Constructor: Brandon Koppy
Relative difficulty: Medium (6:02)
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THEME: words that can follow ... words that can follow ... — sigh ... OK, so ... familiar two-word phrase is the clue, only it's presented as [First word ... / second word ...], the idea being that the answer in the grid will have Zero to do with the clue phrase, but will instead be a New two-word phrase (or compound word) made up of a Word That Can Follow The First Word (in a familiar word or phrase) + Word That Can Follow The Second Word (in a familiar word or phrase) ... so essentially four different phrases are involved in every themer, somehow ...
Theme answers:
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I find fill in the blank clues, i.e. [Word ___] exasperating, so solving this was double the "fun." I should've spent less time with the themers themselves, and just kept hacking at the crosses until something legible appeared as a themer. This is essentially a 2x "words that can follow" theme, with no actual clues anywhere, and so it's just a lot of rolling possibilities through your mind until one of them "worked." I found it really unpleasant to solve. I can't say that the concept is bad, and I don't think the puzzle is poorly made. I'd just rather never solve this type of theme again. Its cleverness is the kind you have to draw diagrams, or at least slow way down, to appreciate. And even then, I don't know exactly how clever it is. Seems like an awfully boring theme to conceive of, actually. I came up with [Knock ... / Out ...] (DOWNSIDE) pretty quickly, but I wouldn't want to have to do that a bunch more times. Since you can make clues / answers like this forever and ever (theoretically anyway), the themer group feels arbitrary. Solving this felt more like solving a two-star quiz in Games magazine than solving a crossword puzzle. Like one kind of puzzle shoved into crossword form. Not my thing. Though, as I say, not bad. Fill is actually nice in places, AMIRITE!?
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You can shove KEN STARR, though. Shove him all the way back through his ill-fated Baylor presidency (mishandling sexual assaults) through the Clinton era back to oblivion. I'm gonna tolerate PACK HEAT only because it's a colorful and slightly old-fashioned phrase I might find in the hardboiled / noir fiction I enjoy. Love PALADIN because it reminded me of being a nerdy D&D-playing middle schooler. "Good" times!
Small words were the most vexing today. Most of the grid, outside the themers, was pretty easy. Cleaned up the NE and SW corners in lightning-fast time. All of my non-theme trouble came from very short answers. First TAX (24D: Duty). Ugh, that one-word clue. Ask me to define "duty" and it's gonna be a while before I remember it has anything to do with taxing. And then PAY, which I had as AGE, and then, even when I had -AY, I couldn't understand. I finished up the grid the first time with HAY / HOTHEAD (!?!?). I clearly had given up on even looking at the words in the theme clue (as "jackhot" is not a word" and HAY is not a [Sensitive figure to ask someone about], I don't think. No idea about HAAS. Misspelled PLAME the first time (PLANE). No idea about WEBER (well, only the dimmest of ideas, from the last time I took Physics, i.e. 28 years ago). No idea about VESTED (?) either. I know the word, but not the technicalities of the stock meaning. So the themers and a few choice small answers slowed me way down, resulting in a slightly above-average, but still pretty average, time. Decent, considering how much I disliked solving the themers, and considering I solved it first thing in the morning.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium (6:02)
Theme answers:
- JACKSON HOLE (17A: Peter ... / Rabbit ...) (Peter Jackson / Rabbit hole)
- TIME FLIES (24A: Space ... / Bar ...) (Spacetime / Bar flies)
- BEAT BOX (30A: Dead ... / Drop ...) (Deadbeat / Dropbox)
- POTHEAD (42A: Jack ... / Cheese ...) (Jackpot / Cheesehead)
- POWER PLAY (49A: Fire ... / Screen ...) (Fire power / Screenplay)
- PADDLEBOARD (59A: Dog ... / Star ...) (Dogpaddle / Starboard)
noun
• • •
Small words were the most vexing today. Most of the grid, outside the themers, was pretty easy. Cleaned up the NE and SW corners in lightning-fast time. All of my non-theme trouble came from very short answers. First TAX (24D: Duty). Ugh, that one-word clue. Ask me to define "duty" and it's gonna be a while before I remember it has anything to do with taxing. And then PAY, which I had as AGE, and then, even when I had -AY, I couldn't understand. I finished up the grid the first time with HAY / HOTHEAD (!?!?). I clearly had given up on even looking at the words in the theme clue (as "jackhot" is not a word" and HAY is not a [Sensitive figure to ask someone about], I don't think. No idea about HAAS. Misspelled PLAME the first time (PLANE). No idea about WEBER (well, only the dimmest of ideas, from the last time I took Physics, i.e. 28 years ago). No idea about VESTED (?) either. I know the word, but not the technicalities of the stock meaning. So the themers and a few choice small answers slowed me way down, resulting in a slightly above-average, but still pretty average, time. Decent, considering how much I disliked solving the themers, and considering I solved it first thing in the morning.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]