Constructor: Trenton Charlson
Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed clipboard solve)
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THEME: FINAL FOUR (62A: March Madness quartet ... or, collectively, the second parts of 17-, 25-, 37- and 51-Across?) — second parts of themers are W, X, Y, and Z, respectively, i.e. the FINAL FOUR letters of the alphabet:
Theme answers:
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How hard would it have been to run this on a Tuesday in, let's say, March? I know the theme doesn't have anything to do with college basketball, but with a revealer clue like that, running the puzzle in any month but March just seems silly. You've got at least four Tuesdays in March, right? I doubt you've already got four March-specific Tuesday puzzles lined up for 2020, so why not hold this one? First Tuesday in March? Would've made the revealer much punchier, much more Aha! Oho! AHH. One of those. Running it in January is a bit of a GROANER. But that's not the puzzle's fault, obviously, and I think as Tuesday puzzles go, this one was fine. And it was Very easy, so people are going to enjoy it for that reason if for nothing else. The letter string gimmick feels slight—you could do it with other letter strings—say A, B, C, D or L, M, N, O, P—though the revealer gives it some cohesiveness (yet Another reason to run this thing in the correct month—that revealer has to do a lot of work: help it out!). I found the start of the solve slightly off-putting—allHOODOO and warts—but after that, with the exception of the occasional short gunk you get with almost every puzzle, the fill on this was smooth and even vibrant at times (OPEN MRI, TOPOLOGY, GRANDEUR, THE SAME, COYOTE ... I like all canids). And the themers were also interesting—though I've never used CONTROL-Z in my life and no one uses GENERATION Y. Still, those are valid phrases. Overall, very acceptable work.
The only speed bumps today came early on with the perennial "is it AAH or AHH????" question right off the bat at 1A: Sigh of satisfaction (AHH), an (ironically) unpleasant way to begin. I always want AAH for the relaxation sound, as the vowel should be drawn out (to my ear), but today, AHH it is. Then just figuring out HOODOO took most of the crosses (2D: Jinx). Thought there might be something about "hoax" in there, and then even after getting HOOD- thought, "HOODED?" Then since I thought 24A: Zoom up was something you do on your motorbike, not your airplane (SOAR), well, I think I spent more time with that answer than I spent with the entire bottom half of the grid. I didn't even see some of the Acrosses in the SW (where I finished up). Glad I didn't see NRA—I'm grateful they didn't use the gun clue, but if you throw a random Alphabet Soup clue at me, I'm just going to be confused. Do you have any idea how many [New Deal inits.] there are?? But I lucked into getting all the crosses and never actually seeing the clue. Hurray! I think I had RAVED before I had RAN ON (15A: Yakked and yakked)—I definitely wanted one past-tense word—but nothing else in the grid proved an obstacle for even a moment after I got out of the N/NW. Tight theme, smooth fill, easy clues. I've done (much) worse Tuesdays.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed clipboard solve)
Theme answers:
- COMPOUND W (17A: "The wart stops here" sloganeer)
- MALCOLM X (25A: Civil rights activist with a Harlem thoroughfare named after him)
- GENERATION Y (37A: So-called "millennials")
- CONTROL-Z (51A: Keyboard shortcut for "undo," on a PC)
The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was a prime New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in 1933. The goal of the administration was to eliminate "cut throat competition" by bringing industry, labor, and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices. The NRA was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and allowed industries to get together and write "codes of fair competition." The codes intended both to reduce "destructive competition" and help workers to set minimum wages and maximum weekly hours, as well as minimum prices at which products could be sold. The NRA also had a two-year renewal charter and was set to expire in June 1935 if not renewed. (wikipedia)
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The only speed bumps today came early on with the perennial "is it AAH or AHH????" question right off the bat at 1A: Sigh of satisfaction (AHH), an (ironically) unpleasant way to begin. I always want AAH for the relaxation sound, as the vowel should be drawn out (to my ear), but today, AHH it is. Then just figuring out HOODOO took most of the crosses (2D: Jinx). Thought there might be something about "hoax" in there, and then even after getting HOOD- thought, "HOODED?" Then since I thought 24A: Zoom up was something you do on your motorbike, not your airplane (SOAR), well, I think I spent more time with that answer than I spent with the entire bottom half of the grid. I didn't even see some of the Acrosses in the SW (where I finished up). Glad I didn't see NRA—I'm grateful they didn't use the gun clue, but if you throw a random Alphabet Soup clue at me, I'm just going to be confused. Do you have any idea how many [New Deal inits.] there are?? But I lucked into getting all the crosses and never actually seeing the clue. Hurray! I think I had RAVED before I had RAN ON (15A: Yakked and yakked)—I definitely wanted one past-tense word—but nothing else in the grid proved an obstacle for even a moment after I got out of the N/NW. Tight theme, smooth fill, easy clues. I've done (much) worse Tuesdays.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]