Constructor: Jamey Smith
Relative difficulty: Challenging-ish? (solved on clipboard, so no clear idea, but it felt hard)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: MATSU Islands (26D: ___ Islands, archipelago in the East China Sea) —
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This puzzle be trash. Seriously. What the actual hell is the phrase "Be trash" supposed to mean? Is that your answer to #BeBest? Ebay ashtray, e.g. = PIG LATIN (very last answer I got), but ... how? Fire everyone. Please. Please. This was torture. Not the constructor's fault. Editors should've passed, hard. Are there really not enough Friday submissions out there? Leaving Ebay ashtray aside (PIG LATIN is a fine answer), this grid is choked with, well, trash. Partials and alt-spellings and MERRIE olde beers and OME? and ERE ('ERE?") and weird plurals (EAUX is correct, but BASSOS ...?!?!). I was in stunned disbelief as I penciled most of these answers in. It started rough and it never got better. There's not a single longer answer in this thing that seems worth even a quarter of the garbage fill. ELD! ANAL! UIE! ADAS!? And then just tired stuff like NOSIREE or name parts like CLEEF or whatever MATSU is. The clue on TENSES makes no sense (Will *will* change a verb's tense; there's no "might" to it). EMO POP remains a total non-thing. TNN!? If I could eliminate one TV channel of yore, that would be it. The Marley lyric is bizarre. 'ERE is supposed to be an h-less "here" now? Dear lord. The idea that you would take your cruddy crosswordese and try to convince me that it was some cool musical reference ... nah. No, man, sorry. Do you know how hard it is for me to out-and-out hate a Friday? My quiet early-morning ME TIME, ruined.
Everyone who's ever had a themeless puzzle rejected (especially women) have to be sitting at home going "... really?" Best Puzzle In The World! I feel bad for the people who live in this elite puzzle monopoly and just assume that whatever the NYT does is good. Get into indie puzzles, people. They're So Often better than this. That's it, goodbye. Be trash, everyone!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. all my love to Christchurch this morning...
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Challenging-ish? (solved on clipboard, so no clear idea, but it felt hard)
Word of the Day: MATSU Islands (26D: ___ Islands, archipelago in the East China Sea) —
The Matsu Islands (Chinese: 馬祖列島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Lièdǎo; Fuzhou dialect: Mā-cū liĕk-dō̤ or less frequently, Chinese: 馬祖群島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Qúndǎo; Fuzhou dialect: 馬祖島 Mā-cū dō̤) are a minor archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea administered as Lienchiang County (Chinese: 連江縣; pinyin: Liánjiāng Xiàn; Fuzhou dialect: Lièng-gŏng gâing) under streamlined Fujian Province, Republic of China (Taiwan). It is the smallest county in the ROC free area.Only a small area of what is historically Lienchiang County is under the control of the ROC. The People's Republic of China (PRC) administers the part of the historical county on mainland Chinaas Lianjiang County, which claims the entire archipelago to be its Mazu Township (馬祖鄉; Mǎzǔ Xiāng; Mā-cū hiŏng). The ROC also controls two other archipelagos along the coast of Fujian, namely the Kinmen Islands and the Wuqiu Islands, which together make up Kinmen County. (wikipedia)
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Everyone who's ever had a themeless puzzle rejected (especially women) have to be sitting at home going "... really?" Best Puzzle In The World! I feel bad for the people who live in this elite puzzle monopoly and just assume that whatever the NYT does is good. Get into indie puzzles, people. They're So Often better than this. That's it, goodbye. Be trash, everyone!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. all my love to Christchurch this morning...
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]