Epithet meaning great soul / SAT 6-10-17 / Victor at Brandywine / Bob who narrated how I met your mother / Begin at beginning / Launch of April 1968 / National bird of Trinidad Tobago

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ACHENE (19A: Seed of a strawberry or sunflower) —

An achene (Greek ἀ, a, privative + χαίνειν, chainein, to gape;^[1] also sometimes called akene and occasionally achenium or achenocarp) is a type of simple dry fruit produced by many species of flowering plants. Achenes are monocarpellate (formed from one carpel) and indehiscent (they do not open at maturity). Achenes contain a single seed that nearly fills the pericarp, but does not adhere to it. In many species, what is called the "seed" is an achene, a fruit containing the seed. The seed-like appearance is owed to the hardening of the wall of the seed-vessel, which encloses the solitary seed so closely as to seem like an outer coat. (wikipedia)

This grid is really quite impressive for how smooth it is, given the low word count / massive amounts of white space (esp. in the middle). Clues were hard as heck (mostly), and so overall this was satisfying: a clean, genuinely thorny, proper Saturday puzzle. I want to talk briefly about my strong ambivalence re: the clue on MENACHEM (1A: Begin at the beginning?). On the one hand, that is a brilliant burying of a proper noun. That trick is ancient (i.e. the trick of putting a name-that-is-also-a-word at the beginning of a clue to camoflauge the name-ness), but with *that* name, in *that* phrase, with the "?" clue ... brutal. I had MENA-HE- and still had no idea. So I admire the trick. But as a clue ... it's just not fair. Hard is not the problem. It's just that "in the beginning" is a thing that makes sense only after you've solved it, and then only if you really think about it hard (I assume that the clue means the "beginning ... of Israel"). I don't associate him w/ "beginnings," and I think a no-context "beginning" there really violates the spirit of fair play. You got enamored of your wordplay and just went for it, even though it really wasn't a very good / accurate / specific enough clue. Cheap. You can see the ambivalent, right? Love the idea, but I think if I'm a ref, I call a foul.

[UPDATE: I totally misunderstood the clue. "... at the beginning" simply refers to MENACHEM's being his *first* name. I knew it was his first name ... but ... wow ... yeah, just whiffed on that one. Thanks to my Twitter-friend Helen for helping me out]




Other brutal (but fair) clues include 24A: Two stars, perhaps for ITEM (I thought SO-SO); and 30D: Runner's place for BASE (I thought LANE, which ... as you can see ... half works). The very hardest part, though, was the last square I filled in, because once again the cluing was nasty. In the SW corner, I had BARKAT and OGEEARCH thrown across the empty space, and then put "WHAT THE"!? up the side (36D: "Are you kidding me?!"). That "W" made the answer to the cross easy: 34A: It's got teeth = SAW. And the "A" worked. And then I filled in the rest of that corner and ended up with S-NK ART for 34D: Refuse work? Now I knew "refuse" was gonna be a noun (trash) not a verb, but ... SINK ART? SUNK ART? The cross at the vowel was 38A: Drivel and I had M-SH and thought there was some PISH or BOSH or other kind of word that might go there. Then MUSH seemed right. But SUNK ART? Yeah, that was wrong. So the JAW clue is sadistic. It's obviously intentional in its attempt to redirect you *specifically* to SAW. And it worked. I'm not so much a fan of that particular brand of "difficult," but to each his own. The puzzle's wavelength wasn't exactly my own, but it's very good as hard, low word-count themelesses go.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. oh and 22A: Jules or Jim, in "Jules et Jim" ... I had NOM :(

P.P.S. and oh yes more iffy clue shenanigans...


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