Constructor: David Steinberg
Relative difficulty: Challenging by the clock, but ... once I finally got traction it felt Easy-Medium, so ... dunno (9:23)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: TROY OUNCE (27D: Gold standard) —
Apparently worst-time-to-solve time is not upon waking in the *morning*, but upon waking after having unexpectedly fallen asleep on the couch for three hours. Long week. Annnnyway, I couldn't do anything with this puzzle to start. I have no idea how long I was floundering, but it felt like forever. Enough time passed that I thought, "UGH, this is just gonna be one of those tough outliers, why would you make 5x7 sections, no good can come of that..." But once I got momentum going ... well, actually, it threatened to peter right out because the sections are so isolated from one another that it's hard to get any real flow, but somehow once I finally put a corner together *and* found a way out of the corner, everything began to click and the puzzle felt like a normal Saturday. I think the puzzle is trying a little too hard to be "hip" and "now" and "hello, fellow young persons!" but looking it over, it seem very solid. I really hate the grid shape (isolated corners = blargh), but that's just a matter of taste.
It went like this: HOLA / SHY / TOE / YELL / nothing. I mean, it just stopped, right there. Actually, thought SHY was AFT at first, but then I got HOLA because (thank god) I had ADIOS already in place (one of only two right answers I'd gotten in the NW, the other being ENTER IN, and the wrong answer I had up there being TEETH (1D: Places for braces (KNEES)). So the tiny west section was useless and, after completely failing to get any of the answers in the middle (was [Turn] GEE or HAW or ...? was [Daring way to go] ALL IN? (No and no)), I wandered (lonely as a cloud) down to the SE where I was pretty sure APRIL was right, and then OPTS OUT seemed OK, and then STALK seemed plausible, and then ELK, really??? OK. And then I was getting somewhere. Could not get out of that section via ___ OUNCE because I had No idea (I had TR-Y OUNCE and still had no idea, tbh), so I got out via THE EMERALD ISLE. I made up for the TROY OUNCE fail with a spectacular SPINNAKER play (I know squat about all things nautical and just pulled that word out of god-knows-where). No idea about Wiz Khalifa or 2 Chainz "hits" at all, but "HOME ALONE," I got that, and so both the NE and the SE were a jillion times easier than the west had been. Finished up in the NE, where I had a hiccup, as (yet again) I didn't know if it was IPAD PRO or AIR, annnnnnd I misspelled SNORKLE.
Five things:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Challenging by the clock, but ... once I finally got traction it felt Easy-Medium, so ... dunno (9:23)
Word of the Day: TROY OUNCE (27D: Gold standard) —
Troy weight is a system of units of mass customarily used for precious metals and gemstones. One troy ounce (abbreviated "t oz" or "oz t") is equal to 31.1034768 grams, (or about 1.0971 oz. avoirdupois, the "avoirdupois" ounce being the most common definition of an "ounce" in the US)] There are only 12 troy ounces per troy pound, rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system. However, the avoirdupois pound has 7000 grains whereas the troy pound has only 5760 grains (i.e. 12 × 480 grains). Both systems use the same grain defined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959 as 0.06479891 grams. Therefore, the troy ounce is 480 grains or 31.10 grams, compared with the avoirdupois ounce, which is 437.5 grains or 28.35 grams. The troy ounce, then, is about 10% heavier (ratio 192/175) than the avoirdupois ounce. Although troy ounces are still used to weigh gold, silver, and gemstones, troy weight is no longer used in most other applications. One troy ounce of gold is denoted with the ISO 4217 currency codeXAU, while one troy ounce of silver is denoted as XAG. (wikipedia)
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Apparently worst-time-to-solve time is not upon waking in the *morning*, but upon waking after having unexpectedly fallen asleep on the couch for three hours. Long week. Annnnyway, I couldn't do anything with this puzzle to start. I have no idea how long I was floundering, but it felt like forever. Enough time passed that I thought, "UGH, this is just gonna be one of those tough outliers, why would you make 5x7 sections, no good can come of that..." But once I got momentum going ... well, actually, it threatened to peter right out because the sections are so isolated from one another that it's hard to get any real flow, but somehow once I finally put a corner together *and* found a way out of the corner, everything began to click and the puzzle felt like a normal Saturday. I think the puzzle is trying a little too hard to be "hip" and "now" and "hello, fellow young persons!" but looking it over, it seem very solid. I really hate the grid shape (isolated corners = blargh), but that's just a matter of taste.
- 59A: ___ Prize (onetime annual $1 million award) (TED) — UGH. I somehow never want to hear again about anything TED. No TED Talks, not TED Prizes. All things TED feel tiresome to me now. Those talks feel like glorified infomercials or sermons or carnival huckster spiels. The only TED I want to hear about is Danson.
- 21A: Algae touted as a superfood (SEA MOSS) — I have not seen said touting. The "natural foods" section of my Wegmans is full of All Kinds of Bogus half-science claims, but nothing that I've noticed there contains SEA MOSS. Is there a SEA MOSS ODWALLA?
- 31A: Commercial name that becomes a Native American tribe if you move its first letter to the end (IHOP) — man, "commercial name" is some deliberately irksome cluing. IHOP is a restaurant. A restaurant chain. In fact, simply "Chain" would've been a million times better than stupidly ambiguous, borderline meaningless "Commercial name."
- 33D: Monthly travelers? (OVA) — men's cutesy clues about female anatomy continue to not go over great with me for some reason.
- 5D: Where models are assembled? (CAR LOTS) — really wanted this to be CATWALK
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]