Constructor: Dory Mintz
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (some parts a piece of cake, but the east side....not so much)
THEME: Familiar Phrase + ə = (Fill in your own level of enjoyment here)!— Add a schwa somewhere within a familiar phrase to get your theme answers and clue them with wacky ? clues (which are wackily clued literally!).
Theme answers:
- FANTASY SUPPORTS (22A: Beams of one's dreams?)
- GO FOR BAROQUE (33A: Visit a museum to see a Rembrandt exhibit?)
- FALCON CARESSED (49A: Bird of prey that's gently petted?)
- THEROUX IN THE TOWEL (67A: Actor Justin sitting poolside?)
- DERIDE APRICOTS (86A: Make fun of small orange fruits?)
- GRAVY TERRAIN (102A: Mashed potatoes, on a Thanksgiving plate?)
- THUNDER COLLAPSE (116A: Fourth-quarter meltdown at an N.B.A game in Oklahoma City?)
Word of the Day: OMAKASE (I'm cheating a little -- the answer is SUSHI to the clue 25A: Food served in an OMAKASEmeal ) —
The phrase omakase, literally 'I leave it up to you',[3] is most commonly used when dining at Japanese restaurants where the customer leaves it up to the chef to select and serve seasonal specialties.[4]In American English, the expression is used by patrons at sushi restaurants to leave the selection to the chef, as opposed to ordering à la carte.[6] The chef will present a series of plates, beginning with the lightest fare and proceeding to the heaviest dishes.[7] The phrase is not exclusive to raw fish with rice and can incorporate grilling, simmering and other cooking techniques.Customers ordering omakase style expect the chef to be innovative and surprising in selecting dishes, and the meal can be likened to an artistic performance.[10][11] Ordering omakase can be a gamble, but the customer typically receives the highest-quality fish available at a lower cost than if it had been ordered à la carte.[12] According to Jeffrey Steingarten, recounting in Vogue a 22-course "memorable feast" that required several hours:
(WIKIPEDIA)
Hi there! It's Colin (NYC classical pianist) back again to fill in for Rex on this late summer Sunday! And what a thrilling and innovative theme for us today! OOPSIE -- I clearly made an error in totspeak (see: 60A). What a ho-hum well-worn theme with some serious groaners for us today.
Let me get one thing out of the way. I know many readers of this blog are aware of Rex's general frustration level with the quality of Sunday puzzles. At times, I agree with him on that front -- if this really
is supposed to be the flagship puzzle of the damn Federation, then they better get the equivalent of Jean-Luc Picard to man this ship every time it leaves a Starbase. (I promise no more Star Trek TNG references for the rest of this post. Maybe.) That being said, I do find I enjoy the Sunday puzzles (or tolerate their too often Dad-joke themes) more than Rex does. However, this one.....Uh? Oh.....not so much.
Let's start with the theme. As I mentioned earlier, this is not a new theme concept -- which does not mean it should never be used again, of course! However, in my opinion, if such a simple theme as 'add a syllable to phrases' is going to headline the Sunday NYTXW, then it better be GOOD. I should be smirking, smiling, and ideally laughing at each (or, at least, some) of the theme answers. But these really fell flat with me.
The first themer to fall (flat) for me was FALCON CARESSED. I flew though the NW corner, jumped to the NNW because YES WE CAN (30A: See 4A) literally told me to, and then got stuck so couldn't keep plowing eastward. So in looking to the south, I easily got CONN (31D: N.Y. neighbor) and reluctantly got ABACI (32D: Calculators of old). Truth be told, I really hoped I was wrong with that.....uh, oh....I wasn't. Biggest issue was not sure if I was more annoyed with the fact that ABACI was in the puzzle...or that I got it with only the A----. Long story short (too late) I got to FALCON CARESSED and that's when I literally told my wife out loud -- 'I figured it out. And I don't think I'm going to like it.'
The other themers are just plain rough. No way to sugarcoat it. I have very little patience for using the word BAROQUE as a pun for BROKE (not to mention it required 14D to be the incredibly inelegant visual of ETSEQ). I've just heard it too many times. That looks just a wee ICKY (59A: Gross) to me. I feel like I can say that honestly separating my music background and hearing more BACH/BACK BAROQUE/BROKE HAYDN/HIDING "jokes" than anyone should ever be exposed to. Just stick with viola jokes (which in general are ALWAYS funny)! On that note (ouch....unfortunate pun there), if you want truly entertaining music humor, please enjoy some PDQ Bach (the genius Peter Schickele):
A few of the other themers FARED better, but only slightly. Biggest problem with a big old Sunday puzzle is that if your theme doesn't work, you have an even larger canvas to expose it's issues.
One last observation regarding the themers: I think I would have appreciated (maybe not liked, but at least appreciated) if all the theme answers had the added syllable in the same place, or at least in the same location in the sequence. Or if the themers were all somehow wackily related? Again, I fully acknowledge it's easier to point out flaws in the theme than to come up with a tight Sunday-worthy set....but I also don't think I'm wrong. (Right?) We did get three different vowels adding the schwa (A/E/O), which I did notice and appreciate.
I'd like to take a moment and point out some clues in this puzzle that I really did enjoy. In general, my favorite kind of clues are ones that take a regular interesting-ish word OR SO (76D: ...ish) and make it fun/enjoyable/clever/spicy/crossword adjective meaning 'good'. For instance, INTER (11D: Lead-in to com or net, but not org) and MENU (90A: Something rectangular that might have more than four sides). Neither of those words is particularly exciting, and only 4 and 5 letters -- but I liked that those clues made me think for a second in a way that I hadn't thought about those words (or words in the clues) before. I also appreciated the clue for ESCALATOR (47D: Nonstop flight?). What I didn't appreciate was how brutal that section was for me. I am all for crunch, both in my late week crosswords, and in my spicy sushi rolls (ideally served in an OMAKASE meal! (see word of the day, above)), but man that I struggled there in the mideast. RAMAPO, MITER, tough clue on EPIDEMIC (especially now!), I definitely had some DISDAIN for the region. Again -- I don't mind being difficult, but that section felt off-balance with the rest of the puzzle (to me, obviously). I also confidently wrote in OR SO (76D), but then second guessed myself because I already had IF SO locked in at 38D: "In that case...". That only made that region more difficult for me to parse.
Otherwise I found this fairly easy/standard for a Sunday puzzle. A few mistakes along the way, for sure though. I very confidently wrote in OVERSLEPT for (40D: Didn't hear the alarm, say) instead of SLEPT LATE. I had ADVERT before ADPAGE (8D: Spot for a perfume sample in a magazine, maybe) -- and I'm glad I was initially wrong.
Side note: When I was a kid all the magazines we got had perfume and cologne AD PAGES in them -- did anyone alive ever open that little folded over part of the ADVERT and think -- 'I want to smell like this! It smells like cool water! I must emit this odor from all of my pores!' ?? Just asking. For a friend.
I also find it very telling to me that in perusing this puzzle after completing it, I found true difficulty in choosing a 'Word of the Day' to post at the top of this blog. I love when the answers teach me something I didn't know, or at least if the clue teaches me something about the actual word that I did not know. Crosswords are about the beauty and fascination of our language. But at the end (or beginning) of the day, this puzzle did not inspire either of those sensations for me. This was not my favorite Sunday effort.I wish that it were, but that won't MAKE IT SO.
Signed, Colin Fowler, Court Musician of CrossWorld