Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke
Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium, depending on your moon knowledge (9:03 with a drink in me!)
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THEME:"Over the Moon" — themers contain words meaning "elated" (i.e. "over the moon"); those words appear *directly overthe name of a moon (of some other planet in our solar system)*:
Theme answers:
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Well, what do you know? A good Sunday puzzle. Second of the year, by my count. Nice. This one actually got better as it rolled along. Not sure why that should be, but that's how it felt. Maybe it just took some time to sink in that I was actually kind of enjoying a Sunday, that I was finding very little to be irritated about, and that the themers were fun answers in their own right, as well as being part of a very interestingly executed concept. I don't think the full significance of the theme really dawned on me until I was done, because the puzzle was remarkably easy. I was just having fun slaloming through the grid, and then having a Lot of fun realizing exactly how many moon names I know. It was like all that crossword moon knowledge I'd picked up over years and years of solving finally paid off in one big moon rush. I found my fingers just typing out stuff like DEIMOS and TITAN without my brain really feeling like it was involved. My fingers were just like, "trust us." And they were right. I don't think I knew ARIEL and NAIAD were moons, but they filled themselves in easily enough through crosses. And the rest of the grid was overwhelmingly clean and even a little bouncy. There are "only" five themers, but actually there are ten, with the moons, and the immediate proximity of the moon names to the theme answers means that theme is actually quite dense in places; and yet the grid does not feel terribly compromised. The worst thing in the grid, FESTAL, comes at the most thematically dense part of the grid (it runs through three theme-related answers), so I can forgive it. That is how it should be—ugly fill should only appear where you are really boxed in. By that rationale, though, there should be no NFLER in this grid. There is no excuse for NFLER. There is never an excuse for NFLER. I was so mad at NFLER, I redid that portion of the grid (on the spot, no software help!):
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Only a couple of mistakes today. Wrote in MANDMS (!?) instead of MENTOS (64D: Candy featured in a classic "MythBusters" episode). The word "classic" has meaning, and I am here to tell you that there is no such thing as a "classic""MythBusters" episode. I barely know what that show is. Somehow MENTOS cause a Diet Coke geyser ??? Anyway, I thought maybe the show was going to bust the myth that green MANDMS make you horny (I would watch that). I also wrote in OUTSIDER instead of OUTCASTS, failing to pick up on the obvious (!) Latin plural in the clue (23A: Personae non gratae). I also just couldn't / wouldn't stop to figure out what the hell the clue on "ERAGON" thought it was doing (70D: 2003 best seller whose title is one letter different from a fantasy creature). That creature? The fabled 'EXAGON of 'ellenic 'istory (jk it's a "dragon"). I know "ERAGON" well, as my daughter went through a "read all the fantasy series esp. ones with dragons" phase circa 2010—she's got a signed photo of the "ERAGON" author in her room, no foolin'. But the whole "change this letter to a different letter and then scramble the letters and add salt to get a mythical creature"-type of cluing just makes my eyes blur, and so I inevitably move on and try to get the answer from crosses.
Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium, depending on your moon knowledge (9:03 with a drink in me!)
Theme answers:
- JOLLY RANCHER (21A: Brand of fruity hard candy) / ARIEL (24A: URANUS)
- BLISSFUL IGNORANCE (40A: Comfort in not knowing, say) / GANYMEDE (50A: JUPITER)
- "HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN" (66A: Song standard on "Barbra Streisand's Greatest Hits") / TITAN (71A: SATURN)
- CHEERY DISPOSITION (86A: One feature of a perfect nanny, in a "Marry Poppins" song) / DEIMOS (91A: MARS)
- MERRY-GO-ROUND (113A: Classic carnival ride) / NAIAD (117A: NEPTUNE)
Pai gow (Chinese: 牌九; pinyin: pái jiǔ; Jyutping: paai4 gau2) is a Chinese gambling game, played with a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. It is played in major casinos in China (including Macau); the United States (including Boston, Massachusetts; Las Vegas, Nevada; Reno, Nevada; Connecticut; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Mississippi; and card rooms in California); Canada (including Edmonton, Alberta and Calgary, Alberta); Australia; and, New Zealand.
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Oh, I also really didn't like TYS, because I don't believe that abbr. has every been written out that way ever, ever. [Grateful sentiments] are THX, maybe, but not TYS ("thank-yous"??). Still, if that's all there is to complain about, then that's a Win for the puzzle. It's a bit on-the-nose, but yes, I was over the moon about this puzzle.
Only a couple of mistakes today. Wrote in MANDMS (!?) instead of MENTOS (64D: Candy featured in a classic "MythBusters" episode). The word "classic" has meaning, and I am here to tell you that there is no such thing as a "classic""MythBusters" episode. I barely know what that show is. Somehow MENTOS cause a Diet Coke geyser ??? Anyway, I thought maybe the show was going to bust the myth that green MANDMS make you horny (I would watch that). I also wrote in OUTSIDER instead of OUTCASTS, failing to pick up on the obvious (!) Latin plural in the clue (23A: Personae non gratae). I also just couldn't / wouldn't stop to figure out what the hell the clue on "ERAGON" thought it was doing (70D: 2003 best seller whose title is one letter different from a fantasy creature). That creature? The fabled 'EXAGON of 'ellenic 'istory (jk it's a "dragon"). I know "ERAGON" well, as my daughter went through a "read all the fantasy series esp. ones with dragons" phase circa 2010—she's got a signed photo of the "ERAGON" author in her room, no foolin'. But the whole "change this letter to a different letter and then scramble the letters and add salt to get a mythical creature"-type of cluing just makes my eyes blur, and so I inevitably move on and try to get the answer from crosses.