Constructor: Wyna Liu and Erik Agard
Relative difficulty: Mediumish (8-ish + find-the-vowel-error-in-the-foreign-word!)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Tyr (40A: It's named for the Norse god of war: Abbr. => TUE.) —
Really nice grid. I struggled some with the cluing, which seemed to me, at times, too clever for its own good—so clever, that is, that I still wasn't sure I quite understood it after I got the answer. Super "thinky" clues are one way to add difficulty to a puzzle, but those really have to land for me or else I get irked. Take O'ER (31D: Shortened again), which I couldn't get at all except through crosses, and only after having it all in place did I see "oh ... so it is a 'shortened' form of a word that means'again' ... well, ok then," which, as you might guess, is a somewhat less electrifying response than "wow" or "aha!" And the clue on LEGAL LIMIT still has me slightly puzzled where grammar is concerned (8D: Bound to follow). "Bound" is a noun here? And I have to "follow" it in the sense of "observe" or "obey" it? Who am I in this scenario? What is the context? You wouldn't really say you have to "follow" a LEGAL LIMIT. The wording is really iffy, and all just so you can get this "haha you think it's a verb phrase but it's a noun phrase" effect. Again, if you pull this trick (a time-honored trick that, in theory, is just fine), make sure it *lands*. Not a big fan of "we made this hard by making the cluing preposterously awkward." That said, there wasn't too too much of this. This is a very snazzy grid with a lot of sparkly colloquial phrases ("ROGER THAT,""IT'S NOT A RACE,""CHECK, PLEASE, MADE IT WEIRD, etc.), and though I had a few bad experiences with clues, my dominant feelings were positive.
I had the bad fortune of coming to the very end and having two bad squares—one an error, the other a giant question mark. Let's take the error first—I was super-psyched to know the answer to 36A: Festival observed every October 31 to November 2 right off the bat. I was far less psyched to spell the first word of the answer wrong. I wrote in DIO DE LOS MUERTOS because, not being a Spanish speaker, I get the gender of words all confused in my head, so DIA looks feminine to me, but it's really masculine, and sadly today that meant that my brain just decided to make the word look more masucline to my eye by taking away the "A" and replacing it with an "O" (please do not ask for logic from my brain, it will rarely oblige). This meant I had CLOSE SHOVES at 3D: Narrow escapes (CLOSE SHAVES), and while I definitely squinted at that, I figured it was some colloquial expression I just wasn't aware of (I would use "close call" a million times before I'd use "close shave," so even though I know the phrase "close shave," it just didn't shout at me). Then there was the MILL / LESTE crossing. Well, LESTE ... every letter a guess. Never heard of it. Timor, yes, East Timor, for sure, Timor-LESTE, yipes. I managed to get the -ESTE done but MILL ... you could not write a worse clue *for me* for MILL if you tried (28A: Machine shop essential). I'm not *entirely* sure even what a "machine shop" is. I get the idea that it is industrial and people use machines to make ... things ... for ... industry? But to me a MILL is where you grind grain. Or pepper. Or maybe you cut logs into lumber. The "machine shop" idea of "MILLing," totally foreign to me. So I wrote in the "L" there only because literally nothing else made sense. And so because of foreign vowel troubles and an obscure-place-name / something-way-out-of-my-wheelhouse crossing, I almost didn't finish. Phew. It was a very close shove.
Is there a paradigmatic KALE SALAD? (6A: Dish often topped with goat cheese and cranberries) I've had a bunch of them, and eat them at home on a reasonably regular basis, but goat cheese and cranberries? I mean, I might put those on any salad, but ... they don't scream KALE SALAD to me. What else? Had RURAL before RHODE (45D: R, in a postal abbreviation), and GEAR UP before SUIT UP (27D: Get ready for action). No additional problems.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Mediumish (8-ish + find-the-vowel-error-in-the-foreign-word!)
Word of the Day: Tyr (40A: It's named for the Norse god of war: Abbr. => TUE.) —
Týr (/tɪər/;[1] Old Norse: Týr, pronounced [tyːr]), Tíw (Old English), and Ziu (Old High German) is a god in Germanic mythology. Stemming from the Proto-Germanic deity *Tīwaz and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European chief deity *Dyeus, little information about the god survives beyond Old Norse sources. Due to the etymology of the god's name and the shadowy presence of the god in the extant Germanic corpus, some scholars propose that Týr may have once held a more central place among the deities of early Germanic mythology.Týr is the namesake of the Tiwaz rune (ᛏ), a letter of the runic alphabet corresponding to the Latin letter T. By way of the process of interpretatio germanica, the deity is the namesake of Tuesday ('Týr's day') in Germanic languages, including English. Interpretatio romana, in which Romans interpreted other gods as forms of their own, generally renders the god as Mars, the ancient Roman war god, and it is through that lens that most Latin references to the god occur. [...]The modern English weekday name Tuesday means 'Tíw's day', referring to the Old English extension of the deity. Tuesday derives from Old English tisdæi (before 1200), which develops from an earlier tywesdæi (1122), which itself extends from Old English Tīwesdæg (before 1050). The word has cognates in numerous other Germanic languages, including Old Norse týsdagr, Frisian tīesdi, Old High German zīostag, Middle High German zīestac, and Alemannic zīstac. All of these forms derive from a Proto-Germanic weekday name meaning 'day of Tīwaz', itself a result of interpretatio germanica of Latin dies Martis (meaning 'day of Mars'). This attests to an early Germanic identification of *Tīwaz with Mars.
• • •
Really nice grid. I struggled some with the cluing, which seemed to me, at times, too clever for its own good—so clever, that is, that I still wasn't sure I quite understood it after I got the answer. Super "thinky" clues are one way to add difficulty to a puzzle, but those really have to land for me or else I get irked. Take O'ER (31D: Shortened again), which I couldn't get at all except through crosses, and only after having it all in place did I see "oh ... so it is a 'shortened' form of a word that means'again' ... well, ok then," which, as you might guess, is a somewhat less electrifying response than "wow" or "aha!" And the clue on LEGAL LIMIT still has me slightly puzzled where grammar is concerned (8D: Bound to follow). "Bound" is a noun here? And I have to "follow" it in the sense of "observe" or "obey" it? Who am I in this scenario? What is the context? You wouldn't really say you have to "follow" a LEGAL LIMIT. The wording is really iffy, and all just so you can get this "haha you think it's a verb phrase but it's a noun phrase" effect. Again, if you pull this trick (a time-honored trick that, in theory, is just fine), make sure it *lands*. Not a big fan of "we made this hard by making the cluing preposterously awkward." That said, there wasn't too too much of this. This is a very snazzy grid with a lot of sparkly colloquial phrases ("ROGER THAT,""IT'S NOT A RACE,""CHECK, PLEASE, MADE IT WEIRD, etc.), and though I had a few bad experiences with clues, my dominant feelings were positive.
["They call it instant justice when it's past the LEGAL LIMIT..."]
I had the bad fortune of coming to the very end and having two bad squares—one an error, the other a giant question mark. Let's take the error first—I was super-psyched to know the answer to 36A: Festival observed every October 31 to November 2 right off the bat. I was far less psyched to spell the first word of the answer wrong. I wrote in DIO DE LOS MUERTOS because, not being a Spanish speaker, I get the gender of words all confused in my head, so DIA looks feminine to me, but it's really masculine, and sadly today that meant that my brain just decided to make the word look more masucline to my eye by taking away the "A" and replacing it with an "O" (please do not ask for logic from my brain, it will rarely oblige). This meant I had CLOSE SHOVES at 3D: Narrow escapes (CLOSE SHAVES), and while I definitely squinted at that, I figured it was some colloquial expression I just wasn't aware of (I would use "close call" a million times before I'd use "close shave," so even though I know the phrase "close shave," it just didn't shout at me). Then there was the MILL / LESTE crossing. Well, LESTE ... every letter a guess. Never heard of it. Timor, yes, East Timor, for sure, Timor-LESTE, yipes. I managed to get the -ESTE done but MILL ... you could not write a worse clue *for me* for MILL if you tried (28A: Machine shop essential). I'm not *entirely* sure even what a "machine shop" is. I get the idea that it is industrial and people use machines to make ... things ... for ... industry? But to me a MILL is where you grind grain. Or pepper. Or maybe you cut logs into lumber. The "machine shop" idea of "MILLing," totally foreign to me. So I wrote in the "L" there only because literally nothing else made sense. And so because of foreign vowel troubles and an obscure-place-name / something-way-out-of-my-wheelhouse crossing, I almost didn't finish. Phew. It was a very close shove.
Is there a paradigmatic KALE SALAD? (6A: Dish often topped with goat cheese and cranberries) I've had a bunch of them, and eat them at home on a reasonably regular basis, but goat cheese and cranberries? I mean, I might put those on any salad, but ... they don't scream KALE SALAD to me. What else? Had RURAL before RHODE (45D: R, in a postal abbreviation), and GEAR UP before SUIT UP (27D: Get ready for action). No additional problems.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]