"Yay for us!" / TUES 3-26-19 / Fraction of a bushel / Nursery buy / Dawn's direction

Hello! It's Clare again — back for another Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a great start to their week! I just turned in maybe my biggest law school assignment yet, and I am SO relieved, so the start of my week has been great. That, plus the fact that March Madness is going on, and baseball's OPENING DAY is Thursday (Go, Giants!), and I feel like this week will be a good one.

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty:Medium
THEME: OPENING DAY(62A: Start of the baseball season... or what the start of each starred clue is)— Seven answers in the puzzle begin with the abbreviations of the days of the week, in order.

Theme answers:

• SUNG (1A: Like carols and cantatas)
• MONTECARLO (16A: Grand Prix locale)
• TUESBELLE (24A: "You're beautiful," in Paris)
• WEDIDIT (37A: "Yay for us!")
• THURMAN (39A: Uma of "Kill Bill")
• FRIARTUCK (50A: Friend of Robin Hood)
• SATE (70A: Fill to excess)

Word of the Day: KINTE (52D: Kunta of 51-Down — "Roots")

Kunta Kinte is a character in the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors: a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822. (Wikipedia)

I thought the theme overall was clever. Having seven clues correspond to the theme is ambitious, and it was done well. I appreciate the effort that must have gone into constructing a puzzle like this. And, the theme definitely helped me with the solve this week, which is doesn't always do.

I did have a few nits with the theme, though. One is how the clue for the theme answer was phrased (62A: Start of the baseball season... or what the start of each starred clue is). Shouldn't the clue for 62A send you to look at each starred answer and not the clue? Also, OPENING DAY is Thursday, not Tuesday, so it's strange to have this theme in today's puzzle. Lastly, by having this theme take up so much of the puzzle, the other clues/answers were constricted, and there just wasn't much else about this puzzle that I found particularly clever.

The fill also confused me in places. I didn't know PLIES (14A) could be tissue layers. LEANTO (46A: Rustic shelter) is more poverty-based than "rustic." I like seeing a word like BLITZES in a puzzle (32D: Intense promotional campaigns), but AD BLITZES seemed kind of made up to me. 9D: That: Sp. could also be "ese" or "esa" and not ESO, so that threw me a bit. I had "rad" instead of FAB for 42A: "Groovy!" I'm not sure that a MOON STARER is a thing. Having an anagram can be clever, so I could almost get behind that answer, but I find it kind of weird. Also, enough with the guns in the puzzle!! It's first of all odd to have "pellets" in both the clue for 7D: Pellet projectors and 21D: Small pellets. Then, the clue for VEST (53A: Bulletproof garment) also related to guns, even though there are so many other ways one could clue to VEST.

Apparently, I didn't like the puzzle as much as I thought I did when I started writing this. Maybe the theme is the only saving grace. I did like the classic misdirection from 6D: Nursery buy (I was convinced that was a nursery for the baby and not one for plants). My favorite clue/answer combo of the puzzle was probably 64D: Chatty travel companion as GPS. I also thought having FRIAR TUCK (50A: Friend of Robin Hood) in a puzzle was unusual and fun.

Misc.:

• Whoa. Is that why the saying goes "a bushel and a PECK"?? Mind = blown.
• I drink so much tea, and the only thing I could think of for a while for a brewed drink at 31D was "ale."
• Working as a waitress last summer, I definitely made my fair share of cappuccinos and LATTEs.
• Just gonna put it out there that the Warriors knocked the Houston ROCKETS out of the playoffs last year. Crossing my fingers that happens again in this playoffs. *Knocks on wood.*

With that, have a great week!!

Signed, Clare Carroll, a happy law student

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