Terror in Arthur Canon Doyole's Lost World / FRI 3-30-18 / Ubiquitous Chinese character / Like three-pitch inning / Italian poetic form

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: none

Word of the Day: ZEROTH (33D: Preceder of first) —

adjective

1. immediately preceding what is regarded as first in a series. (google)

All pleasure from the longer stuff was drained away by displeasure with the less-long stuff, but honestly there was really only one answer in this puzzle that I'm going to remember tomorrow, and that's ZEROTH (a word that has never appeared in a NYT crossword before, he said, surprising no one). I needed every single cross and was still not convinced it was a word. I honestly couldn't even see that it was an ordinal. I flat-out didn't know what I was looking at, and was certain I had an error. Sincerely, at one point I thought the answer was ZERO TO ... like, maybe there was a phrase like "zero to sixty" only ... it's "to first"??? I went on to complete the puzzle, and the little Happy Pencil came up, so ... hurray, but still baffled by ZEROTH. Even after figuring out it was the thing that precedes first the way first is the thing that precedes second, I still had no idea in what context one would use it. I've since looked it up, and honestly nothing I read made me care. It was all technical. Blargh. ZEROTH looks like the name of a scifi character. What's worse is that "Z" from ZIP-ON, which is not a thing. Hoods are ZIP-*OFF* if they're anything. Both "zip away" and "zip off" get more hits than "ZIP ON." Because ZEROTH was a non-thing to me, I questioned every cross, and the "Z" was the most questionable. So, you see, all the NEVER FAILS and WELCOME TO MY LIFE and I'M A FAN and WELL, DAMN! and other fine answers honestly didn't mean jack to me, because ZEROTH.


Hated clue on NO-RUN too (39A: Like a three-pitch inning). A three-pitch inning would indeed, by definition, be NO-RUN, but a. a three-pitch inning is an amazing, very very rare thing, whereas a NO-RUN inning is Like Most Innings, and b. no one says "NO-RUN inning." Google ["no run inning"]. Look at number of hits. Now just change "no" to "one" ... and watch the number of hits go up 10-fold. Being off with your phrasing and jargon is so bad. Do you really say "*I* CHECK" ... it's not just "check"? I hate poker so I wouldn't know, but it felt overly formal and wrong. The phrase is "DON'T WAIT UP!" The "FOR ME" part takes it into the realm (again) of the improbably formal.


Even ENEMY SPY felt slightly wonky. What is the non-enemy spy? I mean, our allies spy on us, and they are "plants from other countries," so ... ?? ENEMY SPY, I admit, is a thing, but it also just doesn't google well—there's this volume in a kids' book series, some weird band ... no surprise that this, too (like ZEROTH) has never been in a grid before. I dunno. Stuff just did not land for me today. Time was pretty normal, and some of the longer and more colloquial stuff was OK, but off-ness is just like a broken REAR AXLE—you end up with a puzzle that might look nice in places, but it just doesn't ... work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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