Hacienda drudge / TUE 1-14-20 / Video game franchise in which enemies are pigs / Dadism pioneer / Vikki who sang it must be him / BuzzFeed competitor / Rogue computer in 2001

Constructor: Jim Peredo

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium ("Medium" was *entirely* the NW)

THEME: animals feeling various levels of ire — famous names / titles which follow the pattern [adjectives meaning some level of "displeased" + animal]

Theme answers:

• ANGRY BIRDS (18A: Video game franchise in which the enemies are pigs)
• GROUCHY / LADYBUG (23A: With 51-Across, Eric Carle kid-lit book, after "The")
• GRUMPY CAT (34A: Feline in an internet meme)
• RAGING BULL (57A: 1980 Boxing biopic)

Word of the Day: MASHABLE (36D: BuzzFeed competitor) (really? "competitor"?) —

Mashable is a digital media website founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005.

Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a simple WordPress blog, with Cashmore as sole author. Fame came relatively quickly, with Time magazine noting Mashable as one of the 25 best blogs of 2009. As of November 2015, it had over 6,000,000 Twitter followers and over 3,200,000 fans on Facebook. In June 2016, it acquired YouTube channel CineFix from Whalerock Industries.

In December 2017, Ziff Davis bought Mashable for $50 million, a price described by Recode as a "fire sale" price. Mashable had not been meeting its advertising targets, accumulating $4.2 million in losses in the quarter ending September 2017. After the sale, Mashable laid off 50 staffers, but preserved top management. Because of the drop in value, stock options previously issued to employees became worthless. (wikipedia)

This solve was pretty much defined by my never having heard of "The GROUCHY / LADYBUG"; that answer crossed the end of NOTAONE, whose quaintness was inscrutable to me (I had NOTHING and NOT A BIT before getting to the correct answer). I don't think of a PEON as having anything to do with a "Hacienda" specifically or Spanish generally, so 14A: Hacienda drudge was a bizarre clue to my eyes. And then 1D was a cross-reference, ERGO useless (1D: 18-Across, e.g.). Thus, that GROUCHY bit could not have been better situated to mess me up. That whole NW section was an awkward struggle—and I actually *knew* CARR (24D: Vikki who sang "It Must Be Him"), which, if you are not a longtime solver and are under, say, 50, might very well have been baffling. Vikki is no longer what I would call a Tuesday CARR. Are there any Tuesday CARRs? Caleb? I'll have to think on this one. Anyway, once, I got (the hell) out of the NW, the puzzle suddenly got ridiculously easy. I wrote in RAGING BULL without ever looking at the clue, that's how fast things were going. EASY (66A: "No problemo!"). In the end, I think this one is pretty solid. It's got a fun, consistent, modern theme, and the fill is very smooth, for the most part. Angry, Grouchy, Grumpy, Raging. Yes, this works. If only my Eric Carle knowledge went further than "The Hungry Caterpillar"...


I hope you are not one of the people who will inevitably be shouting that the NYTXW made an error today with DESERTS (13D: "Just" punishment). The answer is correct. Just DESERTS are what you *deserve*, not some kind of Banana Split of Justice or pie to the face. Is MASHABLE really a "competitor" or BuzzFeed. I am aware that MASHABLE exists only because its stories get forced into my social media feeds from time to time. I'm not business-type person, but my guess is that this alleged "competition" is, uh, asymmetrical. BuzzFeed feels like a monolith, MASHABLE feels like someone in 2030 making a joke about what the internet was like in 2015. I only ever hear BANE in the phrase "BANE of my existence," where it is idiomatic and means nothing like "ruination." Thus I had trouble getting to BANE from its clue (which is perfectly dictionary-correct) (19D: Cause of ruination). After all those stumbles in the NW, I made just one stumble the rest of the way. I had -O-E at 38A: A wartime communication might be sent in it (CODE), and I unblinkingly wrote in DOVE. I guess they didn't really put the message *in* the doves ... and, wait, am I thinking of pigeons? Oh, dang, I'm thinking of pigeons. Wow. Well, that was fun. Have a nice Tuesday!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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