Constructor: Lynn Lempel
Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (3:17) (though I stupidly fell into a hole that no one else will have fallen into, so maybe slightly easier?)
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THEME: GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS (61A: Start of a mixed message, as illustrated by 17-, 23-, 39- and 54-Across) — themers are phrases that have a common meaning (largely GOOD), but that can be reinterpreted to have a different meaning (allegedly BAD):
Theme answers:
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This one was surprisingly wobbly. Grid is unsurprisingly clean and bright, but the theme just felt off to me. Forced. Specifically, the two middle themers seem off, for different reasons. MAKE PASSES is not a phrase you'd really use re: football. It's green paint-ish. Yes, a QB might, in fact, MAKE PASSES, but it's not a good stand-alone phrase. The phrase stands alone Much better for the "Bad" part of the clue: [invite a slap in the face]. But ... this raises an interesting question. Is making passes (in the sense of coming on to someone) inherently "bad"? I get that it's associated with unwanted attention, specifically from men, and that certain kinds of "passes" might in fact be sexual assault, or at least highly inappropriate. But aren't there such things as passes that are appropriate and potentially well received? I mean, the very phrase is kind of messed up, and it's probable that the connotations of the phrase are mostly negative. But it's not clear to me that allllllll passes are bad. Also, why is it only one slap that's being invited if there are multiple passes? Moving on to GET A RUN ... that's not a great standalone phrase in any context. Very EAT-A-SANDWICH. I also just don't like that the clues go Good-then-Bad, as opposed to Common usage-then-punny usage, which feels much, much more natural to me. Again, I know that the theme is literally GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, so the progression makes sense, but I found the moving around of the more common usage (first part of clue here, second part of clue there) irksome. I think GO DOWN IN HISTORY works OK, and DRAW A BLANK works best of all, but those middle two just feel clumsy to me.
I fell into a TAR pit of my own making today while solving. I was humming along, at probably a better-than-average clip, but then I tried to round the corner at 35A: Times Sq. squad, to move into the SE, and the wheels came off. "Times Sq." felt specific, so, faced with NY--, I went with someplace specific: NYSE. Which, in my defense, *is* somewhere specific. Just not somewhere in Times Square. Things go much worse. The "E" from NYSE gave me ENDED for 37D: Brought to ruin (DID IN). And AIDE worked just fine with ENDED. So I really got BOGged down. At one point I ended up with SERBIA at 49A: One of the Baltic States (!?) and fleetingly considered ORLANDO for 46D: U.S. city with the world's busiest airport. But the rationale part of my brain was like, "psst, buddy, it's ATLANTA," and so I slowly put the grid into presentable shape. I also conflated BEET and LEEK, which I weirdly do a lot. Borscht is beet. Vichyssoise is LEEK. I will forget this almost immediately.
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Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (3:17) (though I stupidly fell into a hole that no one else will have fallen into, so maybe slightly easier?)
Theme answers:
- GO DOWN IN HISTORY (17A: Leave a lasting legacy ... or do worse at school)
- MAKE PASSES (23A: Succeed on the gridiron ... or invite a slap in the face)
- GET A RUN (39A: Score in baseball ... or ruin some hose)
- DRAW A BLANK (54A: Be lucky in Scrabble ... or come up short memorywise)
Sara Gilbert (born Sara Rebecca Abeles; January 29, 1975) is an American actress, best known for her role as Darlene Conner on the ABC sitcom Roseanne (1988–1997; 2018), for which she received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She is also co-host and creator of the CBS daytime talk show The Talk and has had a recurring role as Leslie Winkle on CBS's The Big Bang Theory. (wikipedia)
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I fell into a TAR pit of my own making today while solving. I was humming along, at probably a better-than-average clip, but then I tried to round the corner at 35A: Times Sq. squad, to move into the SE, and the wheels came off. "Times Sq." felt specific, so, faced with NY--, I went with someplace specific: NYSE. Which, in my defense, *is* somewhere specific. Just not somewhere in Times Square. Things go much worse. The "E" from NYSE gave me ENDED for 37D: Brought to ruin (DID IN). And AIDE worked just fine with ENDED. So I really got BOGged down. At one point I ended up with SERBIA at 49A: One of the Baltic States (!?) and fleetingly considered ORLANDO for 46D: U.S. city with the world's busiest airport. But the rationale part of my brain was like, "psst, buddy, it's ATLANTA," and so I slowly put the grid into presentable shape. I also conflated BEET and LEEK, which I weirdly do a lot. Borscht is beet. Vichyssoise is LEEK. I will forget this almost immediately.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]