Obsolescent aid for businessperson / SAT 11-9-19 / Stereotypical exclamation from Hercule Poirot / Aircraft that excels at water landings / Rapturous reception for Oprah Winfrey / Corporate shuffle for short

Constructor: Neil Padrick Wilson

Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed, but once I got going, there wasn't much resistance—plus Twitter is *awash* in 'PERSONAL BEST SATURDAY TIME!" notices...)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: FLOAT PLANE (11D: Aircraft that excels at water landings) —

A floatplane is a type of seaplane with one or more slender floats mounted under the fuselage to provide buoyancy. (wikipedia)

Solving first thing in the morning, my brain just doesn't operate quite right. I printed this one out, put it on the clipboard, sat down in the comfy chair to solve, and the first answer I went to was 23A: "And this affects me ... how?" Like, why would I do that? Why would I start there? That's' just weird. Maybe my eye caught the clue and its strange colloquialness just piqued my interest, I dunno. But I do know I spent like a minute just poking around that answer ("OK. SO?") and its crosses (I could get only EON and OPTTO). Then I was like "huh, well, this has been fun, wonder what the rest of the puzzle is like," hopped just an inch over to the NW (traditional crossword starting point!) and TEN INAPT NAPE ACHE whooooosh, off I went. ASPERUSUAL off the ASP-, "SUPER FREAK" off of nothing (an enormous gimme), and on and on. No idea if solving in the evening on computer would've gotten me a record Saturday time, but it seems possible. Only issues were spelling of MADEA (classical theater lover in me just instinctively went "MED-"), and, oddly, WOMAN, whose clue (44D: Amazon, e.g.) was ... I mean, accurate, I guess, but a bit like using ["Moby-Dick," e.g.] as a clue for BOOK or [Jack Lemmon, e.g.] as a clue for HUMAN BEING. Got the WOM- part and for a half-second thought I must have had something wrong. Then WOMAN dropped. OK. So?


I am trying to pinpoint why I didn't find this one very exciting, despite the fact that it's trying so hard. I like many answers in it. I like "SUPER FREAK" (even if the clue was Way too easy). I like SNOOZEFEST, I like "NO PROBLEMO!" (very early-Bart-Simpson). But ENGLISH TEA and FLOAT PLANE and USED AS BAIT and UTTER BORES (plural) felt like a wordlist dump. Who would even think to put ENGLISH TEA in a puzzle. I know ENGLISH BREAKFAST TEA (too long for any non-Sunday grid), but ENGLISH TEA? FLOAT PLANE is a thing, for sure, but feels technical in a way that it's hard to imagine someone's really *wanting* that answer. ZORRO MASK looks cool, but isn't that just a mask? Like, a black mask that covers just your eyes? There's a movie called "The Mask of Zorro." The thing that really makes the Zorro look, besides the sword, is the hat. USED AS BAIT is a verb phrase that feels very iffy as a standalone answer. USE AS BAIT, USES AS BAIT, USING AS BAIT, are these all good? I'm fumbling around here trying to put my finger on why I didn't find this groovy, despite there not being much junk at all (TGI and NOTUS were my only real "ick" moments). I think it's that it doesn't have a voice. It doesn't feel like a human made it. Constructors, at their best, have voices, personalities, they have a feel to their puzzles. "Voice" is the best term I can think of. This one doesn't have a distinctive voice. It's like ... somewhere in the uncanny valley of Saturday puzzles. Like, it's very puzzle-like, very passable, and yet there's something ... off. Like a super-sophisticated but not-sophisticated-enough robot made it. "This is human fun, yes!?" I mean ...yes? I'm not outraged. But I didn't have a blast. "Your hot dog buns come in OCTETs, yes!?" Sure they do, Puzzy. Sure they do.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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