Constructor: Yacob Yonas
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day:"CRIP Camp" (2D: "___ Camp," 2020 Oscar-nominated documentary) —
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Pretty strong grid today. No real oohs or aahs, and the grid design ... I dunno, seemed like I was dealing with a lot of short stuff. Felt choppy, chopped up, in a way that made it feel kind of formless—like I was never really in any section, because the sections weren't, I don't know, discrete enough. It was a bit like solving my way through a blob. I know I complain about highly segmented grids sometimes because I don't like corners that are almost completely cut off, but apparently there is another extreme, and this is it. The long answers don't have the effect of creating an open feeling because they're kind of sliding all over the place. What this meant, in practical terms, is that I never really had that great feeling of a corner's opening up, or of several adjacent long answers coming together at once. The grid just felt formless, somehow. And though there were good longer answers all over, they were all just good, not Wow, so it had more of a workmanlike feel to it overall. I think AU CONTRAIRE abutting NOT UP TO SNUFF was my favorite part of the solve, although RAISE A GLASS alongside BEER GARDEN is pretty good too. In those places, I got a little bit of that cool 'Whoosh!" feeling I like to experience when a Friday really throws down and the grid opens up. Everywhere else, I felt like I was hacking away dutifully; the longer answers, when they came, were absolutely solid, but my reaction tended more toward "I SEE" than "oh, cool."
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day:"CRIP Camp" (2D: "___ Camp," 2020 Oscar-nominated documentary) —
Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is a 2020 American documentary film directed, written and co-produced by Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht. Barack and Michelle Obama serve as executive producers under their Higher Ground Productions banner.
Crip Camp had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2020, where it won the Audience Award. It was released on March 25, 2020, by Netflix and received acclaim from critics. It has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. //
Crip Camp starts in 1971 at Camp Jened, a summer camp in New York described as a "loose, free-spirited camp designed for teens with disabilities". Starring Larry Allison, Judith Heumann, James LeBrecht, Denise Sherer Jacobson, and Stephen Hofmann, the film focuses on those campers who turned themselves into activists for the disability rights movement and follows their fight for accessibility legislation. (wikipedia)
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I'm fairly certain my mood was also dampened by the mere mention of Bitcoin, not to mention the unpleasant E-answer it was used to clue (EMONEY) (23A: Ethereum or Bitcoin, for example). I can't believe I live in a (cross)world where I have to accept ECASH *and* EMONEY. EMONEY should've been clued [How rocker Eddie Money signs his checks]. The whole world of EMONEY (if that's what you insist on calling it) reeks of bro-commerce and scamminess. Just yuck. My mood was probably even more dampened by my own failure to get sufficient traction in the NW, where I opened the puzzle. Never pleasant to start out flailing. And then, on the other end of the flailing, there just wasn't enough of a payoff to make the bad feeling go away. And I was so proud of knowing "CRIP Camp"! That's what you get for pride, buster! I went CRIP, SPY, and then ... CATY. With a "T"(3D: Women's rights pioneer Elizabeth ___ Stanton). I know her name so well, how am I still conflating her spelling and CATE Blanchett's spelling this late in the game? I know Stanton's middle name is spelled unusually, but apparently I can't remember the exact nature of the unusualness. That one-letter error probably hurt me most up there. But APPS for ATMS didn't help (1D: You can bank on them), nor did FIGHT (the actual word people use) for MELEE (srsly?) (15D: Hockey game highlight, for some). Vague clues on AXED (7D: Cut) and SLEDS (20A: Winter Olympics equipment) made those invisible as well. Had to abandon the area and start over somewhere around (ugh) EMONEY. That NE area went more smoothly, and I went clockwise around the grid from there, coming back up to the NW via the bottom of ALL SYSTEMS GO, which allowed me to work things out up there. The plural on TRAIL MIXES is awk. Also, I really wanted a brand of snack, or something that I could imagine literally *any* "student" eating (since "student" is in the (ungainly) clue) (14A: Snacks known as "student fodder" and "scroggin" in Germany and New Zealand, respectively). MIDDLE SEAT is good, but of course I thought the "flier" of the clue was the pilot (17A: What few fliers desire), so wah wah, thanks for playing, better luck next time.
No idea who MARLO is (still haven't watched "The Wire") (42A: Drug kingpin on "The Wire"), so I went with CARLO. Then things briefly got very dicey down there when I went with St. YVES instead of St. IVES at 51A: St. ___, locale in an English nursery rhyme). Ended up with C-Y- at 42D: One of eight in "The Twelve Days of Christmas"and had to repeatedly sing the song to myself to make sure that the only possible answer was eight MAIDs (a-milkin'). Otherwise, the puzzle was very doable, with only BITE MARKS for TIRE MARKS really slowing me down at all (35A: Leftovers from a doughnut, say). In case you didn't know, a "doughnut" is a term to describe driving in a circle while burning rubber, which leaves TIRE MARKS in a circular, or "doughnut," shape. I don't think anything else needs explaining. Cheers.