Constructor: Ned White
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: A badminton rally— someone SERVES (presumably with a RACKET) and then the BIRDIE crosses the BADMINTON NET seven times (with each "hit" represented by an actual bird(ie) name) before landing out of bounds, resulting in a judge's call: "IT'S OUT!"
The BIRDIEs:
Do you serve in BADMINTON from out of bounds? I honestly don't know. I assume you do, because otherwise the entire concept here falls apart. It's already muddy to begin with, given that the six BIRDIEs are supposed to somehow represent the BIRDIE *and* the fact of its being struck by a RACKET (?). I admire the ambition here, but the execution is a bit of a mess. Also, the fill here is routinely junk, starting right away with RISD (😖😖😖) and continuing on with SNERT and OSS and PES and NISI and on and on. Those last two are real groaners. Constructor's just not trying hard enough here to polish the fill. Makes for a terrible solving experience. Luckily, it was also a lightning-fast solving experience (somewhere in the mid-3s—and that's with an oversized grid).
I don't know where ION BEAMS (33A: Output from futuristic weaponry) are used as weaponry, fictionally or otherwise. The phrase is barely familiar to me, and that answer was probably the toughest to fill in. I've never heard anyone say PAL UP (with), so even though that was my first guess (off the "P"), I didn't trust it. Had STORM for SEISM (ugh, that word), which was my costliest mistake of the day, by a long shot. I keep looking over this grid for interesting things to talk about, but the more I look, the more I'm struck by how much crosswordese there is Yet Again (LBO, ENERO, ERSE, ECONO, -OSE, ERG, IDI, ADAIR, VENI, ODED, NAS, ASNER, ONA, ORE, REN, DODO, plus the aforementioned stuff). It's pretty ruthless. The Rut continues.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy
The BIRDIEs:
- DUCK
- CROW
- LOON
- KITE
- DODO
- DOVE
Paul Neal "Red" Adair (June 18, 1915 – August 7, 2004) was an American oil well firefighter. He became notable as an innovator in the highly specialized and hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping oil well blowouts, both land-based and offshore. (wikipedia)
• • •
Do you serve in BADMINTON from out of bounds? I honestly don't know. I assume you do, because otherwise the entire concept here falls apart. It's already muddy to begin with, given that the six BIRDIEs are supposed to somehow represent the BIRDIE *and* the fact of its being struck by a RACKET (?). I admire the ambition here, but the execution is a bit of a mess. Also, the fill here is routinely junk, starting right away with RISD (😖😖😖) and continuing on with SNERT and OSS and PES and NISI and on and on. Those last two are real groaners. Constructor's just not trying hard enough here to polish the fill. Makes for a terrible solving experience. Luckily, it was also a lightning-fast solving experience (somewhere in the mid-3s—and that's with an oversized grid).
I don't know where ION BEAMS (33A: Output from futuristic weaponry) are used as weaponry, fictionally or otherwise. The phrase is barely familiar to me, and that answer was probably the toughest to fill in. I've never heard anyone say PAL UP (with), so even though that was my first guess (off the "P"), I didn't trust it. Had STORM for SEISM (ugh, that word), which was my costliest mistake of the day, by a long shot. I keep looking over this grid for interesting things to talk about, but the more I look, the more I'm struck by how much crosswordese there is Yet Again (LBO, ENERO, ERSE, ECONO, -OSE, ERG, IDI, ADAIR, VENI, ODED, NAS, ASNER, ONA, ORE, REN, DODO, plus the aforementioned stuff). It's pretty ruthless. The Rut continues.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]