Constructor: Michael Schlossberg
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (probably actually "Easy" but I solved this while still half-asleep and my timer says Easy-Medium) (5:22)
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THEME: BINGO— all the themer clues contain the word "bingo" in some form, and there is a FREE space at the center of the grid:
Theme answers:
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This felt like a perfectly adequate puzzle from times of YORE. A solid late 20th-century puzzle. If you are of the bingo-playing age, here is your puzzle. I guess no one was really "gluten-free" in the 20th century, but still. This feels a little ... basic for a Thursday. I see people complaining that it's too easy for a Thursday, and it's definitely on the Easy side, but I don't think that's the main issue. I think there's just ... the one tricky bit (the "FREE" square), and the rest of it plays like an ordinary puzzle. There are "bingos" in all the theme clues, YEAH, but they're all straightforward. And since there are no non-theme answers longer than seven letters (and only two of those), there's no real interest outside the theme ... which isn't that interesting. There is definitely a logic and consistency and the grid does look (in one way) like a bingo card, but with very little trickiness and very little sparkly fill, the whole thing feels a bit flat. I think the grid design is really the problem, from a solver-enjoyment perspective. This is a max (78) word count puzzle, which means (in this case) the grid is loaded with short stuff; if you never really get a reprieve from the short stuff, then your theme has to be Dazzling. Otherwise, the crosswordese starts to come to the fore and dominate the experience. The only thing that sticks with me about this theme is that center square (which was easy to get, and which feels like it's probably been done before, though that's less of a deal). The weak theme meant that more of my attention went toward stale fill and off cluing.
I don't know if the problem was early-morning brain fog or genuine clue toughness, but I had real problems with very ordinary (short) answers today. Writing in ARE instead of AND, OK, anyone could've done that, especially if you had the "A" in place. No big deal (22D: Word often shortened to its middle letter). But I needed every cross to get NAY (26A: Assembly line?). I don't think of the word "assembly" as related to voting, but I guess, uh, the UN General Assembly ... votes ... sometimes? Also had very very scary what-the-hell issues at the HA- / TO-S crossing. The clue on HAS (64D: Orders) obviously is designed to fool you (noun? verb? what meaning of 'orders'?), and this MENU-related meaning of HAS is very narrow (you'd have to be describing someone else eating at a restaurant to use it this way, which is weird), but still, I should not have just blanked completely. Also 71A: Scrap is a notoriously multivalent word. Again, verb or noun? And which meaning? A small piece? A fight? Oh ... it's the verb meaning. You scrap something, you TOSS it, you get rid of it. Brain just could not manage that much ambiguity crossing this early in the morning. This may be another issue with the grid—it has to pick up whatever difficulty it has in the cluing for the short stuff, and that ... is not the way to get the most bang for your buck. No one wants to struggle and have the payoff be, say, SPF (1D: 50 is a high one: Abbr.). See also: cluing "UH-OH" as a "word" (10D: Worrisome word at a nuclear power plant). That is some letter-of-the-law cluing. It's an exclamation, and it's probably not, in many people's minds, *one* word. Also, I'm not really up for te(e)-heeing at lethal disasters these days. This puzzle does not fail to do what it sets out to do, but neither does it bring any real joy, anywhere.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. NEW PUZZLE ALERT: Crossword-constructing phenom Matt Gaffney is now doing a daily crossword for the Daily Beast (daily!). Very easy 10x10s focused on current events. Check them out here.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (probably actually "Easy" but I solved this while still half-asleep and my timer says Easy-Medium) (5:22)
Theme answers:
- 17A: Bingo, in Scrabble (FIFTY-POINT BONUS)
- 27A: "B-I-N-G-O," e.g. (NURSERY RHYME)
- 37A: Breakfast aisle option for a wheat allergy (GLUTEN-[FREE] CEREAL)
- 46A: Bingo, for one (GAME OF CHANCE)
- 61A: "Bingo!" ("ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!")
Paula Vogel (born November 16, 1951) is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre. (wikipedia)
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I don't know if the problem was early-morning brain fog or genuine clue toughness, but I had real problems with very ordinary (short) answers today. Writing in ARE instead of AND, OK, anyone could've done that, especially if you had the "A" in place. No big deal (22D: Word often shortened to its middle letter). But I needed every cross to get NAY (26A: Assembly line?). I don't think of the word "assembly" as related to voting, but I guess, uh, the UN General Assembly ... votes ... sometimes? Also had very very scary what-the-hell issues at the HA- / TO-S crossing. The clue on HAS (64D: Orders) obviously is designed to fool you (noun? verb? what meaning of 'orders'?), and this MENU-related meaning of HAS is very narrow (you'd have to be describing someone else eating at a restaurant to use it this way, which is weird), but still, I should not have just blanked completely. Also 71A: Scrap is a notoriously multivalent word. Again, verb or noun? And which meaning? A small piece? A fight? Oh ... it's the verb meaning. You scrap something, you TOSS it, you get rid of it. Brain just could not manage that much ambiguity crossing this early in the morning. This may be another issue with the grid—it has to pick up whatever difficulty it has in the cluing for the short stuff, and that ... is not the way to get the most bang for your buck. No one wants to struggle and have the payoff be, say, SPF (1D: 50 is a high one: Abbr.). See also: cluing "UH-OH" as a "word" (10D: Worrisome word at a nuclear power plant). That is some letter-of-the-law cluing. It's an exclamation, and it's probably not, in many people's minds, *one* word. Also, I'm not really up for te(e)-heeing at lethal disasters these days. This puzzle does not fail to do what it sets out to do, but neither does it bring any real joy, anywhere.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. NEW PUZZLE ALERT: Crossword-constructing phenom Matt Gaffney is now doing a daily crossword for the Daily Beast (daily!). Very easy 10x10s focused on current events. Check them out here.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]