Constructor: Ross Trudeau
Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium for me, time-wise, but it didn't FEEL that way...)
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THEME: like, social media stuff, I think — theme clues all start [One with a lot of ...] and then the ensuing word sounds like something from social media, but the answer is actually more literal and not social media-related at all:
Theme answers:
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This was so weird. I started out flailing and even after I got a few sections fairly quickly (the NE, the SW), I still felt like I was struggling over and over to understand the clues. You have no idea how many passes I took at YEA big, for instance, yeesh. But then I was done and my time was in the 5s (?) which is ... I don't know anymore, but probably a little on the fast side, actually. I am currently literally laughing at the young person who is trying to make sense of how a ROCKIN' ROBIN has "a lot of tweets." I mean, you really have to know that specific song, and I do, but I'm 48, and that song was well before *my* time. Also, I only really *got* it after I had it filled in. It seems like the kind of puzzle that could Really have stymied people, both because the theme is ... just ODD, with non-intuitive answers ... and because the proper nouns are dangerous. I can see MIRA, JOFFREY, EDM (not proper noun, but still...), ENRICO, ROCKIN' ROBIN, VALLEY GIRL, any of those really throwing someone off. I think the theme has a certain cleverness to it, but I don't really like when the whole "joke" of the theme is exclusively in the clues. I never got a sense of the puzzle's identity, never felt a pattern emerging. The answer set is weird. FENCE MENDER does not feel like much of a thing, and a MOTHER DUCK does not have "a lot" of followers—look:
That's less than a dozen. "A lot" compared to what? I like this suggestion for an alternative answer:
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Started with SPAT for RIFT (1A: Falling-out), and then "confirmed" it with TELE (4D: Prompter or printer lead-in), ugh. Could not make any sense of 1D: Gets going (REVS UP) or 5D: Tell (SAY TO) (?) or HIGHCS (6D: Hard-to-hit pitches) or PER or EEL or even SHAPE (5A: Mold). If I hadn't eventually gotten PETRI (27A: Kind of dish), I don't know how I would even have been able to get at that whole N / NW area. The "P" from PETRI was how I knew there was an UP up there, and UP got me USE, and of course there's an "S" before UP ... and that somehow got me SILENT H (!). The rest of the puzzle was thorny but not nearly as bad as the N / NW. So this wasn't terrible but didn't really ... land, the way I like the trickiest theme puzzle of the week to Land.
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Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium for me, time-wise, but it didn't FEEL that way...)
Theme answers:
- VALLEY GIRL (17A: One with a lot of likes?)
- ROCKIN' ROBIN (23A: One with a lot of tweets?)
- MAJORITY OWNER (35A: One with a lot of shares?)
- FENCE MENDER (49A: One with a lot of posts?)
- MOTHER DUCK (57A: One with a lot of followers?)
Electronic dance music (also known as EDM, dance music, club music, or simply dance) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. EDM is generally produced for playback by disc jockeys (DJs) who create seamless selections of tracks, called a mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. In Europe, EDM is more commonly called 'dance music' or simply 'dance'. (wikipedia)
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That's less than a dozen. "A lot" compared to what? I like this suggestion for an alternative answer:
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