Constructor: Adam G. Perl
Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder because of the made-up themers)
![]()
THEME: TOO CLEVER BY HALF (54A: Overly inventive ... or a hint to the answers to 17-, 26- and 42-Across)— familiar expressions containing numbers have those numbers increased by 50%, resulting in semi-wacky wrong phrases that, well, make the revealer somewhat descriptive of the entire puzzle:
Theme answers:
![]()
My wife makes a good point, which is that this puzzle might've been a lot more fun if there'd been a way to wackily clue the actual answers in the grid, instead of just having those answers be flat-out wrong. No wacky clues. Just very, very literal clues (doesn't get much more straightforward than [1965 Beatles hit], snooze). I'm not sure if the puzzle is TOO CLEVER BY HALF or just not clever enough. I kinda like the basic concept—I just wish it could've come across in a more entertaining way. There was nothing fun about writing in THIRTY QUESTIONS and going "well, that's wrong." I like that the grid has those long Downs—woulda been easy to clip them (putting black square at end of CROUP and beginning of HORSY), and the grid might've been easier to fill, but we would've just had more (probably dull) short fill. RIOT POLICE and FALSEHOODS give us at least a little flash outside of the theme (even if it is kinda depressing, as flash fill goes).
Most of the fill here is just OK. Maybe, uh, a little over-reliant on the E-words (-FILE, COLI, -BOOK). I struggled a little with slang that was outside my normal range of usage, i.e. TOOTS and CHIN UP. I also thought the [Drilling grp.] at 1D was OPEC (it's ROTC), and [Event name suffix] was a tough clue for CON, so I was very slow out of the gate. What makes a "feline Facebook posting" an LOLCAT? Also, are LOLCATs still a thing? That answer required many crosses for me to understand. Something about it feels off. Also off-feeling: STABLE as a "Kind of income" (44D: Kind of income a lending officer likes to see). Just because an adjective can be used to describe something doesn't mean that the adjective is a "Kind." If my car is parked, if you asked me what kind of car I owned, I wouldn't say "parked" (however literally accurate that might be). Because that would be too clever by at least 2/3.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder because of the made-up themers)
Theme answers:
- THIRTY (instead of 20) QUESTIONS (17A: Classic game needing no equipment)
- FIFTEEN-FOOT (instead of 10-ft.) POLE (26A: You might not want to touch something with this)
- TWELVE (instead of 8) DAYS A WEEK (42A: 1965 Beatles hit)
Edward James Olmos (born February 24, 1947) is an American actor and director. Among his most memorable roles are William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Lieutenant Martin "Marty" Castillo in Miami Vice, teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, patriarch Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. in the film Selena, Detective Gaff in Blade Runner, and narrator El Pachuco in both the stage and film versions of Zoot Suit. In 1988, Olmos was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Stand and Deliver. (wikipedia)
• • •
Most of the fill here is just OK. Maybe, uh, a little over-reliant on the E-words (-FILE, COLI, -BOOK). I struggled a little with slang that was outside my normal range of usage, i.e. TOOTS and CHIN UP. I also thought the [Drilling grp.] at 1D was OPEC (it's ROTC), and [Event name suffix] was a tough clue for CON, so I was very slow out of the gate. What makes a "feline Facebook posting" an LOLCAT? Also, are LOLCATs still a thing? That answer required many crosses for me to understand. Something about it feels off. Also off-feeling: STABLE as a "Kind of income" (44D: Kind of income a lending officer likes to see). Just because an adjective can be used to describe something doesn't mean that the adjective is a "Kind." If my car is parked, if you asked me what kind of car I owned, I wouldn't say "parked" (however literally accurate that might be). Because that would be too clever by at least 2/3.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]