Constructor: Jamey SmithRelative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none Word of the Day: Niecy NASH (
62A: Actress Niecy on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) —
Carol Denise Betts (née Ensley; born February 23, 1970) is an American comedian, actress, and television host, best known for her performances on television.Nash hosted the Style Network show Clean House from 2003 to 2010, for which she won an Emmy Award in 2010. As an actress, she played the role of Deputy Raineesha Williams in the Comedy Central comedy series Reno 911! (2003–2009) The series was relaunched on Quibi In April 2020. Nash received two nominations for Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series nominations for her performance as nurse Denise "DiDi" Ortley in the HBO comedy Getting On (2013–2015). She also starred as Lolli Ballantine on the TV Land sitcom The Soul Man (2012–2016), and played Denise Hemphill in the Fox horror-comedy anthology series, Scream Queens (2015–2016). In 2017, she began starring as Desna Simms, a leading character, in the TNT crime comedy-drama Claws.
Nash has also played a number of roles in films and has made many guest appearances on television shows. In 2014, Nash played the role of civil rights activist Richie Jean Jackson in the historical drama film Selma directed by Ava DuVernay. In 2019, she starred as Delores Wise in the Ava DuVernay' miniseries When They See Us, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2018, Nash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (wikipedia)
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I'm trying to figure out why this was so unpleasant to solve. I like the longer answers OK—some of them (
LAND GRAB, GROUP THERAPY, "WHAT ABOUT BOB?," PHONE TAG) are even quite good—but the grid was so choppy, so fussy, so full of nooks and crannies and therefore Short Fill (scads of 4- and 5-letter stuff), that it felt like I was having to use a machete to hack through thick, annoying undergrowth to get from long answer to long answer. There were answers I liked, but no *sections* that felt well put together or that ever felt good to be in. Also, perhaps because so much of the puzzle was short stuff, there seemed to be some attempt to amp up the cluing difficulty on it (as short stuff is often the easiest stuff to get), and when every other clue seems to be Trying So Hard to be cutesy / tricky, wow it gets exhausting, mostly because attempts to get cute tend to miss a lot of the time. Like, what the hell is going on with the clue on
TERA (41A: Precursor to a big flop?)!?
TERA- is a prefix meaning "a hell of a lot" (actually, it denotes multiplication by one trillion). So I've got the "Precursor" part (it's a prefix) and the "big" part (one trillion), but "flop" has me baffled. The only thing I can conceive of is a "flop...py disc," a digital storage system that I thought was not just outmoded, but primitive, and certainly not capable of carrying anything one
TERAbyte of *anything*. So it can't be that. [...] ugh it looks like there is a term called "teraflop," wow, fun. Fun.
"A unit of computing speed equal to one million million (10¹²) floating-point operations per second." Love to discover a word I've never heard of in a "?" clue (ugh) for a cruddy bit of fill (ugh) on what is supposed to be the most fun puzzle day of the week (triple ugh). TERA is regular old less-than-good fill; you use it if you have to, but you don't set out to use it. So again, I ask, why would you call attention to your not-strong short fill with weird-ass "?" clues like this?
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| 46D: "___ Winter Sundays" (Robert Hayden poem) ("THOSE") |
EYEBEAM feels very weak, although I don't know what else you'd call that thing coming out of Cyclops' head (19A: Superpower of Cyclops in the "X-Men" films) ("films"!? You know he's a comic book character, right?). Trouble with PATE (1D: Dome) and especially FLAY (2D: Severely criticize), which I had down to FLA- and still could only see FLAK, which I wrote in as FLAC at one point because I thought Cyclops might be wielding an ICE BEAM. Ugh, ALAI is up here (again? didn't we just see ALAI? oh maybe that was AÇAI) and I'm ashamed that it's the first thing I put in the grid (13A: Second word of a game name that rhymes with the first). Hate relying on my crosswordese knowledge for traction. Just a ton of scrambling around in these little corners. Worst was the TERA section in the east, because I also didn't really get the clue on PEEPER, as no one but no one would ever refer to a singular PEEPER (30A: Eye, slangily). I thought "Eye" in that clue was a verb, so PEEP AT. Clue on NASH feels disrespectful, as she has been in a ton of major stuff, on the small and big screen, and the only thing you can think to put in her clue is that she's on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. *Be Specific* about your people! Soupy Sales has a star on the Walk of Fame. Tons of people do. So what? Also, YO, DOG seems so off. If you're going to go with this phrase, I think the DAWG spelling is required. I offer this as my proof.
SAPOR is always yuck. I just have a beef with SAPOR. It's one of those "technically-a-word"s that also never shows up anywhere except crossword puzzles. Not as bad as SAPID, the related, adjectival version of SAPOR, but unpleasant nonetheless. And oof, UREY (58A: Harold ___, Manhattan Project scientist). There's a rough name. Despite having decent longer answers, this one just didn't have any flair or style or grid-craft or a sensibility that I could groove with. Some good long answers in search of a decent grid environment. The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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