Constructor: Will Treece
Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:29)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: BINDI (25A: Mark on the foreheads of Hindu women) —
Wow, really thought this was a Saturday. Between having just woken up from a nap to discover that we are trying to start a hot war with Iran, and still being under the "what day is it even?" holiday haze, and the puzzle's Saturday-level difficulty, I was very confused. I even tweeted about the puzzle with the hashtag #Saturday... But it's Friday, Friday, Across and Down on Friday!
I think I went in with Big Saturday Energy, and the puzzle met me where I was at. That is, I was braced for hardness, and so I was somewhat more deliberate, somewhat more on the lookout for pitfalls, second-guessing myself, etc. But the real problem for me was the barrage of wrong answers, wrong answers that looked very right, wrong answers that, in fact, shared half or more of the letters of the *correct* answers. And all of these came in a bunch, up top. The worst of them all was OTHELLO for OPHELIA (4A: Shakespeare character who introduced the phrase "primrose path"). I had "O-HEL--" and Did Not Blink. I also don't think I read the clue past "Shakespeare character," because, well, it seemed obvious that the answer was OTHELLO, why go on? WHY INDEED! Ugh.
Then at 15D: Heaters (GATS) I had GUNS and at 7D: "___ Is Betta Than Evvah!" (1976 album) (ETTA) I had ELLA. Yes, in retrospect, ELLA does not rhyme with "Betta," but that meant nothing to me in the moment. I just thought "hmm, ELLA sings Cole Porter, right? And he wrote 'Did You Evah?', didn't he??" Pffffffffft. O those three mistakes just wrecked me. I also wrote in GRADDAD instead of GRANDKID at 11D: IV vis-à-vis II, e.g. because ... I dunno, dumbness? That whole section was a big claggy. I knew BINDI, but forgot Alice MUNRO won the Nobel and totally did not understand the UNCLE clue (22D: Cave man?) until well after I was finished with the puzzle (if you "Cave" (in) you might cry "UNCLE!"). I am now literally laughing at the UNCLE / CRACKER crossing:
I have definitely read "Antigone" and I definitely have no recollection of ISMENE, yipes! (47A: Antigone's sister). I only remember CREON! Just looked it up and CREON has somehow been in the grid only once (!) in the entire time I've been blogging (13+ years!!!). And this makes *two* appearances for ISMENE in that time period. The world is broken and upside-down. . . My last observation about this puzzle is that the perimeter, from the S around the SE corner (so SEERESSOSSMESSES) is not, uh, good. When you're pushing that many "S"s and "E"s into terminal positions, you are *struggling* to keep the grid from collapsing. Crutch city. But on the whole, I thought this one was solid enough. And I can see its having played as a very normal Friday if I hadn't fallen into a trap or two.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:29)
Word of the Day: BINDI (25A: Mark on the foreheads of Hindu women) —
A bindi (Hindi: बिंदी, from Sanskrit बिन्दु bindú, meaning "point, drop, dot or small particle") is a coloured dot worn on the centre of the forehead, originally by Hindusand Jains from the Indian subcontinent. The word bindu dates back to the hymn of creation known as Nasadiya Sukta in the Rigveda.[1] Bindu is considered the point at which creation begins and may become unity. It is also described as "the sacred symbol of the cosmos in its unmanifested state" (wikipedia)
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Wow, really thought this was a Saturday. Between having just woken up from a nap to discover that we are trying to start a hot war with Iran, and still being under the "what day is it even?" holiday haze, and the puzzle's Saturday-level difficulty, I was very confused. I even tweeted about the puzzle with the hashtag #Saturday... But it's Friday, Friday, Across and Down on Friday!
I think I went in with Big Saturday Energy, and the puzzle met me where I was at. That is, I was braced for hardness, and so I was somewhat more deliberate, somewhat more on the lookout for pitfalls, second-guessing myself, etc. But the real problem for me was the barrage of wrong answers, wrong answers that looked very right, wrong answers that, in fact, shared half or more of the letters of the *correct* answers. And all of these came in a bunch, up top. The worst of them all was OTHELLO for OPHELIA (4A: Shakespeare character who introduced the phrase "primrose path"). I had "O-HEL--" and Did Not Blink. I also don't think I read the clue past "Shakespeare character," because, well, it seemed obvious that the answer was OTHELLO, why go on? WHY INDEED! Ugh.
Then at 15D: Heaters (GATS) I had GUNS and at 7D: "___ Is Betta Than Evvah!" (1976 album) (ETTA) I had ELLA. Yes, in retrospect, ELLA does not rhyme with "Betta," but that meant nothing to me in the moment. I just thought "hmm, ELLA sings Cole Porter, right? And he wrote 'Did You Evah?', didn't he??" Pffffffffft. O those three mistakes just wrecked me. I also wrote in GRADDAD instead of GRANDKID at 11D: IV vis-à-vis II, e.g. because ... I dunno, dumbness? That whole section was a big claggy. I knew BINDI, but forgot Alice MUNRO won the Nobel and totally did not understand the UNCLE clue (22D: Cave man?) until well after I was finished with the puzzle (if you "Cave" (in) you might cry "UNCLE!"). I am now literally laughing at the UNCLE / CRACKER crossing:
I have definitely read "Antigone" and I definitely have no recollection of ISMENE, yipes! (47A: Antigone's sister). I only remember CREON! Just looked it up and CREON has somehow been in the grid only once (!) in the entire time I've been blogging (13+ years!!!). And this makes *two* appearances for ISMENE in that time period. The world is broken and upside-down. . . My last observation about this puzzle is that the perimeter, from the S around the SE corner (so SEERESSOSSMESSES) is not, uh, good. When you're pushing that many "S"s and "E"s into terminal positions, you are *struggling* to keep the grid from collapsing. Crutch city. But on the whole, I thought this one was solid enough. And I can see its having played as a very normal Friday if I hadn't fallen into a trap or two.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]