Constructor: Randolph Ross
Relative difficulty: untimed, on paper, but I'm gonna say "Easy-Medium"
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THEME: joined at the hip— clues are ALLCAPS words or names that have something in common and have been run together, overlapping at last letter of first word and first letter of last word. Each word; these clues visually represent familiar two-word phrases where the first word means (roughly) "joined" and the second word is whatever kind of thing the clue words are. So:
Theme answers:
An interesting theme completely wrecked by atrocious fill. The theme concept here isn't bad—kind of obvious, but clever in its way. But I feel like I could've guessed most of them without any help, or with little help, from the crosses (the only one I had issues with was COMBINED FORCES, as I wanted a lot of other different first words like JOINED or UNITED or ALLIED or something ... COMBINED actually took a bit). The themers were not tricky. Once you get the gist of the theme, there it is, you see it, cute, great. Now you've got to fill in the rest of the grid, and oof. Ouch. Yipes. I have "ugh""no" and "ouch" written alllll over my puzzle print-out. Let's start with the name parade in the NE—so much real estate on old TV actor a physicist a soap role (?????) and GAL GADOT (whose name I can never spell (I'm always Waiting for Gal GODOT), but that's on me). And that little corner in the NE, why ... just why? Why the terrible ONTV (16A: Where "Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible!" originated) and more terrible KTS (12D: Gold standards: Abbr.)? You can do annnnnnything up there, and you do that? Astonishingly poor judgment. And then, let's take a look around, shall we? It won't be pleasant, but here we go: AFUSS. Sigh. Lord. Come on. A terrible partial? Crossing an old ("old" is a theme today) Pontiac model (29D: 1980s Pontiac sports car)? Next to the woeful UNARM (it will always be "disarm" and only "disarm"). And then ENOTE? ENOTE!? Stop, [Cybermemo]!?!? Ugh. Only someone who thinks "COSMIC!" is an actual exclamation could like this fill, my goodness (42D: "Far out, man!"). And then D'ESTE!? Not ESTE, which is common/irksome enough, but D'ESTE!? And RFD, which I know only from old (there's that word again) TV, i.e. "Mayberry R.F.D."? It's all so rough. So Rough. Oh well, I liked LEADFOOT (37A: Highway speedster) and QUARTETS, and there *is* a nice shout-out to yesterday's puzzle (34D: Like the worst dad joke = CORNIEST).
Five things:
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Relative difficulty: untimed, on paper, but I'm gonna say "Easy-Medium"
THEME: joined at the hip— clues are ALLCAPS words or names that have something in common and have been run together, overlapping at last letter of first word and first letter of last word. Each word; these clues visually represent familiar two-word phrases where the first word means (roughly) "joined" and the second word is whatever kind of thing the clue words are. So:
Theme answers:
- SPLICED GENES (20A: WILDERAYBURN) (Gene WILDER + Gene RAYBURN (an old talk show host))
- ATTACHED HOUSES (22: HACIENDADOBE) (can a hacienda not be made out of adobe? These "houses" don't seem distinct enough from one another)
- COMBINED FORCES (43A: MILITIARMY) (militia + army)
- UNITED STATES (48A: UTAHAWAII) (state of Utah, state of Hawaii)
Marlena Evans is a fictional character on the NBC daytime drama, Days of Our Lives, a long-running serial about working life in the fictional town of Salem. She has been played by actress Deidre Hall since 1976, but the character was absent from the show from 1987 to March 1991 and again from January 2009 to September 2011. Marlena was created by scriptwriter Pat Falken Smith and executive producer Betty Corday, and has become one of Days of our Lives' most well-known characters. Hall made her debut on the soap on June 21, 1976, currently making her the second longest running actress on the serial, surpassed only by Suzanne Rogers (Maggie). (wikipedia)
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| ALAN HALE |
Five things:
- 3D: Ticket category (ADULT)— I got PAYS then PLACID then ran the Downs coming off of PLACID and got them all right ... except this one. I wrote in AISLE.
- 34A: Grimalkin (CRONE)— Grim what now? If I've seen this word before, I forgot it ("this word" = "grimalkin"— I *have* heard of CRONE!). Cool word. Storing it away.
- 54A: Locker room shower? (ESPN) — old cluing trick, where "shower" means "entity that shows something" (as opposed to "descending moisture") (P.S. congrats to the Washington Nationals on their first trip to the World Series—I assume their locker room was showered with champagne after Game 4 of the NLCS)
- 7A: Deg. for an animator (BFA) — kinda hate "degree" clues because who knows? I always have to leave the first square blank on this one, as it could easily be MFA (the deg. I'm actually more familiar with).
- 58A: K'ung Fu ___ (Confucius) (TSE) — really enjoying* the "anagrams of EST" mini theme going on there at the bottom of the grid: quartETS over SET over TSE (crossing D'ESTE!). Really... something (*not actually enjoying)
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