Constructor: Daniel Larsen
Relative difficulty: Medium, I think
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Rabindranath Tagore (41D: Language of the Literature Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore => BENGALI) —
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All the symmetries! 180º rotational, 90º rotational, axial, mirror ... wait, are axial and mirror the same thing? Looks like axial is more for 3D objects. Whatever. The black squares are arranged here to give the grid the made-up term I (now) like to call "hypersymmetry." None of this has anything to do with how good the puzzle is; just something I noticed. The grid is also shaped (in the white squares) a bit like a wandering path, one that you can walk through (clockwise or counter-), solving the entire puzzle, without having to take any detours or double back on yourself or anything. That's not exactly how I solved it (I went west to east and then got mildly hung up and went back to the west and then down and counterclockwise around). The only real downside of this grid shape is that there are no long answers. Literally nothing about seven letters. This kept the grid feeling pretty reserved and conservative. I like splashy long stuff, a grid that has answers that zing and slash and burst open across the grid. This grid, while solid, stays in a very safe lane the whole time. Well, I say safe, but apparently it thinks you should catch a GRENADE, what the hell!? (31A: Dangerous thing to catch). Such a weirdly morbid clue there. But overall, tame. Fine. OK. Nothing splashy. A calming if somewhat eventless stroll.
Relative difficulty: Medium, I think
Word of the Day: Rabindranath Tagore (41D: Language of the Literature Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore => BENGALI) —
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ (listen); born Robindronath Thakur, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941; sobriquet Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi) was a Bengalipoet, writer, composer, philosopher and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European as well as the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal". (wikipedia)
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I think maybe they should retire LOLCATS. It feels like an answer from 2004. Or one that should've been from 2004, but since the NYTXW is routinely on a cultural time lag, it's probably an answer that started showing up much later. Feels very early-internet speak. Cats still definitely rule the internet, but LOLCATS has a whiff of dust on it. Internet dust. It did help me get started early, though. I went CDS to TRULY to LOLCATS. Unfortunately, I then gutted TRULY when I assumed that the answer to 15A: Apple product launched in 2015 was IPADAIR. Ended up having to build most of that NW corner before finally seeing the PRO. My MacBook (this MacBook in front of me) is a PRO. I have never owned an iPad, so I missed that the PRO came out. Or I noticed and promptly forgot. Cannot keep up with the Apple product permutations, which, considering how often they appear in grids, is sometimes a problem. Like today. But I just made the correct answer out of Apple product parts—a little IPAD here, a little PRO there, voilà! Correct answer. After that, not much trouble. Except for the part where I spelled DAYAN correctly but then swapped the "Y" for an "I" when I (very incompletely) read the clue on the cross: 35A: Do or ___ (punny hair salon name). My eyes only went as far as the fill-in-the-blank. The apex hair salon pun name is, of course, "Curl Up and Dye," though "Do" (with its pun on "hairdo") is not bad either. The "or" is off, though, since presumably it is the do that you are dying. But back to the point: I finished with an error because I "fixed"DAYAN. After having it right the first time. The second time I did that today (see TRULY), only this time, it was fatal. I did indeed d(i)e. TRULY.
The one thing that keeps this long answer-free grid from being lifeless is the high number of multi-word phrases in the seven-letter stuff, particularly the weirdly high number of two-letter parts inside those phrases. It can be more fun, but also more difficult, to parse multi-word phrases, especially if they are reasonably short and therefore you are not really expecting them. And two-letter elements can really make things challenging. Today we get OE in "ALOHA OE" (59A: Elvis Presley sings it in "Blue Hawaii"), OP in PHOTO OP (37D: When a poser might be presented?), OK in "OK, SHOOT" (43D: "Yeah, I'm listening") and E.R. in E.R. NURSE (16A: Vital hosp. worker). That last one wasn't exactly hard, though it did make me think there was a very important guy working in the hospital named ERNESTO. I did not know SLUMDOG was an actual word that had been coined, as I've only heard it followed by "Millionaire." I thought 21A: Attachment to Christ? (MAS) (because Christ + MAS = Christmas) was IAN. I don't think of HAIL as "bad"—weirdly judgey weather clue there (54D: Bad fall?). I enjoyed remembering "Battlestar Galactica" and "48 Hours." All in all, a pleasant enough experience.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]