Constructor: Ryan McCarty
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: PETARD (40D: Aid in breaching castle walls) —
This is so good. Just winner after winner. ~10 times the sparkle-fill content as yesterday's puzzle. Sufficiently tough but not grueling, and just bursting with life and personality. Even the one truly dumb entry (LIBATE) made me literally laugh out loud. That is some quaint bygone olde-tymey fill I can use! Ironically? Sure, ironically. I'm using it ironically. That's what I'll say. That's what I'll say after I shout "Let's LIBATE!" and everyone just stares. "It means 'drink'! It's not a sex thing, I swear! I was being quaintly ironic!," I'll say. And then I will drink, because I will need to. You can have one loopy Word of Yore if the rest of your grid sizzles with stuff like MEGACHURCH and GAYPORN (bless you for finally bringing these two crazy kids together, Mr. McCarty!) I made lots of little missteps, but no big ones, and I never got truly bogged down, so the struggle was pleasant. I felt like the puzzle wanted me to have a good time. Some puzzles seem like they want you to suffer and then want to sneer at you for not understanding their evil genius. Better puzzles seem to put you through an obstacle course while shouting encouragement all the way, and then rewarding you for your success with, like, beer or cake whatever it is you like. To drastically change metaphors: I really felt like I got upgraded to the PARLOR CAR today (man I miss the romantic train travel of the mid-20th century that I never got to experience and probably only existed in movies! I live in the "Parlor City" and we have no train service whatsoever—just carousels and spiedies. Put SPIEDIES in a puzzle, you cowards! #Binghamton).
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: PETARD (40D: Aid in breaching castle walls) —
A petard is a small bomb used for blowing up gates and walls when breaching fortifications. It is of French origin and dates back to the 16th century.[1] A typical petard was a conical or rectangular metal device containing 5–6 pounds (2–3 kg) of gunpowder, with a slow match for a fuse. (wikipedia)
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| So good... |
Hardest answer for me was probably BRONZER PALETTE (19A: Makeup kit for a summer look). I didn't know makeup bronzer had anything to do with summer. I know "bronzer" as the stuff that can make your skin look dark, the tanning lotion, but again my not wearing makeup has locked me out of the fact that bronzer is a face makeup thing (which is somehow also for summery looks??). We are not really a makeup-wearing people, this household, alas. And I couldn't get from "kit" to PALETTE too easily. I would've gotten there sooner if I hadn't imagined that it was the *I*RA who filed for bankruptcy in 2021, or if I'd known that AMAZONPAY was a thing (I know only Apple Pay and Google Pay ... Google has a "Pay," right? Or am I confusing it with Google Play? Ugh) (5D: E-commerce alternative to Square or Stripe). With IRA in place, really looked like the "summer look" was going to have something to do with BROILING. But I got around my makeup ignorance pretty easily. The grid is so flowing and interconnected that there aren't many places to get truly stuck. I just went down to the center and then back up in the NE and worked BRONZER PALETTE out from there. After that, no serious hold-ups. Just fun.
[LOL this song, Wow, talk about reactionary rural white myth-making.
"Leather boots are still in style / For manly footwear" is a great lyric, though!]
I know them as "mommy blogs," not MOM BLOGS, but the difference seems pretty minor (2D: Some parenting websites). Also, I thought I knew them as "meat sacks," not MEAT BAGS, but google returns some pretty definitively testicular answers for "meat sacks" so MEAT BAGS does indeed appear to be the mot préféré (34D: Humans, in sci-fi slang). Riz AHMED's name lives in my head for reasons I don't know. Why hasn't RIZ been in a puzzle? That's clearly the name part that's shouting most loudly for grid inclusion. I forgot that "name, image and likeness" had to do with college athletes getting paid for the use of ... well, those three things (abbreviated "NIL," btw), but it came back to me quickly when I saw NCAA was going to be the answer there (9A: Org. at the center of modern "name, image and likeness" legislation). I had 'TIS for the poetic contraction (29A: 'TIL) before NU METAL set me right (saw a reference to this genre just this week and could not have foreseen it would be crossword-useful). Had slight trouble with the ARMY part of TROLL ARMY, and I thought the FRAT BRO was a FRAT BOY at first (that's what we used to call them ... too infantilizing now, I guess). Super proud of myself for knowing to change BOY to BRO immediately, because of seeing through the HALO clue immediately (54A: Cause of lightheadedness?), and then running APNEAL (!) MECHA and I WISH from there, bam bam bam, 1-2-3. I literally have a huge happy face drawn next to the grid there, so pleased was I with myself. Hope you had similar self esteem-boosting moments, or at least an overall good time. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. if you are a crossword constructor, you might be interested in the following message from Everdeen Mason, the Editorial Director for Games at the NYT:
We're overhauling our crossword submission and editing process, & as part of that, we're conducting some research about constructors. If you're a constructor, we'd love to chat with you! Here's a survey link if you wanna help us make puzzles better 😊https://t.co/ozmX2oI9lW
— EverQueen Mason (@EverdeenMason) September 17, 2021
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