Constructor: Brandon KoppyRelative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just over 5) (early a.m. solve)
THEME: LIFE / CYCLE (1D: With 41-Across, generational sequence)— the outer edge of the grid is populated by a "cycle" of 4-letter answers are clued as interlocking phrases, i.e. LIFE BOAT / BOAT SHOW / SHOW DOWN, etc. until the "cycle" ends up back at "LIFE" again (TIME/LIFE):
Theme answers:- LIFE BOAT (1A: With 5-Across, means of survival)
- BOAT SHOW (5A: With 9-Across, place to yacht-shop)
- SHOW DOWN (9A: With 16-Down, decisive confrontation)
- DOWN PLAY (16D: With 39-Down, minimize)
- PLAY DEAD (39D: With 62-Down, lie motionless)
- DEAD HEAD (62D: With 71-Across, traveling music fan of old)
- HEAD HOME (71A: With 70-Across, call it a night, say)
- HOME GAME (70A: With 69-Across, advantage in sports)
- GAME FACE (69A: With 50-Down, athlete's intense expression)
- FACE TIME (50D: With 27-Down, Apple app)
- TIME LIFE (27D: With 1-Down, company named for two magazines)
Word of the Day: Judd APATOW (
22A: Judd who directed "Knocked Up") —
Judd Mann Apatow (; born December 6, 1967) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and comedian. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and directed the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), Trainwreck (2015), and The King of Staten Island (2020).
Additionally through Apatow Pictures, he produced and developed the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), Undeclared (2001–2002), Funny or Die Presents (2010–2011), Girls (2012–2017), Love (2016–2018), and Crashing (2017–2019).
Apatow also produced the films The Cable Guy (1996), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy(2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express(2008), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Begin Again (2013), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and The Big Sick (2017).
Throughout his career, Apatow received nominations for eleven Primetime Emmy Awards (two wins), five Writers Guild of America Awards (one win), two Producers Guild of America Awards, one Golden Globe Award, and one Grammy Award. (wikipedia)
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All short stuff, all cross-referenced—you can guess how much I enjoyed this (A: not much). "With this-clue, With that-clue," over and over and over, backward and forward up and down. Annoying, fussy, disorienting, joyless. Not hard at all, but because of the look-here, look-there horrid heavy cross-referencing, it was time-consuming. With no payoff. When I got into those little corners, because two of the answers now were going to be cross-references, and one of those was going to force my attention *outside* the corner, things just got confusing. Not hard, again. Just, "wait, where am I looking again?" I have absolutely positively seen this kind of ring around the rosy theme before: the interlocking phrase thing, the perimeter thing, both very much done before. And again, the main issue is not the been-done quality of the theme, but the failure to satisfy at least one of two theme requirements: is there a really good payoff? Is it a joy to solve? If you get 'no' to both, then why are you making this? This feels like a child's placemat game that got turned into a puzzle, and no one thought to ask "why?" The
CYCLE bit in the middle is interesting, especially the way it's linked back to the first word in the
CYCLE, but it's not interesting enough. The theme is unsatisfying, and one of the results of the theme set-up is that the grid is choked with 3-to-5-letter fill (
ABRA NEHI STENO etc.), which is also unsatisfying.
It's a shame the theme was a drag, because at least a couple of these long Downs deserve better. AMBIENT NOISE in particular is really very nice, as is EMAIL BLAST, though I didn't like the latter as much because the clue threw me and so I couldn't pick up the BLAST part until almost the last cross. I know EMAIL BLAST as a mass email ... I didn't know the "bcc" part was a definitive feature. When I see "bcc" I think of secretively looping someone in for one reason or another; I guess I don't think of it for, like, mass advertising purposes. Anyway, the "bcc" had me thinking regular work-type emails, so BLAST (which is about the *size* of the audience, not the audience's recipient status) just didn't enter my brain til very late. Still, it's a vibrant phrase. Thumbs up, for sure. I had trouble moving through the grid because of having EMAIL but no idea about BLAST, and then having BOSTON and having no idea about ACCENT. Again, a clue word threw me: "tested." Your accent would be "tested" if you had to say that phrase, not if you actually had to park the car in Harvard yard, and yes, I know, that is why the "?" is on the clue, but that's pretty tenuous.
Mistakes? A few. Ironically screwed up the blogging clue by writing in ESSAY instead of ENTRY off the "Y" (66A: Blog post). That SW corner was the toughest for me, because I forgot if the actress was FAY or FEY or oh it's FOY? Oh, I probably knew that, or should, since I've watched every episode of "The Crown." Anyway, I would've sorted it out faster but the stupid under-clued ORANG (51D: Rainforest dweller, for short), crossing one of those dumb cross-referenced themers, was getting in my way. Any other trouble? Oh, yes, a major, costly mistake right up top with 17A: Puma competitor (FILA). Sadly, the one letter I had in place when I looked at that clue was the "I" and so I wrote in NIKE. Bah. Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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