Constructor: Margaret Saine
Relative difficulty: Mediumish (4:48)
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THEME: editing— a convoluted sentence, inside of which are circled words that, taken together, form a well-edited version of said sentence:
Theme answers:
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As with yesterday's puzzle, there seems to be a significant gap between what the constructor wanted to do and what the constructor did. That is, the concept was sound, but the execution was less so. Only yesterday, the puzzle still managed to hold up, however totteringly. This one isn't so lucky. For me, the main problem is that the original, unedited sentence is entirely implausible that I couldn't make any grammatical sense of it at all while solving, and that even now does not seem like a sentence that any human would ever write—certainly no human that had written well enough in the past to have made it to the stage where they would actually *have* an editor. The thing that well (!) and truly kills the plausibility of the sentence is WELL. It took me forever (OK, maybe half a minute or so, which is Forever) after solving to figure out that WELL was an adverb modifying EDITING (!?). I just kept thinking "what is a 'draft of writing well'???!" Ditch the WELL and at least I have a plausible (however outlandish) bad sentence that I can imagine being edited into shape. The WELL is just a tin-eared disaster. The unedited sentence is a bad bad sentence. Not bad comma bad. Bad modifying bad. And if the subject of your puzzle is the art of editing, well ... I mean ... here, I'll let this tweet tell it:
How in—and I cannot stress this enough—the world do you let FORMED (44D: Gave shape to) cross FORM, in *any* puzzle, let alone one that is specifically about the art of editing!? This may be the greatest self-own in the history of crossword puzzle editing. I guess the NYTXW really *is* the "gold standard* after all. Bravo!
Five things:
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Relative difficulty: Mediumish (4:48)
Theme answers:
- EDITING A DRAFT OF (17A: Start of a long-winded musing from an author)
- WRITING WELL IS (35A: Musing, part 2)
- SURELY AN ART FORM (53A: End of the musing, which could simply have been the circled squares)
2: a formal entrance march of bullfighters into an arena (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
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| FORM crossing ... FORMED |
How in—and I cannot stress this enough—the world do you let FORMED (44D: Gave shape to) cross FORM, in *any* puzzle, let alone one that is specifically about the art of editing!? This may be the greatest self-own in the history of crossword puzzle editing. I guess the NYTXW really *is* the "gold standard* after all. Bravo!
Five things:
- 35D: East Coast 7-Eleven competitor (WAWA)— apparently this is a Philly thing (??). I'm sure I've seen one, but I've never lived anywhere near one and I needed every cross to get this answer
- 1D: Cheap and inauthentic (CHEESY)— I had CHEAPO. You can see how that was never going to work
- 8D: One who's "out" (ODD MAN) — man does he look ... odd ... all by himself there, without the "out" ...
- 33A: Craze (MANIA) — had -ANI-, wrote in PANIC
- 24D: Illustration for an ill tourist? (ANAGRAM)— I tend to find [blank for blank?] clues for ANAGRAM exasperating, but this one's so bonkers, I kinda like it (to be very very extra clear, "Illustration" is an ANAGRAM of "an ill tourist")
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