Constructor: Angela Olson Halsted and Doug Peterson
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME:"Game Changers"— familiar phrases have one letter added to become wacky phrases clued (wackily!) in some relation to baseball; the added letters in the themers are, in order: I, N, N, I, N, G, and S, which makes for EXTRA INNINGS (120A: Ballgame extenders ... and what can literally be found in the answers to the asterisked clues):
Theme answers:
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Hello and welcome to today's puzzle. Full disclosure: these are my friends, two of my favorite people in all of Crossworld. And they are (hard core) baseball fans (Angela, Nats; Doug, Yankees). I have been to (multiple) baseball games with these two. Mostly Yankees games when we're all in NYC for, say, the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament (in late summer), or an Orioles game when we're IN D.C. (!) for the Indie 500 crossword tournament (in late spring). You see, I too am a hard-core baseball fan, though unlike them, I support a team (the Tigers) that does not, uh, win. Though perhaps I should celebrate this particular moment in the baseball season, as Opening Day was only a few short days ago, and my Tigers are currently undefeated, having beaten last year's best pitcher in baseball (Shane Bieber) in Game 1 and having given up just four runs in two games so far. Yes, today, and for probably no more than another day or two, I revel in my team's glory: the best team in baseball, by record, on this day, the 4th of April, two thousand and twenty-one ... where was I? Ah yes, the puzzle. So, I know these two, and I want to say that I love the revealer (I *was* wondering, as I was solving, "Why *these* letters?" and unlike other such puzzles, this puzzle had an answer—EXTRA INNINGS).
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- IDEAL BREAKER (23A: *Perfect curveball?)
- BUNT SERIOUSLY (33A: *Batting coach's instruction to a lackadaisical hitter?)
- LAWN STUDENTS (40A: *Apprentice groundskeepers?)
- SO FAIR, SO GOOD (65A: *Overenthusiastic description of a routine base hit?)
- LINE DETECTOR (72A: *Umpire's aid in judging foul balls?)
- LABOR OF GLOVE (99A: *Long hours of fielding practice?)
- INVISIBLE SINK (104A: *Imperceptible fastball movement?)
Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho (born 9 August 2000) known professionally as Arlo Parks, is a British singer-songwriter and poet. Her debut studio album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart. (wikipedia)
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NOTICE: If any of you have any idea why my site has been completely delisted by non-Google search engines, please let me know. It's ... bizarre. In the meantime, please bookmark the site so that you can arrive here without issue: rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com. Or just use Google!
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| Yankee Stadium, Aug. 2015 Back row: Doug, Me, Mike Nothnagel, Brian Cimmet, Erik Agard Front row: Finn Vigeland, Angela, Brad Wilber, Penelope Harper Not pictured: Sam Ezersky, who had to leave early :( |
I have some serious baseball lingo reservations, though. First, and probably most importantly, I think the first themer is not just an outlier, but kind of a deal-... let's say, -breaker. The minor problem is that "breaker" isn't the most specific term. I guess people use it as shorthand for a "breaking ball," but mostly they actually say the whole phrase, or they say the specific pitch (curve, slider, etc.). "Breaker" feels odd, and googling [baseball "breaker"] doesn't yield great results. But the bigger problem with the first themer is that the wacky word is not the baseball word. In *every* other case (BUNT, LAWN, FAIR, LINE, GLOVE, SINK), the added letter creates a baseball-related word. But here, the "I" creates "IDEAL," which ... is not a baseball word. Added letter creates the baseball word, that's how it should go, and that's how it does go ... except here. Just weird. Also weird: trying to pass off SINK as a baseball term. Certainly a "sinker" is a type of pitch, and yes, that pitch does have, uh, "sink" to it, but SINK on its own is not really an identifiable baseball term. Lastly, I don't know why you would exclaim "SO FAIR, SO GOOD" for a "routine base hit," necessarily. A fair ball might be routine, but it also might very much not be routine. It might be extraordinary. It might be game-winning. In short, I don't see how the phrase clearly denotes an "Overreaction." I mean, it's a goofy, made-up phrase, but one as appropriate to a walk-off homerun as a leadoff single to right field. I wish the baseballness of this had been tighter, and funnier.
Super-excited to see ARLO with this new, non-Guthrie, non-"Arlo & Janis" clue. As soon as I discovered ARLO Parks's music (earlier this year), I thought, "Yes! New clue for ARLO! It's only a matter of time ..." I assumed that time would be, well, years in the future, given the NYTXW's track record with contemporary ... everything, but hurray, that time is now! Give her a listen, she's fantastic. I can imagine hearing her music in a coffeehouse, unlike FOLK MUSIC (5D: What's heard at many a coffeehouse), which I haven't heard in a coffeehouse since ... the '60s? I wasn't born then, but that's when I last heard it. Time is weird. I have spent a lot (lot lot) of hours in coffeehouses since roughly 1990 and FOLK MUSIC, maybe, sure, sometimes there's stuff that roughly falls in that category (I see one of the listed genres for ARLO Parks is "indie folk"), but still, that clue feels dated. Also, has anyone ever been RARING to go? (125A: ___ to go). RARIN', sure, we've all been there, but with the "G" ... it just doesn't square with the spirit of the verb, somehow. Too prim. Too proper. "Jeeves, I'm RARING to go, bring the car around." Can't hear it. OK, I'm going back to my couch to watch highlights of the Tigers game. See you again soon.
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]