Constructor: Randolph Ross
Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (6:42)
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THEME: "Undercover" orgs. — rebus with FBI, NSA, DEA, and CIA lurking in their own squares. Then there's a revealer, the puzzle-relevance of which I don't get at all: 40D: What the four undercover orgs. in this puzzle might do (WIRETAP)
Theme answers:
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I've seen this "undercover orgs." rebus sommmmmewhere before, I'm pretty sure, but that's not my problem with this puzzle. My problem is, the revealer makes no sense. None. I guess these "orgs." might issue WIRETAPs, but there is nothing puzzle-relevant about that revealer. If the revealer is just "something all these orgs. might do," then tons of revealers might've worked. When I finished, I went back and looked for how WIRETAP might describe some kind of wordplay, something actually happening in the grid. Checked the crosses, checked the surrounding material, chewed on it all for a bit, and ... nothing. This is bad puzzle-making. Better to punt and have your revealer be something dumb like UNDERCOVER than to try to get cute with an answer that suggests there might be wordplay but that ultimately doesn't deliver. This failure to deliver an aha punch was made more painful by the awkward, semi-ridiculous placement of the revealer. If you're gonna put your revealer *there*, it better be good. That is not a natural revealer site, so ... if you don't bring some aha ... thud.
I didn't really get that there were "undercover orgs." involved, or that the gimmick was even a rebus, until I was done. Got GARDNLE and BEANLAD (!) and just thought the "SA" was missing. And then the "BI" was missing. I wasn't stopping / slowing to think about it all. Got nowhere in the NW at first (despite the ANG gimme), and finally got started in the N with RIOT DRAB BELGIAN. Then ABEE and AMORE got me into the NE, where I finally hit what turned out to be the first rebus square. Once I got the whole rebus thing (which, for me, was a "missing letters" thing (??)), the rest wasn't too hard. I could sort of tell where they were pretty easily. I only just now noticed that the rebus squares are symmetrical. Not a required feature of rebuses, and certainly not one you can usually rely on. Seems kind of an insult to the "undercover orgs." involved to have your rebus squares form a discernible pattern. The orgs. should be unpredictably placed if they're truly "undercover."
Bullets:
P.S. RANDD = R and D, i.e. Research & Development (9D: Big Pharma expense)
P.P.S. here's a very, very generous interpretation of the WIRETAP revealer:
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Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (6:42)
Theme answers:
- GARDENSALE / BEANSALAD
- BAYOFBISCAY / DATEOFBIRTH
- ENUNCIATION / MARCIACLARK
- MADEASCENE / ARTDEALER
Teresa Gaye Weatherspoon (born December 8, 1965) is a retired American basketball player who played for the New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the former head basketball coach of the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters. In 2011, she was voted in by fans as one of the Top 15 players in WNBA history. In 2016, Weatherspoon was chosen to the WNBA Top 20@20, a list of the league's best 20 players ever in celebration of the WNBA's twentieth anniversary. (wikipedia)
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I didn't really get that there were "undercover orgs." involved, or that the gimmick was even a rebus, until I was done. Got GARDNLE and BEANLAD (!) and just thought the "SA" was missing. And then the "BI" was missing. I wasn't stopping / slowing to think about it all. Got nowhere in the NW at first (despite the ANG gimme), and finally got started in the N with RIOT DRAB BELGIAN. Then ABEE and AMORE got me into the NE, where I finally hit what turned out to be the first rebus square. Once I got the whole rebus thing (which, for me, was a "missing letters" thing (??)), the rest wasn't too hard. I could sort of tell where they were pretty easily. I only just now noticed that the rebus squares are symmetrical. Not a required feature of rebuses, and certainly not one you can usually rely on. Seems kind of an insult to the "undercover orgs." involved to have your rebus squares form a discernible pattern. The orgs. should be unpredictably placed if they're truly "undercover."
Bullets:
- 18A: Stooge (TOOL)— I had FOOL, and canNot be the only one...
- 12D: "It doesn't hurt that bad" ("I'LL LIVE") — Had the "I'LL," wrote in "I'LL BE OK"
- 13D: Gene mutation results (ALLELES)— learned this word from crosswords, and now it's a word my friend Lena and I use facetiously all the time when discussing crosswords, though I couldn't recreate the context for you if I tried (also, unlike me, she knows the meaning of ALLELES, as she is a scientist-type)
- 25D: Tart (ACID) — Back when I thought there were just missing letters, I seriously thought this answer would be ACERBIC, but with ... just some of the letters missing (!?). Honestly, I don't know how I finished this thing as fast as I did while also being as clueless as I was.
- 57A: Derisive (SNEERY) / 47D: Some cuts, later (SCARS) — Had the "SN-" and went SNOBBY / SCABS. SNEERY is barely a word.
- 3D: Pleasant glance (GLADEYE) — what the hell is this? I've heard of gladhanding, but not GLADEYEing.
P.S. RANDD = R and D, i.e. Research & Development (9D: Big Pharma expense)
P.P.S. here's a very, very generous interpretation of the WIRETAP revealer:
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