Constructor: Lynn Lempel
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: I DO— Theme answers ended in some variant of the word "do."
Theme answers:
- SCOOBY DOO (17A: Great Dane of animated cartoons)
- MORNING DEW (24A: Result of overnight condensation)
- NO CAN DO (38A: Impossible for me)
- POSTAGE DUE (50A: Words on returned mail)
- PAS DE DEUX (62D: Couple's ballet dance)
Word of the Day: LE CID (11D: French play about a storied Spanish soldier) —
Le Cid is a five-act French tragicomedy written by Pierre Corneille, first performed in December 1636 at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris and published the same year. It is based on Guillén de Castro's play Las Mocedades del Cid.[1] Castro's play in turn is based on the legend of El Cid.
An enormous popular success, Corneille's Le Cid was the subject of a heated polemic over the norms of dramatic practice known as the Querelle du Cid (Quarrel of The Cid.) Cardinal Richelieu's Académie française acknowledged the play's success, but determined that it was defective, in part because it did not respect the classical unities.
Today, Le Cid is widely regarded as Corneille's finest work, and is considered one of the greatest plays of the seventeenth century.
(Wikipedia)
• • •
It's Annabel Monday! And it's also almost finals! I'm dying, send ramen and Monster Energy. Now that I think about it, I bet Rex is worn-out too. And so is my dad, the computer science teacher. I think we all deserve some pretty sleepy winter breaks.I think I tend to like easier puzzles more. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe because they're less, haha, tiring? But today's achieved that rare feat of being basic and easy without having the clues be so boring I fell asleep doing them (with a few exceptions, like "Vegetarian's no-no" for MEAT and "From alpha to ___" for OMEGA). None of the clues blew me away with their cleverness, to be sure, but the point is I had fun. That's what crossword puzzles are supposed to be about, right? Fun? Oh, by the way, did anyone else have MARMADUKE in for SCOOBYDOO and leave it there for EONS? It's not like there are that many cartoon Great Danes, it's just an unfortunate coincidence that their names have the same number of letters. Oh, and I couldn't remember whether it was Mary-Kate and Ashley OLSON or OLSEN, so I had to wait until filling in AZURE before I got it.
This theme was really refreshing for a Monday! I had to double-check to make sure there even was one, it was so subtle, but what a welcome change from Monday's usual "this is the theme, and these are the theme answers" clue. That could have made things more challenging if this was a more challenging puzzle but it wasn't. In Lynn Lempel's notes, she says she wishes she could have used "derring-do"; I agree wholeheartedly, but I liked the fill that was here. PAS DE DEUX is definitely the one of these answers that's not like the others, but nothing wrong with being a bit of a misfit.
Bullets:
- EVENT (16A: Notable happening)— Hey, you know what notable happening started last night? Chanukah!!!! (Or Hannukah or Hanukkah or even Hanuka I guess.) I celebrated by lighting candles and promising my mom I'll go to Mail Services tomorrow to pick up the package containing all my gifts. I hope I get some nice warm socks!!!!!
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- SCOOBYDOO (17A: Great Dane of animated cartoons)— I dressed up as Daphne from Scooby-Doo for Halloween!!!! Here I am with Velma. We actually ended up being the only people that actually dressed up for the costume party we went to, but we looked great so who cares. Also doesn't it feel like Halloween just happened? Instead of having been more than a month ago? Oy.
- PROSPER (4D: Thrive)— It honestly felt so weird to see this without "Live long and ____" as the clue. Or is that just because I'm a nerd? I dunno.
- ONE (65A: Number replaced by "hup" by a drill sergeant— I was trying to remember what movie scene this clue made me think of and then this hit me like a ton of bricks.
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