Constructor: Ryan McCarty
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (8:45)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: FLOUR BOMB (47A: Protest item that leaves a powdery mess) —
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Not sure what to say about this one. It seems well made—that is quite a stack through the middle there, and there's very little of the cringey crosswordese that normally gets on my nerves. But I didn't enjoy myself at all. Some of that was because there were so many longer answers that I just didn't know, or barely knew. Then there was exceedingly dull cluing, which was often just trivia, or else blunt and vague. And then SICKROOMS was just ... morbid. Never had that feeling (the feeling I had multiple times yesterday) of "ooh, good one." Again, this all seems structurally sound. I just didn't dig its personality. Also, I wasn't sure if the puzzle was trying to make some kind of theme happen in the center/NW area, with BLUE and GREEN and RED all huddled together there. A secret shout-out to Namibia? The Gambia? New Caledonia? Azerbaijan??? I apologize if there is a theme here somewhere, but I don't apologize too much, because if a theme falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it ... well, something like that.
LOL GOOGLEHOME is a thing?? How are they losing the name recognition battle that badly? They're Google, but apparently Google is the Bing of voice-activated assistants, yikes. Had GOO---HOME and still had no idea what that one was about. GREEN TAPE, what? Just no idea. None. Had that one as a plural (with "S" on the end) for a minute. SINBIN??? Yuck, since when did hockey fans take up sing-songy moralization. This is easily the stupidest sports term I (now) know and y'all should be ashamed to keep using it. FLOURBOMB... apparently it's a "classic" protest method. I'm sure I've seen it before, but I had no idea it had a name and had FLOUR and still no idea. Also had the [City near Tesla Gigafactory 1] as BRNO, so that SE corner was a tad rough. Remembered DRAGO at 17A: "Rocky IV" rival who makes a reappearance in "Creed II" but not whether that was his first or last name so after I plunked down AMASSED (3D: Stocked up) I put down DRAGO ... and then ... (brain: "Malfoy?"). There was somewhat more delight to be had in the middle of the grid, which is really the best thing going on here today.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (8:45)
Word of the Day: FLOUR BOMB (47A: Protest item that leaves a powdery mess) —
Flour bomb is a fragile container (e.g. a paper bag) filled with flour for the purpose to be thrown at a person or object to cause an inconvenient messy stain.Flour bombs are a classic protest method, along with the throwing of eggs and overripe tomatoes. [...]Flour bombs saw notable use during the controversial 1981 Springbok Tour at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand. In an attempt to disrupt the match, flour bombs, along with flares, leaflets and a parachute-support banner reading "Biko" were dropped into Eden Park from a light plane flying overhead. A New Zealand All Blacks player was felled by one of the flour bombs. (wikipedia)
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[from the album "Blue"]
LOL GOOGLEHOME is a thing?? How are they losing the name recognition battle that badly? They're Google, but apparently Google is the Bing of voice-activated assistants, yikes. Had GOO---HOME and still had no idea what that one was about. GREEN TAPE, what? Just no idea. None. Had that one as a plural (with "S" on the end) for a minute. SINBIN??? Yuck, since when did hockey fans take up sing-songy moralization. This is easily the stupidest sports term I (now) know and y'all should be ashamed to keep using it. FLOURBOMB... apparently it's a "classic" protest method. I'm sure I've seen it before, but I had no idea it had a name and had FLOUR and still no idea. Also had the [City near Tesla Gigafactory 1] as BRNO, so that SE corner was a tad rough. Remembered DRAGO at 17A: "Rocky IV" rival who makes a reappearance in "Creed II" but not whether that was his first or last name so after I plunked down AMASSED (3D: Stocked up) I put down DRAGO ... and then ... (brain: "Malfoy?"). There was somewhat more delight to be had in the middle of the grid, which is really the best thing going on here today.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]