THEME: HIDDEN / AGENDA (9A: With 68-Across, ulterior motive ... or what 21-, 37- and 59-Across each has?) — the letter string "AGENDA" is "HIDDEN" inside three answers:
Theme answers:
HÄAGEN-DAZS (21A: New York City-born ice cream brand with a Danish-sounding name)
VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (37A: 1970s auto that shares part of its name with one of Santa's reindeer)
MAGEN DAVID (59A: Name for the star on Israels' flag)
Word of the Day: VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (37A) —
The Volkswagen Passat (B1) is a large family car produced by Volkswagen in West Germany from 1973 to 1981. // The original Volkswagen Passat was launched in 1973. The body types offered originally were two- and four-door fastbacksedans (that were discontinued in 1981). These were joined in January 1975 by identically profiled three- and five-door hatchback versions. Externally all four shared a modern design, styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. In essence, the first Passat was a fastback version of the mechanically identical Audi 80 sedan, introduced a year earlier. [...] In North America, the car was called the Volkswagen Dasher. The three- and five-door hatchback and a station wagon model were launched in North America for and during the 1974 model year. (wikipedia)
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This puzzle is like yesterday's puzzle in that it has a well-worn, tried-and-true theme type (in this case, the "hidden" word), but it fails by doing poorly what yesterday's puzzle did so well. Yesterday, the revealer was a real revelation, and all the answers worked beautifully, no stretches at all. Today, the revealer is blah and everything besides the ice cream feels like a real stretch. I know something about stretching the limits of answers to make your theme work: I once made a BEER BELLY puzzle where I "hid" LAGER inside VILLAGE ROADSHOW (a movie production company that has done major work but is not exactly a household name). But my puzzle didn't just hide LAGER over and over and over. There were other beer types. Here, it's just AGENDA AGENDA AGENDA, and there are only three themers, so those "huh?" themers really leave a mark. And today, the biggest "huh?" was VOLKSWAGEN DASHER—in fact, the answer is so "huh?," it essentially *tells* you that it's "huh?" but putting that giveaway bit in there about Santa's reindeer. I didn't know the Star of David was known as anything but the Star of David, so MAGEN DAVID was a shrug. Seems like a valid answer, but the point is that you really have to stretch the bounds of familiarity to make this work, and why? Just to see AGENDA again? Further, the revealer comes too early—the whole thing is given away at the top of the grid. Nothing much left to discover except how in the world there could be two more, non-ice cream answers that fit the bill. I just jumped to the end and then filled in VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (a car I've never heard of) shortly thereafter:
The other way this puzzle doesn't work as well as yesterday's is the fill, which was full of CRUD from the very start. Literally, the very start is where CRUD is, but that's also where ARRANT crosses ENNEAD (!?). When I'm stopping to take a screenshot of the wince-y fill before I've gotten out of the NW, that's a bad sign. But I stopped. Right here.
Did the cruddy NW predict overall cruddiness? Kinda. ATRACE IRINA NTH AGRA OHO AAHED ENID ONIT ACER LEDS EARPS (plural) ... these are not all *bad* but some of them definitely are, and all of them are tired or otherwise crossword-common, and I've only enumerated a portion of the problem here. ORBITING LIBERACE gave me a very nice visual—I like to think of him up there in the sky, just shining and playing away—and GONE AWOL is a nice variation on mere AWOL, but there's not much else here to help get the puzzle up on its feet. The puzzle was easy overall. I have no idea what a KETONE is or what it has to do with perfume (56A: Perfume ingredient), but that was the only stumper (outside those last two themers) in the whole grid.
I watched the 1983 movie version of The Pirates of PENZANCE this past week (I'm trying to watch as many major-release movies from 1983 as possible this year—no reason, just 'cause it's been 40 years and it's something to do). It was ... bad? I mean, I'm sure it's a fine operetta, but the production was cheesy, and even though Kevin Kline was handsome and athletic, the movie wanted me to believe that Angela Lansbury was "ugly" and "old" and had no sex appeal, and my credulity could not stand the strain. I realized while watching it that I know nothing about Gilbert & Sullivan except that modern Major-General song, which I always thought was in "H.M.S. Pinafore" — me, to my wife: "Wait ... they did *two* nautical operas??? What on earth?"). Yesterday's 1983 film was The Sting II, which was also not good (it was supposed to be set in NYC but they kept filming at famous L.A. landmarks, what the hell!?). But it did have my childhood celebrity crush, crossword legend TERI / GARR, in it, so it was highly watchable, implausibilities and inconsistencies be damned. See you tomorrow.
Relative difficulty: Easy (a Downs-only breeze, so I'm assuming a breeze in general)
THEME: FUSE BOXES (59A: Electrical panels found in older homes ... or what 18-, 24-, 35- and 53-Across do (regarding each half of each answer)?) — theme answers FUSE BOXES in that they unite two words that precede "box" in a familiar phrase:
Theme answers:
SOAP OPERA (18A: Daytime television drama) (soapbox, opera box)
JUICE PRESS (24A: Kitchen gadget for the health-conscious) (juice box, press box)
TINDER MATCH (35A: Romantic prospect after swiping right) (tinderbox, matchbox)
SQUEEZE TOY (53A: Stress ball, e.g.) (squeezebox, toy box)
Word of the Day: Squeezebox (see 53A) —
The term squeezebox (also squeeze box, squeeze-box) is a colloquial expression referring to any musical instrument of the general class of hand-held bellows-driven free reed aerophones such as the accordion and the concertina. The term is so applied because such instruments are generally in the shape of a rectangular prism or box, and the bellows is operated by squeezing in and drawing out.
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This strikes me as a nearly ideal example of a very old kind of theme—the "both words can precede/follow" theme. You can quibble with the idea of "fuse" here, I guess, in that the words that can precede "box" are not actually "fused" together (i.e. SOAP OPERA is two separate words, JUICE PRESS is two separate words, etc.), but since the words appear in a crossword grid and there are no spaces between words in crossword grids, the words *appear* fused as entered, so Good Enough! What's remarkable to me is that usually these types have at least one theme answer, or part of an answer, that doesn't quite work. Either the answer itself feels forced, or one of the base phrases (e.g., today, one of the "___box" phrases) feels forced, but these are all on the money. All four answers are very recognizable and real things (I've never used the Tinder app in my life, but I know what a TINDER MATCH is), and all of the "boxes" are also recognizable and real. It's slightly amazing that so many valid two-word phrases can be made out of "words that precede 'box'" and it's even more amazing that those valid two-word phrases can be arranged symmetrically in the grid (along with the revealer). This puzzle squeezes a lot of juice out of a well-worn theme type. And the grid itself is mostly very clean, so yeah, I'll take this.
I'm assuming that, for those of you (nearly all of you) who solved it normally (i.e. using the Downs *and* the Acrosses), the puzzle played very fast, even for a Monday. I can tell you that from a Downs-only perspective, it was for sure on the easy side. I can't remember a NYT Downs-only puzzle I've solved so easily. With all those long Downs right up front, I thought the opposite was going to be the case, but BLUEJAY was a gimme and a godsend (that "J" really helped put together JUICE BOX, eventually). There were really only a small handful of Downs that didn't go straight in the grid, and those never bogged me down, as the surrounding answers eventually made the answers clear. The most initial holes in the grid came in the NW, where I didn't get - RAPTURE, ANTSIEST, or COMIC at the first go (I thought that last one might be STRIP) (25D: "Doonesbury" or "Dilbert"). But the Downs that actually ended up giving me the most real *trouble* were SCALES (13D: What kosher seafood has that nonkosher seafood does not) and SNYDER'S (43D: Big name in pretzels). I had no idea that SCALES were the Kosher dealbreaker. I knew that shellfish were a no-no, but never thought about the actual parameters. SCALES and fins—that's the deal. Gotta have SCALES and fins or ... not kosher. As for SNYDER'S, I am vaguely familiar with the brand, but no way was I getting that from the clue alone, so I just had to wait for the point when I could infer enough of the crosses to make sense of the answer. I think the "Y" from SQUEEZE TOY was the thing that finally triggered my SNYDER'S memory. I had some trouble with BEASTS at the very end (46D: Wild animals), but the neighboring Downs were so easy that BEASTS became clear rather quickly.
Aside from ALB and YES'M and the playground retort (truly the worst crossword answer genre) (DOES SO), there wasn't much to make me frown today. As usual, I couldn't remember the vowel that went at the end of PESET- (19D: Bygone Spanish currency). I always want it to be PESETO because of PESO. My brain makes an analogy and won't let go. But I know better than to write it in, and I just wait for crosses to take care of the issue. While I was solving (and not looking at Across clues), I was kinda hoping the STANTON was going to be Harry Dean STANTON. But it's never, ever been Harry Dean STANTON. Just the suffragist STANTON or Lincoln's Secretary of War STANTON. It's time to give one of our greatest character actors his due! In a 60-year career that included appearances in over 80 movies, from Paris, Texas to Pretty in Pink ... it's Harry Dean STANTON. Coming soon, to a grid near you, I hope. Good day.
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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