Constructor: Ross Trudeau and Lindsey HobbsRelative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed)
THEME:"Gravity's Rainbow"— colors of the rainbow turn downward (because of gravity?) inside of otherwise Across theme answers. Plus, it's hard to see this the way the colors are situated in the grid, but if you read them from L to R, they do follow the correct rainbow order:
Theme answers:- THE RED PLANET (95A: Mars)
- BLOOD ORANGE (56A: Fruit with crimson-colored flesh)
- MELLOW YELLOW (39A: 1966 Donovan hit)
- EVERGREEN TREE (6A: Spruce or fir)
- OL'BLUE EYES (43A: Sinatra, to fans)
- INDIGO GIRLS (60: Popular folk rock duo)
- ULTRA-VIOLET RAYS (100A: Harmful bits of sunlight)
Word of the Day: LYDIA Ko (
64D: Golf's ___ Ko, youngest golfer to be ranked #1) —
Lydia Ko MNZM (born 24 April 1997) is a Korean-born New Zealand professional golfer. A former No. 1-ranked woman professional golfer, she achieved the top ranking on 2 February 2015 at 17 years, 9 months and 9 days of age, making her the youngest player of either gender to be ranked No. 1 in professional golf.Ko has had much success from an early age holding many youngest accolades on the LPGA Tour. She was the youngest person ever to win a professional golf tour event and youngest person ever to win an LPGA Tour event. In August 2013, she became the only amateur to win two LPGA Tour events. Upon winning The Evian Championship in France on 13 September 2015, she became the youngest woman, at age 18 years, 4 months and 20 days, to win a major championship. Her closing round of 63 was a record lowest final round in the history of women's golf majors, but she lowered that record to 62 at the ANA Inspiration in 2021. She had previously won the ANA Inspiration on 3 April 2016 for her second consecutive major championship, where she also became the youngest player to win two women's major championships. Since turning professional in 2014, Ko has won 15 tournaments. In 2014, Ko was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. In both 2014 and 2015, Ko has been named in the EspnW Impact25 list of 25 athletes and influencers who have made the greatest impact for women in sports.
In 2016, Ko was named Young New Zealander of the Year, and in the 2019 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to golf.
• • •
There are two interesting features of this theme. One is the title / downward turn of the colors, and the other is the fact that the colors do, in fact, make a rainbow, if you "read" them in order L to R. Beyond that it's pretty paint-by-numbers, a variant of a theme I've seen a thousand times (well, a few times). I got to this point in the puzzle and thought it might be (yet another) rainbow rebus ...
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... but it surprised me with the whole downward turn thing, so that's cool. Still, the colors are just colors, and once you get the gimmick (early, easily), there's not much going on here. The themers themselves are straightforward. It's all a bit BLAH, if not a total BORE. I just call EVERGREEN TREEs"evergreens," so the TREE part felt redundant ... and generally the colors were so literal (his eyes are in fact blue, the planet does indeed appear red, etc.) that there just wasn't much flair or surprise here. The rainbow is kind of Pride-ish, though, and since it's Pride Month, I guess that's a nice coincidence. Maybe I'll just enjoy it at that level. Yes, that works.
There were no real tough spots today, though I never really committed the song title "JAI HO" to memory (89A: Oscar-winning song from "Slumdog Millionaire"), so all those crosses were a bit dicey for me, with ON BAIL proving the most tenaciously resistant to completion (72D: Temporarily out). Also didn't know LYDIA Ko's name, but after the LYD- slid in there, the rest was easy to infer. Totally forgot LIT OUT was an actual expression, so I had LI- OUT and still no idea. LIP OUT is something a golf ball does on occasion, but you wouldn't say the golf ball "skedaddled" out of the cup, and anyway, LIP out is in the wrong verb tense. GRADATES is a weird verb (109A: Changes by degrees). Not sure I've ever seen it. "Gradated," sure. A rainbow is gradated! "Gradations," yup. But GRADATES as a verb feels less common. Nothing Wrong With It. Just looks/feels weird to my eyes/ears. Especially under DELIME, which I truly have never seen (105A: Remove calcium deposits from). Was prepared to be mad at RED ONION because it contains a color that does *not* turn down, but then the answer turned out to be RAW ONION, so: madness averted. I wrote in PLATE HATS (?) before PAPER HATS at 21A: Homemade headgear for pretend pirates, as I imagined the hats were somehow made out of ... paper plates, I guess. Not proud of that one. I actually had to think about whether it was CONGO or CONGA (71A: World's deepest river). Also not proud of that. Clue on RICH was good but tough (80D: Laughable). I wrote in "PFFT!" then took out "PFFT!" then finally wrote "PFFT!" back in. In other, completely coincidental news, I just watched the movie "PHFFFT!" for the first time this past week—it's a romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday, who are one of the most underrated movie comedy pairs of all time (probably because they only did two movies together ("PHFFFT!" and "It Should Happen To You," both from 1954). Judy Holliday's movie career didn't last much longer, and she died of throat cancer in 1965. "Born Yesterday" (1950), for which Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar, is my favorite movie, no foolin'. Where was I? Oh, right. "PFFT!" I liked it because it reminded me of Judy and Jack.
[OLÉ!]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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