Constructor: Joel Fagliano
Relative difficulty: Easy (9:43)
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THEME:"Uh, What?"— "Uh" sound added to words in familiar phrases, creating new, wacky words / phrases, clued "?"-style:
Theme answers:
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OK, so I'm liking this modest, scaled-back, super-polished theme puzzle trend I'm seeing, or believe I'm seeing (if I'm wrong, please do not break the spell that I am under). The concept here is super-basic, but executed (mostly) creatively and unpainfully, and with just six (!) themers in the grid, there is plenty of room for the fill to breathe and therefore not, you know, suck. You get a moist delicious grid cake with a light layer of theme icing, as opposed to dry some cakelike gunk troweled with heaps of cloying, granular frosting. The latter probably looks more impressive, or at least more garish, but try eating it. This one, however—OK, not earth-shatteringly great, but delightful. A pleasant 10-minute diversion during which I groaned only, like, three times (I can tell you that is Quite a low number of groans for a Sunday). And the cluing on this one felt elevated. Crisper and cleaner than usual. Clever without being that obnoxious kind of clever where someone has to explain it to you and you're like "Oh ... heh ... great." The other kind of clever. The good kind. I mean, [Workers who are always retiring?] for PIT CREW!? That is good. I don't think art is better when it's fine, though. I get the "fine art" wordplay thing you're trying to do there, but better than what? Street art? Pop art? Gonna say no (or not necessarily) on both counts. And many other counts. Also, PHABLETS is a word that makes me want to phomit (72A: Large mobile devices, to use.a modern portmanteau). But it's original, I'll give it that.
Not many sticking points today. Had trouble dropping CONAGRA (9D: U.S. food giant) and YES MAN (10D: Suck-up) down up top because I had OREGON TRA- and I decided, in a fit of foolhardiness, to fill in the next two letters: "-IL." I think CONAGRA and YES MAN were gonna be tricky *anyway*, but with wrong letters in the way, they were especially so. Also totally stymied by ARES, of whom I have no memory from "Wonder Woman," which is odd, as I teach (Golden Age) Wonder Woman in another couple of weeks. To me, a four-letter foe of Wonder Woman is always, and I mean always, gonna be NAZI. Most significant error today was getting the initial "T" at 63D: Music genre at a rave (TRANCE) and dropping in TECHNO. Luckily, nothing worked after that. I say "luckily" because if *anything* had worked, I would've stuck with my understandable-but-stupid wrong answer a lot longer.
Five Things:
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Relative difficulty: Easy (9:43)
Theme answers:
- OREGON TRANSPLANT (as opposed to "organ transplant") (23A: One who's just moved from Portland?)
- TURN THE CORONER (35A: Convert a morgue worker into a spy?)
- KING JAMES BUYABLE (48A: LeBron basketball sneaker, e.g.?) (not sure how I feel about "buyable" as a noun, but ok)
- RIOTING ON THE WALL (69A: Intense blowback against a signature Trump policy proposal?)
- PROJECT RUNAWAY (82A: Bad person to get paired with for a class assignment?)
- SENATOR OF GRAVITY (99A: Nickname for a superserious congressman?)
Fort Erie is a town on the Niagara River in the Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. It is directly across the river from Buffalo, New York and is the site of Old Fort Erie which played a prominent role in the War of 1812. (wikipedia)
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Not many sticking points today. Had trouble dropping CONAGRA (9D: U.S. food giant) and YES MAN (10D: Suck-up) down up top because I had OREGON TRA- and I decided, in a fit of foolhardiness, to fill in the next two letters: "-IL." I think CONAGRA and YES MAN were gonna be tricky *anyway*, but with wrong letters in the way, they were especially so. Also totally stymied by ARES, of whom I have no memory from "Wonder Woman," which is odd, as I teach (Golden Age) Wonder Woman in another couple of weeks. To me, a four-letter foe of Wonder Woman is always, and I mean always, gonna be NAZI. Most significant error today was getting the initial "T" at 63D: Music genre at a rave (TRANCE) and dropping in TECHNO. Luckily, nothing worked after that. I say "luckily" because if *anything* had worked, I would've stuck with my understandable-but-stupid wrong answer a lot longer.
[TRANCE]
Five Things:
- 74A: Hair net (SNOOD)— Me: "Oh, it's that horrible-sounding word, the one that sounds like a disease or a vestigial appendage or something ... oh, yeah: SCROD!"
- 38D: Uncool (LAME)— I would not use this word. Also, even if you *would* use this word, it's so easy, so so easy, to avoid here. NAME / NORA. DAME / DORA. Even if you don't believe LAME is ableist, you know there are disabled people who do, so why go with LAME? So you can get the scintillating LIRA!?
- 45D: What "..." may represent (TYPING) — so good. Would be better if the ellipsis did that little bubble dance that the actual TYPING dots do when the person you're texting is, you know, TYPING, but ... maybe someday: animated clues!
- 77D: Words from a T.S.A. agent before a pat-down ("ARMS OUT") — again, so good, so fresh, so current.
- 65A: Flower said to cover the plains of Hades (ASPHODEL) — Yeow! I am currently reading about Hades (actually, Dante's "Inferno," but ... close) and I did not know this. This answer could easily have been the death of me, as I don't think I've ever seen it. Looks vaguely like a bunch of words I know, like "espadrille" and "Astrophil," but ... it's just lucky for me that the crosses were all solid.
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