Constructor: Peter Gordon
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:43), though it's slightly oversized, so the actual difficulty level may be closer to Medium
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THEME: TRIGGER / WARNING (26D: With 25-Down, caution before a potentially upsetting lecture ... or a hint to 19- and 59-Across and 7-Down?) — firearms are in all the theme answers ... at least I think that's it. I don't really get the WARNING part:
Theme answers:
OK, so that is *not* the Tuesday ROUSSEAU, you guys. Tuesday: Jean-Jacques. Saturday: Henri. It's pretty straightforward.
I liked how weird this puzzle was—the strange shape, the relative openness, some buzzy answers—but conceptually I'm slightly confused. I see that the theme answers all have firearms in them, and firearms have TRIGGERs, but how exactly does WARNING fit in? Is the revealer WARNING me that there are things with TRIGGERs in the theme answers? But the word "hint" in the revealer clue would appear to be doing the alerting, or "warning" ... so WARNING feels extraneous. Just hanging out there, doing nothing. Further: guns, violence, yuck. This is a personal thing, but I don't really want to participate in crossword gunfests. Guns don't "tickle" me, I guess. Too much daily slaughter in this country for me to be able to enjoy cutesy gun-related wordplay. Also, wish the grid had been flipped so TRIGGER came first. It's like a crooked picture frame, the placement of the revealer answers. I just want to fix it. First word should come first, not second. But instead the first word is 26D and the second word is 25D and the whole thing feels alop. BAZOOKA BUBBLEGUM messes everything up by being 16 letters long, which means TRIGGER and WARNING can't sit evenly on opposite sides of the grid, which would be ideal, and which they would be able to do in a grid with the normal 15 rows. And so here we are with wonky TRIGGER and WARNING. Aesthetically, it's irking me. But if I just pretend there's no theme, I actually like this grid pretty well, except for WANGLE, which is about the most off-putting word in the English language (67A: Accomplish schemingly). I really wanted WRANGLE there, as it's a good word, as opposed to WANGLE, which is like WIGGLE and DANGLE got together pretended to be a phallus. I mean, come on. It's got WANG right in the name.
That FIREPLUG clue, what the hell? (64A: Short, stocky person, figuratively). Seems to be used primarily, if not exclusively, of athletes (at least in the dictionary defs that I'm seeing). Kind of important context, in that it seems a bit like an insult otherwise. Not really sure what ALLSPICE is—if I had to name all the spices, I'm not sure I'd name ALLSPICE—and I have no idea what "ZOOTOPIA" is. SAN REMO, also tough, and PITEOUS took a lot of crosses too. I think this puzzle really was somewhat tougher than the usual Tuesday, but again, because of the colorfulness, I didn't mind. Well, ORDERER I mind :( And of course WANGLE. The goodwill that the puzzle lost by playing with guns it won back somewhat with one word: ASYLUM (69A: A political refugee might seek it). I'm tempted to leave you with pictures of children being torn from their parents or audio of distraught children being held in "camps," missing their parents and crying while U.S. border patrol agents make jokes about them, but instead I'll just express my sincere hope that your own family is safe and happy and free.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. after I finished this write-up, I noticed the following tweet ... which shows that I was not the only one to have issues with this gun theme. Not by a longshot.
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Click here to read the editor's whole write-up, complete with amazingly gratuitous and insensitive photograph (a very specific kind of RIFLE, being fired in ... Florida). Thanks to my friend Erin for passing along this little tidbit:
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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:43), though it's slightly oversized, so the actual difficulty level may be closer to Medium
Theme answers:
- RIDES SHOTGUN (19A: Sits in the front passenger seat)
- RIFLE THROUGH (59A: Do a hurried search in)
- BAZOOKA BUBBLEGUM (7D: Candy with a comic, once)
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (French: [ɑ̃ʁi ʒyljɛ̃ feliks ʁuso]; May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists. (wikipedia)
• • •
OK, so that is *not* the Tuesday ROUSSEAU, you guys. Tuesday: Jean-Jacques. Saturday: Henri. It's pretty straightforward.
I liked how weird this puzzle was—the strange shape, the relative openness, some buzzy answers—but conceptually I'm slightly confused. I see that the theme answers all have firearms in them, and firearms have TRIGGERs, but how exactly does WARNING fit in? Is the revealer WARNING me that there are things with TRIGGERs in the theme answers? But the word "hint" in the revealer clue would appear to be doing the alerting, or "warning" ... so WARNING feels extraneous. Just hanging out there, doing nothing. Further: guns, violence, yuck. This is a personal thing, but I don't really want to participate in crossword gunfests. Guns don't "tickle" me, I guess. Too much daily slaughter in this country for me to be able to enjoy cutesy gun-related wordplay. Also, wish the grid had been flipped so TRIGGER came first. It's like a crooked picture frame, the placement of the revealer answers. I just want to fix it. First word should come first, not second. But instead the first word is 26D and the second word is 25D and the whole thing feels alop. BAZOOKA BUBBLEGUM messes everything up by being 16 letters long, which means TRIGGER and WARNING can't sit evenly on opposite sides of the grid, which would be ideal, and which they would be able to do in a grid with the normal 15 rows. And so here we are with wonky TRIGGER and WARNING. Aesthetically, it's irking me. But if I just pretend there's no theme, I actually like this grid pretty well, except for WANGLE, which is about the most off-putting word in the English language (67A: Accomplish schemingly). I really wanted WRANGLE there, as it's a good word, as opposed to WANGLE, which is like WIGGLE and DANGLE got together pretended to be a phallus. I mean, come on. It's got WANG right in the name.
That FIREPLUG clue, what the hell? (64A: Short, stocky person, figuratively). Seems to be used primarily, if not exclusively, of athletes (at least in the dictionary defs that I'm seeing). Kind of important context, in that it seems a bit like an insult otherwise. Not really sure what ALLSPICE is—if I had to name all the spices, I'm not sure I'd name ALLSPICE—and I have no idea what "ZOOTOPIA" is. SAN REMO, also tough, and PITEOUS took a lot of crosses too. I think this puzzle really was somewhat tougher than the usual Tuesday, but again, because of the colorfulness, I didn't mind. Well, ORDERER I mind :( And of course WANGLE. The goodwill that the puzzle lost by playing with guns it won back somewhat with one word: ASYLUM (69A: A political refugee might seek it). I'm tempted to leave you with pictures of children being torn from their parents or audio of distraught children being held in "camps," missing their parents and crying while U.S. border patrol agents make jokes about them, but instead I'll just express my sincere hope that your own family is safe and happy and free.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. after I finished this write-up, I noticed the following tweet ... which shows that I was not the only one to have issues with this gun theme. Not by a longshot.
