Grayish to yellowish brown / THU 10-12-17 / Max popular video game series of 2000s / Classical rebuke / Giant first inductee in WWE Hall of Fame

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging


THEME: homophones— Across clues are all homophones of *actual* clues (no way in hell I'm typing out all the Across clues and their homophones, sorrynotsorry)

Word of the Day: BISTRE (47D: Grayish to yellowish brown) —

bis·ter

ˈbistər/

noun

noun: bistre

1. a brownish-yellowish pigment made from the soot of burned wood.

   • the color of the pigment bister.

(google)

Wow. That was ... not fun. Printout of my puzzle looks kind of cool, since all the Acrosses are just one word (and whatever "Re" is), but this is one of those puzzles that makes you shake your head and go, "Why?"—a stunt puzzle that is probably interesting-sounding in your head, but on paper is laborious to solve. The grid is so unpleasant. On its own terms, it's nowhere near NYT-quality (even recent NYT-quality). It's like one of them grids you'd see in some Giant Book Of Supermarket Checkout Line Puzzles compendium. Nothing holding it together. Fill all mediocre and weird. Multiple MIROS, pffft, fine, OK, but multiple DRYROTS!? Nay. Nay. Neigh. And what on god's green earth is BISTRE!? Apparently that's not even the preferred spelling (?). We get a word that hasn't been seen in the NYT crossword in almost *30* years, and then we get the, what, British spelling? I spent more time than I should just checking and rechecking every BISTRE cross because, well ... look at it! It's hardly a word. I'd've bought BISTRO as a color before BISTRE.


And where is the joy in ... figuring out the homophones. I mean, is anyone going "Aha!" (joyfully, I mean) upon realizing [Lickers] (!?) = "Liquors"? Or (even less likely) upon realizing [Liquors] = RYES. You could never, ever, ever clue RYES that way in a regular crossword, so why do you get to do it here? RYES *kinds* of liquor. It would be like [Cars] cluing TOYOTAS. Absolutely not. I think the same thing goes for [Missal] -> [Missile] -> ATLAS. It's all pretty galling. I will say that I got to put my pretty finely-honed Downs-only skills to work here, at least at first. I refused to look at the Note (per usual) and when the Acrosses made no sense, I went into Downs-only mode, which is the way I typically solve all Newsday puzzles (except the Saturday Stumper), most early-week LA Times puzzles, the cruddy Sunday puzzle we get in our local paper ... any puzzle that is too easy to be much fun. So I got pretty far with Downs-only until I stalled a bit, revisited the Acrosses, and noticed what was going on. After I got theme, only BISTRE (!!) really floored me. With the Acrosses, I struggled with DEPOT (23A: Bass)—thought [Base] would mean "mean" or "low" or "bad," not a noun normally related to trains; ATLAS (32A: Missal)—didn't really know it was a missile; and GLIMMER (53A: Re)—kept saying "Reeee" to myself, hoping it would eventually mean something. But it's the musical note. Do RE mi fa etc. And "ray" -> GLIMMER. What fun!


Turns out the Note wasn't much use anyway:

So ignoring it completely was the right move. This is rarely not the case.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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