Constructor: Ari Richter
Relative difficulty: Easy (3:20)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: AD COUNCIL (27D: Group working on P.S.A. campaigns)—
Olio:
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Relative difficulty: Easy (3:20)
Word of the Day: AD COUNCIL (27D: Group working on P.S.A. campaigns)—
The Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and agencies of the United States government.The Ad Council partners with advertising agencies which work pro bono to create the public service advertisements on behalf of their campaigns. The organization accepts requests from sponsor institutions for advertising campaigns that focus on particular social issues. To qualify, an issue must be non-partisan (though not necessarily unbiased) and have national relevance.The Ad Council distributes the advertisements to a network of 33,000media outlets—including broadcast, print, outdoor (i.e. billboards, bus stops), and Internet—which run the ads in donated time and space. Media outlets donate approximately $1.8 billion to Ad Council campaigns annually. If paid for, this amount would make the Ad Council one of the largest advertisers in the country. (Wikipedia)
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Hi all! It's indie constructor Christopher Adams filling in for Rex while he's in DC for the Indie 500 this weekend. Really wish I could be there and actually see a lot of crossword friends, but I'll have to settle for solving the puzzles at home; as always, they'll be great, and I can't wait to solve them. To those of you solving live tomorrow: may your solves be fast and your grids be clean, and above all, may you have fun.
Anyway, onto this puzzle. I didn't recognize the name when I opened it, and turns out it's a debut. And a low word count debut, at that: only 62 words. The first thing I noticed was the sheer number of cheater squares; there's 14 of them. No doubt that was to aid in filling this; I have no problems with them myself, especially if they result in better fill across (and down) the board. And this puzzle had a lot of good, long answers. Every answer of nine or more letters hit home for me, and especially BLANKET HOG, NONE FOR ME, and MASHED PEAS. (THIS SECOND, maybe, thought it feels like it's missing RIGHT in front of it.) Some shorter goodies, too, including SAD FACEand SCREENER (though I feel that's more the actual physical copy of the film and not the showing itself, but YMMV).
That said, as good as the long fill was, the shorter stuff wasn't as good as I'd hoped, given all the cheater squares. Don't get me wrong; I liked the puzzle, and thought it was reasonably clean, all things considered. But a few too many ONELS, ILE, ESIGN, RETOOK, AEGIS, TFAL, SOG, SIMONES, etc for me to love it. Not that any of these are outright awful, but in toto it sours slightly, especially since I have such a high personal standard for fill. I'm sure many solvers won't bat an eye at this. And again, I liked the puzzle, but I did have slightly higher hopes. Still, a very solid debut.
As for solving, the quick time is, by and large, the result of the clues seeming way too easy for a Saturday puzzle. Of course, it always helps when 1-Across ("Baseball great who was the subject of the 2006 best seller "Game of Shadows") is a gimme (at least for this sports fan). So was ESIGN, with an incredibly straightforward clue (Authorize, as a digital contract). With the entire top row in place, most of the downs offered no resistance whatsoever. Some, like ONELS, are just things that show up all the time. Others, like EXCONS, DRONE, and SERGES, had direct clues that don't try to trip the solver up. And some, like SMOKE (Go to pot?) tried to be tricky, but I've seen so many clues along those lines that it didn't even register as clever.
Two clues that I did think was rather clever were 36-Across (Hot wheels?) and 40-Across (They're spotted at fire stations) for STOLEN CARS and DALMATIANS, respectively. (I might be slightly biased on the first; I've used "Grand theft auto?" for GETAWAY CAR myself, but it's so nice that I'd like it anyway.) Otherwise, not a lot of flash in the clues; as noted, most were straightforward.
33D: Locale of London's Leicester Square (WEST END)
Olio:
- (Winner of the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in N.F.L. history (16 total points)) PATRIOT — A gimme for me; I flew to Boston specifically to watch both The Replacements and this Super Bowl with a bunch of Boston-area friends who, if anything, were rooting against the Patriots while drinking Harpoon Dunkin' Coffee Porter. Fun times; pretty sure there were more people there wearing Shane Falco jerseys than Tom Brady jerseys.
- (Disturbed) DERANGED — This one was pretty hard for me; it's a straight synonym, but if you asked me to define DERANGED for you, I'm pretty sure I'd start talking about permutations before getting to the actual definition.
- (Baseball great who was the subject of the 2006 best seller "Game of Shadows") BONDS — The full title is Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports; not to be confused with the Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr., although I'd watch the hell out of that crossover.
- (Annoying bedmate) BLANKET HOG — It me. (¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
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