2013 disaster film with cult following / FRI 2-28-20 / Celle-la across Pyrenees / Prohibition-era guns / Something Winnie the Pooh lacks

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Easy / Easy-Medium (untimed on paper)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AKON (46D: One-named singer with the 2006 hit "Smack That") —

Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam (/ˈeɪkɒn/; born April 16, 1973) is a Senegalese-American singer, songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and actor. He rose to prominence in 2004 following the release of "Locked Up", the first single from his debut album, Trouble. [...] His second album, Konvicted received three nominations for the Grammy Awards in two categories, Best Contemporary R&B Album for Konvicted album and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Smack That" and "I Wanna Love You". // He is the first solo artist to hold both the number one and two spots simultaneously on the BillboardHot 100 charts twice.^[1] Akon has had four songs certified as 3× platinum, three songs certified as 2× platinum, more than ten songs certified as 1× platinum and more than ten songs certified as gold in digital sales. Akon has sung songs in other languages including Tamil, Hindi, and Spanish. He was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the #1 selling artist for master ringtones in the world. [...] Forbes ranked Akon 80th (Power Rank) in Forbes Celebrity 100 in 2010 and 5th in 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa list, in 2011. Billboard ranked Akon No. 6 on the list of Top Digital Songs Artists of the decade.

So nice to wake up and see Aimee Lucido's name in the byline. She is part of the elite New Yorker crossword team (along with legends like Patrick Berry, Liz Gorski, Erik Agard...) and her puzzles are typically effervescent delights. This one was no exception. Clue after clue, answer after answer had me smiling and (if you can imagine) genuinely enjoying myself! Her puzzles tend to skew contemporary, with lots of fresh turns of phrase and concepts but not (necessarily) a lot of proper nouns. I like proper nouns just fine, but they can be really hostile to people who don't know them and create hard generational lines between solvers. You gotta handle them carefully. Today, AKON's the only real potential proper name stumbling block I see. Mostly I see really in-the-language words and phrases like BINGE WATCH (such a good clue—1A: See the seasons pass quickly?) and ESCAPE ROOM and DEATH TRAPS and COPARENTS and MAKE IT RAIN (again, so good) (52A: Give out cash freely). I guess there is "SHARKNADO"—that's definitely a proper name. But "SHARKNADO" is the "Godfather" of the 2010s, so I just assume everyone knows it. "I'm gonna MAKO him an offer he can't refuse!" Classic.


I love that this puzzle came on the heels of yesterday's puzzle. That puzzle was a technical marvel, in its way, but those puzzles always feel like puzzbros (virtually always guys) showing off for other puzzbros, whereas this ... this just feels like a good time. I know, it's apples and oranges, as Thursdays call for trickiness and Fridays call for a certain open breezy challenge, but still, I have to note that the dearth of women constructors is especially striking when women constructors finally *do* appear and are so clearly above average. The WSJ hardly publishes any women, but when they finally did publish a team of women (Joanne Sullivan and Amy Goldstein) last week ... well, I liked that puzzle more than almost any WSJ puzzle I'd done that year. Erik Agard has the USA Today at something like 70% women constructors right now (!?) and that puzzle is objectively better than it's ever been. The New Yorker crossword team is almost half women, and those puzzles are consistently first-rate. The problem isn't "women aren't interested," the problem is The Culture. And when the most prominent members of The Culture do not care about representation, you have ... our current situation. Anyway, Aimee is great and the NYTXW is lucky she deigned to send them anything.


I made a lot lot lot of mistakes for such an easy puzzle. Let's start with TEAM for BEDS (1D: Twins, e.g.). Shout-out to all my Minnesota readers (there are a weird lot of you)! I am on a social media fast for Lent and what has replaced it is a metric ton of preseason baseball media (news, Grapefruit and Cactus League games, podcasts aplenty, etc.). With friends as well as a daughter in Minneapolis, and baseball on the brain, I could not see "Twins" as anything but a TEAM. I actually had BE_S and still no idea for a few seconds. Brain: ".... is it TEAM?" What else?

Mistakes:

• 46D: One-named singer with the 2006 hit "Smack That" (AKON) — what happens when you are aware of various names but have no idea what songs they go with? NEYO happens!

• 8D: Its scientific name is Bufo bufo (TOAD) — had the -OA-, went with COAL
• 41A: Like many Egyptian pyramids (LOOTED)— this is a very good but very tough clue. Had LOO-ED and still no idea. Thought maybe the passages inside were ... LOOPED? Or maybe there are ankhs ... those have loops, right? Kinda? ... 

• 20A: Something Winnie-the-Pooh lacks (PANTS) — I didn't make a mistake here, I just wanted to point out this answer, which amused me. It's funny 'cause it's true.
• 45A: About .4% of the weight of the human body (NACL)— OK I object to this clue, as there is nothing in it that indicates to me the answer will be a chemical formula! Boooo! Anyway, I forgive this clue, as it led me to my best wrong answer. I had the "N" and eventually decided that .4% of the weight of the human body must be attributable to the NECK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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