Constructor: Wyna Liu
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (mostly smooth, but with a few tricky patches)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Khaleda ZIA (50D: Khaleda ___, first female P.M. of Bangladesh (1991-96, 2001-06)) —
I'm not keeping track of what percent of posts on this blog are written by women, since this is Rex's blog and that would just be unfair, but if anyone IS keeping track, you can add one more to the tally. This is Rachel Fabi, back in the guest-blogger spot and delighted to be here for this puzzle.
I don't even know where to start with the things that made me happy while solving. Ok yes I do, I'm going to start at the beginning with CATFISHES (1A: Misrepresents oneself to on the internet, in a way). This use of the term has only been in the puzzle once before, and never with the -ES on the end, but as a person who has spent many nights watching MTV's Catfish, I was thrilled to see it in such a prominent spot. Here's an SNL sketch about Catfish that is so accurate that it's borderline plagiarism rather than parody.
Another debut in the puzzle is CRAZY RICH ASIANS, which (a) made me cry multiple times when I saw it in theaters and (b) is just a truly excellent film, and if you have not seen it yet, I recommend rectifying that situation. I will admit that I initially filled in CRAZY STUPID LOVE, which I have now verified DID come out in the 2010s, but which grossed about $100 million less than CRAZY RICH ASIANS.
Other things I loved: WIN AT LIFE, OOPS SORRY, MOSTEST, OWN IT. All are things I say in daily life, sometimes facetiously but also sometimes...*not* facetiously.
I slowed down a bit in the southeast because, really, is MELODIZES a word? Google says yes, but my experience says "um, sure, I guess," so crossing MELODIZES with Khaleda ZIA (a name I did not know and am feeling conflicted about knowing now because wow, she was jailed for embezzling money intended for orphans!) was a struggle for me. I knew GWEN IFILL (54A: Late Peabody-winning journalist and newscaster), but couldn't remember how to spell IFILL, which contributed to the challenge. Once I decided that MELODIZES was, indeed, what we were going for there, I still wasn't sure if it would be spelled with a Z or a British S. Don't worry, I figured it out eventually, and the struggle was worth it.
One other observation, which is neither positive nor negative, is that the grid is highly segmented, so the northwest, southeast, and middle southwest-to-northeast strip all played like separate puzzles, with the only thing connecting them being CRAZY RICH ASIANS. It didn't bother me while I was solving, but I could see some people having trouble in one of those regions and getting frustrated by the lack of interconnections to give you a toehold.
Overall, this is a truly excellent puzzle (you might even say it's the MOSTEST in excellence), and I am excited to see more from debut constructor Wyna Liu.
Bullets:
Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (mostly smooth, but with a few tricky patches)
Word of the Day: Khaleda ZIA (50D: Khaleda ___, first female P.M. of Bangladesh (1991-96, 2001-06)) —
Khaleda Zia (IPA: kʰaled̪a dʒia; born Khaleda Khanam Putul [1][2] [3], in 1945) is a Bangladeshi politician who served as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996, and again from 2001 to 2006.[4] She was the first woman in the country's history and second in the Muslim majority countries (after Benazir Bhutto) to head a democratic government as prime minister. She was the First Lady of Bangladesh during the presidency of her husband Ziaur Rahman. She is the current chairperson and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which was founded by Rahman in the late 1970s.
• • •
Oh wow. This is EXACTLY what I am looking for from a Friday. So clean! So crunchy! So made by a non-male constructor! (For those keeping score at home, this brings us to 15% of puzzles in 2019 with at least one woman constructor).I'm not keeping track of what percent of posts on this blog are written by women, since this is Rex's blog and that would just be unfair, but if anyone IS keeping track, you can add one more to the tally. This is Rachel Fabi, back in the guest-blogger spot and delighted to be here for this puzzle.
I don't even know where to start with the things that made me happy while solving. Ok yes I do, I'm going to start at the beginning with CATFISHES (1A: Misrepresents oneself to on the internet, in a way). This use of the term has only been in the puzzle once before, and never with the -ES on the end, but as a person who has spent many nights watching MTV's Catfish, I was thrilled to see it in such a prominent spot. Here's an SNL sketch about Catfish that is so accurate that it's borderline plagiarism rather than parody.
Another debut in the puzzle is CRAZY RICH ASIANS, which (a) made me cry multiple times when I saw it in theaters and (b) is just a truly excellent film, and if you have not seen it yet, I recommend rectifying that situation. I will admit that I initially filled in CRAZY STUPID LOVE, which I have now verified DID come out in the 2010s, but which grossed about $100 million less than CRAZY RICH ASIANS.
Other things I loved: WIN AT LIFE, OOPS SORRY, MOSTEST, OWN IT. All are things I say in daily life, sometimes facetiously but also sometimes...*not* facetiously.
 |
| Gwen Ifill |
One other observation, which is neither positive nor negative, is that the grid is highly segmented, so the northwest, southeast, and middle southwest-to-northeast strip all played like separate puzzles, with the only thing connecting them being CRAZY RICH ASIANS. It didn't bother me while I was solving, but I could see some people having trouble in one of those regions and getting frustrated by the lack of interconnections to give you a toehold.
Overall, this is a truly excellent puzzle (you might even say it's the MOSTEST in excellence), and I am excited to see more from debut constructor Wyna Liu.
Bullets:
- 31D: Bits of hardware that can fit inside 32-Downs (TNUT) / 32D: Opening for 31-Down (TSLOT) — having seen both TNUT and TSLOT individually in previous puzzles and always rolled my eyes at them, I just want to point out that THIS is how you use dreck fill. If you must have one of these words in your grid, cross-reference them and put them right next to each other! It's brilliant and doesn't make me cranky at all.
- 39D: Shots for dudes? (BROTOX)— I love this and think it's a hilarious neologism, but I can see some solvers finding this off-putting
- 21A: Thin strips used in building construction (SPLINES) — In my brief education in biostatistics I learned that a SPLINE is a piecewise function and you cannot convince me otherwise. Here's a picture of a SPLINE I drew in my actual biostats notes about a hundred years ago.
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| A real SPLINE |
One last shameless plug, while I have you here: I'm going to be on Jeopardy on Monday (February 18), so tune in if that's your thing! You'll get to see me teach Alex Trebek what bioethics is and also get many things wrong on national tv.
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