German state or novelist / TUE 11-28-17 / Receptacle carried to crime scene / Wallace's partner in claymation

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME:U-TURN (29D: Often-forbidden maneuver ... as hinted at four times in this puzzle)— names of four U-niversities make literal U-TURNs four times in the grid:

Theme answers:

• PRINCETON (north)
• CAL TECH (east)
• NOTRE DAME (south)
• CLEMSON (west) 

Word of the Day: MILA Kunis (32D: Kunis of "Friends With Benefits") —

Milena Markovna"Mila"Kunis (/ˈmiːləˈkuːnɪs/; Ukrainian: Міле́на Ма́рківна"Мі́ла"Ку́ніс;Russian: Миле́на Ма́рковна"Ми́ла"Ку́нис;івр: מילה קוניס‎); born August 14, 1983) is an American actress. In 1991, at the age of seven, she moved from the USSR to the United States with her family. After being enrolled in acting classes as an after-school activity, she was soon discovered by an agent. She appeared in several television series and commercials, before acquiring her first significant role prior to her 15th birthday, playing Jackie Burkhart on the television series That '70s Show (1998–2006). Since 1999, she has voiced Meg Griffin on the animated seriesFamily Guy. (wikipedia)

I think I just achieved my best wrong answer of the year. It occurred in the only part of the grid that offered any resistance—the SE.  For some reason, after absolutely torching the rest of the grid, I got bogged down on the entire area fenced in by (and including) the answers RULE and ESE (RULE was way more general than 41A: "No shoes, no shirt, no service," e.g. (which is actually a couple of rules...) implied, and degrees-on-a-compass clues are never going to mean anything specific to me). Then, because I went with "N" instead of "S" in the damn compass clue, and couldn't see SPEECH (52A: Crowd chant to an award honoree). I eventually had to build that corner from the bottom up (I was lucky enough to know all the names down there). But before I did that, when the far SE was empty I tried—and failed—to drop that long Down (31D: Substance that decreases purity) into that corner. After slashing some Across answers through the top of it, I had the ADULT part and decided that the [Substance that decreases purity] must be ... an ADULT MOVIE. Me: "Well, 'substance' is weird, but ... maybe?" No, maybe not, but three cheers for epic wrongness. SPEECH! SPEECH!


The worst moment was RULE crossing RISE, mainly because I just did not understand how RISE fit the clue (41D: Opposite of set). And only Just Now did I get it. Literally, as I was typing that last sentence, I got the sun rise / sun set opposition, which is hilariously obvious. I went from not understanding it at all, to imagining it had something to do with baking. Wow, yeah, that SE corner was an entirely different experience than the rest of the puzzle, which I don't remember at all, so fast did I cruise through it.

Bullets:

• 51D: Costume that might involve two people (MOOSE)— so ... a costume literally nobody has ever worn except maybe parts of Maine and rural Canada? That "costume"? What a horrible, not-at-all real-world clue. I've seen two-person horses, I've seen two-person cows. MOOSE, no. I had GHOST for a few seconds.
• 70A: Singer of the 2012 #1 hit "Somebody That I Used to Know" (GOTYE)— it is very weird to me that, five years after his 15 minutes, this guy seems to be showing up in crosswords more than ever. Definitely worth retiring, especially on early-week puzzles, until his fame is more ADELE- or ANKA- or even Irene CARA-esque.
• 9D: Paid part of a magazine (PRINT AD)— fair enough, but it's a "magazine," so my first thought is just AD. Then I was thinking something specific in a magazine ... something like WANT AD but not WANT AD. Anyway, it wasn't hard to come up with, but it reminded me how ubiquitous and annoying the entire language of AD-vertising is in crosswords. ADMAN. ADREP. Blargh.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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