Constructor:Patrick Berry
Relative difficulty:Challenging
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THEME:none
Word of the Day:LARRUP(2D: Beat soundly) —
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About the most unpleasant Berry experience I've had in a while, for multiple reasons. The first is not his fault—this is a Saturday puzzle. Saturday plus. My time was north of my usual Saturday by a good amount. It wasn't just the NW corner—where I was dead-stopped for minutes at the end. It was all over. Just hard / weird cluing and (often) odd answers. Terribly horribly impossibly misplaced on a Friday. Then there's the fill, which has a frame of reference so dated and a general palette so ecru that solving felt like slogging through a very old person's dusty attic. Everything's old and there's no air. No, change that—it's *possible* I'd find some joy in a dusty attic. There was no feeling of aha or breakthrough or anything today. Answers like FIRESCREENS (do those go in front of fires? Seriously these answers are So Plain I barely know what they do) and HOUSECLEANS and CRADLE SONGS (What Are Those??? I have a child, and yet ... this is not a phrase I know. Do. You. Mean. Lullabies!?!?!). Runnin' ___ was never gonna be anything but Runnin' REBS (I went to lots of Fresno State / UNLV games as a kid). So discovering UTES was ... pffft. Not fun. Just "Oh, right, they also are "Runnin'" somehow." Lots of impressively long answers flowing through the middle, but ... didn't matter. Solving this was highly unpleasant. TELNET? BADEN? BORGE!?!? What year is it?
Worst was the NW, where CRADLE songs was unknown to me, and LARRUP was unknown to me, and FOOD had its dumb clue (4D: It's picked up in a mess) that could've been / should've been ODOR or TRAY (both better ... jeez, that clue for FOOD? Not funny). FURL without the UN-, always godawful (5D: Roll up). Worst was LARRUP's ending in -UP, which makes 2D: Beat soundly really really really want to be a two-word phrase ending in UP. But jeez, CRADLE SONGS? And with a stupid jokey "?" clue at that. Honestly, the only time during the whole solve where I went "Oh, good one" was at 26D: Fortune reader, maybe (EXEC). I had SEER. Nice. Everything else—root canal. To be clear, expertly made ... but an expertly made root canal (I just had a root canal, so I know whereof).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I sincerely had to look up just now how "ROLLER" and "brush" are in the same universe? (35D: Brush alternative). It's painting. Right. OK. Man, I'm glad this thing is over. Bet the farm that the *actual* Saturday is easier than this thing.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty:Challenging
Word of the Day:LARRUP(2D: Beat soundly) —
verbinformalverb: larrup; 3rd person present: larrups; past tense: larruped; past participle: larruped; gerund or present participle: larruping
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Worst was the NW, where CRADLE songs was unknown to me, and LARRUP was unknown to me, and FOOD had its dumb clue (4D: It's picked up in a mess) that could've been / should've been ODOR or TRAY (both better ... jeez, that clue for FOOD? Not funny). FURL without the UN-, always godawful (5D: Roll up). Worst was LARRUP's ending in -UP, which makes 2D: Beat soundly really really really want to be a two-word phrase ending in UP. But jeez, CRADLE SONGS? And with a stupid jokey "?" clue at that. Honestly, the only time during the whole solve where I went "Oh, good one" was at 26D: Fortune reader, maybe (EXEC). I had SEER. Nice. Everything else—root canal. To be clear, expertly made ... but an expertly made root canal (I just had a root canal, so I know whereof).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I sincerely had to look up just now how "ROLLER" and "brush" are in the same universe? (35D: Brush alternative). It's painting. Right. OK. Man, I'm glad this thing is over. Bet the farm that the *actual* Saturday is easier than this thing.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]