Constructor: Steven A. Atwood
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: BRITISHISMS (11D: Words found in the answers to this puzzle's starred clues)— familiar phrases are reimagined (via "?" clues) as phrases related to specifically British terms:
Theme answers:
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Today is a day when I really wish the NYT crossword puzzles had titles. I have no idea why Sunday gets one, but none of the other days do. Actually, I can guess why—it likely has something to do with the amount of space the paper is willing to devote to the daily puzzle. But a title does not take up much space, and it would benefit the puzzle tremendously. One, if done right, a title is a great opportunity for clever, suggestive wordplay. Further (and this is where today's puzzle comes in), a title would eliminate the need for dull, descriptive revealers like the one we get today. I can *see* that the words involved in these themers are all BRITISH—you've got "London" in every clue, for ****'s sake. Plunking the unwitty and grid-warping BRITISHISMS down there does nothing but gum up the works. Look at this lopsided grid. You can see how those NW / SE corners are all wee, and cut off from the rest of the grid, whereas their counterparts in the NE / SW are these much larger, unwieldy things (you can see that the constructor struggled with filling them cleanly—hence the black squares in the corners). If you ditched the revealer, you could build a nicer, cleaner grid, and still have a couple of jazzy longer Downs, one of which is not just a dull signpost.
The fill on this one is reasonably solid, though things get a bit rough in the south with COSEC, EPOS, TOATEE, and ELMO (esp. as clued—an obscure "Blondie" clue? In 2017?) (67A: Dagwood's bratty neighbor). That was the only area of the puzzle where I got much resistance—starting at PYRITE (the name of which I just forgot) and headed through the SOCKS part of BOBBY SOCKS (I am more familiar with the term "bobby-soxer"—as in the Cary Grant film, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947)—so the full spelling of SOCKS was oddly, if only briefly, confusing) and then down to ELMO (which was a huge "?"). Oh, and that area also contains KAHLO (54D: Frida who was portrayed in film by Salma Hayek), who is famous enough, but whose name I still struggle to spell correctly (got it right today, but am somehow always willing to entertain KHALO). So, my main takeaway today is: I wish there were titles. But like my wish that constructors were paid anywhere near their actual worth, I expect this wish to go unheeded for the foreseeable future.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. about that COPS clue (70A: Beat people?) ... yeesh.
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Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: BRITISHISMS (11D: Words found in the answers to this puzzle's starred clues)— familiar phrases are reimagined (via "?" clues) as phrases related to specifically British terms:
Theme answers:
- FLAT RATE (17A: *Monthly charge for a London apartment?)
- POKER CHIPS (26A: *French fries on a London card table?)
- MACBOOK (40A: *Catalog from a London raincoat designer?)
- BOBBY SOCKS (51A: *Part of a London police officer's uniform?)
- SHOPLIFT (62A: *Conveyance in a multilevel London store?)
The mineralpyrite, or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formulaFeS2. Pyrite is considered the most common of the sulfide minerals. // Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue give it a superficial resemblance to gold, hence the well-known nickname of fool's gold. The color has also led to the nicknames brass, brazzle, and Brazil, primarily used to refer to pyrite found in coal. (wikipedia)
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The fill on this one is reasonably solid, though things get a bit rough in the south with COSEC, EPOS, TOATEE, and ELMO (esp. as clued—an obscure "Blondie" clue? In 2017?) (67A: Dagwood's bratty neighbor). That was the only area of the puzzle where I got much resistance—starting at PYRITE (the name of which I just forgot) and headed through the SOCKS part of BOBBY SOCKS (I am more familiar with the term "bobby-soxer"—as in the Cary Grant film, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947)—so the full spelling of SOCKS was oddly, if only briefly, confusing) and then down to ELMO (which was a huge "?"). Oh, and that area also contains KAHLO (54D: Frida who was portrayed in film by Salma Hayek), who is famous enough, but whose name I still struggle to spell correctly (got it right today, but am somehow always willing to entertain KHALO). So, my main takeaway today is: I wish there were titles. But like my wish that constructors were paid anywhere near their actual worth, I expect this wish to go unheeded for the foreseeable future.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. about that COPS clue (70A: Beat people?) ... yeesh.
