Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: CROSS-COUNTRY (40A: One way to run ... or a hint to four geographical intersections found in this grid)— four pairs of regularly-clued answers cross at a mystery letter that belongs to neither answer; that letter, when entered, forms the names of countries in both directions. So ... when the answers cross, each one turns into a country. The mystery letters are R, I, N, and A, which can be anagrammed to make IRAN, but ... I have no idea if or why I'm supposed to be anagramming at the end, so maybe I'm just seeing things, or trying to make the puzzle do more than it's doing...
Theme answers (the red letters are the extra letters, where the theme answers cross to form countries):
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I really like the underlying idea of this puzzle, but it is really lacking in follow-through. The whole mystery/extra-letter thing just isn't well-explained or coherent enough. These are unclued letters, so what do I do with them? OK, I see a country there ... why? Why this country? Am I even supposed to be rearranging these letters? Because they aren't in any clear grid order (top to bottom or left to right). I guess you can kind of read "IR" across the top and "AN" across the bottom, kinda, sorta, but the puzzle just felt like it fizzled out. Once I got the revealer and figured out what it meant, I enjoyed seeing the countries come into view. But this puzzle kind of lost its identity somewhere. It looks like a meta puzzle (a puzzle that has another puzzle to solve after you've filled in all the squares). If you've done many meta puzzles, then you probably immediately looked to the extra bits (R, I, N, A) to see what you could do with them. You might even have circled them, if you solved on paper (or printed the puzzle out, as I always do). And if you looked at those letters, you probably saw IRAN very quickly. The question was: "Why?" Also, "Is that all?" Metas tend to have titles that hint at what you should be looking for. Also, when you get the meta answer, typically, you *know* got it. There's a tremendous feeling of "Aha!" But here, without a title to point you in the right direction, without puzzle notes, there's no "Aha!" There's just a "huh?" The theme had all these swoops and flourishes but it just couldn't stick the landing. As a solver, I'm just left alone with a bunch of possibly random letters, with no instructions and an eerie sense that either a. I'm missing something or b. that's all there is. Neither a. nor b. is particularly satisfying.
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers (the red letters are the extra letters, where the theme answers cross to form countries):
- SURINAME / MALI (21A: It comes first in China, but second in the U.S. / 4D: Bad start?)
- NORWAY / RWANDA (9A: "Not a chance!" / 11D: Title character in a classic John Cleese comedy)
- NIGER / BENIN (68A: Media exec Robert / 58D: Hippie happening)
- PANAMA / TONGA (72A: First airline to complete a round-the-world flight / 57D: Grab by pinching, as an ice cube)
The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission (/kəˈsiːni ˈhɔɪɡənz/ kə-SEE-nee HOY-gənz), commonly called Cassini, involved a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygenslander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on October 15, 1997, Cassini was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. (wikipedia)
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The only other thing I have to say about this puzzle is: RULY? Truly? (55A: Neat and orderly). I want to say that I am gruntled about ruly, but that's actually the opposite of how I feel ... I think. Is "gruntled" a word without the "dis" in front of it? Because I know RULY is not a word without the "un" in front of it. Come on. Try using it in a sentence today and see if anyone understands what the hell you're saying. "What RULY children you have!""How dare you!" The grid is oversized today (16x15), in order to allow the revealer to sit securely in the center, so your sluggish time might be partly due to that. I've never heard of CASSINI, a name I am familiar with only when it follows OLEG (a crosswordese legend), so getting started on this one in the NW was a bit of a challenge, despite many of the shorter answers up there coming easily. The MALI / SURINAME crossing wasn't working, obviously, and was made tougher by the fact that MALA- seemed like maybe it was a real prefix ... (?) ... look, you give me four letters, I'm going to assume the answer is four letters long. But I stumbled down to the center, got the revealer, and then the premise was (mostly) clear and everything was easy from there on out.
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| the moment I figured things out |
Somehow, none of the other country crosses gave me trouble. Nothing else about the grid seems terribly remarkable. Oh, noooooo idea who NICOL Williamson is despite *owning* "Excalibur" on Blu-ray (9D: Actor Williamson who played Merlin in "Excalibur"). I probably do know who he is, at least by sight, but seeing that name come into view was a total surprise. The long Downs in this grid are nice. I need to wrap things up now. Still have work to do before my 8:30am class because it's the first week of school and some big part of me is still in denial. Good day.