Constructor: David Steinberg
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: no, but ...
Word of the Day: BONHOMIE (36D: Easy friendliness) —
Hello and welcome to another 23rd-of-the-month Zoom solve featuring my friend Rachel Fabi. "But it's not the 23rd of the month!" you say indignantly. Good point. I forget why we had to miss April 23rd. Oh! Right! My second Covid shot was April 21st and I knew I was probably gonna sleep for allllll of April 22nd, which meant no April 23rd Zoom solve (we do the puzzle the night before, right when the puzzle comes out at 10pm). So this is a make-up. Since I already spent a lot of time solving and talking to Rachel, and I'm going to have to spend some more time doing the technical mumbo-jumbo to prepare the video for posting, I'm just gonna hit the highlights here in the write-up. Thankfully, they are almost all highlights (as opposed to lights of the lower variety). The best thing about the grid is a little symmetrical shenanigans with two of the longer answers, which don't seem to have anything to do with each other, until you either say them out loud or look at them really closely. I'm talking, of course, about EIGHTY-EIGHT and NIGHTY-NIGHT, which not only have the same singsongy cadence, but which are actually identical in every way except the first letters of each word part (i.e. EIGHTY-EIGHT is just NIGHTY-NIGHT with the N's swapped out for E's). It is a very cute little wink of an answer pair. Not so cute that I exclaimed "AW, SO CUTE!" but cute nonetheless.
More stuff:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: BONHOMIE (36D: Easy friendliness) —
: good-natured easy friendliness an undying bonhomie radiated from her— Jean Stafford
English speakers borrowed bonhomie from the French, where the word was created from bonhomme, which means "good-natured man" and is itself a composite of two other French words: bon, meaning "good," and homme, meaning "man." That French compound traces to two Latin terms, bonus (meaning "good") and homo (meaning either "man" or "human being"). English speakers have warmly embraced bonhomie and its meaning, but we have also anglicized the pronunciation in a way that may make native French speakers cringe. (We hope they will be good-natured about it!) (merriam-webster.com)
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[This song is about the Greensboro Massacre]
We sailed through this puzzle with almost no hang-ups. AIDAN was by far the hardest thing for us to come up with, but it wasn't that hard; when we couldn't get it from the AI-, we just swung around and came at it from the back end. I guess there are no famous AIDANs. Oh, nope, looks like AIDAN Quinn *is* spelled that way. I thought he was an AIDEN? Is anyone an AIDEN? Anyway, that was our one trouble spot. We went back and forth over whether 23A: Day to post a throwback picture on social media: Abbr. was THU or TBT (TBT is the hashtag associated with this social media phenomenon, but as Rachel eventually pointed out, the "TB" in TBT actually stands for "throwback," and since that word is in the clue, TBT was never an option. We both think TBT is decent fill to use in a pinch, though. Speaking of pinches, Rachel's first guess for 33D: They may be used in a pinch was HANDS, which I was very willing to believe (but it's HERBS). When Rachel told me 40A: Cheap cab, perhaps was HOUSE RED, I had a split-second of thinking, "Wait, I've heard of Yellow Cabs, but HOUSE REDs!? What the—!?" but as soon as I formed that thought I realized that "cab" here referred to a Cabernet. Rachel also caught the fact that IGA, a familiar supermarket chain, was embedded in the word "Michigan," which is why that clue has a "?" on it (61D: Grocery store found in Michigan?). Whereas I just thought "Well, I know the grocery chain IGA, I guess they're based in Michigan, huh, ok, moving on!"
More stuff:
- 13D: Grade-A (TOP TIER)— thought this was one word all the way to the bitter end. Actually said "TOPTIER?!" out loud
- 35D: Composition test (ASSAY)— this clue is particularly tricky, as the clue works perfectly for ESSAY as well
- 26D: Pumbaa's friend in "The Lion King" (TIMON) — I have never seen this movie, which Rachel cannot believe. Rachel is concerned that TIMON crossing TERI might cause trouble for some people, since this particular TERI isn't that well known (30A: Actress Shields, mother of Brooke). But I reassure her that TERA is nobody's name and there really aren't any other options there but the "I"
- 60D: Archery need (AIM) — Got the "A" and wanted ARM, which, come on, definitely makes sense. I would argue that you need an ARM more than you "need"AIM (clue doesn't say you have to be *good* at archery), but fine, yes, AIM.
OK, here's the video of our solve.
Good night / morning!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]