Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins
Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: BORSCHT BELT (21A: Once-popular resort area in the Catskills, informally) —
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Ah, I was *hoping* Mr. Collins would get a puzzle in this week—he constructs regularly for The New Yorker and I always enjoy his work. Since he (like yours truly) studied Literature in graduate school, I frequently seem to be on his wavelength. Or maybe that's not the reason, but it sure feels like the reason. It sure felt like the reason today, as literary answers that are very close to my work or life came rushing at me time and again, starting with LEO Tolstoy at 1A: First name in Russian literature, whose Anna Karenina is among my very favorite novels, and then again with AENEAS (my boy! I'll see you again next week, buddy!) and SESTETs (I'll see *you* in April, guys). "Twain" is a very poetic way to say DUO, so that clue too felt literaryish. HERSTORIES feels very thirty-years-ago (18A: Chronicles from a feminist perspective), but it turns out I was just starting out in grad school thirty years ago, and have spent my whole life surrounded by (and married to) feminist scholars, so no problem there. My family's from IDAHO. I've never been called "TEACH," but I do TEACH. My first cinematic memory is "STAR WARS" (1977). So yeah, in literary ways and so many other ways, this puzzle felt made for me. Still never watched "THE WEST WING," though; the clue on that one (41A: Government program?) was one of the tougher things about the puzzle (see below), though with a few crosses, it wasn't all that tough.
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Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: BORSCHT BELT (21A: Once-popular resort area in the Catskills, informally) —
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster Counties in upstate New York, United States. These resorts were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s. (wikipedia)
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I solved this one in a fairly regularly counterclockwise manner, starting in the NW and heading down the west side of the grid, mostly because that's where the short answers were, and those tend to be easiest to get quickly. Easy to slide down to DIRGE CARPS TEACH and then (because I had the front ends) into GREAT WORK BE PATIENT S-CLASS. I actually didn't have the WORK part of GREAT WORK at first, but I got OVERT off the "T" (46A: Plain as day) and then SHOVEL off that "V" (36D: Big scoop) and so the SW was over fairly quickly (though I did briefly write in C-NOTE instead of T-NOTE at 41D: Certain govt. security, resulting in a [Government program?] that appeared to be about CHEW-ing things). Had trouble with the second half of an answer again at NERDCORE (50A: Music genre that includes "geeksta rap"), but ROCK didn't make much sense, and once ETC. went in, I remembered HARDCORE and NORMCORE and DADCORE (I swear these are real)—in short, I remembered the "-CORE" suffix and off I went again. The one time that the puzzle appeared daunting was when I rounded the corner in the SE and tried to come up. Progress halted at the backend / bottom of those long Downs in the NE, and all of a sudden I was staring at what looked like a lot of empty white space. But at this point I hadn't gone back and checked those long Acrosses I hadn't pursued back at the beginning of the puzzle, and as soon as I set my eyes on one of those: bingo:
Saved by the Borscht! Only thing holding me back at that point was HOTWIRING, which I found to be by far the toughest answer to come up with today (16D: Getting started the wrong way?). But that's why they call them crosswords—because the crosses save you from your ignorance and/or befuddlement. The end. Only one actual mistake today (besides the C-NOTE / CHEW- thing): I thought that the [Nice pair of boxers?] (at 17A) was PAWS (not PECS). I thought we were playing with dogs, not ogling athletes ("nice pair"!?). Speaking of PAWS, gonna go play with my cats now. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld