Constructor: Jules P. Markey
Relative difficulty: Easy (note: grid is oversized at 15x16)
![]()
THEME: DOWN FEATHERS (11D: Warm winter coat contents ... or what is present in the answer to each starred clue?)— different birds are embedded in the long "down" answers. Birds have "feathers" ... and the answers go "down" ... so there you go.
Theme answers:
![]()
This puzzle has one major (maybe not fatal, but major) flaw, and that's that the revealer is an awkward redundancy. As you can see from the Word of the Day definition, "down" *means* feathers. So ... DOWN FEATHERS ... !?!? Your revealer needs to be snappy and in-the-language and bang-on, and this one just flomps. That's when you "flop" in a "lump" on the ground, I think. DOWN FEATHERS was the answer I finished on, and unlike the rest of the puzzle, it took a bunch of work because ... again, DOWN FEATHERS, not a good phrase. "Down comforter,""down coat," etc. The word "feathers" is absurdly excessive. It's sad because there's potential to this type of embedded-word puzzle. You just need the right revealer, and this wasn't it. Also, as I've said before, with embedded words, the ideal is that every word in the theme answers touches said word, so there are no uninvolved words. WAYNE GRETZKY is a *perfect* embedded-word answer. Beautiful. Who knew EGRET was in there!? A revelation! The rest have extraneous words. A GAME, not involved, TELL ME, not involved, WORLD, not involved. And then there's the revealer. So if you solved left-to-right, as I did, this went from promising and possibly delightful to frowny-face disappointing.
The grid is chock full o'crosswordese (I mean, that first row is paradigmatic ... actually, the second row doesn't get much better ...), so that was unfortunate, but I've definitely seen worse grids. ARIOSE and LIENEE, despite being look-uppable words, are gruesome crosswordese to me (I only ever see them in crosswords, they are only here because of the favorable letter combinations they provide, not because someone thought, "ooh, that'll look nice..."). I have to say, though, that the clue on APOSTROPHE is a hall-of-famer. A perfect use of the "?" clue. Evokes one thing, actually clues something *entirely* different. Aggressively, unexpectedly literal clue. Also, I like bourbon. So that clue, like bourbon, warms my heart.
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy (note: grid is oversized at 15x16)
Theme answers:
- WAYNE GRETZKY (25D: *Sports legend who was an M.V.P. for eight consecutive seasons)
- A GAME OF INCHES (5D: *Baseball, according to some)
- "TELL ME ANOTHER ONE" (7D: *"A likely story!")
- BRAVE NEW WORLD (22D: *Dystopian novel set in the year 2540)
noun
synonyms: soft feathers, fine hair; More
• • •
The grid is chock full o'crosswordese (I mean, that first row is paradigmatic ... actually, the second row doesn't get much better ...), so that was unfortunate, but I've definitely seen worse grids. ARIOSE and LIENEE, despite being look-uppable words, are gruesome crosswordese to me (I only ever see them in crosswords, they are only here because of the favorable letter combinations they provide, not because someone thought, "ooh, that'll look nice..."). I have to say, though, that the clue on APOSTROPHE is a hall-of-famer. A perfect use of the "?" clue. Evokes one thing, actually clues something *entirely* different. Aggressively, unexpectedly literal clue. Also, I like bourbon. So that clue, like bourbon, warms my heart.
Bullets:
- 6A: Site of Zeno's teaching (STOA)— OK, so just now I learned that there are two Zenos. That ... hurts. (e)How did I not know that?? There's Zeno of ELEA (the answer I wanted here) (he's the ZENO of "Zeno's Paradoxes"), and then there's Zeno of Citium (!?!?!) (c. 334 – c. 262 BC), the founder of (wait for it ...) STOIcism, so-named for the place where he taught: the Stoa Poikile in Athens. STOA is here a proper noun. It is also a regular noun meaning "a classical portico or roofed colonnade" (google).
- 65A: Pasta used in soups and salads (ORZO) — always have to stop and think which one is ORZO and which one is OUZO (the anise-flavored Greek liqueur)
- 38D: Mortgagor, e.g. (LIENEE) — the clue and the answer are competing in a "who's uglier?' contest. Too close to call.
- 9D: Longtime Syrian strongman (ASSAD) — well, at least they called him "strongman." I'd've gone with something ... stronger. Actually, I'd probably not use him in a grid at all. Bygone tyrants, I can tolerate in my grids somewhat. Active ones, less so.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]