey simultaneity. Other issues in that corner—I had LEI for TEE; I found 60A: Public health org. far too vague to be any help; 68A: "Fuhgeddaboutit!" coulda gone all kinds of ways; and, you know, AYS. Luckily ELDER, RIM, and the inferred "S" at the end of what turned out to be AYS helped me get MAD DASH, so I wasn't stuck for too too long.


When I was done, I didn't realize there'd been a revealer, so I looked at all the theme answers and thought, "Huh ... it's Monday, so they put MON. in all the answers ... weird." That is seriously what I thought was going on. Not much else to say about this one. Two other errors I had were DUET for DYAD (51D: Twosome) and READY for HANDY (69A: At one's fingertips). SOAPING windows seems like an awful lot of trouble for a Halloween prank. I mean, why not egg? Throw, splat, run. Bada bing. Soaping is a little too close to straight washing someone's windows—how is that bad, exactly? This is not a prank I've ever seen done, or heard of anyone doing (no one that I knew personally, anyway). I have to go now, as I can't stand to look at AYS anymore. See you Tuesday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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