Constructor: Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: "SEE ME AFTER CLASS" (58A: Ominous request from a teacher ... or a hint to the first words (and following letters!) of 17-, 26- and 43-Across) — familiar phrases in which "ME" appears directly after a kind of class:
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
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Really, really liked this theme. It is slightly thin, and I still don't think "business" is a real H.S. class on the level of traditionality with "gym" and "German" (or "English" or "biology" or "history" etc.). Also, BUSINESS MEETING is about the most boring 15 you're ever likely to see. Still, this one unspooled perfectly for me, with the revealer really doing its job of both making me see something I hadn't and (crucial) making me "oh, wow, cool." The "ME" aspect of the theme probably severely limits the number of plausible answers you could generate here, so maybe the theme isn't "thin" at all, but exactly as thick as it needs to be. And then to get your plausible answers to fit symmetrically in your grid? Yeah, this is probably just what it needs to be to come off properly. Restraint! I'm grateful for it. I was stunned at how easy this seemed for a Wednesday. I had the timer off but barely hesitated at any point in the solve. Felt like yesterday's "guess the expression-of-disbelief phrase!" theme, coupled with harder than usual cluing, took me twice as long as today's. I would expect people's times to be very fast today. LAIT was the only thing I didn't know, and that was because I misread the clue (14A: Brest milk). Me: "Why ... did we make the technical name for breast milk ... French??" Later me: "Oh ... Brest. I see, now, what you did there."
- BUSINESSMEETING (17A: Event with minutes that might last hours)
- GYMMEMBERSHIP (26A: Purchase inspired by a New Year's resolution, often)
- GERMANMEASLES (43A: Rubella, by another name)
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. The city has its origin in the shrine of Saint James the Great, now the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, as the destination of the Way of St. James, a leading Catholic pilgrimage route since the 9th century. In 1985, the city's Old Town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Santiago de Compostela has a very mild climate for its latitude with heavy winter rainfall courtesy of its relative proximity to the prevailing winds from Atlantic low-pressure systems. (wikipedia)
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Oh, I also didn't know that OTIS guy who helped develop the pacemaker (4D: Inventor Boykin who helped develop the pacemaker). That answer is the only real speed bump, a total outlier relative to the familiarity of the rest of the answers in the grid, but it's just four letters and wasn't hard to work around. I guessed OTTO at one point but then fixed it. Wasn't sure what shape a bacillus was, but at three letters it didn't take long to figure out. Got to -RED at 41A: Made a peeling? and briefly thought it could be PARED *or* CORED, but then I chose the word that actually referred to peeling, and that solved that (what is [Made a peeling?] even a pun on? "Made appealing?" Looks like it's trying to ape "make a killing" and doing a bad job of it). I remember the IGLESIASes from days gone by. I think Julio sang with Willie Nelson once, and Enrique became a pop star right at the low point of my pop music literacy (the '00s, or, as I heard someone call them the other day, the naughties!). Their name is very familiar to me, so no trouble there. Some trouble with SANTIAGO, which I know only as a place in Chile (the capital!). I don't know that the fill is terribly flashy today, but it's solid. UBERNERD (9D: Tech-obsessed sort, perhaps) is (ironically) supposed to be a cool answer, I think, but it doesn't do anything for me, as the concept "nerd" appears to have lost all meaning in recent years, and UBER just evokes the economic insecurity of the gig economy. I'd rather walk. Or take public transportation. Or a VESPA. Or HAIL A TAXI. Still, despite the non-flashiness, I rarely cringed at the fill today, partially because it was easy (no time to cringe!) but mostly because the fill just did its job and stayed out of the way so we could clearly see and admire the theme. Nice.
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]