Constructor: Timothy Polin
Relative difficulty: Medium (skewing Medium-Challenging—about 10 seconds north of normal for a Monday)
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THEME: WORLD PEACE (62A: Ancient dream of humanity that's hinted at by the starts of 17-, 24-, 37- and 53-Across)— I guess the first words all mean "peace" in their various languages...
Theme answers:
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What a drag. Just a drag, from the jump. That whole NW corner was just onerous to fill in. ABE ECOCARS SICEM AMOR SISI BALI HAI SHEL ... there's zero effort to make the answers or clues interesting. So I knew right away that things were going anywhere good. ALOHA SHIRT just confirmed it. That answer's not taking you anywhere fun. The dull, overfamiliar fill just kept coming. The revealer was a letdown, for a host of reasons. ALOHA and SHALOM do, in fact, mean "peace," but this really looked like a hello/goodbye puzzle to start. And then came PAX ROMANA, which ... refers to a state of peace ... just like the revealer ... so ... it's not much of a themer. Or it makes the themer seem redundant, one or the other. SHALOM MEIR TOWER is kind of ridiculous as a themer. I'm sure it's a real place, but it's an Astonishing outlier, familiarity-wise. Almost every bit of the difficulty came from trying to figure out what the hell went between SHALOM and TOWER (the rest of the difficulty came from the fact that this puzzle mysteriously/weirdly has just 74 words) (just means there were biggish blocks of white in every corner, a natural speed impediment).
The whole thing is forced and weird, and for no good reason. There's no wow-factor. No ooh or ahh. "These are words that mean peace." That's not a great concept. And when you add not-great fill to your not-great concept, the result is a not-great solving experience. Not really worth any specific commentary. I will say that the Venus trivia was pretty cool (64D: Period on Venus that's longer than a year on Venus (!)) (DAY), but that's all I'll say.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium (skewing Medium-Challenging—about 10 seconds north of normal for a Monday)
THEME: WORLD PEACE (62A: Ancient dream of humanity that's hinted at by the starts of 17-, 24-, 37- and 53-Across)— I guess the first words all mean "peace" in their various languages...
Theme answers:
- ALOHA SHIRT (17A: Colorful top often worn with a lei)
- SHALOM MEIR TOWER (24A: Tel Aviv skyscraper that was the first to be built in the Mideast)
- PAX ROMANA (37A: Long, tranquil period ushered in by the emperor Augustus)
- MIR SPACE STATION (53A: Orbiter from 1986 to 2001)
• • •
The whole thing is forced and weird, and for no good reason. There's no wow-factor. No ooh or ahh. "These are words that mean peace." That's not a great concept. And when you add not-great fill to your not-great concept, the result is a not-great solving experience. Not really worth any specific commentary. I will say that the Venus trivia was pretty cool (64D: Period on Venus that's longer than a year on Venus (!)) (DAY), but that's all I'll say.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]