Constructor: John Lampkin
Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday) (2:55)
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THEME: weights — themers are famililarish phrases that start with units of weight, each one bigger than the last (with every themer following a "[unit of weight] OF [some thing]" pattern):
Theme answers:
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Well, enough of Women's Month Week, back to men, right on cue. And back to a rather miserable experience. At least half a dozen ughs or groans, zero smiles. Let's start with the theme—I guess there are many grains in an ounce, many ounces in a pound, and many pounds in a ton, so there's a *kind* of progression here, but it's not a familiar one. Like, GRAIN OUNCE POUND TON does not track as a sequence. It's not clear exactly which weight system is being used here. Troy weight doesn't deal in tons. If it's just "English" or "Imperial" weights, then ... what happened to STONE ?(not to mention some other, far less known units). No, this sequence is tenuous. Weak. Not really a coherent thing. Also, OUNCE OF SENSE feels very weak. The only OUNCE OF phrase that I know at all is OUNCE OF PREVENTION. Maybe *ONE* OUNCE OF SENSE, that feels in the language (and makes a much more natural answer to the clue, [What a complete fool lacks]), but just OUNCE OF SENSE all by itself feels wobbly. The others are fine but bland. The bigger problem today is the fill, which is of yore and of yesteryear and very very much not interesting. I knew things were bad when I hit MY HAT, and then was proved right with (deep breath) OPEL APR GELÉE (!?!) ESTE ULEE PEE (!!!!?!?) ATRA ASTAEKESERLEEREELO .... wow. Just OOF. All over. ATSTUD!? You have got to craft your grids much, much better than this. Eliminate the dross. Clean stuff up. This grid might've passed muster 30 years ago, but there's no excuse for it today. Mothball city. C'mon, man.
Only trouble I had today was the SENSE part of OUNCE OF SENSE (again, just not an intuitive stand-alone phrase to me) and GELÉE, which is just not a word I ever hear. Do you mean hair gel. It's just called "gel," I'm pretty sure. And also ... I'm pretty sure [Cosmetic goop] ("goop!?!") is not a very spot-on clue for something as chichi-sounding as GELÉE. Maybe GELÉE is only for someone who DOLLS UP a lot (i.e. not me), who knows? If the rest of the grid weren't so dismal, maybe it wouldn't bug me so much. Oh, and I balked at the clue on DRIPPED (49A: Leaked, as an old faucet). I wanted DRIPPED, but couldn't figure out why a new faucet wouldn't also drop. Because it would. Oldness and leaking do not seem like related things to me. What is "old," exactly, in faucet-years? I assumed this clue meant [Leaked, as faucets of yore], so DRIPPED seemed ... wrong. I mean, jeez, DRIPPED!? Any faucet can drip. What if you just didn't turn it all the way off?? That could happen to a faucet of any age. So many potential for DRIPPED, and yet you somehow manage to trip on it. Can we do Women's Week again? Please? I didn't love every puzzle from last week, but I'll take *any* of last week's puzzles over stale and lukewarm stuff like this.
P.S. I miss my lapdog
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Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday) (2:55)
Theme answers:
- GRAIN OF SAND (18A: What you should take dubious advice with)
- OUNCE OF SENSE (29A: What a complete fool lacks)
- POUND OF FLESH (46A: Shylock's harsh demand, in "The Merchant of Venice")
- TON OF BRICKS (58A: What "it" may hit you like)
Nate the Great is a series of more than two dozen children's detective stories written by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat featuring the eponymous boy detective, Nate the Great. Sharmat and illustrator Marc Simont inaugurated the series in 1972 with Nate the Great, a 60-page book published by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, and Simont illustrated the first twenty books, to 1998.[...] Nate is a detective, a child version of Sam Spade. He solves crimes with his dog, Sludge, introduced in the second case, Nate the Great goes Undercover (1974). Nate finds him in a field eating a stale pancake. (Both Nate and Sludge love pancakes.) (wikipedia)
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Only trouble I had today was the SENSE part of OUNCE OF SENSE (again, just not an intuitive stand-alone phrase to me) and GELÉE, which is just not a word I ever hear. Do you mean hair gel. It's just called "gel," I'm pretty sure. And also ... I'm pretty sure [Cosmetic goop] ("goop!?!") is not a very spot-on clue for something as chichi-sounding as GELÉE. Maybe GELÉE is only for someone who DOLLS UP a lot (i.e. not me), who knows? If the rest of the grid weren't so dismal, maybe it wouldn't bug me so much. Oh, and I balked at the clue on DRIPPED (49A: Leaked, as an old faucet). I wanted DRIPPED, but couldn't figure out why a new faucet wouldn't also drop. Because it would. Oldness and leaking do not seem like related things to me. What is "old," exactly, in faucet-years? I assumed this clue meant [Leaked, as faucets of yore], so DRIPPED seemed ... wrong. I mean, jeez, DRIPPED!? Any faucet can drip. What if you just didn't turn it all the way off?? That could happen to a faucet of any age. So many potential for DRIPPED, and yet you somehow manage to trip on it. Can we do Women's Week again? Please? I didn't love every puzzle from last week, but I'll take *any* of last week's puzzles over stale and lukewarm stuff like this.
P.S. I miss my lapdog
