Constructor: Greg Poulos
Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)
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THEME: WORD OF THE YEAR (56A: Annual American Dialect Society award given to seven answers in this puzzle)— it is what it says it is:
Theme answers:
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This is an "I found a list and I'm going to arrange words from this list symmetrically in a grid" theme. Whoop dee doo. There's nothing clever happening here. Answers may as well be dog breeds with a revealer of DOG BREEDS—that's how exciting this is. Yes, you get some wackadoodle words like PLUTOED (which no one says at all) and historical curiosities like MILLENNIUM BUG (?), but the rest are just ... words. Oooh, APP, how fun! APP is crosswordese now. See also WMD. No theme credit for you! Ugh, and that first themer. I had MILLENNIUM BU- and still had No Idea what [Rollover problem? [1997]] wanted me to write in. Again, keep your stupid "?" clues out of an essentially non-"?" theme. They are irritating. "Y2K" is something I remember. MILLENNIUM BUG, not at all. And I was very much an adult for that whole "rollover" event. PLUTOED also flummoxed me, as I stared at PL--OED going, ".... no." On top of this mere-list theme, the fill is not good. Except PIANO WIRE, which is highly unusual. And KING MINOS too, I'll take him. But the big NW / SE corners are dull and UIEISM INO RSTU ESE ANDLO (!?!?!) LOL no. I mean, ANDLO + RSTU = delete your grid. Hey, what did Santa say when he finally found a means of descending the chimney safely? ANDLO, AROPE! HOHOHO!
Further, isn't the clue for BAILOUT wrong (36A: Rescue from insolvency [2008])? That clue wants a verb, BAIL space OUT. But the Word of the Year was a noun—BAILOUT (n.): "bailout, the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry." Unless you are going to try to convince me that "Rescue" is being used as a noun there, which ... I mean, I guess you could lawyer it that way, but you and I know you wrote that clue and the world will interpret that clue as having "Rescue" as a verb. In the end, the themers themselves have some inherent charm, but the theme concept is just blah, and the grid as well.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I left one answer off the "Good" list: GAY BAR (10D: New York's Stonewall Inn, e.g.)
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)
Theme answers:
- MILLENNIUM BUG (20A: Rollover problem? [1997])
- DUMPSTER FIRE (28A: Spectacular disaster [2016])
- BAIL OUT (36A: Rescue from insolvency [2008])
- PLUTOED (39A: Demoted [2006])
- SINGULAR THEY (46A: Gender-neutral pronoun [2015])
- WMD (13D: Iraq war worry, for short [2002])
- APP (61D: Snapchat or Dropbox [2010])
The Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, or Y2K, is a class of computer bugs related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000. Problems were anticipated, and arose, because twentieth-century software often represented the four-digit year with only the final two digits—making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. The assumption of a twentieth-century date in such programs caused various errors, such as the incorrect display of dates and the inaccurate ordering of automated dated records or real-time events. (wikipedia entry for "Year 2000 Problem")
• • •
["If you're ever ____, / Here I am!"]
Further, isn't the clue for BAILOUT wrong (36A: Rescue from insolvency [2008])? That clue wants a verb, BAIL space OUT. But the Word of the Year was a noun—BAILOUT (n.): "bailout, the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry." Unless you are going to try to convince me that "Rescue" is being used as a noun there, which ... I mean, I guess you could lawyer it that way, but you and I know you wrote that clue and the world will interpret that clue as having "Rescue" as a verb. In the end, the themers themselves have some inherent charm, but the theme concept is just blah, and the grid as well.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I left one answer off the "Good" list: GAY BAR (10D: New York's Stonewall Inn, e.g.)
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]