Gilbert and Sullivan princess / FRI 5-15-20 / Rapper on the 2001 #1 hit "Lady Marmalade" / "The Great Movies" author / 2015 winner of Best Musical

Constructor:Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


THEME: none

Word of the Day:Straight of JUAN de Fuca (51D: Strait of ___ de Fuca, waterway separating Washington State from Vancouver Island)—

The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada^[1]) is a body of water about 96 miles (83 nmi; 154 km) long^[2] that is the Salish Sea's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the center of the Strait.

It was named in 1787 by the maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley, captain of Imperial Eagle, for Juan de Fuca, the Greek navigator who sailed in a Spanish expedition in 1592 to seek the fabled Strait of Anián. Barkley was the first non-indigenous person to find the strait, unless Juan de Fuca's story was true.^[3] The strait was explored in detail between 1789 and 1791 by Manuel Quimper, José María Narváez, Juan Carrasco, Gonzalo López de Haro, and Francisco de Eliza.

Hi all-- Rachel Fabi subbing in for Rex today. And what a great day to sub! I've said this before, and I'll probably say it many more times, but I friggin love Fridays. Themeless puzzles just have so much more room for the constructor to express who they are and what they care about, and even with the constraints that this *absolutely gorgeous* 66 word grid put on Mr. Adams, his voice really shines through.

And, man, that is a pretty grid. I paused to take a screenshot of the blank grid, giving up valuable clock time, because it's just so lovely. We've got two intersecting staircases through the middle with 3x11s across and 3x11s down, and both sets of 11 are absolutely stunning: MEAN STREETS / BURNT ORANGE / FASHIONISTA run across, and KEPT IN TOUCH / PANTS ON FIRE / RESTRICTIVE run down. Every single part of this central feature is just *chef's kiss* bellissima. I got a little ensnared trying to solve this section because I could have sworn PolitiFact used "Pinocchios" as their measure of truth, but it turns out that is the Washington Post. I also got the second half of ___ORANGE right away but couldn't get past "RUSTY..?" in my head, which slowed me down as well.

With that middle section dominated by the double staircase, the rest of the grid gets pulled a tad TAUTLY, but not so tight that the fill becomes untenable (although there are some rough patches, which is a natural consequence of this ambitious grid design). That said, there are so many flashes of personality and joy in this puzzle that, for me, they greatly outweigh the rougher bits of fill. I'm talking about entries like I'M NOT OK, which I think has become a pandemic mantra for many people coming to terms with our new normal. Similarly, I loved the entry/clue combo on UNPACK (15A: Work through, as feelings), which is one of my favorite overused terms that just means "talk about" (as in, "let's UNPACK the overuse of the term UNPACK, shall we?"). The THOR / CHRIS Hemsworth 1-2 punch (hammer?) was cute as well, and (probably) not just because I am about 2/3 of the way through a pandemic binge of all of the Marvel movies I failed to watch when they were actually coming out. FUN HOME is a beautiful queer musical based on a beautiful queer graphic memoir, and if you have not listened to/seen/read it, I cannot recommend it enough.

Another highlight of this puzzle for me was the excellent wordplay. When I finally parsed (7A: Lines on a record) as CRIMES I may have actually laughed out loud, although I was also a tad grumpy that there was no ? on the clue. Other good ones that also lacked ?'s: (19A: It's used for kicks) for KNEE and (24A: Stand on deck) for BAT NEXT, which I guess maybe isn't wordplay at all now that I look at it again, but going through it felt like a misdirect? Anyways, I liked it. I haven't decided whether or not the clue on MATHLETE (10D: One who's used to adding pressure?) is excellent wordplay or the worst wordplay (I definitely groaned), so I'll let you all hash that one out in the comments.

Ok, now for a few light critiques. Opening the puzzle with LAICAL was not great; it's just not a very good word! Other not-great entries included the bizarre pluralization of LSATS and the even more bizarre singularization of JITTER. Can you have a single JITTER? Seems to me like JITTERs are a package deal. Also TEENTSY... what is that extra T doing in there??? But as I said above, these are all products of the low word count and aesthetically pleasing grid structure, and I think the tradeoff is absolutely worth it. A couple of clues also had me rolling my eyes a bit. The clue on ANI, for one. What, was this puzzle too queer with FUN HOME in it so we couldn't possibly also have ANI DiFranco? (I highly suspect that this was an, ahem, editorial decision). Also the clue on LIE. What is with crosswords and golf?? There are so many ways to clue the word LIE! Here's a Moulin Rouge palate cleanser (ft. LIL KIM) to get the taste of gratuitous golf clues out of your mouth:

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld
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