Liable to snoop / TUES 5-26-20 / In scoring position, say / "Straight Outta Compton" group / Bamboozles

Hi, everyone! It's Clare, back again for this last Tuesday in May. I hope you're all doing well! I've been mostly just trying to relax these last few weeks since my law school finals ended. Quarantine for me has basically been: 12 million card games, 17 loaves of bread, nine hikes (including a fun 14.5-miler with some rock climbing involved!), and three animals driving me up the wall. I was looking forward to some mental stimulation from this puzzle, but...

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty:Medium
THEME: BODIES OF WATER (35A: What the ends of 17-, 21-, 55- and 60-Across end in)— the end word of each of the four theme answers is a body of water.

Theme answers:

• COLIN FIRTH (17A: Best actor winner for "The King's Speech")
• ARTHUR LAKE (21A: Actor who played Dagwood Bumstead in film, radio and TV)
• BILLY OCEAN (55A: Singer with the 1984 #1 hit "Caribbean Queen")
• MICHAEL BAY (60A: Pearl Harbor director, 2001)

Word of the Day: ARTHUR LAKE —

Arthur Lake (born Arthur Silverlake Jr.) was an American actor known best for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio and television. He portrayed the Blondie comic strip character in twenty-eightBlondie films produced by Columbia Pictures from 1938 to 1950. He was also the voice of Dagwood on the radio series, which ran from 1938 to 1950, earning a star for him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Wiki)

I can think of almost nothing to say about this puzzle — the theme was run-of-the-mill, the fill was mostly boring, and there were a lot of obscure names. That's all I need to say, right? Cool.

OK, I guess I can say a bit more. This puzzle felt like it came from someone with quarantine-brain, even though it's probably been in the backlog for a while — it just had no real pizzazz to it. I think my feelings about the puzzle as a whole are best summarized by the way I felt when I saw the clue for 61D: Letter after kay. Seriously? That simple? Give me something more interesting, please, I beg of you!

Anyway... the puzzle as a whole felt quite boring and also fairly hard, mostly because of the names used in the theme. While I knew COLIN FIRTH and MICHAEL BAY, the two other themers just don't feel particularly relevant in today's world. The first thing that slowed me down with the theme was that I didn't know a "firth" was a body of water. Then, I didn't know who ARTHUR LAKE was (he went off the air on radio in 1950...), so I had to piece his name together from the downs; and, I didn't know BILLY OCEAN. So... that was pretty hard. I also feel like we've seen this kind of theme a million times before — and will see it a million times again: A group of celebrities with names that can be grouped into a vague category.

I finished this puzzle and looked back through to find something — anything — that I found remotely interesting. I've concluded that some of the longer downs in the puzzle (BRASILIA; OUTCLASS; NECKWEAR) were just fine. And, I think the best thing about the whole puzzle was 47D: Doll that ran for president for the first time in 1992 as BARBIE. That's at least a fun tidbit. Other than that, the fill was just sort of there and taking up space.


Bullets:

• KRIS Jenner (20A) in a crossword puzzle? No, thank you!
• I had no idea that an average HAT SIZE was 7 1/4 (42A) — I'm not sure I ever needed to know this but I suppose it's useful information. Bruce Bochy (former manager of my San Francisco Giants) has a hat size of 8 1/8. Dude has a noggin.
• Here's BALOO singing "The Bare Necessities" to liven things up a bit:
• And, because COLIN FIRTH is on the brain, here's an amazing scene of him in the "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries:

Signed, Clare Carroll — Barbie 2020

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