Constructor: Sam Ezersky
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: POOH-BAH (15D: Muckety-muck) —
n.
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The NW was where I started, and it was by far the hardest part of the puzzle. Vague clues, multiple possibilities, no real progress. This put me in a baddish mood, but I figured hey, it's Friday, things'll loosen up in other parts of the grid. And while things did, in fact, get easier when I left that section, they did not exactly get better. That is to say, I was happy I was making grid progress, but it was the progress that was making me happy, not the grid, which is oddly bland and also has some absolutely wasted long answers. Your long answers are really your big guns in a late-week puzzle; they are the flash and the sizzle, they are what you want people to remember. But today the answer I liked best in the whole entire grid was... DEFIB. No joke, I really like that little 5-letter word, and I feel like I rarely see it. In fact, not sure I've ever seen it. It's got some spunk, that one. But the long stuff? Fine, adequate, but mostly blah blah blah, and then there's ITALIAN MEAL, which, you know, can be delicious irl, but the MEAL part just makes me squirm with its odd general non-specificity. I'd buy ITALIAN DINNER a thousand times before I'd buy ITALIAN MEAL. "Italian dinner" outgoogles "ITALIAN MEAL" by a long shot, and also, the very first hit I get when googling "ITALIAN MEAL" is this
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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: POOH-BAH (15D: Muckety-muck) —
n.
1. A pompous ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices,fulfills none of them.
2. A person who holds high office. (thefreedictionary.com)
Grand Poobah is a satirical term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885). In this comic opera, Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including "First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral ... Archbishop ... Lord Mayor" and "Lord High Everything Else". The name has come to be used as a mocking title for someone self-important or locally high-ranking and who either exhibits an inflated self-regard or who has limited authority while taking impressive titles.The American writer William Safire wrote that "everyone assumes [the name] Pooh-Bah merely comes from [W. S. Gilbert] combining the two negative exclamations Pooh! plus Bah!, typical put-downs from a typical bureaucrat." (wikipedia)
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I mean, THAI MEAL? CHINESE MEAL? You see how those don't sound *quite* right, right? They're perfectly understandable, they just don't have stand-alone power. I got ITALIAN and then ... no idea. Couldn't guess it. What cool word is coming!? Drum roll: MEAL. It's such a thud. Not as bad a thud as ONE EGG, but a thud nonetheless (11D: Brownie mix add-in, often). Thuddier, thuddiest, in fact, was WORSE TO COME, for which I can't even imagine a scenario (23D: Prognosis that a problem has only just begun). Can't imagine the phrase being uttered. Not plausibly. It's a phrase that makes sense, if you said it, folks would know what you mean, but WORSE TO COME just sits there ... even the clue can't think of a context. "Prognosis" sounds medical, but is a doctor going to use that exact phrase? It just doesn't land. It doesn't snap. It just wilts and dies. And nothing else in the grid is trying too hard to make up for it.
INACAST is like most INA's that aren't INASEC or INABIT or INAWAY—those all make good, stand-alone phrases, but INACAST is like INACAR or INADRAWER. Actually, there are a bunch of INA phrases I would accept. INADAZE. INASNIT. INAHEARTBEAT. But not INACAST. I don't quite get (and this is not the puzzle's fault) why it's POOH-BAH in the dictionary but when you add "Grand" to the front and use it facetiously it's POOBAH. It's a word derived from a character in The Mikado, which is one of those looks-racist musicals that I have not yet been willing to explore. Anyway, I thought it was one-H "poobah," so that caused a pause. Best wrong answer of the day by far came when I had -STHIGH at the back end of 23A: Like water at the shallow end of a pool and wrote in LEAST HIGH. "That's terrible!" I thought. Indeed. Also, that's wrong (it's WAIST-HIGH). Had BRO before BUD (49D: Homie). Groaned at the corny clue on LOIN (50A: "Sir" might be found at the start of it). One more ugsome entry for the day: SUABLE (37D: Fit to be tried). Wanted SANE—the clue would be a good one for SANE. Then I wanted STABLE, which really seemed promising. But SUABLE, what an awful bit of legalese. These kinds of letdowns just happened over and over today. Again, most of the grid holds up fine, but it doesn't do much but lie there. APITY. Alright, I'M OUT. See you tomorrow.