Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: the beginning and end of the world, per two Nobelists— BIG BANG / PENZIAS on one end, WHIMPER / T.S. ELIOT on the other, and Past, Present, Future marching through the whole thing
The Nobelist stuff:
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Quite the rollercoaster, this one. Had one of the weirdest, eeriest, most startling theme-discovery moments of my solving life. Just completely bizarre. So, I start the puzzle, I read 1-Across (as you do), my eyes take in "This is the way the world..." and "per 51-Across," and instantly I write in NOT WITH and then go looking for 51-Across, where I assume I will be writing in T.S. ELIOT. The NOT WITH is from the end of Eliot's "The Hollow Men" ("This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper"), so I assume this is going to be some kind of symmetrical quote thing NOT WITH / A BANG BUT A / WHIMPER, something like that. Only NOT WITH just doesn't work, which causes me to revisit the 1-Across clue and realize I've misread it: it's looking for the way the world began, not ended. So now I'm very disappointed, and I write in BAAS, which is always disappointing, and I dutifully hack at the NW and get BIG BANG, and I'm on my way ... and I drift across the grid ... and then I run into 24A: Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across, I see that it's T.S. ELIOT, and then I GASP and hurl my computer across the room because it's clearly a witch (I didn't really hurl my computer, although I did exclaim "Oh My God!" pretty loudly). So, to recap: misread the first theme clue and guessed the wrong thing, only to discover that it was the right thing for the last theme clue. So, like this: "Cool, it's T.S. ELIOT ... oh, stupid me, it's not ... wait, it is! Oh My God!"
This has not been a good week for me where theme answers are concerned. For the second day in a row, I was completely unfamiliar with the central Across answer (today, NET PRESENT VALUE). Then came the double whammy, as I'd never heard of the physics Nobelist either (PENZIAS). So half of the puzzle felt like it was made just for me, and the other half ... didn't. Hence the "Medium" difficulty rating (I didn't actually time myself, so I don't know—it felt generally easy, actually). I like the idea of this theme. The PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE element is interesting and ambitious, but it feels like it muddies things a bit, conceptually. The main problem is the PRESENT, which is just hanging out there with no Nobelist to give it a good quote. Briefly thought "WHERE AM I?" was supposed to be a themer linked to the PRESENT, but the symmetrical counterpart to "WHERE AM I?" is SESAME ST., which ... wait, is that where I am? Is that where we all are? "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to SESAME ST.?""You're already there, man.""I ... I am?" [achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence]
Relative difficulty: Medium
The Nobelist stuff:
- BIG BANG (1A: This is the way the world began, per 51-Across)
- PENZIAS (51A: Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, confirming 1-Across)
- WHIMPER (71A: "This is the way the world ends," per 24-Across)
- T.S. ELIOT (24A: Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across)
The traveling-through-time stuff:
- PAST ONE'S BEDTIME (16A: At an ungodly hour)
- NET PRESENT VALUE (39A: Tomorrow's cash flow assessed today)
- "BACK TO THE FUTURE" (64A: Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards)
Arno Allan Penzias (/ˈpɛnziəs/; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
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This has not been a good week for me where theme answers are concerned. For the second day in a row, I was completely unfamiliar with the central Across answer (today, NET PRESENT VALUE). Then came the double whammy, as I'd never heard of the physics Nobelist either (PENZIAS). So half of the puzzle felt like it was made just for me, and the other half ... didn't. Hence the "Medium" difficulty rating (I didn't actually time myself, so I don't know—it felt generally easy, actually). I like the idea of this theme. The PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE element is interesting and ambitious, but it feels like it muddies things a bit, conceptually. The main problem is the PRESENT, which is just hanging out there with no Nobelist to give it a good quote. Briefly thought "WHERE AM I?" was supposed to be a themer linked to the PRESENT, but the symmetrical counterpart to "WHERE AM I?" is SESAME ST., which ... wait, is that where I am? Is that where we all are? "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to SESAME ST.?""You're already there, man.""I ... I am?" [achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence]
PENZIAS was genuinely scary for me because I knew I was going to require clear and indisputable crosses for every letter of his name. Thank god I knew the words NACRE and TITTLE, and didn't decide to spell PREZ with an "S" at the end (40D: Head of a country, informally). Managed to tiptoe through that minefield nicely. NET PRESENT VALUE I just hacked away at until discernible words appeared. The grid has a lot lot lot of ordinary short stuff, which meant that getting traction on the longer answers was never a problem. The only place I really found that short stuff off-putting was in the SE, at the PCBS / BRER / SES pile-up (ULM's lurking presence didn't help). But on the whole I thought this puzzle was creative and ambitious and whimsical in a pleasant way. I think the clue on PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is pretty bad (16A: At an ungodly hour), in that "ungodly" implies extreme lateness, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is just a vague, general time period. You'd refer to an hour as "ungodly" if someone woke you up during it, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME has more of a banal "it's getting late" kind of vibe. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's an ungodly hour" = no. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's past my bedtime" = yes. What else? Paused at -HEW because "P" or "W," who can say? (58D: "That was close!") Had BIBS before BUNS (37D: Supply at a barbecue). Blanked on BAO (4D: Chinese dumpling), or, rather, conflated it with BANH MI, and so wrote in BAN (!?!?!). They're both so delicious that I feel compelled to apologize to both of them for the mistake. I'm sorry, food. The end.
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]