One of jacks in cribbage / FRI 7-6-18 / Ruler who died in 30BC / It time 1977 hit babys / Ironic reaction to dry humor

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:51)

THEME: none, although the MIDDLE answer is in the MIDDLE and the BOTTOM part of the BOTTOM answer is at the BOTTOM, so that's something

Word of the Day: NOB (42A: One of the jacks in cribbage) —

[no idea, and I've looked it up ... blah blah rules of cribbage blah blah something about nobs, nibs, knobs ... cribbage slang is garbage fill, what the hell even *is* cribbage? There's a reason you never, ever see cribbage slang in a grid ... Sigh, OK, fine, here's a definition ...]

In cribbage, nobs is the name given to the Jack of the turn-up suit. That is, if the turn-up card is a four of Diamonds, then the player holding the Jack of Diamonds scores an extra point in her hand, known as "one for nobs" (sometimes "knobs") or "one for his nob" (or sometimes "his nibs"). This is a very old term, which probably dates back to the origins of cribbage. What is a nob? The word is British English slang for an important person, so perhaps this is why. (Cribbage Corner)

Hey, this is pretty nice. Clean and interesting, and very ... inclusive, by which I mean there was not a ton of generation-dependent pop culture. In fact, it seems very light on the proper nouns overall, which is cool. I love names, but they are frequently divisive, opening up the puzzle for those who know them and locking out those who don't. If there's one thing I've learned in the many years I've been solving—and I'm not sure there is, but here goes—it's that constructors should be very, very careful with any proper noun that isn't obviously common knowledge. Nothing will tick solvers off faster than having their puzzle blown up by some name (especially an unusual or not terribly inferrable name) they haven't encountered before. Here, MUNRO is on top of ASTIN (!), but beyond that, there's not much in the way of contemporary name-age. Just a lot of common, but colorful, words and phrases. Colorful enough that LINO and ESE and ÉTÉ just kind of floated by me unnoticed. IAMSO, OTOE, all tolerable when the marquee stuff is working. Oh, speaking of names: just saw someone on Twitter say they screwed up the [River of forgetfulness, in myth] because they (understandably) misspelled EMERY (with an "O"). Hope that didn't happen to you. If it did, just cross the river LETHO and fuhgeddaboutit.


Got into this one via the tried-and-true solve-the-short-Downs method. CAIN LINO ELEV (whoops) got me CLEOPATRA (1A: Ruler who died in 30 B.C.), and the rest of the NW was easy from there. Got stymied coming out of there, though, as SWEET TALK wasn't easy to see (22A: Cajolery), nor was "WAS IT?" (23D: "You sure about that?"). Started over in the NE with CRIB and TONY, and then worked back to join up with the NW and move on down the grid. There were two answers I wanted but balked at because something felt off: ICE CAP (25A: One of two polar opposites), because somehow I think of that being only a North Pole thing. I know there's ice at the South Pole, but ... I dunno, I think of Antarctica as a continent ('cause it is), so somehow its having something that the North Pole also had just felt ... weird; and then there was RACE TO THE BOTTOM, which is what I wanted (8D: Competition that hurts everyone), but BOTTOM ... I couldn't get to work because of the three-letter 50A: Hawaiian souvenir, which BOTTOM would've caused to start with a "T" ... and surely the answer was LEI. Even later, when I gave in to BOTTOM (!), I couldn't understand the T. Thought maybe answer was ... TEE? (shirt)? Ugh to the cutesiness of thinking a TAN is a "souvenir." Anyway, nothing else in this grid gave me much trouble. Felt like I struggled, but a sub-6 time on Friday is pretty normal, even somewhat better than normal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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