Constructor: Todd Gross
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: Single / Double / Triple scoop — three 15-letter Downs feature ice cream flavors: one flavor in the first Down, two in the second, three in the third.
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: GENE Weingarten (28D: Pulitzer-winning journalist Weingarten) —
I didn't like this theme while I was solving because whoever heard of VANILLA MINT CHIP? But by the time I got over to LIME LEMON ORANGE, I realized that after COOKIES AND CREAM, the answers were not single flavors, but combinations. Turns out I wasn't really reading/understanding the theme clues—I was just inferring what the answers should be from COOKIES AND CREAM (a single flavor). So now that I look at it, loopy and arbitrary as the theme is, I kind of like it. At least it's different. Different is good. And the fill is really polished, such that it was a pleasure to solve *beyond the theme* (all puzzles should be that way—NYT puzzles often aren't).
The puzzle was very much on the easy side. Finished it faster than yesterday's. Only trouble was with proper nouns, here and there. PONCE, the first clue I looked it, probably took me longer than any other five-letter answer in the grid—why I can't remember it is beyond me (1A: Puerto Rican port). It's Puerto Rico's second-most populous city after San Juan. After that, the only answers that gave me any pause were KATE SMITH—no idea what that clue means (32A: Singer who said "Thanks for listenin'")—and DOGS, which has one of the more tortured-for-"humor" clues I've ever seen (22D: They may be measured by the pound). I'm sure GENE Weingarten, a persnickety crank who complains about everything, will agree with me. Or not. (Follow him and his pile-of-poop avatar on Twitter @geneweingarten).
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: Single / Double / Triple scoop — three 15-letter Downs feature ice cream flavors: one flavor in the first Down, two in the second, three in the third.
Theme answers:
- 4D: Single scoop (COOKIES AND CREAM)
- 7D: Double scoop (VANILLA MINT CHIP)
- 10D: Triple scoop (LIME LEMON ORANGE)
Word of the Day: GENE Weingarten (28D: Pulitzer-winning journalist Weingarten) —
Gene Weingarten (born October 2, 1951 in New York) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winningjournalist known for both his serious and humorous work.[1] Weingarten's column, Below the Beltway, is published weekly in the Washington Post Magazine and syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group, which also syndicates Barney & Clyde, a comic strip he co-authors. (wikipedia)
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I didn't like this theme while I was solving because whoever heard of VANILLA MINT CHIP? But by the time I got over to LIME LEMON ORANGE, I realized that after COOKIES AND CREAM, the answers were not single flavors, but combinations. Turns out I wasn't really reading/understanding the theme clues—I was just inferring what the answers should be from COOKIES AND CREAM (a single flavor). So now that I look at it, loopy and arbitrary as the theme is, I kind of like it. At least it's different. Different is good. And the fill is really polished, such that it was a pleasure to solve *beyond the theme* (all puzzles should be that way—NYT puzzles often aren't).
The puzzle was very much on the easy side. Finished it faster than yesterday's. Only trouble was with proper nouns, here and there. PONCE, the first clue I looked it, probably took me longer than any other five-letter answer in the grid—why I can't remember it is beyond me (1A: Puerto Rican port). It's Puerto Rico's second-most populous city after San Juan. After that, the only answers that gave me any pause were KATE SMITH—no idea what that clue means (32A: Singer who said "Thanks for listenin'")—and DOGS, which has one of the more tortured-for-"humor" clues I've ever seen (22D: They may be measured by the pound). I'm sure GENE Weingarten, a persnickety crank who complains about everything, will agree with me. Or not. (Follow him and his pile-of-poop avatar on Twitter @geneweingarten).