Constructor: Jamey Smith
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7:17)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: VOILE (16A: Fabric for a wedding dress) —
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This was grim. All the things that make a Friday undelightful—not a lot of sparkle, off cluing, weak fill, and (not the puzzle's fault, exactly) just way off my wavelength, both content-wise and just ... voice-wise. Not for me, at all. Hell of a lot of trouble with the top part, from referring to ITEN (bad fill, don't call attention to bad fill!) as a "lower artery" to horrid legal Latin at 1D (IDEM) to TERABIT (not -byte??) to IVORY as an artist's medium (!) to AVOCADO clued in relation to yellow (?) to AMWAY clued via health and beauty (I didn't know it had a focus ... I had ALMAY ... is that something?) to whatever that word for professional MOURNER was (not even gonna look at that clue again) to WINED (ugh) to the weak assertion that rom-coms are "typically" DATE MOVIEs—what does that even mean? I'd venture to say that the "typical" attendee of any movie, rom-com included, is not, in fact, on a date, so the cluing is ... awkward, off, weird, wrong. You mean that a rom-com is a common type of DATE MOVIE; so say that. Yeesh. This whole thing is yeesh. By EMONEY (woof! dear lord, bring back ENOTE if it means I'll never have to see the ridiculous EMONEY again ... that's not a word, that's a recently departed rock star's signature)
I don't believe anyone really says ILLITERATI, and if you do, you're probably the kind of smug I'd rather not know. I misspelled TURNSTYLE thusly, and then imagined that the minor offender was a HOPPER. That clue there, again, woof, no, that pun is awful (54A: One committing a fare-ly minor offense?). There is no such thing as a C-TEAM, truly there is not, any more than there's a Y-TEAM, please stop at the letter B and go no farther. Had SAND for SURF (50A: It's a shore thing). Haven't read Vonnegut since I was a teenager so clue on ELIOT mean jack to me (27D: ___ Rosewater, recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut novels). Elaine CHAO is yet another ghoulish member of this ghoulish administration who probably belongs in jail. And UDE ... what is there even to say about that atrocity? (55D: Ulan-___, Siberian capital). Nothing. Good bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7:17)
Word of the Day: VOILE (16A: Fabric for a wedding dress) —
: a fine soft sheer fabric used especially for women's summer clothing or curtains (merriam-webster.com)
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I don't believe anyone really says ILLITERATI, and if you do, you're probably the kind of smug I'd rather not know. I misspelled TURNSTYLE thusly, and then imagined that the minor offender was a HOPPER. That clue there, again, woof, no, that pun is awful (54A: One committing a fare-ly minor offense?). There is no such thing as a C-TEAM, truly there is not, any more than there's a Y-TEAM, please stop at the letter B and go no farther. Had SAND for SURF (50A: It's a shore thing). Haven't read Vonnegut since I was a teenager so clue on ELIOT mean jack to me (27D: ___ Rosewater, recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut novels). Elaine CHAO is yet another ghoulish member of this ghoulish administration who probably belongs in jail. And UDE ... what is there even to say about that atrocity? (55D: Ulan-___, Siberian capital). Nothing. Good bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]