Constructor: Randolph Ross
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more like a Saturday, for sure)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: NUTLETS (42D: Snacks for squirrels) —
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Just couldn't get into this one. The fill felt flat and the fill felt forced and now I'm alliterating just to amuse myself. I guess HOT TOPICS is OK, and STALE JOKE would've been OK with a more accurate / specific clue—"routine" and "stale" just aren't the same; the latter is far more value-coded, but I guess the "routine" wordplay was too tempting to lay off of. The cluing was what made this a humdrum-to-unpleasant experience for me. It seemed like it was trying too hard to be clever, or else it was too humdrum. But mainly it was the fill that put me off. I don't really see what the marquee answers are supposed to be, and in a Friday (best of all days) there should be a bunch of them. "ARE WE ALONE?" might've worked with a saucier clue, or one that gave it a more everyday context, but the alleged "question" of "humanity" just doesn't resonate at all for me. I want the question to end "... in the universe?"TOADIEDUP feels awkward. NUTLETS, LOL, what? Squirrels eat nuts. Paradigmatically. I never saw a squirrel eat NUTLETS in its or my life. I'm gonna ask the squirrels in my yard how the NUTLETS are today and I assure you they are going to laugh at me.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more like a Saturday, for sure)
Word of the Day: NUTLETS (42D: Snacks for squirrels) —
1a: a small nutb: a small fruit similar to a nut2: the stone of a drupelet [a small drupe; specifically : one of the individual parts of an aggregate fruit (such as the raspberry)] (merriam-webster.com)
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I watch a lot (lot lot) of movies, and read a lot about movies, and while I'll give you WAR EPIC (even though I don't love it), I absolutely won't grant you ART CINE. The clue is in English, so the answer should be in English. An ART FILM is a thing. CINE is a thing. ART CINE ... I mean, really? You're going to say that? Write that? That is a pretentious hybrid phrase I've never seen or heard. SOOTS as a verb, also nonsense. No way you should cross E-READER and READE, especially if you are going to clue READE in relation to reading (54A: Apt surname for a librarian). Also, if you want me to have a good time, maybe don't give me a STAPH infection and blood clots (crossing!).
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| [When google thinks you've made a mistake ...] |
I guess with the last two puzzles being remarkably, anomalously easy, the puzzle universe was bound to correct itself, and it sure did today, as I just kept staring at some of these clues wondering what they thought they were doing. TAMES was hard, largely because of a tenuous / vague clue (19A: Controls). TEAM was hard because of a somewhat better but (again) completely context-free clue (3D: A's, but not B's or C's) (the TEAM in question is the Oakland A's baseball squadron). I had to work that section from the back ends of the longer Across answers (PBJ, I LOVE, SEE THINGS). VETO POWER got me into and through the NE pretty easily, but getting into the western part did not come easily to me. I was stuck (-ish) here:
No idea what "Gaspard de la NUIT" is (23D: Ravel's "Gaspard de la ___"), and despite the "Z," which normally gives an answer away quickly, my brain just refused to see SUN TZU (author of "The Art of War") (25A: Who said "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle"). I was looking for one last name. BLITZ ... FRITZI ... something maybe Italian and WWII-related? Further, parsing CLOSEINON was too much for my morning brain today (29A: Near). So ... obscure proper noun, other proper noun, and hard-to-parse phrase had me stuck. I had to go into the SW and work upward, which meant the west was the last thing to fall (as you can see by the cursor in my finished grid, above—SCAR was the last answer I got). I also struggled a bit earlier, when doing the SE, because in addition to the preposterousness of ART CINE and NUTLETS, I had to deal with a wrong but very plausible guess in one of the short answers down there. Specifically, at 47D: Syndicate, in a way (REAIR), I had RERUN, which is the word that one would actually use, but yes, REAIR, defensible; if your goal is defensible, congrats. It's not that there weren't passable moments in this one ("NICE CATCH!," say), but mostly this one just clunked along and offered up no real high points. Lots of trivia, lots of forced wordplay in the clue, not a lot of joy.