Constructor: Jake Halperin
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)
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THEME: CONS (68A: Disadvantages found in this puzzle's three longest Across answers ...) and PROS (69A: ... and advantages found in them) — two-word phrases where first word starts "CON-" and second word starts "PRO-"
Theme answers:
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The themers are kinda boring and the revealer is backward. Those are the blunt facts of the puzzle. Sometimes wordplay is not enough to overcome certain hard truths, and I'd say this is one of those times. There's no doubt that the theme has something going—all 15s, all neatly CON + PRO, all solid phrases. Didn't like the clue on CONCLUSIVE PROOF (*does* it always "settle a case"???), but that's the editor's fault, in the end, so I'm not too mad about that. Still, neatness and consistency notwithstanding, this was not entertaining, themewise, and the revealer is gratingly backward. The phrase is "pros and cons." Coming in with CONS and PROS is maybe supposed to be cute, but it plays like a big miss. Long Downs somewhat compensated for the dreariness of the themers. Otherwise, the fill was mostly just OK. Lots of short / crosswordy stuff, including the horrible kind where you have to guess at what the answer will be, or just wait for crosses to tell you, i.e. symphony keys (A MAJ) and Morse Code (DAH).
I stopped reading "Game of Thrones" because it just wasn't interesting. My wife stopped reading because it was so relentlessly rape-y. We tried to watch the TV show and never made it past the pilot. So this whole recent end-of-series *phenomenon* has must missed me. I tried to mute every "GOT" term on Twitter because the world just wouldn't shut up about it, but it was becoming a part-time job (so many names!), so I gave up and just scrolled past it all. This is all to say that even if I watched "GOT," I would think SANSA, in that position (i.e. a not-hard-to-fill position), on a Tuesday, is garbage. I get that the constructor is trying to be hip and current, but currency is the Only thing recommending that name. Imagine if you saw that name but instead of the "4th greatest character on 'Game of Thrones'" (per Rolling Stone), it was the "fourth greatest character on 'The A-Team' (or 'Moonlighting' or 'Gunsmoke')." It's the uninferrable name of a secondary character: perfect if you really need it for your demanding Saturday grid (and the crosses are fair), but here, on Tuesday, where you definitely do not need it (you can easily refill that NW corner much more cleanly, and lose LAIC in the process), not so good. Don't confuse "hipness" with "goodness." Pull out proper nouns like that only when necessary. SANKA is better fill, frankly. Here's a not scintillating but Very clean NW corner that I concocted in like a minute:
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You could go NARC / NODS too. You could also rewrite the whole corner tons of other ways. The point is, in tiny corners, cleanness + interesting clues wins every time. Good clues can make even ordinary fill fun, and common terms have tons of cluing possibilities, whereas SANSA ... does not.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)
Theme answers:
- CONSUMER PROFILE (20A: Need for targeted advertising)
- CONTENT PROVIDER (39A: Netflix or YouTube)
- CONCLUSIVE PROOF (55A: It settles a case)
Sansa Stark is a fictional character created by American author George R. R. Martin. She is a prominent character in Martin's award-winning A Song of Ice and Fire series.Introduced in A Game of Thrones (1996), Sansa is the elder daughter and second child of Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Lady Catelyn Stark. She subsequently appeared in the following three novels: A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), and A Feast for Crows (2005). While absent from the fifth novel A Dance with Dragons, as the books are separated geographically, Sansa is confirmed to return in the forthcoming next book in the series, The Winds of Winter.In HBO's adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones, Sansa is portrayed by English actress Sophie Turner. The character has received critical acclaim, including praise as the 4th greatest character in the series by Rolling Stone.[4] She and the rest of the cast were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. (wikipedia)
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I stopped reading "Game of Thrones" because it just wasn't interesting. My wife stopped reading because it was so relentlessly rape-y. We tried to watch the TV show and never made it past the pilot. So this whole recent end-of-series *phenomenon* has must missed me. I tried to mute every "GOT" term on Twitter because the world just wouldn't shut up about it, but it was becoming a part-time job (so many names!), so I gave up and just scrolled past it all. This is all to say that even if I watched "GOT," I would think SANSA, in that position (i.e. a not-hard-to-fill position), on a Tuesday, is garbage. I get that the constructor is trying to be hip and current, but currency is the Only thing recommending that name. Imagine if you saw that name but instead of the "4th greatest character on 'Game of Thrones'" (per Rolling Stone), it was the "fourth greatest character on 'The A-Team' (or 'Moonlighting' or 'Gunsmoke')." It's the uninferrable name of a secondary character: perfect if you really need it for your demanding Saturday grid (and the crosses are fair), but here, on Tuesday, where you definitely do not need it (you can easily refill that NW corner much more cleanly, and lose LAIC in the process), not so good. Don't confuse "hipness" with "goodness." Pull out proper nouns like that only when necessary. SANKA is better fill, frankly. Here's a not scintillating but Very clean NW corner that I concocted in like a minute:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]