Constructor: Joe Krozel
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: SEA RAVEN (43A: Spiny fish named after a bird) —
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I have been so happy in recent years to see the low-word-count puzzle fade in prominence. They're not just tough (which I don't mind) but the resulting fill is often unpleasant. Stuff like APTERAL and VETOER and FROE (real examples). For a while there it seemed like a lot of constructors (all men) were in some kind of low-word-count arms race: Look how low mine is! Oh, yeah, well look at mine, it's lower! They became architectural stunts / pissing contests, but solving them? Yeesh, no. No fun. So when I first looked at this one, I wasn't too thrilled, especially since it's *Friday*, which is my fun day—the day when the puzzles are (ideally) reasonably breezy and wildly inventive. Saturdays are supposed to put you through the wringer, but Fridays?! Fridays want to take you to frolic on the beach and then get ice cream. Good ol' Fridays. Anyway, this Friday didn't look at all like what I wanted, but it was very doable, and ended up being far less painful than I'd feared at the outset. Not a fan of the highly-segmented, four-in-one type puzzle—the quadragon—because you have to get new traction in each quadrant. You better slide through the narrow opening into each quadrant or Good Luck. Today, the sliding was not hard. Well, 3/4 not hard... we'll talk about ZIPPERED later.
1A: One talking a blue streak? (CUSSER)—that's a good clue, but it's also the last thing I got up there. I thought maybe STYLER (as in, your hair STYLER (?) might "talk" to you about getting a "blue streak" ... in your hair?), and that was absurd but the -ER did suggest RESOLE (the first thing in the grid) (6D: Do some cobbling work on). Then I got lucky—my sister drives a Dodge DURANGO. Or she did. Not sure if her latest SUV is still a Durango, but that hardly matters to you. What matters is she loved the original Durango and talked about it affectionately and drove it into the ground, so while I don't know all the SUV models out there, DURANGOS, I know. From that, got the -UP at the end of STORES UP, and the MORE at the end of TAKE MORE. Then PENTA. So that corner was pretty much taken care of.
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Then took HOW SO into the SW. Actually, I might've thrown GAZELLES across, then dropped ZIP down, then put SIP at the end of HAVE A SIP (which I thought was SMALL SIP at first), but it's HOW SO that really propelled me into that corner. Very proud that I got WEASELED off just the "W" and threw BOREAL (!) across off just the "A"—finally, teaching poetry for umpteen thousand years pays off! This corner ended up being the easiest by far. I remember very clearly adding RONDA and ROUSEY to my crossword wordlist, so she was a gimme. Only SALE DAYS (?) proved at all eely. NE might've been very tough but I got ACQUIRED / TASTES off just the -ED in ACQUIRED (7D: With 12-Down, blue cheese and black coffee, typically). Also, QUINNS would've been a gimme anyway, and probably ROBLES too. Took a little time to give sideeye to UNNAILED (?) but got out of that corner in pretty good time, which left only the SE ... sigh.
So for some reason I could not come up with the letters that followed ZIP at 26D: Like many coats with liners (ZIPPERED). We had recently seen ZIP-ON, I think, and so I went looking for some kind of compound word. I even considered ZIPPABLE (what the ...?). Finally just dove into the corner blind and lucked onto EARN IT (36D: Deserve something through hard work), and then immediately double-lucked onto DIVE BAR (49A: Seedy establishment). As with WEASELED, I couldn't believe my first guess ended up being the right guess. Also, I knew GREAVE! Somehow! Total D'oh! moment when ZIPPERED finally fell in, and, well, Quoth the SEA RAVEN, "There's no more!" ... puzzle to solve. Finished. Not my favorite kind of Friday puzz, but doable and enjoyable nonetheless. Huge applause for 20A: High points? (UMLAUT). That is a hell of a clue. Super wordplay, plus the fake plural? Mwah! Good stuff.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: SEA RAVEN (43A: Spiny fish named after a bird) —
Sea ravens are a family, the Hemitripteridae, of scorpaeniform fish. They are bottom-dwelling fish that feed on small invertebrates, found in the northwest Atlantic and north Pacific Oceans. They are covered in small spines (modified scales). (wikipedia)
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1A: One talking a blue streak? (CUSSER)—that's a good clue, but it's also the last thing I got up there. I thought maybe STYLER (as in, your hair STYLER (?) might "talk" to you about getting a "blue streak" ... in your hair?), and that was absurd but the -ER did suggest RESOLE (the first thing in the grid) (6D: Do some cobbling work on). Then I got lucky—my sister drives a Dodge DURANGO. Or she did. Not sure if her latest SUV is still a Durango, but that hardly matters to you. What matters is she loved the original Durango and talked about it affectionately and drove it into the ground, so while I don't know all the SUV models out there, DURANGOS, I know. From that, got the -UP at the end of STORES UP, and the MORE at the end of TAKE MORE. Then PENTA. So that corner was pretty much taken care of.
[PENTAgram]
Then took HOW SO into the SW. Actually, I might've thrown GAZELLES across, then dropped ZIP down, then put SIP at the end of HAVE A SIP (which I thought was SMALL SIP at first), but it's HOW SO that really propelled me into that corner. Very proud that I got WEASELED off just the "W" and threw BOREAL (!) across off just the "A"—finally, teaching poetry for umpteen thousand years pays off! This corner ended up being the easiest by far. I remember very clearly adding RONDA and ROUSEY to my crossword wordlist, so she was a gimme. Only SALE DAYS (?) proved at all eely. NE might've been very tough but I got ACQUIRED / TASTES off just the -ED in ACQUIRED (7D: With 12-Down, blue cheese and black coffee, typically). Also, QUINNS would've been a gimme anyway, and probably ROBLES too. Took a little time to give sideeye to UNNAILED (?) but got out of that corner in pretty good time, which left only the SE ... sigh.
[UMLAUT]
So for some reason I could not come up with the letters that followed ZIP at 26D: Like many coats with liners (ZIPPERED). We had recently seen ZIP-ON, I think, and so I went looking for some kind of compound word. I even considered ZIPPABLE (what the ...?). Finally just dove into the corner blind and lucked onto EARN IT (36D: Deserve something through hard work), and then immediately double-lucked onto DIVE BAR (49A: Seedy establishment). As with WEASELED, I couldn't believe my first guess ended up being the right guess. Also, I knew GREAVE! Somehow! Total D'oh! moment when ZIPPERED finally fell in, and, well, Quoth the SEA RAVEN, "There's no more!" ... puzzle to solve. Finished. Not my favorite kind of Friday puzz, but doable and enjoyable nonetheless. Huge applause for 20A: High points? (UMLAUT). That is a hell of a clue. Super wordplay, plus the fake plural? Mwah! Good stuff.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]