Popular Dominican dance / SUN 10-28-18 / Farthest point in an orbit around the moon / Arizona capital of the Navajo nation / Hills with gentle slopes on one side and steep slopes on the other / Quaint demographic grouping

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:37, but with an error that it took me another 1:19 to find)

THEME:"Match Play" — the theme is MIXED DOUBLES (119A: Game suggested by this puzzle's theme); themers are simply familiar phrases following the pattern "___ AND ___," with clues that are anagrams of the words on either side of AND. So the clue is "mixed" and ... doubled (?) (i.e. split in two, with one part on one side of AND and the second part on the other):

Theme answers:

• SWEET AND SOUR (23A: Sou'wester) ("sou'wester" anagrams to "sweet" and "sour")
• HEART AND SOUL (28A: Late hours)
• PEACHES AND CREAM (45A: Peace marches)
• TAR AND FEATHER (62A: "After Earth")
• RIGHT AND WRONG (77A: Growth ring)
• STAND UP AND CHEER (97A: Trade punches)
• STOP AND STARE (11A: Prostates)

Word of the Day: BACHATA (18A: Popular Dominican dance) —

This theme did very little for me as I was solving. It's an anagram-based theme, but with a twist that I just couldn't fully appreciate. The tennis title / revealer didn't give any oomph or punch—felt like a "best we could come up with" sort of effort. I think it's one of those themes that constructors might appreciate more, because it's actually fairly tough to do well, i.e. to get ___ AND ___ phrases both to anagram (on either side of the AND) to words / phrases that look like plausible crossword clues, *and* to get that set of answers to come out as a symmetrical set. But from a solving perspective, the theme wasn't engaging. It didn't require thought, and didn't have any apt humor, or anything that really makes a crossword enjoyable. I didn't even look at the clues much of the time. Got some crosses, found where the AND was and just wrote it in (which helped make this puzzle Easy) and then looked to see what kind of ___ AND ___ phrase might fit. I didn't even see the clue ["After Earth"], for instance, until after I was done and copying the theme clues into this write-up. Just wasn't necessary to pay attention. The grid was very lively and innovative, with a mess of words I'd never seen before (BACHATA, APOLUNE, WINDOW ROCK, HEADSPRING), so solving was by no means a drag. But the theme was somewhat flavorless to me.


Did anyone else in the whole wide world write in YIPPIES for 96D: Quaint demographic grouping both because you would never in a million years associate the word "quaint" with YUPPIES and because you didn't know the at-least-slightly esoteric word CUESTAS (100A: Hills with gentle slopes on one side and steep slopes on the other) and thought CIESTAS sounded verrrry plausible (like "siestas," only ... in hill form)? No, just me? Man, that was annoying. I don't mind CUESTAS so much as I mind the ridiculous clue on YUPPIES. Actually, I just hate the word "quaint" here, as well as the fact that there is nothing in the clue to point directly at YUPPIES. Just "a grouping." Boring and boooo. CUESTAS compounds the problem, but the origin of the problem is in the exquisitely bad YUPPIES clue. Super annoying. When I realized I had an error (but had no idea where) I put the prime suspects into a line-up. BACHATA checked out. WINDOW ROCK (79D: Arizona capital of the Navajo nation) and HEADSPRING (78D: Gymnastics flip) seemed pretty unimpeachable. APOLUNE looked like a very strong candidate for puzzle-ruiner, because that word looks ridiculous the more I look at it (80A: Farthest point in an orbit around the moon), but the crosses looked like they worked. I was not entirely sure about ENE (76D: Suffix with methyl), but with "moon" in the clue the "LUNE" part of APOLUNE had to be right. So that left CIESTAS. And ... guilty! J'accuse, CIESTAS!


Five things:

• 11D: "C'mon, be serious" ("DON'T PLAY") — I was mildly unsure about this one, as it seemed almost too colloquial, but I've heard it some (primarily in rap / hip-hop contexts), so I just went with it
• 40D: Japanese dogs with turned-up tails (SHIBA INUS) — I know the breed, but spelled it SHIBU at first. This answer makes me worry that constructors will think INUS is a viable stand-alone answer. Please never put INUS in your puzzle, thanks.
• 15D: Dulles designer (EERO SAARINEN)— Full-name! EERO, gettin' the DeeLuxe treatment today. Really thought he had an umlaut somewhere in his name, but apparently not. Some Finnish design guy does, doesn't he? Well ... it's not Alvar Aalto, so I don't know who the hell I'm thinking öf.
• 22A: Get a ___ on someone (READ) — went with BEAD, a wrong answer that is actually plausible
• 47D: 47D: Part of a Mario costume (RED HAT) — so there's this concept in crossword construction called GREEN PAINT ... which could just as easily have been named RED HAT: a phrase you can imagine someone saying that lacks the coherence to stand alone. Like, say, ENTER A ROOM ... a recognizable English phrase that one might use, but as a crossword answer, errrr no. Green paint. Red hat. No dice. Oh, actually, RED HAT is a pretty prominent software company, so ... if that were the clue, that might take RED HAT out of the realm of GREEN PAINT. If you follow ...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]