Constructor: Sid SivakumarRelative difficulty: ChallengingTHEME: RUNS ON EMPTY (61A: Keeps going despite fatigue ... or a hint to three features of this puzzle)— letter string "RUN" appears three times, and each time the squares underneath it are EMPTY
Theme answers:- 17A: They put in long hours to get better hours (LABOR UNIONS)
- 21A: What's theorized to have preceded the Big Bang ([nothing])
- 30A: Telephone when all lit up? (DRUNK DIAL)
- 36A: What polar opposites have in common ([nothing])
- 46A: Founder of the Sikh religion (GURU NANAK)
- 50A: What's uttered by a mime ([nothing])
Word of the Day: GURU NANAK (
46A) —
Guru Nanak (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ (Gurmukhi); گرو نانک (Shahmukhi); Gurū Nānak; [gʊɾuː naːnəkᵊ], ![About this sound]()
pronunciation; born as Nanak on 15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539), also referred to as Baba Nanak ('father Nanak'), was the founder of Sikhism and is the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. His birth is celebrated worldwide as Guru Nanak Gurpurab on Katak Pooranmashi('full-moon of the Katak'), i.e. October–November.
Nanak is said to have travelled far and wide across Asia teaching people the message of ik onkar (ੴ, 'one God'), who dwells in every one of his creations and constitutes the eternal Truth. With this concept, he would set up a unique spiritual, social, and political platform based on equality, fraternal love, goodness, and virtue.
Nanak's words are registered in the form of 974 poetic hymns, or shabda, in the holy text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, with some of the major prayers being the Japji Sahib (jap, 'to recite'; ji and sahib are suffixes signifying respect); the Asa di Var ('ballad of hope'); and the Sidh Gohst ('discussion with the Siddhas'). It is part of Sikh religious belief that the spirit of Nanak's sanctity, divinity, and religious authority had descended upon each of the nine subsequent Gurus when the Guruship was devolved on to them. (wikipedia)
• • •
Ha ha, yeah, not a puzzle I should've been doing at 4:30am, straight out of bed, probably. All the non-theme parts were easy, but literally everything between the first EMPTY and the last EMPTY (so, everything in the center and center-west) was a mess. Spent tons of time just flat-out stuck, which virtually never happens. I'd even jumped ahead to the revealer clue to see if I could get some help and, well, not really. Even with the RUNS part in place, I couldn't figure out the rest of the phrase (RUNS ON AND ON came to me before
RUNS ON EMPTY); and then, even after I completely understood the theme ... still stuck. Three major contributing factors to this. One, I needed literally every cross for
GURU NANAK. Most of those letters could have been anything from my perspective (although I was able to put together the "RUN" part from knowing the theme). Two,
ATONE, wow (
39A: When some people break for lunch). I have to say that cluing a perfectly good English word as a phrase is a generally awful choice, and here it was really irksome because it came right in the heart of theme-impacted country, and so after I put in what seemed like the obvious ONEPM, I had no way of getting rid of that wrong answer with any certainty (not for a while, anyway). Which brings me to three: I just completely forgot the word
DUVETS (24A: Down-hearted softies?). The "?" clue didn't help, but there was honestly one point at which I was staring at DUVE- and thinking, "well, no words start that way so I must have an error." Oof. Throw in, in that same center section, a non-S-ending plural in
DATA (35D: Figures, e.g.) and a really hard clue on theme-affected
TROJAN (25D: Misleading malware), and it meant total catastrophe for me, solving-speed-wise.
The west was also rough, as I forgot there were ever WHIGs in the U.S., and because of that could not come up with the very basic WANTED (34A: Word seen above a mug shot). And before I got HYPE (which took time) (38A: It may lead up to a letdown), I had no real hope of seeing BAYOU (28D: Place to catch shrimp)—that clue was not quite geographically specific enough for me (in that it was not geographically specific at all). So, tale of two puzzles today, as far as difficulty goes—that left/center chunk (yikes), and then everything else (fine). The only issues I had outside the Danger Zone was in the JUG / UTAH area. Hard clue on UTAH, no chance there (58D: Its name is said to mean "people of the mountains"), and I wrote in "ALL ears" before "JUG ears" (?) (57A: ___ ears). I know jugs have ears, but I don't know about the phrase "JUG ears" as a stand-alone thing. I've heard "JUG-eared" to describe someone with ears that stick out, but just "JUG ears," I dunno.
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Really liked the clue on
DRUNK DIAL (30A: Telephone when all lit up?). Really didn't like the clue on
KILO, which lacked any indication that the answer was an abbr. (
48D: Approximate weight of a liter of water). Always feels like cheating on the cluer's part when abbrs. are not signaled some way in the clue. OK, that's all, bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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