Constructor: Caitlin Reid
Relative difficulty: Easyish (9:01)
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THEME:"Theme Shmeme" — sigh, there is no theme :(
Word of the Day: LIENOR (49A: Bank, at times) —
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This is what happens when you're out of ideas. Nothing in the tank. Total admission of defeat. The Sunday themeless is not ... meaningful conceptually. It fills time, but it spits in the face of what a good Sunday is supposed to be, what it often *used* to be—the marquee puzzle of the NYT. The splashy, ambitious, *thematically* clever big-canvas puzzle event of the week. But week after week, the Sunday is a shambles, a faded zombie version of its former glory (when greats like Liz Gorski used to construct for the NYT on a regular basis). And so I guess when the well runs completely dry, we get this: a completely forgettable placeholder of a puzzle. It's not *bad*, to be clear. It's fine. I filled nine minutes of my life. It was a brief diversion. But there's nothing to recommend it. Themelesses this size are meaningless. Against the two themelesses that just preceded it (Friday, Saturday), it seems lackluster, thin. It's so big, that it feels like you can do almost anything, but the achievement means almost nothing. I think my bar for Sunday themelesses is a. please don't do them, and b. if you do them, they should be Startlingly good. And this is just fine. OK. Again, it will occupy your brain for a period of time between roughly 10 and 45 minutes. The end. It's solid throughout, but there's not much here that would make me sit up and cheer in a 15x15, so in a 21x21, yeah, it's just a shrug from me. But it was easy, and lots of people seem to be setting personal records with their solving times, so I'm guessing no one's going to complain too much about this concession to idealessness. Ah well.
Tough for me:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easyish (9:01)
Word of the Day: LIENOR (49A: Bank, at times) —
: one holding a lien against the property of another (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
There aren't any real low points, except LIENOR, ouch ... and I thought ALIENOR was bad (weirdly, I've seen ALIENOR more than I've seen LIENOR, I'm almost certain). Those three letters between "L" and "OR" were an Adventure, for sure. I had LENDOR (?) and LESSOR (!?) before eventually getting the whole answer from crosses. Otherwise, nothing awful in this puzzle. Also, nothing very exciting. I kinda liked [Barely afloat?] for SKINNY-DIPPING, but that's about the only answer that I remembered fondly after I was done. I'm realizing now why I assumed there'd be a theme (besides, you know, the obvious, i.e. that it's Sunday and the puzzle has a title): two of the long Acrosses have "?" clues. In addition to the SKINNY-DIPPING clue, there's the corresponding, symmetrical clue on COURT REPORTER (27A: Hearing aid?). Speaking of "?" clues, 1-Across gave me more trouble than just about anything in the grid (1A: Round number? = BARTAB). It's a fine clue, just anomalously tough. Also tough for me:
Tough for me:
- 25D: Bring down (LOWER)— got the "L," wrote in LEVEL
- 19D: Mudbug, by another name (CRAWDAD) — got the "CRAW," wrote in CRAWLER (?)
- 41A: First attempt (FORAY) — Had no idea that the concept of "first" was built in. I hear "first FORAY" and "initial FORAY" a lot. Those are redundant? Huh.
- 78D: Golfer Jordan who won the 2015 U.S. Open (SPIETH) — after a while I recognized the name, but I try really hard not to pay the least bit of attention to this exclusionary country-club "sport" that is beloved by some of the worst people on the planet. If you never put a golf clue in a puzzle again, I would not complain.
- 79D: Republican politico Reince (PRIEBUS) — ok this wasn't "tough for me," just hilarious to me, literally laughed and thought "omg that guy ... remember *that* guy?" Is he still someone? What an embarrassment.
- 85D: Prepare to deplane (UNBELT) —LOL I have never called it that. I unbuckle my seatbelt, but my need to save breath on syllables has never driven me to utter anything as stupid as UNBELT.
OK, XXOO BYE.
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