Constructor: Jake Halperin
Relative difficulty: medium (slightly tipsy 3:45)
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THEME: CALLS IT LIKE IT IS [What each asterisked clue's answer does, to correct a misnomer?] — each clue is technically correct, but not what we'd call it: the FUNNY BONE is actually a NERVE, etc.
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: KEKE [Actress/TV host Palmer] —
Pretty straightforward theme for a Thursday, IMO; my usual gambit of filling in the first row and then trying all the downs off that wasn't too successful, but getting HOHO / HEH / OPUS / OCHOA gave me confidence that 20-A was SHOOTING STARS...which didn't fit, but most of the downs through the first half of that worked, and so it was easy to assume that the second word was changing. Those downs through SHOOTING gave me FUNNY, and when BONE didn't fit, that confirmed the changing words. Would've found it sooner if I'd looked at the reveal—the clue there really spells things out way too explicitly, IMO—but got there soon enough, and the bottom half went down pretty quickly.
Relative difficulty: medium (slightly tipsy 3:45)
Theme answers:
- FUNNY
BONENERVE [Sensitive part of the elbow] - SHOOTING
STARMETEOR [Oft-wished-upon sighting] - KOALA
BEARMARSUPIAL [Symbol of Australia] PANAMAECUADAOR HAT [Headwear made from jipijapa fibers]
Word of the Day: KEKE [Actress/TV host Palmer] —
Lauren Keyana "Keke" Palmer (born August 26, 1993) is an American actress, singer and television personality. She is known for playing leading and character roles in comedy-drama productions, and her accolades include a Black Reel Award, six NAACP Image Awards, and nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, a Daytime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. An influential figure in popular culture, she was included on Time magazine's list of most influential people in the world in 2019. (Wikipedia)
• • •
It me yet again, occasional indie constructorChristopher Adams filling in for Rex while he's trapped in the JFK airport. The most I can say about JFK: at least it's not Newark. Hopefully he should be free from there and back home and blogging by tomorrow, but while he's off fighting evil airplanes or something, I'm filling in here.Pretty straightforward theme for a Thursday, IMO; my usual gambit of filling in the first row and then trying all the downs off that wasn't too successful, but getting HOHO / HEH / OPUS / OCHOA gave me confidence that 20-A was SHOOTING STARS...which didn't fit, but most of the downs through the first half of that worked, and so it was easy to assume that the second word was changing. Those downs through SHOOTING gave me FUNNY, and when BONE didn't fit, that confirmed the changing words. Would've found it sooner if I'd looked at the reveal—the clue there really spells things out way too explicitly, IMO—but got there soon enough, and the bottom half went down pretty quickly.
YMMV on whether pedantic corrections / "well, actually..." is a fun theme or not, and probably that's the basis of your judgment here. With some tweaks, this could absolutely have run on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but I have no problems with this on a Thursday—to paraphrase Will Shortz, Thursday is only supposed to be harder than Wednesday; it doesn't have to have a gimmick necessarily. I would have liked to see the clues beefed up to be a little more difficult overall to make it more of a Thursday, but this was a fine puzzle, ignoring day of the week concerns.
One thing I didn't notice until typing out the theme clues / entries was that the first three all change the last word, while the last changes the first word. This is, generally, something that should be avoided if possible, and I know Will Shortz likes to avoid that (revisions for this puzzle, for instance, changed it so that the theme change was consistently at the first word of each phrase). Ideally, all four theme entries would've followed the same pattern: either all at the end or all at the beginning; failing that, having two of each) is also fine since there's not really a pattern to break. But having three use the first word (and especially the first three, which sets the solver up to expect the fourth to also use the first word, only to get a c-c-c-combo breaker) is probably the least desirable outcome.
renegades by x ambassadors—they're from ithaca, new york!
But like I said, I only noticed that while typing this up, and it didn't trip me up while solving: partially because having a reveal in the middle breaks up the theme pattern (even though it's not a theme answer, visually, it's in the grid in a spot where it interrupts those answers), and partially because by the time I got to the last theme answer, I'd already filled in the reveal and so dropped in ECUADOR HAT without thinking about theme details such as this.
i have no compelling reason from the grid to include this; it's just funny
Otherwise, I thought it was really nice how the theme answers were stacked—the constructor didn't have to do that, but it made for a bit of an interesting grid. And working in things like HIGH HEELS, TANGENTIAL, RENEGADE, SALVADOR (albeit too easily clued for a Thursday, but still fun), DITTO MARKS, and AT A GLANCE through two or three theme answers each made for fun moments while solving. I could have done without EQUI-, SYS, ALLO, URI (why not just make it BAD / ARI, for instance), etc., but overall this was more good than bad.
Olio:
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Olio:
- LADY ["___ Bird" (2017 film)] — Only pointing this out because it was a good reminder of this collab from way back when.
- DELT [It's found near a trap] — Here referring to muscles: trapezius and deltoid. I suspect the crossing of DELT / LUNN [Sally ___ (English teacake)] will be a sore spot for many solvers; the clue for DELT is definitely one of the trickier ones in this puzzle, but you still want to make sure that those are crossed fairly and all.
- ONE [Common typo for an exclamation point] — A keyboard key clue; if you don't press the shift key, you'll end up with a 1 instead of a ! and mess up your password and get locked out and (the horror!) have to call an actual live human being in tech support to get unlocked (as ! does).
- KEKE [Actress/TV host Palmer] / AKERS [Michelle who was FIFA's Female Player of the Century] — I did not know either of these names before solving and had to fill both in from crosses. And you know what? I am glad to have learned about both of them. More fill like this in crosswords, please.
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