Hill that's steep on one side gentle on other / TUE 6-20-17 / Southern region where blues developed / Pilgrimage site in central italy / Roamer of Serengeti / Like group you're in if you're out

Constructor: Jason Flinn

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: AIRPORT TERMINALS (55A: Arrival and departure locales hinted at by 17-, 21- and 50-Across)— final words in the three themers are all airlines:

Theme answers:

• MANCHESTER UNITED (17A: One of the premier clubs in the Premier League)
• MISSISSIPPI DELTA (21A: Southern region where blues developed)
• SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST (50A: Annual Austin festival)

Word of the Day: CUESTA (47A: Hill that's steep on one side and gentle on the other) —

A cuesta is a hill or ridge with a gentle slope on one side, and a steep slope on the other. In geology the term is more specifically applied to a ridge where a harder sedimentary rock overlies a softer layer, the whole being tilted somewhat from the horizontal. This results in a long and gentle backslope called a dip slope that conforms with the dip of resistant strata, called caprock. Where erosion has exposed the frontslope of this, a steep slope or escarpment occurs. The resulting terrain may be called scarpland. (wikipedia)

The one and only thing I like about this puzzle is that it looks interesting. 16-wide, with those ridiculous 11-letter non-theme Acrosses riding shotgun with the top and bottom themers? Bonkers. Oh, and KICKS BUTT is kinda fun. But besides that, this thing was deeply unpleasant. I'll start with the theme, which is just a bloated last-words theme. The revealer fails twice, first by being a really booooring entry, and second by being ... not really what ... those last words are. Those are airlines. They may have their own "terminals." Or they may not. Theme answers themselves are fine, but the revealer was kind of a letdown. And then there's Maude! I mean, the fill (and cluing). Hoo boy. Here we come to the Downside of the puzzle's "interesting" look. Those 11-letter Acrosses abutting the grid-spanning themers make for a ****ton of cruddy short fill in the crosses. INA SSN OPE (ugh) TRA EDA SYS TEMAS (double ugh). Things get rough in other places too: ACHOO TWPS (ugh ugh ugh) INTWO NCIS—that's a pretty section. My favorite*, though, was AKEY crossing CUESTA. That was my last square. I hate riddles. I hate bad fill. AKEY is an answer to a riddle, and it is also bad fill. CUESTA was just a thing I've never heard of that clearly doesn't belong in a Tuesday. I saw "hill" in the clue and thought "CREST ... A?" Oy.


I don't like the clue on LGBT (40D: Like the group you're in if you're out, for short), as it seems to imply that being "out" is a precondition of being L or G or B or T. Now it doesn't say "*only* if you are out," so I guess you can lawyer that clue into being technically accurate, but it feels off, and all for the sake of wordplay (in/out) that isn't even that good. The clue did get some pretty high-power defense when I complained about it last night, though:


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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