Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Hard
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THEME: PENTATHLON — Theme answers ended in the events of a pentathlon.
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: HI-HAT (53D: Component of a drum kit) —
This has been one of my favorite Mondays in awhile! The relative difficulty rating comes from the numerous cultural refs/name drops, the fact that HAJ is usually transliterated as HAJJ and so I didn't trust that answer, and the amount of wrong answers I had. RANGE for RANCH was the most egregious--I mean, come on, it literally says "home!" Like "Home on the Range!" Anyway.
There was some fun wordplay, and some great words; EWER, which means a pitcher or jug, was my second pick for word of the day, which is impressive since I feel like I'm often scrambling for a good word rather than choosing between two! (ANCHO was a good one as well.) I feel like the decision to call SKIT a "comedic sketch" synonym could draw the IRE of some comedians, but I personally don't know enough about the differences, if there are any. Also, like the mental image of a ONE-WAY CRIME MAP. Like, a scavenger hunt that leads you from crime to crime but ends you in jail? That seems like kind of a Batman villain thing. The point is, I loved this puzzle.
I'm going to avoid exposing my lack of knowledge about all sports other than rugby and sailing by JUMPing right over the PENTATHLON theme and onto CHICKEN RUN. The VHS tape of that movie lived on the TV stand so I could replay it over and over again, proving that I've had amazing taste since childhood. Or maybe it's just that rewatching a movie that somehow pulls off "British chickens wearing women's accessories, aware of the grisly fate that awaits them, team up with an American rooster conman who pretends to teach them to fly but ends up building a working plane"-- and pulls it off perfectly and hilariously--shaped me into the lover of B-movies and anything else with a buckwild plotline that I am today.
Also, those guys made Wallace and Gromit!
Bullets:
Signed, Annabel Thompson, still searching for jobs!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]
Relative difficulty: Hard
THEME: PENTATHLON — Theme answers ended in the events of a pentathlon.
Theme answers:
- GORDON JUMP (17A: Arthur Carlson portrayer on "WKRP in Cincinnati")
- PHOTOSHOOT (23A: Job for a model)
- CHICKEN RUN (52A: 2000 stop-motion comedy hit)
- ADULT SWIM (9D: Late-night Cartoon Network programming block)
- SNOW FENCE (32D: Winter barrier)
Word of the Day: HI-HAT (53D: Component of a drum kit) —
A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a foot pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, and blues.[1] Hi-hats consist of a matching pair of small to medium-sized cymbals mounted on a stand, with the two cymbals facing each other. The bottom cymbal is fixed and the top is mounted on a rod which moves the top cymbal towards the bottom one when the pedal is depressed (a hi-hat that is in this position is said to be "closed" or "closed hi-hats").
(Wikipedia)
• • •
Hello, it's an Annabel Monday! And I guess the summer's over, huh? Just like that. I mean, not that it means that much anymore now that I'm just sort of living my life rather than being on summer vacation. Also my summer job got extended through September, which is amazing because honestly I really really love working in this library. It's gonna be sad to leave it, but hopefully I'll move on to another library before I get my M.L.S.This has been one of my favorite Mondays in awhile! The relative difficulty rating comes from the numerous cultural refs/name drops, the fact that HAJ is usually transliterated as HAJJ and so I didn't trust that answer, and the amount of wrong answers I had. RANGE for RANCH was the most egregious--I mean, come on, it literally says "home!" Like "Home on the Range!" Anyway.
There was some fun wordplay, and some great words; EWER, which means a pitcher or jug, was my second pick for word of the day, which is impressive since I feel like I'm often scrambling for a good word rather than choosing between two! (ANCHO was a good one as well.) I feel like the decision to call SKIT a "comedic sketch" synonym could draw the IRE of some comedians, but I personally don't know enough about the differences, if there are any. Also, like the mental image of a ONE-WAY CRIME MAP. Like, a scavenger hunt that leads you from crime to crime but ends you in jail? That seems like kind of a Batman villain thing. The point is, I loved this puzzle.
I'm going to avoid exposing my lack of knowledge about all sports other than rugby and sailing by JUMPing right over the PENTATHLON theme and onto CHICKEN RUN. The VHS tape of that movie lived on the TV stand so I could replay it over and over again, proving that I've had amazing taste since childhood. Or maybe it's just that rewatching a movie that somehow pulls off "British chickens wearing women's accessories, aware of the grisly fate that awaits them, team up with an American rooster conman who pretends to teach them to fly but ends up building a working plane"-- and pulls it off perfectly and hilariously--shaped me into the lover of B-movies and anything else with a buckwild plotline that I am today.
Also, those guys made Wallace and Gromit!
Bullets:
- TAE BO (68A: Fitness program popularized in the 1990s) — Did you know Tae Bo was invented in 1976?!? Did they even have exercise tapes back then? I would have thought it was way later!
- LIT (22A: Extremely fun, as a party) — I was looking up the etymology for the modern slang context of this word and found out that it's actually been circulating in and out of slang since the 1910s, if not earlier, as in, from this 1918 book, "We walked into the vamp's house. We all got lit and had a hell of a time." It's so cool how language changes! (Also if you're still interested in that etymology, a cursory Google suggests that the more recent use of the word stems from its use in rap music, which in turn probably stems from African-American Vernacular English. But I'm no linguist--I just thought the 1918 thing was cool!)
- KOI (58A: Colorful pond fish) — The word "koi" only conjures up one mental image for me now. "I have also fallen into the fountain at the Steamtown Mall."
Signed, Annabel Thompson, still searching for jobs!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]