Constructor: Michael Hawkins
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: ON THE UP AND UP (42A: Straight-shooting)— two other themers start with devices that can take you up (or down, actually, but whatever). So since there are two ... UP ... and UP:
Theme answers:
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These are not the most familiar of themers. I knew one. My wife knew one. They were not the same ones, and the one I knew, I knew only in French—never heard STAIRCASE WIT, but I inferred it from "l'esprit de l'escalier."ESCALATOR CLAUSE baffled me. I had CLAUSE and ESC- and had to resort to crosses because ESCAPE wouldn't fill the space. I like the weird grid shape, and I actually kind of like the super-light theme (3 answers? 39 squares?), and the fact that they didn't even bother trying to give the revealer a dopey revealer clue. Simple. People can figure it out without your getting all corny with it. And yet I don't think I Like liked this puzzle. Any puzzle with REUNE(S) starts with two strikes against it, and ugh, SCRY and ATTA and AER and TNN ... so much MAASwordese, blargh. A puzzle with only three themers should have Much better fill than this. "Annie Hall," yes, ANTEHALL, no (31D: Entrance room where guests wait). So despite its quirky charms, I'm gonna say nay. Wait. Wait, no, I changed my mind—I thought it was a near-miss, but then I noticed that you can kinda sorta make a case that the grid has a kind of staircase/escalator shape (taken from SW corner to NE corner), and even if that is what we in the business call "reading too much into things," I don't care. I need Tuesday not to fail every week. So consider this the most marginal of positive reviews.
Aside from ESCALATOR, I didn't have much trouble here. Biggest issue by far (compounded by its adjacency to ESCALATOR) was with 26A: Place to find a pen and teller (BANK). I had the -NK and my eye got only as far as "pen" and I wrote in ... OINK. Now this "makes sense" insofar as a pig oinks and a pig lives in a pen. In all other ways, it makes no sense, particularly considering that OINK is not a "place," ugh. Otherwise, smooth sailing.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- STAIRCASE WIT (17A: Cleverness thought of too late to use)
- ESCALATOR CLAUSE (30A: Flexible contract provision)
[this clue really should say [*Pretend* to foretell the future etc.], come on ...] [also, what the hell is "other reflective object or surface"!?]verbverb: scry; 3rd person present: scries; past tense: scried; past participle: scried; gerund or present participle: scrying
• • •
Aside from ESCALATOR, I didn't have much trouble here. Biggest issue by far (compounded by its adjacency to ESCALATOR) was with 26A: Place to find a pen and teller (BANK). I had the -NK and my eye got only as far as "pen" and I wrote in ... OINK. Now this "makes sense" insofar as a pig oinks and a pig lives in a pen. In all other ways, it makes no sense, particularly considering that OINK is not a "place," ugh. Otherwise, smooth sailing.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]