Constructor: Julian Lim
Relative difficulty: Challenging
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THEME: None
Word of the Day: Natural numbers (29D: Some are natural: Abbr. => NOS.) —
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Just not my day. Really didn't like the cluing on this one at all and so even though there are several fine entries, the solving experience was rough and unpleasant. Maybe if I had any idea what "Bridge of Spies" was, or who was in it, the experience would've been slightly more tolerable, but probably only slightly. The main problem for me was the middle. Almost all of it. I just had no way in. Never heard of THE SHARD (5D: U.K.'s tallest building, named for its look). Thought ELKO (23D: Western city on the Humboldt River) was RENO, and then ENID. And on and on. I had EDITS and eventually AFTER PARTY and that is all I had in the middle. Bottom finished, top finished, middle ... empty. Wanted an actual animal, not ASLAN, so even with -LAN in place I just kept trying to think of animals. Oh, I guessed THRASHER, so that was in there too, but it wasn't much help. Couldn't bring myself to write in SOUP for 38D: Stock holder because it seemed so stupid. "Holder?" Sigh, whatever. But the real backbreaker in the middle, the thing that, once corrected, helped me finally get traction and work my way to the end, was "GIVE IT A SEC," which was the cool answer I was sure was correct for 12D: "Be patient" ("GIVE IT TIME"). That A SEC just killed me. When I finally decided to take it out, I wrote in TIN at 36A: Spam might be kept in it, and that started everything going in the right direction. TIN gave me LINES and ANGRY and then -THING gave me HOT and then SOLO HOMER and on to the end. But honestly this was just grueling, with almost no ameliorating sparkle or cleverness. And the cluing, I just don't understand...
Relative difficulty: Challenging
Word of the Day: Natural numbers (29D: Some are natural: Abbr. => NOS.) —
In mathematics, the natural numbers are those used for counting (as in "there are six coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the third largest city in the country").
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DARK HUMOR" is not a phrase I've ever associated with "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." I have watched that movie a million times and never thought it "dark." Yes, a guy has various limbs chopped off and they spurt blood, but honestly there's no "darkness" to that scene at all. The movie is zany. It's comedy. It's parody. Dark shmark. It's downright light-hearted. Didn't know S.I. FOR KIDS existed. I'm sure that's supposed to be a marquee answer, but if a magazine falls in the woods and I'm not there to hear it ... I can't appreciate it too much. Also, S.I. FOR KIDS. it turns out, simply isn't the title of the "mag" in question. Here's wikipedia's first line: "Sports Illustrated Kids (SI Kids, trademarked Sports Illustrated KIDS, sometimes Sports Illustrated for Kids) is a monthly spin-off of the weekly American sports magazine Sports Illustrated. .""Sometimes"????? So we get a "mag" that's "sometimes" this title, and we get it in made-up abbr. form. Pfft. Cluing COURTESY via a random quote was cruel—that's a long answer to give over to a mere fill-in-the-blank clue. No joy there. Haven't been paying much attention to new movies because theaters haven't been open that long so "LUCA" got by me, I'm afraid. Had U.S. POST before U.S. MAIL (I blame this on my actual home mailbox, which says "POST" on it). I haven't heard the term FLAME WAR for what feels like decades, so I had real trouble remembering the kind of "war" I was dealing with. I think "LET'S DO THIS THING!" is valid and good and belongs in the center (37A: "Ready for action!"). And I like AFTER PARTY. Nothing much else here interests me. And there's a lot of AONE TREY YESES OGRE ADT DADAS ANION SOLTI ADHOC NOS LIETO HEE HAW ROM PSHAW STILE ERST going on here. That is, a lot of gunky short crosswordesey and somewhat erstwhile fill. The SE corner was easy, but that's the only part I moved through smoothly... actually, the NE was pretty pliable too. But overall, a slog; a slog that started with me writing in HYPO / OTHER instead of TREY / YESES (1D: Long shot, informally / Column on a survey), and never got much more pleasant. YESES, yeesh. Super glad this is over.