Word of the Day: CYCAD (3D: Palmlike tropical plant) —
noun
noun: cycad; plural noun: cycads
a palmlike plant of tropical and subtropical regions, bearing large male or female cones. Cycads were abundant during the Triassic and Jurassic eras, but have since been in decline.
Origin
mid 19th century: from modern Latin Cycas, Cycad- (order name), from supposed Greek kukas, scribal error for koikas, plural of koix ‘Egyptian palm.’ (google)
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Misplaced (felt way more Saturday than Friday) and irksome in its unevenness. Also, it just wasn't on my wavelength, anywhere, ever. VOLUNTOLD? No. Please, stop. It's one thing to put "new" things in a puzzle—a good thing—but use discretion. See also BACONATOR. Here's what I liked: SQUEAMISH, IDRIS ELBA, PIECEMEAL. The rest is fine but unrermarkable, except for the following remarks I have about some bad patches. Actually, the grid divides neatly into thirds—doable / clean middle and eastern thirds, and then a western third that I wish a massive earthquake would cause to fall into the Pacific. CYCAD? MAIA? ALPEH (!??!!?!) NULL? Go ahead and high-five yourselves, math nerds, but that answer is crap. Seriously, all my red ink is on the left side of the grid. ("Red" signifies pain)
The esoteric fill is one issue. There's not a ton of it, but there was enough of it, strategically placed, that things got gunked up good. Then there was the bizarro cluing, like 1D: Company once named Socony-Vacuum (MOBIL). That clue tells me precisely nothing. I had -OBI- and had to run the alphabet. I didn't have the "M" because I thought 1A: Churchill Downs, to horse racing fans (I am not one) would be specific, not this dumb MECCA answer. Why is LTD Lucasfilm specific? (22A: Abbr. for Lucasfilm) It's a general company designation. If you think that NW corner was clean, then you have low standards of clean. You probably have BACONATOR ON YOU.
Had ROAR for CLAP (26D: Sound in a storm), ANNOY for IMPLY (29A: Get at) (I was probably thinking [Get to]), nothing for MAIA(35A: Eldest of the Pleiades) (?), nothing for ALEPH (!!?). In fact, I literally just had NULL (38A: Smallest infinite cardinal number). Down below, jeez louise, 55D: Relative of "die" is brutal. That clue could have gone so many different ways. Here (in case you still haven't figured it out, which seems plausible), "die" means "the" in German and "LES" means "the" in French and so ... relatives? Eh? Eh? Arf. Another rough clue: 57A: Plasma, for one (STATE). Had the second "T" and thought "some kind of TV." So this thing had competent parts but they were overshadowed by blecch. Not outnumbered, but overshadowed. Doesn't take much blecch to bring a whole puzzle down.
Relative difficulty: Average, with a Thursday gimmick
THEME: The World, orbiting The Sun — The World, indicated in the circled squares in the four quadrants of the grid, orbits The Sun, indicated in a rebus square in the center. The Sun also has lovely rays extending out into the grid.
RIP
Word of the Day: FALUN Gong (23A: ___ Gong [Chinese spiritual practice]) —
Falun Gong/ˈfɑːluːnˈɡʊŋ/ or Falun Dafa/ˈfɑːluːnˈdɑːfɑː/ (Standard Mandarin Chinese: [fàlwə̂n tâfà]; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a Chinese spiritual practice that combines meditation and qigong exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance (Chinese: 真、善、忍).
The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and
identifies as a qigong practice of the Buddhist school, though its
teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist
traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation,
practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and
ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment. [...] On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. It blocked
Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October
1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization" that threatened
social stability. Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly
subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities.As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun
Gong practitioners had died as a result of abuse in custody.Some observers put the number much higher, and report that tens of thousands may have been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry.
In the years since the persecution began, Falun Gong practitioners have
become active in advocating for greater human rights in China. (Wikipedia)
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Laura here -- I'm back again, and I get to blog a woman constructor! (Or co-constructor, at least.) Did you know that so far in 2017, only 13% of New York Times puzzles have been constructed by women? That's on track to be the lowest percentage ever. Why so few? Editors, constructors, bloggers, and journalists have offered explanations: crossword constructing is more techy now (eye-roll), more women used to construct as a hobby and now they have real jobs and don't have time (larger and more dramatic eye-roll), or perhaps there's systemic and/or unconscious bias in the culture (eyebrow raise). Are you a woman or female-identified solver reading this blog and interested in constructing puzzles? I can't claim to be an expert, but I'm learning, and I'd love to learn with you. Send me a tweet or ask Rex to forward an email -- maybe we can work together on breaking what I've decided to call the Newsprint Ceiling.
Oh yeah, the puzzle: I liked it very much. I knew something was up, likely rebus-wise, when I couldn't fit SUNSET into 35A (Cowboys may ride off into it). Got the northeast right away with BATHTOY (14A: Rubber ducky, e.g.) crossing STUART (9D: Little of children's literature), noted that the circled letters spelled out THE WORLD and also that they made a little circle. Went to the southeast next, noted that we had another THE WORLD but that it was oriented differently, then orbited the sun clockwise and finished up in the northwest with ETRURIA (15A: Ancient region of central Italy) and ADRIENNE (2D: Actress Barbeau of the cult classic "Swamp Thing"). Did you notice that the letters of THE WORLDs aren't just randomly placed?
In each quadrant, THE WORLD is oriented differently; in the NE, it begins at noon and goes counterclockwise; SE, at 3pm; SW, at 6pm; and NW, at 9pm. Cool and lovely -- but I am a greedy solver and wanted more. I saw AARON (6D: Composer Copland) in the NE and thought, "Appalachian Spring"? Maybe each quadrant alludes to a season? Or did ETRURIA indicate something about which hemisphere faces the sun at whatever point? But nah. The fill was fill, however decent.
I live near the Appalachian Trail, where it is finally Spring
Bullets:
55A: Part of the escape route in "Casablanca" (ORAN) — I have seen Casablanca eleventy-godzillion times. Thought I had the script by heart. And I needed all the crosses to get this -- since it turns out that I have every bit of dialogue memorized except the escape route narration by the movie announcer guy in the opening credits. "I was misinformed."
40D: Jack of "Barney Miller" (SOO) — Barney Miller was a 1970s sitcom about NYPD detectives. Jack Soo, born Goro Suzuki, was interned imprisoned at the Topaz War Relocation Center Concentration Camp during WWII and acted for years on Broadway and in films and television, usually playing stock Asian characters. Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miller was his last (and best) role until his death from cancer in 1979.
Jack Soo, 1917-1979 (on far right)
44D: Detective whose first name is Kentaro (MR MOTO) — Mr Moto was a recurring character in stories and novels by John Marquand from the 1930s through the 1950s. In eight movies produced in the 1940s, he was played by Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre (whom you might also remember from Casablanca).
64A: Cartoonist's aide (INKER) — This was clued back in January as "Comics artist," which is far more accurate. Let's not demote our INKERs! Inking isn't something your assistant does to help; it is an integral part of the collaborative art of comics production. There's even an Eisner Awards category for inking.
Thanks to Rex for giving me another guest-posting opportunity this week, and I hope to see you all again soon.
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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