Constructor: Joe DiPietro
Relative difficulty: Medium? (I solved on paper without a timer ... if you knew the old trivia clues, probably easy; if not ... not)
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THEME: diamonds— circled squares form—and spell out—different "diamonds":
Theme answers (from L to R, top to bottom):
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I have "yeesh" written multiple times in the margins of my puzzle print-out, if that gives you some sense of how this went. There weren't many pleasant moments today. NICEISH, that was my one moment of "oh, I like that!" (58A: Kind of kind). Let's start with the end—that is, making sense of the circled squares. When I started, I took one look at the grid and thought, "OK, scattershot circled squares, those'll add up to something eventually, let's just go." The key word there is "scattershot," i.e. in no way did I see five discrete diamond shapes. Not at all. The "baseball" diamond puts circles so close to the other diamonds that the shapes lose their individual identity, at least to a cursory glance. So theme shmeme. It may as well not have been there, and in no way added to or subtracted from my solve. Only became an issue when, in the end, I looked back over the grid and thought "What ... was that?" There's no revealer, so figuring it out was tougher than usual. But not that tough. I don't think of the moment you discover the theme as an "aha" moment unless it comes mid-solve and helps move you along. Not sure what to call an irrelevant after-the-fact theme discovery. But that's what I experienced. Very much a let down. "Faux" seems particularly weak as a type of "diamond." The others are OK, but who cares? Making shapes like this feels very old hat. Nothing new or exciting going on here, themewise.
So as for the actual solving experience, this puzzle may as well have been a themeless, and as a themeless ... hoo boy, it was not satisfying. My main complaint was the trivia, which was stale and old and obscurish at times, *especially* if sports (and **especially** old sports trivia) is not really your thing. This thing was sports-heavy even for me, a sports-following person since I was a boy. And when I was a boy, Walter ALSTON (33A: Walter ___, 1950s-'70s Dodgers manager) and WEEB (!?) Ewbank (40D: Hall-of-Fame coach Ewbank) were already in history's rearview mirror. Dodgers were my first sports fandom, but the only manager I ever knew was Tommy Lasorda. Anyway, I was semi-stunned to see the puzzle go to the old-coach well more than once. WEEB *and* ALSTON!? Two, two, two old coaches in one (puzzle)!? To say nothing of the more common sports stuff (GOT A HIT, BALKS, the baseball diamond in the middle of the grid, CAV, RCA DOME ...). But it was mainly the coaches that got me.
And then there was the trivia like FROZONE (back to the "secondary characters on 'The Incredibles'" well, I see) (16A: Character voiced by Samuel L. Jackson in "The Incredibles") and then meaningless (to me) stuff like OIL RING (41D: Engine part that distributes lubrication evenly) and ALAMOSA (38D: Colorado city on the Rio Grande). And tired old xword stuff like DENEB and AZOLE and IGAS (plural!) and SOU and LAC (!) and the non-Nan Bobbsey twin FLOSSIE (!?!?) (speaking of old). There wasn't much to cheer about. The theme was ultimately familiar and inconsequential, the fill was trivia-laden and mired in a pretty bygone era. OK, I'll give TOTAL LIE and HOT WINGS some credit. They do liven up the grid. But solving this just wasn't fun. PESETA *and* LIRA?! LOT *and* LOTT?! MRS. C *and* ESTELLE!? SELASSIE *and* FLOSSIE!?!?! (just kidding on that last one). I'll pass. Or, I would have, if I didn't have to write this blog :)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium? (I solved on paper without a timer ... if you knew the old trivia clues, probably easy; if not ... not)
Theme answers (from L to R, top to bottom):
- Faux diamond (??)
- Hope Diamond
- Baseball diamond
- Neil Diamond
- Legs Diamond
: a resinous substance secreted by a scale insect (Laccifer lacca) and used chiefly in the form of shellac (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
So as for the actual solving experience, this puzzle may as well have been a themeless, and as a themeless ... hoo boy, it was not satisfying. My main complaint was the trivia, which was stale and old and obscurish at times, *especially* if sports (and **especially** old sports trivia) is not really your thing. This thing was sports-heavy even for me, a sports-following person since I was a boy. And when I was a boy, Walter ALSTON (33A: Walter ___, 1950s-'70s Dodgers manager) and WEEB (!?) Ewbank (40D: Hall-of-Fame coach Ewbank) were already in history's rearview mirror. Dodgers were my first sports fandom, but the only manager I ever knew was Tommy Lasorda. Anyway, I was semi-stunned to see the puzzle go to the old-coach well more than once. WEEB *and* ALSTON!? Two, two, two old coaches in one (puzzle)!? To say nothing of the more common sports stuff (GOT A HIT, BALKS, the baseball diamond in the middle of the grid, CAV, RCA DOME ...). But it was mainly the coaches that got me.
And then there was the trivia like FROZONE (back to the "secondary characters on 'The Incredibles'" well, I see) (16A: Character voiced by Samuel L. Jackson in "The Incredibles") and then meaningless (to me) stuff like OIL RING (41D: Engine part that distributes lubrication evenly) and ALAMOSA (38D: Colorado city on the Rio Grande). And tired old xword stuff like DENEB and AZOLE and IGAS (plural!) and SOU and LAC (!) and the non-Nan Bobbsey twin FLOSSIE (!?!?) (speaking of old). There wasn't much to cheer about. The theme was ultimately familiar and inconsequential, the fill was trivia-laden and mired in a pretty bygone era. OK, I'll give TOTAL LIE and HOT WINGS some credit. They do liven up the grid. But solving this just wasn't fun. PESETA *and* LIRA?! LOT *and* LOTT?! MRS. C *and* ESTELLE!? SELASSIE *and* FLOSSIE!?!?! (just kidding on that last one). I'll pass. Or, I would have, if I didn't have to write this blog :)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]