Constructor: Ross Trudeau
Relative difficulty: Medium (3:38)
![]()
THEME: CURLING STONES (36A: Items guided by brooms in the Winter Olympics ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — names of precious gems (or "stones") sort of "curl" around the corners of the grid (inside circled squares): SAPPHIRE, EMERALD, DIAMOND, AMETHYST
Word of the Day: WINGLET (25D: It turns up at the edge of a plane) —
![]()
Rough. And then, when I finished, I saw why. It's actually very hard to make clean, smooth grids when you run words all diagonal or will-nilly through the grid like this. Locks you up as bad or worse than a dense theme would. So the fill today is not exactly good, but it's predictably, explainably ungood. I wish the theme had offered more of a payoff. More of a smile or "yay!" I got my smile/yay early with CURLING STONES, which is a nice answer all on its own (though when I put it in, I had no idea what it had to do with the theme) (if I'd just stopped and looked at the grid for a few seconds, I'm sure I would've seen it, but [shrug]. There are no proper theme answers beyond the revealer, which also gives the whole endeavor a kind of characterlessness. It's hard to love a theme that you can't really see except in retrospect, that has only one true theme answer, and that is *directly* responsible for fill like ALD, SAPOR, and SAYST. Harder to blame HBAR (?) ORD and CAEN on the theme, but you can try.
Slow start (as usual!) because 1A: Home squatters? (UMPS) meant nothing to me despite my having watched some playoff baseball just last night :( Also the clue on STENCILS (16A: Spray-painting tools) was never going to land with me, since I think of spray-painting only as an act of graffiti. I realize there must be other uses for spray paint, I just never see them. I certainly don't see STENCILS. I'm not questioning this clue, I'm just saying it lies somewhat outside my spray-painting experience (which mainly involves seeing it on TV / movies). Never heard of a WINGLET, so that heard. I confidently wrote in WINGTIP, because, well, that is essentially what a WINGLET is, it turns out. Sigh. Wrote in TBILL for TBOND (of course) (51D: Long-term security, for short). Thought 37D: Matchless (UNPAIRED) was going for a kind of metaphorical matchlessness (like "peerless" or "unparalleled"), but no, it's just literally "without a match." I like CREEP OUT (60A: Give the heebie-jeebies), even if my brain keeps parsing it CREE POUT [Sullen expression of a First Nations person?]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium (3:38)
Word of the Day: WINGLET (25D: It turns up at the edge of a plane) —
: a small wingalso : a nearly vertical airfoil at an airplane's wingtip that reduces drag by inhibiting turbulence (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
Slow start (as usual!) because 1A: Home squatters? (UMPS) meant nothing to me despite my having watched some playoff baseball just last night :( Also the clue on STENCILS (16A: Spray-painting tools) was never going to land with me, since I think of spray-painting only as an act of graffiti. I realize there must be other uses for spray paint, I just never see them. I certainly don't see STENCILS. I'm not questioning this clue, I'm just saying it lies somewhat outside my spray-painting experience (which mainly involves seeing it on TV / movies). Never heard of a WINGLET, so that heard. I confidently wrote in WINGTIP, because, well, that is essentially what a WINGLET is, it turns out. Sigh. Wrote in TBILL for TBOND (of course) (51D: Long-term security, for short). Thought 37D: Matchless (UNPAIRED) was going for a kind of metaphorical matchlessness (like "peerless" or "unparalleled"), but no, it's just literally "without a match." I like CREEP OUT (60A: Give the heebie-jeebies), even if my brain keeps parsing it CREE POUT [Sullen expression of a First Nations person?]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]