Constructor: Tracy Gray and Tom Pepper
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME:"Double-Crossed"— grid contains six rebus squares, inside of which are two sets of double letters, which are to be read in one direction the Acrosses, and in reverse direction in the Downs)
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Theme answers:
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I don't know if it's harder or easier than normal to make a puzzle like this. All I know is that it's tiring to solve. It was tiring to enter the double double letters, and it was double tiring that there was no point. This is the kind of puzzle that almost *has* to have a meta-puzzle payoff to be worth it—that is, if the double double letters had ended up spelling out some kind of message, something relevant to the idea of doubling or doubleness or whatever, then you could go "wow, cool, nice." But I tried spelling things and it didn't really work out (though depending on how you write out all the double letters, you *can* almost make the word DOUBLE happen ... but no, there's no message here, ultimately). It would've been slightly nicer to solve this on paper, where at least I could've seen the letters I was entering, but it would've been equally disconcerting in terms of letter order reversal (i.e. the double letters are in one order going Across, and reverse order going Down, for some reason). The concept feels half-baked. The rebus double-letter circles were both the most interesting and the hardest part of the solve, but they weren't as interesting as they could've been, and they stand out mainly because the rest of the grid is lackluster. I like that this puzzle has more ambition than your typical stale Sunday, but this needed another layer, another element, to really stick the landing. As it is, double double, ho hum. Kind of a letdown.
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
- OVERHEAD DOOR / BLOOD DRIVE (23A: Way into a garage, typically / 7D: Subject of a Sleeves Up campaign)
- CARTOON NETWORK / RAMEN NOODLES (34A: Nickelodeon competitor / 13D: Classic dorm room meal)
- GLORIA ALLRED / STELLA ARTOIS (61A: Prominent women's rights lawyer / 45D: Part of a college visit, typically)
- STROBE EFFECT / COFFEEMATE (76A: Visual phenomenon created by short flashes of light / 66D: Nestlé creamer)
- BALLOON ARTISTS / SCHOOL LOANS (104A: Some entertainers at children's birthday parties / 85D: Sallie Mae products)
- DAYTIME EMMYS / SWIM MEETS (119A: Awards show that airs at night, ironically / 101D: Pool competitions)
: relating to or characterized by miosis; [(miosis, n.) : excessive smallness or contraction of the pupil of the eye] (wikipedia)
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By far the hardest themer square for me was the OVERHEAD DOOR (?) / BLOOD DRIVE one. First one I encountered, and the only one that doesn't have at least one totally transparent cross. Your "way into a garage" is ... through the garage door. Is OVERHEAD DOOR the kind of garage door that retracts and then sorta slides back onto the roof of the garage? OVERHEAD DOOR sounds like some kind of trap door, like you are entering the garage through the ceiling, somehow. No idea what a "Sleeves Up" campaign is, so the BLOOD DRIVE part was also opaque to me. No other theme square posed nearly so much trouble. Wanted EUGENIA instead of EUGENIE, why in the world would I know about / care about Prince Andrew's kids, ugh (57A: Prince Andrew's younger daughter).
I think of them as "college loans," or "student loans," not SCHOOL LOANS, but I guess that's a colloquial expression people sometimes use, so OK. Had LAYIN before LAYUP, of course (108D: Easy two points). No idea what MIOTIC means (73A: Causing constriction of the pupils). "Myopic" (also eye-related), sure, but MIOTIC was a yikes (crosses were easy, though, so no big deal). Does ETHERNET still exist? How is NEODADA"old" and also "neo"(95D: Old genre for 12-Down)? Like ... is it "old" in that Yoko ONO no longer works in that genre? I honestly didn't even know it *was* a genre. It's basically an excuse to lade your grid with vowels, is what it is. I think I like BUM A RIDE and ANTI-THEFT and maybe STEAM OPEN. The rest of the grid is good enough, but not delightful. Again, if the theme had done something spectacular, as I kept hoping it would, we'd be having a very different conversation. Ah well. It is admirably ambitious, but in the end, pleasure-wise, no better (or worse) than your average NYTXW Sunday.