Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Andrew J. Ries
Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium, I think (untimed)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: OTIS Williams (1A: Williams who was one of the original Temptations) —
This was a really nice puzzle. It was built like a Friday but clued like a Saturday, or at least like a semi-Saturday. A Friday/Saturday. A Friturday. Grid has room for a slew of 7+-letter answers but also has an interconnectedness and *flow* that means (for me) never getting truly bogged down anywhere. You can really hack away at a puzzle like this. It's true that part of the cost of having a hackable grid is having a lot of short fill, but if your longer fill is nice and your short fill is inconspicuous, i.e. not spit-in-your-face bad, you'll do fine. It's a very sassy, youngish grid, with a colloquialism that, bless its heart, is almost actually very current. Yesterday we got LIT, and today we get Gen Y 102: TURNT (24D: Excited, in modern slang). Pretty sure this refers to inebriation most of the time, but "excited," sure, by extension, I'm sure that works too. It has a party context. Or so I'm told by my Youth Translator. Speaking of my Youth Translator, I woke to a very excited (but not TURNT ... I don't think) text from my daughter this morning, who had very important news for me:
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Struggles:
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Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium, I think (untimed)
Word of the Day: OTIS Williams (1A: Williams who was one of the original Temptations) —
Otis Williams (born Otis Miles Jr.; October 30, 1941) is an American baritone singer. Nicknamed "Big Daddy", he is occasionally also a songwriter and a record producer.
Williams is the founder and last surviving original member of the Motown vocal group The Temptations, a group in which he continues to perform; he also owns the rights to the Temptations name. (wikipedia)
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If I'd been fully awake, I would've cried :) So, parents, if you want your kids to share your interests, the key is a. make it seem awesome (or delude yourself into believing that you make it seem awesome!) and b. never ever push it. I would get her kids crosswords when she was little and she would do a few, but the whole crossword bug never really caught her. Then she went to college, and she started finding different ways to waste time, then her friends got into doing crosswords too, sometimes together, then COVID hit and shutdowns hit and she had a lot more "free" time on her hands ... and anyway, here we are. I have a feeling the pandemic, which has been a mismanaged disaster in so many ways, is going to end up having been very good for people's crossword skills. You take the good where you can find it. Anyway, congrats to the girl, and to everyone who got over the Saturday (or Friday, or Thursday, or Wednesday...) hump during this terrible year.
The colloquialism of the puzzle went beyond TURNT to "BE LIKE THAT" and HOT TAKE and "I'LL BITE" (my fav) and all the way to the so-old-it's-new tweenfluencerspeak of "ADIEU!" and "TATA!" (seriously, kids, please pick these up and run with them, I will love you for it). OTIS / SADIE could've been a dangerous cross, but OTI- can really only be an "S," so Natick averted. Here were the only struggles I had, all of them brief:
Struggles:
- AHEM (5A: Audible nudge)— PSST! went in first, "confirmed" by PLAY at 5D: Preschool recital (ABCS). I played Billy Goat Gruff in my preschool PLAY
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- ROLL (25A: Dinner ___)— I had the -LL and went with BELL
- ROMULUS (29D: Eponym of a European capital, by tradition) — hilarious that I had trouble here, since I teach the Aeneid every year, which is all about "where did Rome come from!?" I thought ROMULUS just *was* the eponym. I don't get the "by tradition" here. I mean, if he's not really a historical figure, wasn't suckled by a she-wolf, etc., he can still be the eponym, right?
- BOOMERS (36D: Male kangaroos) — LOL, really? If you say so. I got a strong suspicion that this one was reclued so as not to infuriate a certain (giant) segment of the NYTXW solving audience
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR (35A: Common material for a jacket) — had ABOUT THE A-T- and thought "ooh, good one" ... and wrote in ABOUT THE ARTIST!
- COHOST (40D: Running mate?)— still not sure I get the "?" joke here. Like ... a show "runs" on television / radio ... and if two+ people host that show, they are "running" ... mates? Needs work.
- TUSSAUD (20D: Wax figure?)— I should've gotten this immediately. Instead, I had -SSA- and at one point definitely tentatively wrote in MASSAGE, which ... I'm just gonna assume that a hot-wax MASSAGE is a real thing and not ask any further questions
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