Constructor: Jennifer Nutt
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (4:44 on oversized 16x15 grid)
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THEME: something about PLINY THE ELDER approaching MOUNT VESUVIUS while saying "FORTUNE / FAVORS / THE BOLD" — all of this is news to me, so ... I guess this all happened ... allegedly ... a long time ago?
Word of the Day: ANIMATRONS (4D: The T. rex in "Jurassic Park" and others) —
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Couldn't have cared less. Even if I had ever heard of this ... event? ... I don't think I'd have cared. It's some kind of ADAGE (67A: Maxim), and then a Roman dude and a volcano. I do not care. There is no interest level here. There is no wordplay or trick or nothin'. Lots of 3-, 4-, and 5-letter answers, though, so woo hoo! I feel like people are out here making puzzle just to make them, just because they seem adequate, or like something they can imagine being in a paper, instead of making puzzles that might bring *them* joy, one's they can imagine *themselves* really loving. Just ... so much adequacy lately. So much mediocrity. Things haven't even been *interestingly* bad lately. Just meh. This puzzle has "ERASERHEAD," so that's cool, but that's all that's cool. TUNA BURGER!? I'm sure they exist, but not anywhere I've eaten lately. Tuna steak, sure. Tuna salad, of course. I dunno. Awkward adjectives like PUPAL and PAPUAN and then stupid archaisms like AFORE :/ and classic crosswordese like "IS IT I?" It was all a little exhausting. Big Shrug Energy, overall.
I drink coffee. Like, a lot. It is the most important ritual of my day. The happiest moment of my day. Literally nothing brings me greater joy that brewing that first pot of coffee just before dawn. I love everything about it. I've been drinking coffee for ~30 years. So ... what the hell is "Jitter juice" (JAVA)? Stop it. Stop with your dumb slang from some wannabe hipster, Daddy-O. JAVA is an actual coffee-producing island, you could go with that. There are lots of other slang terms of real merit. "Jitter juice"? This dumb clue has me borderline angry. I would love a cool coffee clue, but this really ain't it. I wrote in SLAV at 53A: Speaker of a language that has both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets because for the life of me I cannot keep SERB and SLAV straight ... and then bam, there's SLAV just waiting for me at 10D: Many a person once trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Always weird when your wrong answer one place becomes your right answer somewhere else. Only answer that was a total "???" to me was RENÉ Caovilla, but "high-end women's shoes," no surprise that's a little beyond me. "High-end" is such a bad euphemism. They're expensive. It's OK to say that. Cool to see ELENA clued as Ferrante this time. I feel like Kagan gets most of the ELENA glory. I had SCAM instead of SPAM at first, which seemed very plausible (10A: Many a phone call from one's own area code, nowadays). No real hang-ups or wrong turns in this one. Some wrestling with vague clues, and a tad slow overall, but nothing noteworthily difficult here. Time for bed.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (4:44 on oversized 16x15 grid)
Word of the Day: ANIMATRONS (4D: The T. rex in "Jurassic Park" and others) —
: a puppet or similar figure that is animated by means of electromechanical devices : an animatronic figure (merriam-webster.com)
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I drink coffee. Like, a lot. It is the most important ritual of my day. The happiest moment of my day. Literally nothing brings me greater joy that brewing that first pot of coffee just before dawn. I love everything about it. I've been drinking coffee for ~30 years. So ... what the hell is "Jitter juice" (JAVA)? Stop it. Stop with your dumb slang from some wannabe hipster, Daddy-O. JAVA is an actual coffee-producing island, you could go with that. There are lots of other slang terms of real merit. "Jitter juice"? This dumb clue has me borderline angry. I would love a cool coffee clue, but this really ain't it. I wrote in SLAV at 53A: Speaker of a language that has both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets because for the life of me I cannot keep SERB and SLAV straight ... and then bam, there's SLAV just waiting for me at 10D: Many a person once trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Always weird when your wrong answer one place becomes your right answer somewhere else. Only answer that was a total "???" to me was RENÉ Caovilla, but "high-end women's shoes," no surprise that's a little beyond me. "High-end" is such a bad euphemism. They're expensive. It's OK to say that. Cool to see ELENA clued as Ferrante this time. I feel like Kagan gets most of the ELENA glory. I had SCAM instead of SPAM at first, which seemed very plausible (10A: Many a phone call from one's own area code, nowadays). No real hang-ups or wrong turns in this one. Some wrestling with vague clues, and a tad slow overall, but nothing noteworthily difficult here. Time for bed.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]