Onetime truth in engineering sloganeer / THU 2-13-20 / Relative of jaguarundi / Reference that arranges words by concept rather than alphabetically / Noted painter of scenes in Napoleonic wars / Super Mario bros character with mushroom head

Constructor: Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:06, very much not trying to speed ... I can't speed-solve before 6am, and it's not even 5)

THEME: ROLL THE DICE (56A: Take a chance ... or a hint to the letters in the circled squares) — letters D, I, C, E appear in the "cube"-shaped circled squares, in a different configuration each time (because the DICE is "rolling") ... each "DICE" configuration is part of a long Across that enters the "cube" at the lower left corner, jumps up to pick up the top two letters, then comes down for the bottom right letter before continuing Across (well, one answer just ends there at the "cube")

Theme answers:

• IN-SERVICE DAYS (17A: Times when teachers go to school but students don't)
• SAUCE DISH (23A: Vessel for dipping at a dinner table)
• REVERSE DICTIONARY (36A: Reference that arranges words by concept rather than alphabetically)
• SHAVED ICE (51A: Cousin of a sno-cone)

Word of the Day: BELAY (31A: "___ that order!" ("Star Trek" command)) —

2. nautical : STOP, CANCEL
belay that last order (merriam-webster.com)

Really wanted to like this one. Have enjoyed work from these constructors before, so was excited to dig into this, but while there is fun to be had along the way today, I found this one clunked as much as it hummed. We can start with the theme itself, which feels like something I've seen before, conceptually, but ... that's not too big a deal, maybe the constructors will make it new and interesting. But just spinning four letters like this, and (I'm pretty sure) even the DICE thing has been done, so as soon as I get that revealer and realize all those square configurations are just gonna be DICE boxes, I'm already a little let down. Actually, I was let down earlier on two fronts. First, SAUCE DISH. That is ... not exactly a sizzling start. I can kind of imagine what one of those is, but it feels like such an odd, generic, non-specific phrase ... one that I basically inferred from SAUC- ... I can't really dispute the thingness of SAUCE DISH, but it was a disappointment. I like for themers to elicit a "ooh, good one!" not just an "uh, sure, OK." Which brings me to the next let-down, which is that I got the theme concept *immediately*. Very easy to figure out what was going on with SAUCE DISH when SAUCI- wasn't going to go anywhere, and those circles are basically screaming "look at us!" I was hoping the remaining circle configurations were going to hold new things, but then I got the revealer and realized it was just gonna be DICE. And they were gonna roll. I feel like there's some kind of REVERSE AHA MOMENT here, where I get the gimmick early, am not terribly intrigued by it, but still have the rest of the damn puzzle in front of me. The one thing I kinda liked about the theme—the fact that the answer went up and over each "DICE"—was the one thing that didn't seem in keeping with the "DICE" theme. The "rolling" happens as the "DICE" rotates one click counterclockwise at each stage as it "rolls" down the grid. NO IDEA how the up-and-over theme answer thing is DICE-y, but I'll take the added theme feature, since it's kind of fun. I also like how the "DICE" letters are always broken across two words in the themer. Nice added touch.


The last truly disappointing thing today was the phrase IN-SERVICE DAYS. I've been married to a NYS high school teacher for the better part of two decades and I have never heard this term. She definitely has "teacher conference days," where students are off but teachers meet for various reasons, and maybe I've heard "service days" (maybe...) but IN-SERVICE DAYS, sigh, no. I'm sure someone somewhere calls them that, or this answer wouldn't be here. But that answer clanked for me worse than SAUCE DISH. That was (consequently) the last and toughest part of the grid for me. Oh, and the grid ... so choppy and fussy. So much short stuff, which meant so much not-great stuff like -EAN and EINK and RGS and AER and on and on. I actually didn't dislike this puzzle as much as this first paragraph would suggest, but the execution was just off on this one, for me.


I have never seen a REVERSE DICTIONARY, and am not sure why you would use one, but I still liked that answer better than any of the others. It's snappy. And original. And I like how, in general, the clues were spiced (i.e. toughened) up in the short fill (probably because an abundance of short fill tends to make puzzles very easy, and the gimmick today isn't terribly hard to uncover, but it's Thursday, which is supposed to be a toughish solving day, so ... spicy! I actually had to think about the clues on little things like RIPE, NINTH, SALTS, HDTV, CENSUS, TED, etc. Really wanted to like SCIFI BOOK, and I see that that is a term people use, but it's SCI FI NOVEL, or should be, esp. where Clarke is concerned, even if he did occasionally publish a collection of short stories (8D: Many an arthur C. Clarke work). The clue says "work," singular, and the name of the "work" is not "book," it's "novel." If you look at his wikipedia page, the "Works" section is broken down into "novels,""short story collections," and "non-fiction," not "books"). Today really was mostly about my being irked that so many things felt off—not horrible, just wide of the mark.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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