Constructor: Ryan McCarty and Alan Southworth
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
![]()
THEME: NO WAY (69A: "Forget it!" ... or a hint to 17-, 30-, 46- and 62-Across)— DESCRIPTION
Word of the Day:"KUBO and the Two Strings" (58D: 2016 animated film "___ and the Two Strings") —
![]()
Two things about this puzzle are startling. First, the theme, which is so conceptually remedial, I have a hard time imagining its running in any majoy daily, let alone the "gold standard" puzzle. You just take WAY out? To get tepid phrases that are sometimes actual things and sometimes non-things? ONE STREET? That's funny? That's ... what is that? This is a puzzle you make early in your career and it gets rejected and then you learn to make your themes more interesting. When I got to the revealer ("NO WAY!"), I thought, "That ... that can't be it. Is that it?" It was it. And the resulting answers: HIGH ROBBERY, not a thing (unless you smoke pot and then knock over a bank, I guess), SUBSTATIONS, absolutely a thing, ONE STREET, a thing but not a standalone thing ... and then there's RUN A TRAIN. This is where I really, really wonder if anyone took any time editing this thing. The *only* reaction to this puzzle that I saw on Twitter last night involved this answer. Go ahead and google RUN A TRAIN (in quotation marks) if you don't know what that phrase means in common parlance. Let's just say that if the NYT does indeed have a "breakfast test" for its answers, this one proooooooobably doesn't pass. Surely Will's younger assistants know the slang meaning of this phrase. I wonder if the constructors thought they were being cute, or had a bet, or something. "We'll never get this by him!""Let's try!"
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
I found the puzzle really easy except for the far north, where BRETT (???) (6A: Lady ___ Ashley, Jake Barnes's love in "The Sun Also Rises") and BOBBER (it's not just "bob"?) (6D: Tackle box item) and especially RUBADUB (who doesn't love a partial nonsense phrase!?) (7D: Start of a children's rhyme) really gummed things up. The SW also slowed me down, as all that Cockney nonsense was unintelligible to me. Neither LONDONER (37D: Cockney, e.g.) nor 'ERE (68A: "Listen ___!" (Cockney cry)) came into view easily. I thought maybe the Cockney person (?) was saying "Listen 'A ME!" Ugh. Oh, and I forgot what a "jewel case" was (oh, these modern times!) and so CD-ROM (bygone!) was rough for me as well (53A: Jewel case insert). Also got thrown by the theme-length answer with the "?" clue that was *not* a themer (I really hate that sort of junk). CEMENT MASON is as long or longer than all themers and (like the themers) has a "?" clue, so I went looking for a missing WAY. To no avail. But the rest was a cinch and even these problem areas weren't tough to work out. But overall, this was unpleasant, in more ways than one.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: NO WAY (69A: "Forget it!" ... or a hint to 17-, 30-, 46- and 62-Across)— DESCRIPTION
Word of the Day:"KUBO and the Two Strings" (58D: 2016 animated film "___ and the Two Strings") —
Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American 3D stop-motion fantasy action-adventure film directed and co-produced by Travis Knight (in his directorial debut), and written by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler. It stars the voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei, and Matthew McConaughey. It is Laika's fourth feature film produced. The film revolves around Kubo, who wields a magical shamisen and whose left eye was stolen in infancy. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must subdue his mother's corrupted Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather Raiden (aka, the Moon King), who stole his left eye.Kubo premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival and was released by Focus Features in the United States on August 19 to critical acclaim and has grossed $77 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million. The film won the BAFTA for Best Animated Film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Visual Effects, becoming the second animated film ever to be nominated in the latter category following The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). (wikipedia)
• • •
Weird, we get a My Chemical Romance clue (45A: My Chemical Romance genre => EMO), but ... NO WAY?*
[*Gerard WAY is the lead singer for My Chemical Romance]
Two things about this puzzle are startling. First, the theme, which is so conceptually remedial, I have a hard time imagining its running in any majoy daily, let alone the "gold standard" puzzle. You just take WAY out? To get tepid phrases that are sometimes actual things and sometimes non-things? ONE STREET? That's funny? That's ... what is that? This is a puzzle you make early in your career and it gets rejected and then you learn to make your themes more interesting. When I got to the revealer ("NO WAY!"), I thought, "That ... that can't be it. Is that it?" It was it. And the resulting answers: HIGH ROBBERY, not a thing (unless you smoke pot and then knock over a bank, I guess), SUBSTATIONS, absolutely a thing, ONE STREET, a thing but not a standalone thing ... and then there's RUN A TRAIN. This is where I really, really wonder if anyone took any time editing this thing. The *only* reaction to this puzzle that I saw on Twitter last night involved this answer. Go ahead and google RUN A TRAIN (in quotation marks) if you don't know what that phrase means in common parlance. Let's just say that if the NYT does indeed have a "breakfast test" for its answers, this one proooooooobably doesn't pass. Surely Will's younger assistants know the slang meaning of this phrase. I wonder if the constructors thought they were being cute, or had a bet, or something. "We'll never get this by him!""Let's try!"
I found the puzzle really easy except for the far north, where BRETT (???) (6A: Lady ___ Ashley, Jake Barnes's love in "The Sun Also Rises") and BOBBER (it's not just "bob"?) (6D: Tackle box item) and especially RUBADUB (who doesn't love a partial nonsense phrase!?) (7D: Start of a children's rhyme) really gummed things up. The SW also slowed me down, as all that Cockney nonsense was unintelligible to me. Neither LONDONER (37D: Cockney, e.g.) nor 'ERE (68A: "Listen ___!" (Cockney cry)) came into view easily. I thought maybe the Cockney person (?) was saying "Listen 'A ME!" Ugh. Oh, and I forgot what a "jewel case" was (oh, these modern times!) and so CD-ROM (bygone!) was rough for me as well (53A: Jewel case insert). Also got thrown by the theme-length answer with the "?" clue that was *not* a themer (I really hate that sort of junk). CEMENT MASON is as long or longer than all themers and (like the themers) has a "?" clue, so I went looking for a missing WAY. To no avail. But the rest was a cinch and even these problem areas weren't tough to work out. But overall, this was unpleasant, in more ways than one.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]