Constructor: Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:20-something, though I had not one but two typos I had to track down)
![]()
THEME: STRAIGHT EDGES (14D: Rulers, e.g. ... or what the letters in 3-, 7-, 27- and 34-Down all have) — if you write them in sans-serif caps, the left edges of all the letters in the themers are all straight (i.e. letters in themers are drawn entirely from the set: BDEFHKLNPR. According to "Notes" on the puzzle:
![]()
This is one of those ideas you have when you're just brainstorming and you jot it down in your notebook and you realized it can't possibly produce a joyful result so you scrap it. Or, you don't, I guess. Not sure how you get away with a theme like this. Must be nice. Yeesh. Look, the theme does Not work electronically, which is how So Many people solve now, so it's a giant F.U. to them, and honestly, even if I was solving this on paper, I'd resent the NYTXW putting in little "vertical lines" for me to use like a little trellis on which to build the rest of the letters that go in those squares. I wonder how many people started solving and just wrote in the letters to the side of the damned "vertical lines" only to realize later on, "oh, I was supposed to ... make letters ... that incorporated those lines ... huh.""REBEL REBEL" is a great song and I'm never going to object to seeing Bowie in the grid, but the fact that you have a to repeat a word to get this theme to be In Any Way interesting tells you something.
The fill seems ok. ET TU, TUTEE is making me laugh, in a "so bad it's good" way, though ... that SW really isn't good. I had PLEAT before DRAPE (7A: Arrange in folds). I wrote in RARIFY and BORE instead of RAREFY and BORN, so that was bad work on my part. RAREFY just looks so awfully wrong. Also, the clue ... [Make thinner, as air]? ... that is so weird. "We need to RAREFY this air, stat!" I only ever (and I mean Only Ever) hear the word used adjectivally, in the purely metaphorical phrase "rarefied air." I think of that air as being the effect of high elevation, like "la-di-dah, look at you up there ... breathing your rarefied air like some kind of duchess ..." Actually, I would never use the phrase. The point is, it's hard to imagine someone "rarefying" anything, least of all air. I'm not sure I ever saw "Crash," and when I think of the expansive oeuvre of Mr. Brendan FRASER, that movie doesn't come to mind; luckily, there aren't that many actors named Brendan, so FRASER came quickly enough. ERR ERSE ERNST ELSE OER ONO EBB SELA ETTU ATIT TUTEE this could've been cleaner. Much cleaner. Big come-down after yesterday's nifty number.
See you tomorrow.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:20-something, though I had not one but two typos I had to track down)
THEME: STRAIGHT EDGES (14D: Rulers, e.g. ... or what the letters in 3-, 7-, 27- and 34-Down all have) — if you write them in sans-serif caps, the left edges of all the letters in the themers are all straight (i.e. letters in themers are drawn entirely from the set: BDEFHKLNPR. According to "Notes" on the puzzle:
In the print version of this puzzle, each square in 3-, 7-, 27- and 34-Down contains a short vertical line in the left half of the square.Theme answers:
- KEEBLER ELF (3D: Mascot on cookie boxes)
- FEEL FREE (34D: "Be my guest!")
- DR PEPPER (7D: Forrest Gump's favorite soft drink)
- "REBEL REBEL" (27D: David Bowie hit with the lyric "You've torn your dress, your face is a mess")
1: to make rare, thin, porous, or less dense : to expand without the addition of matter2: to make more spiritual, refined, or abstruse (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
The fill seems ok. ET TU, TUTEE is making me laugh, in a "so bad it's good" way, though ... that SW really isn't good. I had PLEAT before DRAPE (7A: Arrange in folds). I wrote in RARIFY and BORE instead of RAREFY and BORN, so that was bad work on my part. RAREFY just looks so awfully wrong. Also, the clue ... [Make thinner, as air]? ... that is so weird. "We need to RAREFY this air, stat!" I only ever (and I mean Only Ever) hear the word used adjectivally, in the purely metaphorical phrase "rarefied air." I think of that air as being the effect of high elevation, like "la-di-dah, look at you up there ... breathing your rarefied air like some kind of duchess ..." Actually, I would never use the phrase. The point is, it's hard to imagine someone "rarefying" anything, least of all air. I'm not sure I ever saw "Crash," and when I think of the expansive oeuvre of Mr. Brendan FRASER, that movie doesn't come to mind; luckily, there aren't that many actors named Brendan, so FRASER came quickly enough. ERR ERSE ERNST ELSE OER ONO EBB SELA ETTU ATIT TUTEE this could've been cleaner. Much cleaner. Big come-down after yesterday's nifty number.
 |
| iconic FRASER |
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]