Constructor: Paul Hunsberger
Relative difficulty: Challenging
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THEME: TENT rebus— Five "TENT" squares can be found throughout the grid
Word of the Day: E-CAR (42D: Green vehicle, briefly) —
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Love the crossing 15s. Rest of it is just average. Buncha tents. If there were a revealer (or if the puzzles had titles, as they really should—as all the old (and great) New York Sun puzzles did), maybe something with involving "camp," this would've had a little more vroom, a little more coherence. But as an "arbitrary letter string" rebus, this one is fine. Even though I picked up the gimmick early, I still found the puzzle much harder than usual. Knowing the TENTs were out there didn't make them that much easier to find—the two towards the east were particularly tough for me to see, since once is in a German phrase / plant I don't know (11D: Plant with fluffy flower spikes = KITTENTAILS) crossing, and the other ... I don't know, I just had a hard time finding it. That SE corner was the hardest for me by far, though I really should've grokked TENTACLE much earlier. Had "MISTER!" for "LISTEN" (!?!!) (68A: "Hey"), wasn't entirely sure about BENITO (50D: Mexican hero Juárez), had no idea about ABCD, and E-CAR? Forget about it. Never seen it in a puzzle (it's not in the cruciverb database, so I guess it's never been in a mainstream puzzle). E CAR looks like an abbr. for East Carolina, which is a university, I think. Yes. It is.
My only real objection today is to 70A: The "cetera" of "et cetera" (SO ON). I know Latin, a bit, and that is, how you say, not ... accurate. "Cetera" is a neuter plural noun, meaning "the rest" or "the remaining." I know that the abbr. "etc." can be translated as "an SO ON," but ... no. If you want to break it down into its constituent parts, then you need to be precise about what they mean. I was so baffled by that clue that when I'd finished, and had SOON, I thought "... how in the World!?" My outrage was slightly mitigated when I realized I hadn't parsed it correctly. Two words. SO [space] ON. Still not right, but at least it's ballparky, I guess.
I'll leave you with this whimsical image of slavery. I think it depicts when the first sudoku came over on the ships from Africa. Not sure. But isn't it adorable? Also, classy.
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I look forward to the sequels, "Waterboarded By Sudoku" and "Genocide-oku."
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Challenging
THEME: TENT rebus— Five "TENT" squares can be found throughout the grid
Word of the Day: E-CAR (42D: Green vehicle, briefly) —
n(Engineering / Automotive Engineering) a car powered by electricity[electric car] (thefreedictionary.com)
• • •
[7A: 1970s-'80s sketch comedy show]
My only real objection today is to 70A: The "cetera" of "et cetera" (SO ON). I know Latin, a bit, and that is, how you say, not ... accurate. "Cetera" is a neuter plural noun, meaning "the rest" or "the remaining." I know that the abbr. "etc." can be translated as "an SO ON," but ... no. If you want to break it down into its constituent parts, then you need to be precise about what they mean. I was so baffled by that clue that when I'd finished, and had SOON, I thought "... how in the World!?" My outrage was slightly mitigated when I realized I hadn't parsed it correctly. Two words. SO [space] ON. Still not right, but at least it's ballparky, I guess.
I'll leave you with this whimsical image of slavery. I think it depicts when the first sudoku came over on the ships from Africa. Not sure. But isn't it adorable? Also, classy.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld