Constructor: Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Jimmy Nelson (3D: Danny ___, ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson => O'DAY)—
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Hello! It's the 23rd of the month once again, so I hopped on the old Zoom machine and taped myself solving the puzzle with my good friend Rachel Fabi. I'll post that at the end of the write-up. What did we encounter? Well, it was quite a ride—mostly a pleasant one. I did spend a good amount of time just starting, baffled, at 3D: Danny ___, Ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson, and then, when I filled in the answer (entirely from crosses), spent some more time just staring at that answer (O'DAY). I've never had a clue mean less to me in my life. Never ever Ever heard of Jimmy Nelson, and then just add some "ever"s to the amount I've never heard of Danny O'DAY. Three decades of solving puzzles, never once seen Jimmy Nelson, never once seen this O'DAY clue. Anita O'DAY is the O'DAY I know. Possibly the only O'DAY I know. If you're gonna give me a new O'DAY, at least ... I don't know, make sure that person exists in the realm of current human knowledge. As you can see from the "Word of the Day" entry above, Danny O'DAY isn't even Jimmy Nelson's primary dummy!!!! Danny doesn't even get mentioned in the opening paragraph. No, instead it's Farfel the Dog (!?!?!?!) who was apparently the A-list dummy. If you put FARFEL in your grid (please don't), then sure, you sorta have to go to Jimmy Nelson for your clue, but O'DAY, as I say, Has A Perfectly Good Clue. I am really hung up on this. Danny O'DAY? I almost don't want to look him up. I feel like the reality will only be disappointing. Oh well, let's go ahead and look ... oh ... my ... I ... wow
Other things we reacted to:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: Jimmy Nelson (3D: Danny ___, ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson => O'DAY)—
James Edward Nelson (December 15, 1928 – September 24, 2019) was an American ventriloquist who appeared on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for commercials for Nestlé chocolate featuring Farfel the Dog. He also hosted a children's show sponsored by Nestlé. [what the actual *&!$?] (wikipedia)
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The dummy clue was the only real baffler. Didn't know MABEL, either, but at least I've heard of "The Pirates of Penzance," so that didn't bother me nearly so much (16A: "The Pirates of Penzance" ingénue). Rachel hadn't heard of Esther ROLLE, who was a lot more common in crosswords of yore, i.e. crosswords that came out closer to when "Good Times" was on the air (i.e. the '70s) (21A: Esther of TV's "Good Times"). ROLLE was a gimme for me, but I'm 20 years older than Rachel, so no big surprise there. She also didn't know LAURA NYRO, who's before my time, even, but she's a pretty famous songwriter, so I know her name well (51A: "Stoned Soul Picnic" songwriter). Rachel did make a decent point, though, about the NYRO / DYNE crossing, which is that people might try an "I" there ... Seems possible, but I'd say it's even more likely that solvers will screw up a different crossing, which Rachel also noticed—the KRUPA / KOLA cross. If you don't know Gene KRUPA, then it seems very possible that you will imagine that the nut in question is a COLA. Someone somewhere is making that mistake, for sure. Both NYRO and KRUPA are gonna be much better known to older solvers, and since their names aren't exactly inferrable, there's plenty of opportunity for younger solvers to screw them up. Proper nouns, man. You have got to watch out. See, with MABEL and O'DAY, those are proper nouns, and I didn't know either of them, but they are both recognizable, familiar names, and the crosses were in no way confusing, so I could get at them. KRUPA and NYRO I knew ... but if I hadn't, yikes.
Other things we reacted to:
- 29A: Left on deck (APORT)— boy, did we REACT to that one. If I could wish one answer in this puzzle away (aweigh?) it would be that one. I guess it means in the direction of ... port (which is what "left on deck" means in most cases). I jokingly asked if there's such a word as "astarboard" ... but, in fact, there is.
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- 14D: Unwelcome forecast (SLEET)— I got mad at the puzzle for calling hail "bad" yesterday, but I'm not as mad at this SLEET clue, because "unwelcome" isn't a moral absolute; it's a human judgment.
- 53A: Counterpart of butch (FEMME) — Rachel took particular exception to this, as it reinforces a limited, binary way of thinking (about lesbians in particular). That binary does have a meaningful history, and I thought that "counterpart" was better than, say, "opposite." Rachel is right, though, that you can get to FEMME without "butch." We also discussed the fact that the answer to 7D contains a word that can be a racial slur, and some constructors (including Rachel) have deleted it from their wordlists entirely. Oh, and HIT LIST—I thought it was a little too grim (23A: Offer sheet?). Rachel, who grew up like many in her generation, doing active shooter drills in school, associating the term HIT LIST with the targets of would-be school shooters—she had an even stronger negative reaction than I did.
- 11D: Classic film that gave us the term "paparazzi" ("LA DOLCE VITA") — I loved this one, and we both generally liked all the long answers. SHARK WEEK, "WORDS FAIL ME," POT DE CRÈME ... all nice.
Here's the video of us solving in real-time.
Two corrections re: this video. I talk about "TREES" poet Joyce Kilmer as if Joyce were a woman. Joyce Kilmer was a man. Alfred Joyce Kilmer. My fellow former UM English grad student friend Michele pointed this out to me just now, and so I'm properly humiliated. Also, I think somewhere in this video, I reimagine the phrase "any port in a storm" as "any storm in APORT," so you can ignore that as well.
Hope you liked the puzzle at least as well as we did (despite the issues detailed above, I did think it was an enjoyably solid effort).
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