Heraldic hue / SAT 10-5-19 / Egyptian sky god / Short yardage play briefly / Game with ball called quaffle / Vague expression of empathy / Hagia Sophia was built in it / Disney president who oversaw the Pixar acquisition

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (7-something)


THEME: none

Word of the Day: MESONS (5D: Accelerator particles) —

n.

Any of a class of subatomic particles that are both hadrons and bosons, are composed of aquark and an antiquark, participate in strong interactions, and have masses generally intermediate between those of leptons and baryons. (sorry, I'm not going to look up all those words for you, too)

The 15s here are nice. Embarrassed it took me a while to back into the BYZANTINE part of BYZANTINE EMPIRE, considering I love using the adjective "byzantine" as much as I can (45A: The Hagia Sophia was built in it). It's a beautiful word. I also like that TAKE-NO-PRISONERS is a compound adjective that looks like a verb phrase (19A: Ruthlessly aggressive). Sneaky. I found most of the rest of this puzzle competent but kind of boring. The little half-show-offy thing in the middle with the string of Qs (plus one J) in the initial positions of a bunch of answers—that felt pretty bush league. I've seen that before, and it rarely makes a grid better than it might've been otherwise. No real harm done here, but it's a cheap flourish, though I will say that both QUAGMIRES and QUIDDITCH are good words. I also enjoyed the colloquial crossing of "IT HAPPENS" (29D: Vague expression of empathy) and "THAT SO?" (40A: "For real?"). But too much of this was IGER OREM ERAS TORI, i.e. yeah, those words, but there's not much sizzle there. Further, the cluing is generally terse and boring. I think the overriding problem with so many NYTXW puzzles *generally* has more to do with the editorial voice (i.e. the cluing) than the quality of the grids.


My lack of real knowledge about particle physics, as well as tougher-than-grid-average cluing, made the NW the hardest place for me to break into. Thank god I got the COME part of COME QUICK, because that's the only way I get a clear path to the NW. Before that, I've got QUARK, but I can't figure out the ANTI- part (despite having the "A" from the gimme MILA) (8D: One of the two components of 5-Down (5-Down = MESONS)). Is IDIOcracy a real word? I thought it was just a movie title (googling certainly suggests it's just a movie title). Weird. Grateful for my proper noun gimmes today: MILA, EVERS, SALMA, and QUIDDITCH. The QANTAS / LOGO crossover was pretty obvious as well. If I leave the NW out of the equation, this is an Easy Saturday (for me). I liked it moderately, but I still wish NYTXW themelesses were as consistently interesting and timely and clever and even funny as the New Yorker's themelesses are (if you're not doing them (twice a week!) you're missing out). If I could get the difficulty of a NYTXW Saturday with the flair and sass and overall grid quality of a New Yorker puzzle, I'd be so happy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I am a master codebreaker




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