Constructor: Trenton Charlson
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (half-asleep, still finished just under 6)
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THEME: THEME— DESCRIPTION
Word of the Day: WORD (CLUE) —
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Happy Halloween Eve. I wish the world could just be Halloween-scary, quaint-scary, instead of your-malevolent-leaders-want-you-to-just-get-sick-and-die-already scary, but you get the world you get and make the most of it. This puzzle wasn't scary, just boring. It was the sudoku of crosswords, in that I had to spend some time filling in boxes ... yeah, that's it. That's exactly how much pleasure it brought. To its, let's say, credit, it didn't bring any pain, either. It was easy enough, and there wasn't much in the grid to make me DEEP SIGH (36A: [Ho-o-o boy, here we go again ...]) (a pretty good answer slightly marred by the fact that it crossed a stupid nautical-time answer where I initially guessed ONEAM instead of ONEPM, oh the bos'n's gonna be so mad at me...) (28D: Two bells, nautically). There is one answer I probably would've resented a lot more if I hadn't managed to suss it out pretty quickly, and that is JASON FOX. LOL, who? I teach a course on Comics. Two, actually. I am one of the few people who still reads the funny pages, in the newspaper *and* online (my paper doesn't carry the new "Nancy" or the new "Mark Trail," so I go digital for those). And yet. And yet I had no idea about this answer. Had the JASON and ... nothing. "Foxtrot" is one of those strips whose name I have seen ... on book collections, maybe ... here and there. I'm aware of its existence, but familiarity with its character roster, uh, no. Yipes. This seems awfully obscure. Not an iconic character. The idea that you can describe him and still have me draw a total blank—where comics characters are concerned, that's a problem. The legit famous ones are iconic, and thus visually instantly identifiable. DEEP SIGH! Worse, this alleged character kept an "X" hidden from me, when SILEX was already keeping yet another "X" hidden from me (41A: Heat-resistant glass), so all I can say is, thank god XEROXES (44D: Copies, in a way) just *came* to me, out of the blue, because otherwise it would've been Stuckville for me, for sure.
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (half-asleep, still finished just under 6)
Word of the Day: WORD (CLUE) —
DEFINITION
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So once again, a marginal proper name gums up everything. It really is the least pleasant way to get stuck, working out some name that means nothing to you. That same section also had Margaret KEANE, which... I have no idea how I pulled her name out of my brain (after I got the "K") (46A: Margaret ___, artist known for painting subjects with big eyes). I misspelled it at first (KEENE), and honestly I'm not sure if I knew it knew it, or just "knew it" in the sense that my crossword brain rolodexed through likely "K" names very quickly and the mostly likely one just happened to be correct. But that puts JASON FOX and KEANE in the same corner—slightly rough. I was lucky to "know"KEANE, and also lucky to know ELEANOR Smeal (who seems much more legit famous than the others) and Pablo NERUDA, so the SW corner went down easier (I had more trouble with KAPLAN, and thus KALAMAZOO, than anything else over there). Not much else to say. Started easy with NO-DRAMA Obama and didn't get much harder until that little JASON FOX bit there at the end. I wanted to object to plural ROOT BEERS until I remembered my kitchen cabinet, which typically contains anywhere from three to six different varieties of ROOT BEERS at any given time, so ... plural accepted! (29A: Floats are often made with them). Enjoy your day. Vote, maybe? OK bye.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. forgot about Mitch HEDBERG (13D: Comedian Mitch who said "I haven't slept for 10 days, because that would be too long"). Seems like a name that might've thrown a lot of you. He was funny. He died young, of a drug overdose, in 2005.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]