Give a false impression of eco-friendliness / FRI 9-27-19 / ___ Addiction, alternative rock band that headlined the first Lollapalooza / Fruit with a cedilla in its name / What the "E" of Euler's formula V - E + F = 2 represents / Traditional crop grown by a small farm, maybe / Activity for a storm chaser

Constructor: Jack Mowat

Relative difficulty: Easy



THEME: THEME— None

Word of the Day: GREENWASH (39A: Give a false impression of eco-friendliness) —

noun

noun: greenwash; noun: green-wash

1. disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

Hello, everybody! It's Aimee Lucido here taking over for Rex for the day to justify me shamelessly using his platform to plug my brand new book that just came out on Tuesday!

But first, the puzzle:

I always let out a sigh of relief when I'm on the hook for a blog post and I end up solving the puzzle relatively quickly. In this case, I solved the puzzle in 28:02 (which is about 10 minutes below my average Friday (please don't judge me for being slow)), but I spent about 8 of those minutes stuck in the NW.

I tore my way through the SW, loving ICEBREAKER and TAG TEAMED, wanting MAKES BANK for MAKES A MINT even though it didn't fit, and figuring out TRACKING before I got TORNADO for 7D. I figured out GREENWASH (great word!) from the straightforward clue, even though I'd never heard of it before, and the NE and center fell from there. But I struggled significantly in the NW because I had LOOS for IANS and refused to put NON-GMO as the first six letters in 3D because of how non-thing-y it seemed.

Overall, I found the grid mostly solid, if a little sleepy, with the only things that I didn't know being ZUNI and TOPOS, but I balked at some of the "green paint" answers in the grid. TENNIS SHOT? Does that mean we can use SOCCER SHOT or BASKETBALL SHOT or LACROSSE SHOT in our grids? NON-GMO CORN could have just as easily have been NON-GMO BEAN or, I dunno, NON-GMO PEAR. CHOCOLATE RABBIT seems to open up the door for CHOCOLATE SANTA or CHOCOLATE EGG or CHOCOLATE HEART. CHOCOLATE HAND? Why not!



These phrases in the grid are by no means bad, and I would even say some are good, but the excitement is lost a bit in the arbitrariness of the adjective/noun pair. By contrast, however, URBAN DECAY is a thing all its own, and replacing URBAN with, say, RURAL completely negates the meaning. This to me is why URBAN DECAY or GREENWASH make me happy, but NON-GMO CORN makes me sad.

I found the cluing on this a little too straightforward, as I usually hope to walk out of a Friday with at least one or two meaty "?" clues, but I did enjoy learning that MR T used to be a bouncer and that "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" was sung by BRENDA LEE.


Bullets:

• 31D: Like good cakes and bad cellars (MOIST) — I wonder how many solvers cringed when they put this word in. It's never bothered me, but I know a lot of people hate this word. Moist, moist, moist. 
• 53D: ___ pad (LILY) — I reaaaaallly wanted MAXI here.
• 35A: Person put in a box  (JUROR)— I enjoyed this clue! It made me think contortionists and I spent a lot of time trying to think of a five-letter synonym for that.

• 18A: Hand-held anxiety reliever (STRESS BALL) — This was a debut word in all the databases that I have access too, and I really liked seeing it!
• 100A: Middle-grade book written by Aimee Lucido about girls learning to program computers that got a starred review from Kirkus (EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE) — Wait, this wasn't in the puzzle! Oh yeah, it's my brand-new book that I'm shamelessly plugging! Check it out here!

Signed, Aimee Lucido, Scribe of the CrossWorld

[Follow Aimee Lucido on Twitter and buy her book on Amazon or Indiebound]
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