Verde desert tree / WED 12-25-19 / Nebraska county named for indigenous people / Weather map lines relating to temperature / Rhyming question of attractiveness

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:15)

THEME: Santa chortling all over the place — phrases with "HO" sound in them have that sound tripled to "HOHOHO," and phrase is given a wacky "things Santa might say"-type clue:

Theme answers:

• "LAND HO HO HO!" (17A: What Santa said when his sleigh touched down?)
• "PLEASE HO- HO- HOLD" (23A: What Santa might say on his North Pole hotline?)
• "IT'S HO- HO- HOPELESS!" (38A: What Santa said when the reindeer went on strike on Christmas Eve?)
• "HO- HO- HOLY SMOKES!" (50A: What Santa said when going down a chimney that had a lit fireplace?)
• "I'M HO- HO- HOME!" (61A: What Santa says around dawn on Christmas Day?)

Word of the Day: ISOTHERMS (31D: Weather map lines relating to temperature) —

1: a line on a map or chart of the earth's surface connecting points having the same temperature at a given time or the same mean temperature for a given period

2: a line on a chart representing changes of volume or pressure under conditions of constant temperature (merriam-webster.com)

If I may quote several early reviews I saw of this puzzle: "No no no." The theme is conceptually fine (though not that well executed—more on that in a moment). But the fill is so grim that I can't believe you'd want to run this puzzle *any* day of the year, let alone Christmas Day. I mean, Bashar al-ASSAD? Really? Really?? You want to put that ****ing murderous dictator, commiter of war crimes, user of chemical weapons, that guy, you want to put *him* in your light-hearted Santa-themed puzzle? And NOOSE!? Yeesh, that's grim: genocide *and* lynchings. Quite a day. And then you throw in the leering HOT OR NOT (39D: Rhyming question of attractiveness), an answer that recalls the creepy early days of Facebook, when it was called FaceMash and was set up as "a type of "hot or not" game for Harvard students. The website allowed visitors to compare two female student pictures side by side and let them decide who was more attractive" (wikipedia). Ugh. So many bad vibes in this puzzle. The misery even works its way into the theme a little, with the reindeer going on strike and Santa just going, "Oh, it's ho- ho- hopeless." Hey, Santa, pay your ****ing reindeer, you creep!


As I said, I don't mind the basic theme concept, though I wish the answers had more oomph to them. Also, LAND HO HO HO is awful, first because ... wow, there are so many things wrong. You say "land ho" when you see land, not when you "touch down." Also, that's just not a very Christmasy image. It's like you tried to make an utterly unChristmas thing into a Christmas thing just because it had "HO" in it. And about that: that answer is terrible because it's the only one where "HO" is not the first syllable of a larger word. That repeated "HO" syllable at the front end of words gives the puzzle its quirkiness and charm. But when you're just repeating "HO" on its own? That's just sad. Ho-ho-horrible first themer. The others are fine. 



Screwed up a few times along the way. Wrote in AGE instead of BIO (5D: Part of a dating profile, for short). Had PASO, I think, before PALO (1D: ___ verde (desert tree)). Wanted YOKEL before YAHOO (53D: Country bumpkin). And then just couldn't think what the hell kind of scent an air freshener might have. I hate those things. Artificial aromas give me headaches. I don't think I'd've guessed LEMON if I'd had ten guesses. So I just got that one from crosses. Hey, did you know you can get rid of NOOSE (ugh) super duper easy. NO ONE / ONO, and ... that's it. There are other remedies too, as any half-experienced constructor could tell you. I just don't get putting NOOSE in your puzzle if you don't absolutely have to. Especially on Christmas. Bizarre. OK, gotta get to bed before Santa comes. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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