Metallica hit with lyric sleep with one eye open / TUE 3-13-18 / Product of Yale Medeco / chips trendy snack food / First name of two of three apple co-founders

Constructor: Carl Worth

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: KEY WEST (41A: Florida island ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 52- and 65-Across) — first answers of themers (i.e. the word on the "west" of the answer) is a type of keyboard "key":

Theme answers:

• SHIFT GEARS (17A: Change one's approach)
• ENTER SANDMAN (24A: Metallica hit with the lyric "Sleep with one eye open")
• CONTROL FREAK (52A: Micromanager)
• ESCAPE ROOM (65A: Series of puzzle for group solving)

Word of the Day: TARO (38D: ___ chips (trendy snack food))—

noun

1. a tropical Asian plant of the arum family that has edible starchy corms and edible fleshy leaves, especially a variety with a large central corm grown as a staple in the Pacific. (wikipedia)

First two words in were AJAR and APSE, and that pretty much set the tone for the whole thing. It was a very, very generic puzzle, with dull and familiar short fill everywhere. To its credit, the fill never gets painful or awkward or forced—it's quite solid. But solidly ecru. Solidly ENNUI. Part of the problem is the grid construction. It's a very choppy grid, with a preponderance of short answers. Outside of the themers, there are only four 7s and two 6s in the whole thing. Eeeeeverything else is 3, 4, and 5. I can rattle examples off, but why? Just look at your grid and you can see for yourself. The theme is pretty lifeless too—totally acceptable wordplay on the revealer, KEY WEST, but in the end, it's just a "first words do this" puzzle. Shift, enter, control, escape, zzzz. I will say that three of the four themers are very nice answers on their own (everything but SHIFT GEARS, which is, like the rest of the puzzle ... there). "ENTER SANDMAN" will get a lot of love from Metallica and Mariano Rivera fans (probably a lot more of the latter in this group, i.e. among you all). Rivera was the legendary Yankees closer, and when he'd come out to the mound, well...


Early-morning solving took its toll on me again, as what was clearly a very easy puzzle somehow took me a totally average amount of time to solve. I could feel as I was solving it that it was easier than normal, but SNEER went in for SNORT (22D: Derisive sound), and the clue on SITE just meant nothing to me (42D: Something pinned on a map) (*any* place is a potential SITE of ... something), and after having already gotten TASE, STUN would not come at all (I think it's misclued—tasing is a form of zapping, but stunning is not a form of tasing—it's vice versa, so "in a way" just doesn't work there). And the worst was TARO chips. "Trendy"? I know what TARO is, of course, but I had TA-O and could see only TACO, which was clearly wrong. Balked at JAKARTA (47D: Capital of the world's largest island country), had only the "A" at back end of ZAPPA and that clue meant zero to me (59A: Frank who performed "Watermelon in the Easter Hay"). Even PORT wouldn't come easily. So the entire east and southeast areas were clunky as hell for me—for no good reason. Morning brain. That is all. I hope that is all. OK... now, that is all. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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