Constructor: Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:53)
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THEME: blank OR blank — themers are familiar phrases following the pattern "___ OR ___"; clues all take the form of [Word that can complete (some all-caps word that is missing consecutive letters)]:
Theme answers:
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Felt like I flew through this, and my time was certainly on the fast side for me, but weirdly my Thursday times have been remarkably consistent over the past four months: all timed solves between 4:24 and 6:02. Only reason I find this weird is that I think of Thursday having a very wide-ranging level of difficulty, in that it's the gimmicky puzzle of the week and those gimmicks can sometimes be very hard to discover. Usually, once you discover them, the puzzle gets real easy, but the discovering can take an awful lot of time. Only Monday and Tuesday solving times have a narrower range—not surprising, as those are uniformly easy. OK, back to this specific puzzle. The theme answers are pretty dull, but the cluing provides an interesting twist. Narrows the field of acceptable answers considerably. Still, not sure those clues can be considered flashy or even interesting. Once you tumble to the concept here (that the "Word" is actually a pair of options), then for the rest of the themers, you don't really need the clues—just use pattern recognition from crosses to figure out common ___ OR ___ answers. I certainly never did the word math (until after I was done). Theme seems like something a constructor's gonna like more than a solver.
The fill is mostly reasonable, but it's got some subpar moments. I know the [Fittings under the sink] as traps, not U-BENDS, which is totally new to me. MAITRE is kind of a long foreign word. Had POSH for PISH because why wouldn't I? (10A: "Nonsense!") SW corner is chock full o' crosswordese. GAWP at it, why don't you? Rest of the grid has its fair share, but that corner, yikes. Starts with PRO RATA and just ... keeps going. The ENOCH / ACTIN / SOTO / SSNS area isn't terribly lovely either. My favorite answers of the day were ADZUKI (delicious), FOG OF WAR (38D: Cause for combatants' confusion), and POP OFF. I thought the [Raiders' org.] might be AFC or NFL, but having EATS in place already meant that the "F" in both those options would've resulted in a word starting TF- for 47D: Service easy to break? (TEASET), so I scrapped those and tried DEA. Bingo. Besides the PISH, U-BENDS, and ENOCH areas, I didn't have much trouble at all. Do people know SPERRY? Top-Siders were a huge fashion trend when I was in middle school. Had to have the real thing or you'd get teased. My god middle school in the '80s was a classist hellhole of viciousness. I've never been more miserable. Luckily I had MTV. A boy's best friend is his MTV. Anyway, good day.
P.S. my wife notes (correctly, I think) that DEFRIEND (!?!) (see 38A) is not a thing people actually say. I gotta believe "unfriend" beats DEFRIEND by an enormous margin, ordinary usage-wise. As far as I can recall, I've heard "unfriend" nearly exclusively (as a term meaning "to drop someone as a Friend, particularly on the social media platform called Facebook"). Anyway, this is all to say that if you found the clue on FRIEND OR FOE confusing, you're certainly not alone.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:53)
Theme answers:
- GIVE OR TAKE (17A: Word that can complete CARE___R)
- IN OR OUT (27A: Word that can complete SH___ED)
- FRIEND OR FOE (38A: Word that can complete DE___)
- DO OR DIE (49A: Word that can complete ___TING)
- BOOM OR BUST (61A: Word that can complete ___ER)
Enoch (/ˈiːnək/ (listen), EE-nuhk) is of the Antediluvian period in the Hebrew Bible. Enoch was son of Jared and fathered Methuselah. This Enoch is not to be confused with Cain's son Enoch(Genesis 4:17).
The text of the Book of Genesis says Enoch lived 365 years before he was taken by God. The text reads that Enoch "walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him" (Gen 5:21–24), which some Christians interpret as Enoch's entering Heaven alive.Enoch is the subject of many Jewish and Christian traditions. He was considered the author of the Book of Enoch and also called Enoch the scribe of judgment. The New Testament has three references to Enoch from the lineage of Seth (Luke 3:37, Hebrews 11:5, Jude 1:14–15). (wikipedia)
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The fill is mostly reasonable, but it's got some subpar moments. I know the [Fittings under the sink] as traps, not U-BENDS, which is totally new to me. MAITRE is kind of a long foreign word. Had POSH for PISH because why wouldn't I? (10A: "Nonsense!") SW corner is chock full o' crosswordese. GAWP at it, why don't you? Rest of the grid has its fair share, but that corner, yikes. Starts with PRO RATA and just ... keeps going. The ENOCH / ACTIN / SOTO / SSNS area isn't terribly lovely either. My favorite answers of the day were ADZUKI (delicious), FOG OF WAR (38D: Cause for combatants' confusion), and POP OFF. I thought the [Raiders' org.] might be AFC or NFL, but having EATS in place already meant that the "F" in both those options would've resulted in a word starting TF- for 47D: Service easy to break? (TEASET), so I scrapped those and tried DEA. Bingo. Besides the PISH, U-BENDS, and ENOCH areas, I didn't have much trouble at all. Do people know SPERRY? Top-Siders were a huge fashion trend when I was in middle school. Had to have the real thing or you'd get teased. My god middle school in the '80s was a classist hellhole of viciousness. I've never been more miserable. Luckily I had MTV. A boy's best friend is his MTV. Anyway, good day.
P.S. my wife notes (correctly, I think) that DEFRIEND (!?!) (see 38A) is not a thing people actually say. I gotta believe "unfriend" beats DEFRIEND by an enormous margin, ordinary usage-wise. As far as I can recall, I've heard "unfriend" nearly exclusively (as a term meaning "to drop someone as a Friend, particularly on the social media platform called Facebook"). Anyway, this is all to say that if you found the clue on FRIEND OR FOE confusing, you're certainly not alone.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]