Constructor: Dan Flanagan
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: no. / no.— clues all look like fractions that = 1 (i.e. one number over itself) but they all have different meanings...
Theme answers:
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Huh. OK, I like that the numbers involved go up. That's a nice feature. I'd never heard of COMMON TIME before—I was glad to see it was a thing, 'cause when I googled it I thought the answer just meant "common time signature," or "time signature one hears in a lot of songs." That is, I thought the answer was using "common" commonly, not specifically. But nope, COMMON TIME is a real, coherent thing. An actual term. Learning! But GREAT VISION ... yeah, that wasn't so great. For me. It's just an arbitrary term. COMMON TIME, specific term, VETERANS DAY, specific, GREAT VISION ... a subjective concept used here to describe vision that is commonly (!) considered very good. Swing, miss. EVEN STEVEN also feels like some cobbled together junk, i.e. it's a turn of phrase, a colloquialism. Too cutesy. So the first two themers work for me, the others feel jury-rigged for reasons of symmetry. Not nearly as precise. Thus, a letdown. I've done (much) worse Tuesday puzzles, for sure. But this one's just OK. Neither good nor bad. It hits and it misses.
Fill was also just OK. Some nice stuff, like NAMEDROP and QUICKSAND, but lots and lots of common (!!) stuff; you know, ECO ERES ADELE. Swing a cat and you'll hit a ton of it. ARAL AERO IOTA URSA PAAR ISTO UAE. On and on and on. SSN! The more I look at the grid, the less I like it. Lesson: stop looking! My only holdups today involved themers: COMMON TIME (because I didn't know what that was) and GREAT VISION (because that is not a specific thing, as we have been over). I also blanked (for seconds, which felt like minutes) on 39A: "Great Expectations" protagonist ... and I had -IP in place! I knew the answer, of course, but my brain tried to feed me the Dickens pseudonym (which I know only 'cause of crosswords), BOZ, and so the answer came out BIP, but ... I knew that wasn't right. So there was this weird giant pause right in the middle of my otherwise lightning-fast solve (just broke 3 minutes). So at least it went by quickly. Good for a Tuesday, but since that bar is so low, it's still just OK overall.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. TOE is in the grid, and [Tiptoe] is a clue (40A). A no(e)-no(e).
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- 17A: 4/4 (COMMON TIME)
- 27A: 11/11 (VETERANS DAY)
- 44A: 20/20 (GREAT VISION)
- 60A: 50/50 (EVEN STEVEN)
com·mon timeˈkämən tīm/nounMusicnoun: common time
• • •
Fill was also just OK. Some nice stuff, like NAMEDROP and QUICKSAND, but lots and lots of common (!!) stuff; you know, ECO ERES ADELE. Swing a cat and you'll hit a ton of it. ARAL AERO IOTA URSA PAAR ISTO UAE. On and on and on. SSN! The more I look at the grid, the less I like it. Lesson: stop looking! My only holdups today involved themers: COMMON TIME (because I didn't know what that was) and GREAT VISION (because that is not a specific thing, as we have been over). I also blanked (for seconds, which felt like minutes) on 39A: "Great Expectations" protagonist ... and I had -IP in place! I knew the answer, of course, but my brain tried to feed me the Dickens pseudonym (which I know only 'cause of crosswords), BOZ, and so the answer came out BIP, but ... I knew that wasn't right. So there was this weird giant pause right in the middle of my otherwise lightning-fast solve (just broke 3 minutes). So at least it went by quickly. Good for a Tuesday, but since that bar is so low, it's still just OK overall.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. TOE is in the grid, and [Tiptoe] is a clue (40A). A no(e)-no(e).
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]