Constructor: Bruce Haight
Relative difficulty: Medium
![]()
THEME:INNER DEMONS (61A: Personal struggles ... or, literally, features of 17-, 26-, 36- and 52-Across)— "DEMON" can be found embedded in every theme answer:
Theme answers:
![]()
As an example of this very common type (embedded words with a revealer of INNER whatever and such), this one is pretty solid. You got a good set of themers here—that is, the answers are colorful all on their own, with PRIDE MONTH being the strongest and MADE MONEY the weakest. The only time I really went 'ugh' was at AYS. I mean ... no. AYES, yes. AYS!?!? That's idiotic. But as I say, everything else holds up OK. Despite relatively open corners (which often spell trouble, time-wise), I cruised through this one very quickly, *except* in the SW, where I dead-stopped a couple of times trying to get in, largely because CODE MONKEY was unknown to me (and I had no idea of the theme at this point). Also, the phrase AT A TIME didn't seem at all apt for 48A: Simultaneously, perhaps because 99% of the time you hear the phrase AT A TIME, it's immediately following the word ONE ... which does little to convey simultaneity. Other issues in that corner—I had LEI for TEE; I found 60A: Public health org. far too vague to be any help; 68A: "Fuhgeddaboutit!" coulda gone all kinds of ways; and, you know, AYS. Luckily ELDER, RIM, and the inferred "S" at the end of what turned out to be AYS helped me get MAD DASH, so I wasn't stuck for too too long.
When I was done, I didn't realize there'd been a revealer, so I looked at all the theme answers and thought, "Huh ... it's Monday, so they put MON. in all the answers ... weird." That is seriously what I thought was going on. Not much else to say about this one. Two other errors I had were DUET for DYAD (51D: Twosome) and READY for HANDY (69A: At one's fingertips). SOAPING windows seems like an awful lot of trouble for a Halloween prank. I mean, why not egg? Throw, splat, run. Bada bing. Soaping is a little too close to straight washing someone's windows—how is that bad, exactly? This is not a prank I've ever seen done, or heard of anyone doing (no one that I knew personally, anyway). I have to go now, as I can't stand to look at AYS anymore. See you Tuesday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME:INNER DEMONS (61A: Personal struggles ... or, literally, features of 17-, 26-, 36- and 52-Across)— "DEMON" can be found embedded in every theme answer:
Theme answers:
- CLAUDE MONET (17A: "Water Lilies" painter)
- PRIDE MONTH (26A: June, in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement)
- MADE MONEY (36A: Profited)
- CODE MONKEY (52A: Computer programmer, disparagingly)
nouninformalnoun: code monkey; plural noun: code monkeys
• • •
When I was done, I didn't realize there'd been a revealer, so I looked at all the theme answers and thought, "Huh ... it's Monday, so they put MON. in all the answers ... weird." That is seriously what I thought was going on. Not much else to say about this one. Two other errors I had were DUET for DYAD (51D: Twosome) and READY for HANDY (69A: At one's fingertips). SOAPING windows seems like an awful lot of trouble for a Halloween prank. I mean, why not egg? Throw, splat, run. Bada bing. Soaping is a little too close to straight washing someone's windows—how is that bad, exactly? This is not a prank I've ever seen done, or heard of anyone doing (no one that I knew personally, anyway). I have to go now, as I can't stand to look at AYS anymore. See you Tuesday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]