Constructor: Byron Walden
Relative difficulty: Challenging (10:39 ... though roughly 3:00 of that for me was just being flat-out stuck in the NW)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: POTASH (9A: Fertilizer ingredient) —
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This is a truly excellent grid, especially given how low the word count is (64), but man oh man did it smack me around. Well, the NW corner did. The rest of it was pretty normal for a Saturday, and if I'd been able to proceed through the NW at a relatively normal pace, I'd've finished in a mid-7s (i.e. normal) time, normally, like normal. But that didn't happen. I'm staring at my marked-up puzzle, where I've used a red marker to highlight the trouble areas, and basically it just looks like someone bled all over the NW. Yes, SITCOMMY (great) was tough to see (34D: Formulaically humorous), and since I had DONA at 38D: Woman's name meaning "gift" (DORA), I struggled to get CROWE (48A: "Say Anything ..." director), which should've been a gimme given my solidly Gen-X credentials, oh well. But outside of that little bottom-center area, the rest of the grid didn't present any real trouble ... until I (re-)arrived at the NW, where I had ... virtually nothing. This is what my grid looked like at roughly the 7 or 8 minute mark:
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Five things:
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Relative difficulty: Challenging (10:39 ... though roughly 3:00 of that for me was just being flat-out stuck in the NW)
Word of the Day: POTASH (9A: Fertilizer ingredient) —
Potash (/ˈpɒtæʃ/) is some of various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-solubleform. The name derives from pot ash, which refers to plant ashes soaked in water in a pot, the primary means of manufacturing the product before the industrial era. The word potassium is derived from potash.Potash is produced worldwide at amounts exceeding 90 million tonnes (40 million tonnes K2O equivalent) per year, mostly for use in manufacturing. Various types of fertilizer-potash thus constitute the single largest industrial use of the element potassium in the world. Potassium was first derived in 1807 by electrolysis of caustic potash (potassium hydroxide). (wikipedia)
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Please note my brilliant error, GNAR, which ... is not the word I actually wanted. The word I actually wanted was KNAR (so close!), which means "a knot or BURL on wood." Sigh. I not only had a wrong answer, I had the wrong wrong answer. I couldn't even get the wrong answer right. Etc. To my credit, I knew that of all the things I had in place, that was the one that needed removing. Oh, I also had EVE in there earlier at 5D: Today preceder (USA). But that was also very dicey, so I pulled it too. I just couldn't make this section move. I could tell that 2D: Nebulous ended in -LIKE, but ... lots of things are nebulous. Eventually got BOATS at the end of 1D: Some disguised fishing trawlers but ... SPY BOATS? Never in a million years would I have guessed that SPY BOATS were for fishing. They sound like they're ... for spying. HEURISTIC would've been hard on a good day, but this was not a good day (3D: Method of solving). YEN SIGN (!?!?!) (8D: "Y" with a bar). No way. BRAINED? Oh, *that* meaning of [Clocked]. Oof. Nope. the *only* reason I'm not still trying to solve this thing is that I finally decided to think for a few seconds about 1A: Overweight and untidy, and I sort of cocked my head and made a face and asked myself: "SHLUBBY ... nope. SCHLUBBY? Is that how you spell it?" And bam bam bam everything fell into place. Several minutes of dead air, and then a lucky guess. Hail Mary! Lord have mercy those are the corners I have nightmares about.
- 4D: Transferrer of stock? (LADLE) — I literally made chicken stock today and still thought this clue was about livestock
- 15A: Sybaritic pursuit (PLEASURE)— so so mad at myself for completely forgetting what "sybaritic" means. It's one thing to be befuddled by clues, and quite another, more miserable thing to be done in by one's own impoverished, fraying vocabulary
- 16A: City on the Douro River (OPORTO) — this is hard, and yet in retrospect, I read all about Portuguese wine and the Douro Valley terroir (!) this past summer, so I feel like I should've been quicker here
- 13D: One with a frog in its throat? (STORK) — so ... STORKs literally eat frogs? I've seen them fish (really spectacular). I have not seen them frog, I don't think
- 37A: Like oil spills and clearing of rain forests (ECOCIDAL) — I feel like this word is largely made-up for the sole purpose of being in this crossword, but it was at least, eventually, inferrable.
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