Hi, everyone! I'm Clare, and I'm back since it is indeed the last Tuesday of March. I'm just getting back from spring break, where I spent time with my family and, umm, curating my Netflix account. My brain has definitely been on vacation, meaning this was the most thinking I've had to do in a couple of weeks.
Constructor: Peter Koetters
Relative difficulty:Medium-Difficult for a Tuesday
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THEME: Puns involving U.S. state capitals
Theme answers:
Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupec; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. Negri signed with Paramount in 1922, making her the first European actor in history to be contracted in Hollywood. (Wikipedia)
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Constructor: Peter Koetters
Relative difficulty:Medium-Difficult for a Tuesday
Theme answers:
- MORETHANJUNEAU (20A: "Explore Alaska! It's ___!")
- FREELANSING (33A: "Writers and photographers will find Michigan a great place for ___!")
- AUGUSTAWIND (39A: "Blow into Maine on ___!")
- CONCORDMYFEARS (50A: "I was afraid to ski, but in New Hampshire I ___!")
Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupec; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. Negri signed with Paramount in 1922, making her the first European actor in history to be contracted in Hollywood. (Wikipedia)
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Signed, Clare Carroll, an Eli with senioritis (Here's hoping my brain starts working before classes start for me mañana — cheers to having no classes on Mondays!)The theme was clever. It's a good thing I was paying attention in fifth grade when we learned all the state capitals. I might have only memorized them because I wanted to get a higher score than a fellow classmate (looking at you, Jeff Howard), but I haven't forgotten them to this day! I can't decide which answer I like more:FREELANSING or AUGUSTAWIND. Both are fun.
I found the rest of the puzzle pretty hard, though; a lot of the fill was a bit off my wavelength. LAV could have been "loo"; ENTO could easily have been "endo"; IRANIAN could have been a more generic term for an oppressed subject; and LOT should probably have been "lots." Has anyone ever drawn one lot? There were also some just ugly answers, like: HOERS (seriously ugly), ALTI, and EDAMS as a plural. And, (I promise I'm done harping on the puzzle soon) there were a lot of clues/answers that felt hard for a Tuesday. ELAMwas a word I'd never seen before, and I had never heard of "hoarfrost" (54D) or the answer for that clue, RIME. ELAM crossingLOT crossing ALTI is an ugly middle. It actually took me a while to come up withCLEANS(47D: What a janitor does) because I convinced myself that would be way too obvious for this puzzle.
Moving on, I did actually like some of the fill:
- There were a lot of clever puns outside the theme answers. 57A: Belted out of this world? as ORION and 11A: Fixer at a horse race as VET were particularly nice; I laughed when I figured out the answers.
- It took me a long time to get SNOCONE because I was convinced that "treat" in the clue was being used as a verb instead of a noun. Then I wanted to hit myself on the head when I realized how obvious it was.
- A crossword puzzle finally got common slang right with ACES (though that may be by accident; apparently the term is so old that it's current again)!
- CRAM is something I'm definitely familiar with as a college student sitting in my DORM.
- The ABC sitcom Black-ISH is a show that everyone should watch.
- I got VIJAYSINGH really quickly and am mystified. I have this vivid recollection of when he was playing in a tournament that a female golfer, Annika Sörenstam, entered and said he'd withdraw rather than play with her. But that was in 2003, so I was six. He apparently really made an impression, and not a good one.
- AGONY means that I'll have the song from "Into the Woods stuck in my head. Here it is so I'm not the only one (best part from 1:05-1:07. If you watch, you'll understand why):
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