Constructor: Greg Johnson
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:41)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: NAME DAY (8D: Catholic celebration) —
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This one lost me from the jump. GHOST GUNS? This is certainly fresh and original fill, but it puts gun violence right in the lead-off position, and thus totally killed (!) the vibe for me. I actually don't mind names of weapons in my puzzles, but ones specifically associated with getting around background checks and regulation? Yeah, no, you can take that **** out of here. Take it to BOISE! (actually I hear BOISE is very nice and my mom grew up in Idaho and my grandma still lives there, so no offense!). Sincerely, though, it was a mood killer. And the vibe of this puzzle just stayed very ... conservative man. I.T. *GUY*. VIAGRA. Using "Animal House" instead of "Alice in Wonderland" for EAT ME? There are no women in this grid at all, and the only woman to be seen in all of the clues is used to clue her husband (VINCENTE). I guess ELLE is mostly a woman's magazine. That hardly counts. Anyway, even beyond the aggressive dude-ness of it all, the fill just left me cold. ORGANIC MATERIAL?! (17A: It was discovered on Mars in 2018) It's hard to think of a duller 15 than that. And isn't the more common term "matter"? Not that that would've made it more interesting. The puzzle seems sturdy and well enough made, but not for me.
Found this mostly quite easy, though PEEK IN was PEEKED (wrong verb tense!) and PEEK AT at first (20A: Take a furtive look), and PILFER was BUFFET (!) (32A: Lift). Can't airborne things be "buffeted" by the wind? Did I make that up? Ugh, it looks like maybe I was thinking of "buoyed" or "borne" or some other "B" word. Also had MESSIER before MANGIER (38D: More shabby), which caused some minor grief, but only minor. Otherwise, no problems. I've barely heard of NAME DAY, but crosses weren't too hard to come by. The clue on MISADD is very clever (28D: Totally screw up?) (get it, because when you MISADD you "screw up" while "total"-ing... eh? eh? please clap). It doesn't make me like MISADD as fill, but it's clever.
Today we've got a four-day solo male constructor streak going. Gotta go back seven years to find an equivalent streak for women. Oh, and here's a little thread I wrote about how the NYTXW's partner site, xwordinfo, uses deceptive charts to visually misrepresent the data on women constructors. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:41)
Word of the Day: NAME DAY (8D: Catholic celebration) —
noun
• • •
Found this mostly quite easy, though PEEK IN was PEEKED (wrong verb tense!) and PEEK AT at first (20A: Take a furtive look), and PILFER was BUFFET (!) (32A: Lift). Can't airborne things be "buffeted" by the wind? Did I make that up? Ugh, it looks like maybe I was thinking of "buoyed" or "borne" or some other "B" word. Also had MESSIER before MANGIER (38D: More shabby), which caused some minor grief, but only minor. Otherwise, no problems. I've barely heard of NAME DAY, but crosses weren't too hard to come by. The clue on MISADD is very clever (28D: Totally screw up?) (get it, because when you MISADD you "screw up" while "total"-ing... eh? eh? please clap). It doesn't make me like MISADD as fill, but it's clever.
Today we've got a four-day solo male constructor streak going. Gotta go back seven years to find an equivalent streak for women. Oh, and here's a little thread I wrote about how the NYTXW's partner site, xwordinfo, uses deceptive charts to visually misrepresent the data on women constructors. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]