Constructor: Matt FrederickRelative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)
THEME: CROSS / ROADS (29D: With 36-Down, intersection ... as suggested by the circled letters in the middle of this puzzle?) — circled letters represent the songs "HIGHWAY to HELL" and "STAIRWAY to HEAVEN," with "highway" descending and "stairway" ascending; thus "highway" and "stairway" are (metaphorically) ROADS that (literally) CROSS in the middle of the grid:
Theme answers:- HEAVEN (23A: Classic Led Zeppelin song represented by the ascending circled letters and this answer)
- HELL (61A: Classic AC/DC song represented by the falling circled letters and this answer)
Word of the Day: BAI (
43D: Antioxidant juice brand) —
Bai Brands is a beverage company founded in 2009 in Princeton, New Jersey, by entrepreneur Ben Weiss. Weiss started Bai after he learned about the coffeefruit – the fruit that surrounds the outside of the coffee bean — and decided to use it to create a new brand of beverages. The company offers a line of low-calorie soft drinks (including sodas, bottled water, iced tea, and non-carbonated fruit-flavored drinks) sweetened with erythritol and rebaudioside A (stevia leaf extract), ascorbic acid, and extract from coffea fruit harvested in Indonesia; its flavors typically are identified by the name of an exotic locale along with the natural fruit flavor used. Its flagship product is Bai Antioxidant Infusions. In 2015, it launched a brand of bottled water called Bai Antiwater.
By 2015, Bai was named one of “America’s Most Promising Companies” by Forbes. In 2016, entertainer Justin Timberlake invested in Bai and became the brand’s “chief flavor officer.” On November 22, 2016, it was announced that Dr Pepper Snapple Bottling Group had made a cash purchase of Bai Brands for $1.7 billion. On February 5, 2017, Bai aired their first national commercial during Super Bowl LI due to the success that they had with the regional commercial shown in the previous year's Super Bowl. They spent an estimated $5 million on the ad that also featured Timberlake and Christopher Walken. (wikipedia)
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There's a lot happening here, but "a lot" is not necessarily "more," which is to say it doesn't necessarily improve things. The theme is somewhat off in several ways, so the offs get compounded. No part of the theme feels stick-the-landing perfect in its execution. Let's start with the fact that the theme—all of it except the
CROSS / ROADS part, was instantly gettable once you took one look at the clue on
HEAVEN, which just hands you the song title, which basically hands you the concept and the remaining circled squares. "Stairway to Heaven" is the obvious, first-to-mind "classic Led Zeppelin song," and once you see that only
HEAVEN fits there, the whole
STAIRWAY part becomes obvious, and then the remaining circled bits ... I don't even think I looked at the clue for
HELL. Just filled in every circle on the board immediately. Theme: basically over:
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Only it's *not* over because there is more theme material to uncover. I run into CROSS and get the ROADS part easily enough, but this phrase doesn't add much. Or, it adds the "crossing" part (so it expresses the fact that the ascending and descending circled parts "cross"), but while a "highway" is in fact a "road," a "stairway" is not. There's just the one road. Further, the very idea of a highway crossing a stairway is a little absurd. Further, now our attention is *really* called to the asymmetry of the "roads," a thing that was making chalkboard-scratchy noises in my head from the moment I opened the puzzle ("what is that a picture of ... scissors? ... ew, no, why is one part longer than the other? etc."). And then there's the fact that the roads don't actually reach their destinations. "And she's buy-uy-ing a stairway to a square two spaces down from HEAVEN!" Catchy. Not as catchy as "I'm on the hiiiighway to NYE," but catchy nonetheless. Anyway, everything feels alop (to borrow a rarely-actually-used word from crosswords I have solved). Too easy to figure out *and* not on-the-nose enough.
Also, there's BAI. Forget that I've never heard of it (though I'm sure I've seen it on shelves there w/ all the other artificially-colored "healthy" waters in scamville). It had a Super Bowl ad, so it's famous enough for crosswords. But it's still bad. Just because it's *new* doesn't make it good. A random product name, esp. one not universally known, is not inherently good. BAI is old-school three-letter fill* dressing up like it's fancy and new, but really HAI or JAI would serve you better here. They are stalwarts. They can do the job in a way that doesn't call much attention to themselves (since obviously you don't want anyone lingering on your short fill here—you wanna keep people focused on the theme spectacle). So aside from my standing antipathy to virtually any prepackaged product touting its "antioxidant" content :( there's the misguided consumerist cruciverbial idea of "all-brands-are-good-fill" that's bugging me too. If you need BAI, I guess go ahead. But you didn't. So [___ alai] is like "come on, man" and [Yokohama "yes"] is like "uh ... no." Let crosswordese do its (limited) magic. Stop trying to sell me brightly-colored, allegedly healthy, "All New!" snake-oil crosswordese. I'll take my crosswordese like I take my water: straight up. BAI schmai.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
