Constructor: Paul Coulter
Relative difficulty: Easy (3:56)
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THEME: HAPPY MEAL (64A: Certain fast-food offering ... or what 17-, 27- and 47-Across certainly don't add up to?) — themers are phrases that sound kinda like "negative fast-food reviews" (allegedly):
Theme answers:
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WEAK SAUCE is in no way a plausible "fast-food review," negative or otherwise. "Sauce" is not a fast-food item, the way that BURGERs and SHAKES are. I just don't understand how this isn't totally and completely obvious to everyone involved in the making of this puzzle. Sometimes you have a theme that you think would be a really good idea, and you want it to work out, but you Just Don't Have The Right Themers to pull it off. The great constructors don't force it. Others ... do, I guess. Yeah, yeah, there's "sauce" on a Big Mac or whatever, stop your lawyering. That answer is so much of an outlier it ruins the whole shebang. With HAPPY MEAL as your revealer, I don't think you have to be *perfect* (i.e. you don't need the three themers all to be the exact elements of a HAPPY MEAL), but since you've already got two themers that land very cleanly and solidly in the "fast food" column, you need your third to do so as well. Here, watch. "Is a burger fast food?""Yes.""Is a milkshake fast food?""Yes.""Is sauce fast food?""What?" End scene. You see how this doesn't work, right? It's fine if you like the concept—so do I—but execution matters and bad execution just ruins everything. This thing isn't a full-on TRAIN WRECK, but it's definitely some kind of train malfunction where you have to detrain and get on a different train or maybe get bused to the next train station ... something non-fatal but incredibly annoying like that.
Relative difficulty: Easy (3:56)
Theme answers:
- WEAK SAUCE (17A: Negative fast-food review?)
- NOTHING BURGER (27A: Negative fast-food review?)
- NO GREAT SHAKES (48A: Negative fast-food review?)
: a free shot sometimes given a golfer in informal play when the previous shot was poorly played (merriam-webster.com)
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In fairly typical fashion, I started slowish and then really sped up. Under 4 is pretty fast for me on a Wednesday, and honestly I thought I was much faster. I must've been much slower to start than I imagined, because by about 1/3 of the way in I was flying, writing answers in as fast as I could look at the clues. I didn't even see many of the clues—for MALTA, for instance (52D: Country from which the name "Buttigieg" comes) (such a weird clue). I like the symmetry of RUBBERNECK and TRAIN WRECK since you might do one while driving by the other. Fill seems mostly OK, though there were moments (GRU SOLI CIE SRO AMS) that were slightly rough, and man could I do without horrid (criminal!) right-wing idiots in my puzzle. Again. Editor really loves to plug those guys. Not sure what's going on there. Didn't have many outright mistakes. Wrote in OMSK (!?) before OSLO (28D: City called a "kommune" by its inhabitants). Oh, and I wrote in CARTS for MARTS because I didn't read the clue accurately (9A: Shoppers' stops). Had a lot of trouble getting to COAL from 3D: Rock around the Christmas tree? I get it, you get COAL in your stocking if you're bad ... by legend ... though no one solving this puzzle has actually ever gotten COAL, and if they had it would've been in their stocking, not "around the tree," and COAL just isn't exactly iconically Christmasy. Sigh. I hate when try-hard "?" clues don't land. I also like when they do land, as is the case with the clue on ASIA (10D: Polo grounds?) (Marco Polo, that is). Looking forward to tomorrow's puzzle shenanigans. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]