Constructor: Bruce Haight
Relative difficulty: Well, I was slow, but this oversized, so who knows: Medium-Challenging for a Tuesday, maybe?
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THEME: BOXED / ROSES (41A: With 44-Across, Valentine's Day gift ... or a hint to the circled squares) — circled squares form a kind of box and contain the letters R, O, S, E
Bonus theme answers:
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This feels exactly like a February *13* puzzle, i.e. off. The revealer isn't exactly classic. I have seen roses come in boxes only in old movies. "Long-stemmed roses,""a dozen roses," these are phrases that sound right. Who says "Oh, you got her *boxed* roses, ooh la la!"? You just Got Her Roses. The whole BOXED thing is weird, just as a phrase—so much so, that I had BOX OF ROSES written in there at first. And then to try to get the little ROSE squares into the grid *along* with pseudo-valentinish themers ... it was too much, and the grid strained. Kind of nice to have the themers be the candy to accompany the roses (that *is* a pretty classic combo), but HAVE A HEART is not a romance-oriented phrase, whereas STEAL A KISS is. It's just wonky, this thing. But that's not what made the solving experience so unpleasant. No, the real puzzle ruiner came with BATCHED IT, which ... is batsh*t. Batsh*t crazy. That's simply not a thing. And if it were a thing, it would be a vomitous thing. I googled ["batched it"] and first of all, this is not a good number of hits:
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Mediocre fill abounds, so why go into it? I have no idea what ARIKARA is (57A: Dakota tribe that attacked "The Revenant" trappers), except probably not a Tuesday answer. I've also never seen "The Revenant," but my ignorance of these particular things really isn't the problem today. It's an off theme for an off-holiday puzzle. It's trying too hard to be clever, it's trying to do too much, and everything just, let's say, wilts. There better be one Hell of a Valentine's Day puzzle planned for tomorrow—what else could explain this thing's appearing today? Maybe I don't want to know. We'll see... Hey, next time you put cookies into the oven, I think you should shout, "BATCHED IT!" Oh, better yet—if someone asks you what you did last night, and what you did was waste your evening watching ABC's"The Bachelor," I insist you reply, "Oh, you know ... just BATCHED IT." Then high-five yourself. OK. Bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Elvis's official middle name is AARON. It's even on his tombstone. The ARON / AARON thing is a bit complicated, but cluing ARON simply as [Elvis's middle name] is wrong. Read more here.
P.P.S. "Batching it" googles much better. It's hilarious to see feedback I'm getting on this: roughly 3/4 "what the hell kind of answer is that?" and 1/4 "it's common, what is wrong with you?!"
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Well, I was slow, but this oversized, so who knows: Medium-Challenging for a Tuesday, maybe?
THEME: BOXED / ROSES (41A: With 44-Across, Valentine's Day gift ... or a hint to the circled squares) — circled squares form a kind of box and contain the letters R, O, S, E
Bonus theme answers:
- HAVE A HEART (10D: Try some Valentine's Day candy?)
- STEAL A KISS (37D: Try some Valentine's Day candy, sneakily?)
Arikara (English: /əˈrɪkərə/), also known as Sahnish,[2] Arikaree or Ree, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribeknown as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. // The Arikara's name is believed to mean "horns," in reference to the ancient custom of wearing two upright bones in their hair. The name also could mean "elk people" or "corn eaters." (wikipedia)
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And second of all, *none* of the first page of hits had *anything to do* with the meaning of the phrase that the clue is positing. Literally, none. Which means that the real number of hits is way, way less than the already meager 4,160 returned by the search. That answer added eons to my time, because I kept looking at BATCH and thinking, "that ... is not how you spell that." Just horrible. And what's worse, it *thinks* it's good. It thinks it's cute. Like, this is surely a debut answer, and apparently both the constructor and editor thought: "Nailed it!" And now it will go into databases everywhere for unscrupulous solvers of the future to use in their puzzles, on the grounds that, "it was used before ... and in the Times!" Lord help me.
[Jacob fixed it!]
Now people are telling me that young people say BATCHED IT (?) but spelled differently (?!) like ... Bached It!?!? I often Bach it, but, you know, I like Bach. BACHED IT is even more hilarious. Here, Evan found a 1907 usage of BACHED IT for you to enjoy:
Mediocre fill abounds, so why go into it? I have no idea what ARIKARA is (57A: Dakota tribe that attacked "The Revenant" trappers), except probably not a Tuesday answer. I've also never seen "The Revenant," but my ignorance of these particular things really isn't the problem today. It's an off theme for an off-holiday puzzle. It's trying too hard to be clever, it's trying to do too much, and everything just, let's say, wilts. There better be one Hell of a Valentine's Day puzzle planned for tomorrow—what else could explain this thing's appearing today? Maybe I don't want to know. We'll see... Hey, next time you put cookies into the oven, I think you should shout, "BATCHED IT!" Oh, better yet—if someone asks you what you did last night, and what you did was waste your evening watching ABC's"The Bachelor," I insist you reply, "Oh, you know ... just BATCHED IT." Then high-five yourself. OK. Bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Elvis's official middle name is AARON. It's even on his tombstone. The ARON / AARON thing is a bit complicated, but cluing ARON simply as [Elvis's middle name] is wrong. Read more here.
P.P.S. "Batching it" googles much better. It's hilarious to see feedback I'm getting on this: roughly 3/4 "what the hell kind of answer is that?" and 1/4 "it's common, what is wrong with you?!"
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]