Constructor: Ryan McCarty
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (except for one ridiculous place in the NW)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: APPARAT (2D: Political organization) —
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This puzzle was repulsive from the start. Two of the first three answers I got mentioned a fascist, right-wing politician and an offensive word for a disabled person, so, yeah, no, I did not DIG that. Just ... unfathomable that you'd think Marine Le F***ing Pen was worth your little wordplay gimmick there (4D: Le Pen pal? = AMI). Racism, fascism, and anti-immigrant sentiment aren't f***ing funny, and they certainly aren't funny at this particular point in world history. (And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were evoking Marine and not her much worse, out-and-out racist, Holocaust-denying father) And dear lord you could've gone other ways with GIMP (18D: Hobble). You really, really could have. Without much trouble. Why? It's like you just don't have an ear for this job. It's all just letters and words, and the fact that they have meaning, that they evoke images and feelings that affect people, just doesn't occur to you. It's startling. And again, it's especially startling in late 2018. Negligent, if not IGNOBLE. (also, lots of solvers will try LIMP and get very stuck because I mean who the hell uses GIMP, my god)
Then there's the regular crossword irksomeness, which today went by the name of APPARAT. I have no idea what that is, *and* the extremely vague, non-Communism-mentioning clue does nothing to help. Further, it crosses a proper noun I've also never heard of ("CAPEMAN") and, worse for me, it crosses WANT AD. I had written in WANTED. This seemed fine to me at first. Things that are WANTED can be sold/found in the "Classified" ads. Ugh. Normally something would've come along to disabuse me of the "E," but the only thing that came along was APPARAT (!?!), a word I can't remember ever having seen in my nearly half century of life. I had APPERAT and just stared at it. Actually, I had AVPERAT (because I had "CAVEMAN"), and kept trying to parse it all sorts of different ways. Eventually decided the "V" had to be wrong, and guessed "P" (correct!), but there was no way in hell I was ever going to see that WANTED / APPERAT was wrong. I have no idea why you would continue making your grid if your only fix was APPARAT. That word is a tear-it-downer. I've been doing this long enough that I can tell you my problem with that word will play out all over solverdom, and that is the thing constructors/editors should be able to foresee. APPARAT is a blotch on your grid (especially if the crosses aren't perfect); putting it in there severely detracts from anything wonderful you might've done in the rest of the grid. All your crosses for a bad entry like that have to be perfect, and at least one, possibly two here, weren't.
TWO-PLY is not "thick." The Entire SW is ugly as heck (NONHERO?! INATRAP SIL PERES TOPOL oof). There were decent parts of this puzzle, but you wanna throw racist world leaders at me? Gratuitously? You'll forgive me if I'm not really in the mood to tell you what's good. Or you won't. Whichever.
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Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (except for one ridiculous place in the NW)
Word of the Day: APPARAT (2D: Political organization) —
nounHISTORICAL
• • •
Then there's the regular crossword irksomeness, which today went by the name of APPARAT. I have no idea what that is, *and* the extremely vague, non-Communism-mentioning clue does nothing to help. Further, it crosses a proper noun I've also never heard of ("CAPEMAN") and, worse for me, it crosses WANT AD. I had written in WANTED. This seemed fine to me at first. Things that are WANTED can be sold/found in the "Classified" ads. Ugh. Normally something would've come along to disabuse me of the "E," but the only thing that came along was APPARAT (!?!), a word I can't remember ever having seen in my nearly half century of life. I had APPERAT and just stared at it. Actually, I had AVPERAT (because I had "CAVEMAN"), and kept trying to parse it all sorts of different ways. Eventually decided the "V" had to be wrong, and guessed "P" (correct!), but there was no way in hell I was ever going to see that WANTED / APPERAT was wrong. I have no idea why you would continue making your grid if your only fix was APPARAT. That word is a tear-it-downer. I've been doing this long enough that I can tell you my problem with that word will play out all over solverdom, and that is the thing constructors/editors should be able to foresee. APPARAT is a blotch on your grid (especially if the crosses aren't perfect); putting it in there severely detracts from anything wonderful you might've done in the rest of the grid. All your crosses for a bad entry like that have to be perfect, and at least one, possibly two here, weren't.
TWO-PLY is not "thick." The Entire SW is ugly as heck (NONHERO?! INATRAP SIL PERES TOPOL oof). There were decent parts of this puzzle, but you wanna throw racist world leaders at me? Gratuitously? You'll forgive me if I'm not really in the mood to tell you what's good. Or you won't. Whichever.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]