Constructor: Rich Proulx
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (~5 min.)
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THEME: hand jive — the meanings of hand gestured, clued using ordinal numbers to describe what the various DIGITs do in each gesture (66A: What each number in the starred clues represents):
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (~5 min.)
Theme answers:
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The theme is fine but getting through this felt like running a punishing gauntlet, where lots and lots of tired fill just kinda shove you around and poke you in your ears and stuff. The problem started at 1-Across, to be honest (1A: Lab test) (ASSAY). Fine word, you might say, and, uh, OK, yeah, it's a word, but it is crosswordy, in that I only ever see it there, and I see it not infrequently; and when words like that pile up, yikes. And it's not just the repeaters, it's the rando stuff like ACTIV and the crosswordese place names like LHASA and LOIRE and then LAO ATOP ASEA PTA SARI GRU etc. on full blast for the whole 15x15 experience. HORAE!? GELID!? Also, there's this ultra-annoying little tendency toward Scrabble-f*cking, with the X and Z and multiple Ks shoved into the grid to either no good or very bad effect. None of these letters are giving you much bang for your buck, and the sections they're in aren't exactly pretty, so what the heck is even happening? AKNOT? Is your "K" worth that? Letters aren't interesting—good fill is interesting. Clean grids are pleasant. That's the direction you want to go in. If you go in that direction, then people can focus on the theme you came up with, which is presumably where you want them to focus.
- HANG LOOSE (18A: *1st and 5th)
- VULCAN SALUTE (24A: *1st separate, 2nd and 3rd together, and 4th and 5th together)
- VICTORY (39A: *2nd and 3rd separated)
- "CAN I GET A LIFT?" (49A: *1st)
- "HOPEFULLY..." (60A: *2nd and 3rd crossed)
The vocal fry register (also known as pulse register, laryngealization, pulse phonation, creak, croak, popcorning, glottal fry, glottal rattle, glottal scrape, or strohbass) is the lowest vocal register and is produced through a loose glottal closure that permits air to bubble through slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency. During this phonation, the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together, which causes the vocal folds to compress rather tightly and become relatively slack and compact. This process forms a large and irregularly vibrating mass within the vocal folds that produces the characteristic low popping or rattling sound when air passes through the glottal closure. The register (if well controlled) can extend far below the modal voice register, in some cases up to 8 octaves lower, such as in the case of Tim Storms who holds the world record for lowest frequency note ever produced by a human, a G−7, which is only 0.189 Hz, inaudible to the human ear. (wikipedia)
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I've got green ink alllllll over my puzzle print-out. A lot of it is just flagging the tiresome fill, but some if it indicates trouble spots. I can never process [Word that does this if you do this thing to it]-type clues, so SHE (15A: Word that becomes its own opposite if its first letter is removed), crossing a "?" clue in ASH (6D: Outcome of being fired?), crossing LHASA (which I wanted to be either LAPAZ or SUCRE), that whole area caused a bit of a slow-down. Also totally blanked on HORAE, a term I know because I teach classical literature sometimes but omg there are so many groups of goddesses and my brain apparently just can't keep them all sorted (36D: Goddesses of the seasons). Went for ICEIN before FOGIN, of course (53D: Strand at an airport, maybe). I think that's it for genuine sticking points. Except, no, I had trouble with the FRY part of VOCAL FRY, a phenomenon which is somehow both a widespread scourge and a thing I've never heard of, or ... possibly have heard of but have never properly understood. I thought it was just the rasp you get after yelling at, say, a concert or sporting event. It seems like such a slangy recent coinage that the simple word "register" didn't clue me in.
I will close by displaying contempt for 59A: Display contempt for, in a way (SPIT ON), but I'm just gonna sneer at it because spitting in general is repulsive and spitting *on* someone is beyond the pale. Even as a metaphor, gross.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld