Constructor: Mary Lou Guizzo
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)
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THEME: boxing phrases— all with non-boxing clues:
Theme answers:
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Weird puzzle. The themers were all incredibly easy to get. Worked a few Downs into each of them before ever looking at the clues, and then got every one at first glance. I see the puzzle is trying really hard to come up with clues that steer the context away from boxing, but ... I dunno. It just looks like a lot of violence to me. Nothing very interesting going on except that every themer is 15 letters long. The gloves never actually come off in boxing, but we'll just let that one go. I guess this puzzle proves that boxing has given us a lot of idiomatic phrases, but that's about all this puzzle does. The fill is truly poor. As bad as I've seen in a while, and certainly the worst I've seen this year. So jarring to have the themers be pieces of cake and then have to struggle with the shorter gunk holding it all together. Everywhere you look, unpleasantness. The worst for me was the "ERI TU" / IDIO- / NOTV / GLUEPOT smashup in the upper-middle-left of the grid. Glue POT? (25D: Receptacle for one doing decoupage) That's a thing? And "ERI TU" here is a partial!? Those five letters are quintessential crosswordese, the kind of thing you absolutely positively want to avoid if at all possible, so that your grid doesn't seem like some awful relic. To shove "ERI TU" in there with RLS and IDIO ... it's so rough and awful-feeling. Unfortunately, other parts of the grid aren't clean either. ENUF ROLF ANO ... HAAS AAAS ... HATH ENTR' ... ARS NEY ... ENOLA UIES ... SCHUSS SSR ... there's hardly a patch of land that isn't tainted by something to make you go EWW or UGH. It's all just so tired and tiresome.
ANKE held me up a bit because I thought the last letter of her name was an "A" (40D: Tennis great Huber). I guess she was pretty "great"—way greater than Jay HAAS was at golf, that's for sure—but (like HAAS) she never won a major. I wouldn't use her name unless I absolutely had to. But I wouldn't be commenting on her name at all if the rest of the grid weren't such a mess. I am totally unfamiliar with PUT as a correct answer to 60D: Wager. Like most solvers (probably???) I wrote in BET (I had the "T" from SETH already). I'm guessing it's some technical thing, inserted here to make an otherwise very very easy puzzle a tiny bit harder. Or is it as simple as, say, "I PUT $5 on Mane Event to show!"? Maybe that's it. TMC is not an abbr anyone uses—just try to get a first page of search results that *doesn't* suggest that maybe you were thinking of TCM (a real abbr. in common use because it's a channel people actually watch). And TMC is an [HBO competitor] in What universe??? Does HBO even know The Movie Channel exists?? First you want me to believe MASHABLE is a "competitor" of BuzzFeed, now you want me to believe that TMC is a "competitor" of HBO. No. No, I say. You are causing "competitor" to lose all meaning, and I have to draw a line somewhere.
There are very plausible TWO-HIT game scenarios where the pitcher gets absolutely shellacked. How many batters did the pitcher walk? Or hit with a pitch. Walk a couple guys and give up a homer, and then walk a couple more and give up a triple that the next batter knocks in with a sac fly ... suddenly you are pitching a TWO-HIT game and you're down 6-0. Not "really good." Yes, under most circumstances, if you go the distance and just give up two hits, you have pitched well. But the further you drift from the legitimately named games (NO-HIT, ONE-HIT), the more your claims that the game was necessarily well pitched come to seem suspect. The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)
Theme answers:
- HIT BELOW THE BELT (17A: Engaged in foul play)
- SPARRING PARTNER (22A: One engaged in friendly contention) [not sure you wanna double up on "engaged" after using it in your first theme clue...]
- THE GLOVES ARE OFF (36A: "Oh, now they're really going to fight!")
- THROW IN THE TOWEL (49A: Cry "Uncle!")
- PULLS ONE'S PUNCHES (56A: Hold back)
ay Dean Haas (born December 2, 1953) is an American professional golfer formerly of the PGA Tour who now plays on the PGA Tour Champions. [...] Haas has had a solid career on the PGA Tour, winning nine times between 1978 and 1993. He had a resurgence in 2003, when he finished in the top 30 on the money list for the first time since 1995 and made the United States Presidents Cup team. The following year he was one of Hal Sutton's two captain's picks for the Ryder Cup, and made his third appearance in that event.Haas was known for being one of the most consistent players on the PGA Tour over the course of his career and ended up playing 798 events. He is only five starts off Mark Brooks' record. He has made the cut 592 times on the PGA Tour, more than any other player. Haas also has the distinction of playing in the most major tournaments without a win, with 87 during his PGA Tour career. (wikipedia)
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ANKE held me up a bit because I thought the last letter of her name was an "A" (40D: Tennis great Huber). I guess she was pretty "great"—way greater than Jay HAAS was at golf, that's for sure—but (like HAAS) she never won a major. I wouldn't use her name unless I absolutely had to. But I wouldn't be commenting on her name at all if the rest of the grid weren't such a mess. I am totally unfamiliar with PUT as a correct answer to 60D: Wager. Like most solvers (probably???) I wrote in BET (I had the "T" from SETH already). I'm guessing it's some technical thing, inserted here to make an otherwise very very easy puzzle a tiny bit harder. Or is it as simple as, say, "I PUT $5 on Mane Event to show!"? Maybe that's it. TMC is not an abbr anyone uses—just try to get a first page of search results that *doesn't* suggest that maybe you were thinking of TCM (a real abbr. in common use because it's a channel people actually watch). And TMC is an [HBO competitor] in What universe??? Does HBO even know The Movie Channel exists?? First you want me to believe MASHABLE is a "competitor" of BuzzFeed, now you want me to believe that TMC is a "competitor" of HBO. No. No, I say. You are causing "competitor" to lose all meaning, and I have to draw a line somewhere.
There are very plausible TWO-HIT game scenarios where the pitcher gets absolutely shellacked. How many batters did the pitcher walk? Or hit with a pitch. Walk a couple guys and give up a homer, and then walk a couple more and give up a triple that the next batter knocks in with a sac fly ... suddenly you are pitching a TWO-HIT game and you're down 6-0. Not "really good." Yes, under most circumstances, if you go the distance and just give up two hits, you have pitched well. But the further you drift from the legitimately named games (NO-HIT, ONE-HIT), the more your claims that the game was necessarily well pitched come to seem suspect. The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]