Constructor: Priyanka Sethy and Matthew StockRelative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME:"Study Breaks" — the letters to CUT CLASS appear in circled squares in the grid, in order from top to bottom, one in each theme answer; in each case, the letter "cuts" a "class," i.e. it interrupts (or "breaks") some common class name (or course of "study"), which explains the title:
Theme answers:- ARCTANGENT ("C" cutting/breaking "Art") (21A: Function whose output is 45º when applied to 1)
- ELITE STATUS ("U" cutting/breaking "Stats") (26A: Premium membership designation)
- INTERNET CONNECTION ("T" cutting/breaking "Econ") (42A: It lets you see the sites)
- DUAL CITIZENS (60A: "C" cutting/breaking "Lit") (60A: Holders of multiple passports)
- RACHEL MADDOW ("L" cutting/breaking "Chem") (74A: First openly lesbian anchor to host a major prime-time news program)
- POLITICAL ACTIVISTS ("A" cutting/breaking "Calc") (92A: Ones fighting for change)
- CANNABIS OIL ("S" cutting/breaking "Bio") (108A: Hempseed product)
- LAST IN LINE ("S" cutting/breaking "Latin") (119A: Bringing up the rear)
Word of the Day: SALAT (
19A: Five-times-a-day Islamic prayer) —
Salah (Arabic: صَلاة, pl salawat, romanized: Arabic pronunciation: [sˤa'laː(h)], ([sˤaˈlaːt] in construct state) lit.'prayer'), also known as namāz (Persian: نماز) and also spelled salat, are prayers performed by Muslims. Facing the qibla, the direction of the Kaaba with respect to those praying, Muslims pray first standing and later kneeling or sitting on the ground, reciting from the Quran and glorifying and praising Allah as they bow and prostrate themselves in between. Salah is composed of prescribed repetitive cycles of bows and prostrations, called rakat (sing. rak'ah). The number of rak'ahs, also known as units of prayer, varies from prayer to prayer. Ritual purity and wudu are prerequisites for performing the prayers.
The daily obligatory prayers collectively form the second of the five pillars in Islam, observed five times every day at prescribed times. These are Fajr (observed at dawn), Zuhr prayer (observed at noon), Asr (observed late in the afternoon), Maghrib (observed at dusk), and Isha (observed after sunset). Salah can be performed either in solitude, or collectively (known as jama'ah). When performed in jama'ah, worshippers line up in parallel rows behind a leader, known as the imam. Special prayers are exclusively performed in congregation, such as the Friday prayer and the Eid prayers, and are coupled with two sermons each, delivered by the imam. (wikipedia)
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Just feels like there's not much here. Did the whole thing as if it were a themeless, because it basically is. I could see that some kind of "DRINK MORE OVALTINE" message was going to come into view eventually, but it had no real connection to the answers. After I was done, I looked at them all and thought "OK, some kind of class is being cut, what's going on?" and then I saw all the "classes" embedded in the theme answers and how the letters in "cut class" sort of "cut" through each "class" and ... OK. The class names are often so short (BIO, ART) that you can barely see them, and so ... it just doesn't feel like a very high bar, themewise, to put letters inside classes *inside* long theme answers. The essential unrelatedness of the answers, and the unrelatedness of their cluing, and the lack of any
SURFACE thematic content whatsoever, made the puzzle kind of a drag. I don't really like it when the NYTXW runs themelesses on Sunday, but at least those, the ones that are designed as proper themelesses, make a point of having loads of scintillating, original fill. This one, instead, has just boatloads of 3, 4, and 5-letter answers, a tidal wave of short stuff, and then tries to get some difficulty by making that short stuff odd / hard / unusual. The main result is an overall feeling of fussiness. Spent most of the solving time mired in the short stuff. The long stuff just didn't seem important; it was all solid enough, but none of it was particularly vivid. So you have a grid that mostly lacks any real theme or real points of interest in the fill (there are some, which I'll get to, but not a ton). Felt like a wash-out. Also, did you know that ROBIN ROBERTS and
RACHEL MADDOW have the same number of letters in their names. And both (
OBVI) start with "R." Yeah, that was a fun mistake :)
Lots and lots and lots of names—admirably inclusive, but a flood of names is a flood of names and for the second day in a row I felt like I was playing a trivia game (though this one felt a hell of a lot less self-consciously erudite ... more pub trivia, which is actually a nicer vibe). Many many of the names were names I "knew," which is to say I did not know them straight off, but then I'd get a cross or two and go "oh, right, that person." Like with TESSA Thompson and Katie NOLAN. There's no necessary reason why you should know the "first female president" of a country, but in Taiwan's case she is also the *current* president, so that makes her very much worth knowing (63D: ___ Ing-wen, first female president of Taiwan = TSAI). I was not at all familiar with the "T" spelling on SALAT, so when I wrote in STASH (finally) I was ... well, I was definitely praying. SALAT reminds me of a sweet moment I witnessed in JFK this past summer, where a Muslim man had laid out his prayer mat in an emptyish part of the terminal near where we were sitting, and as he was preparing to pray, a woman in his party, maybe his wife, went "psst" and then pointed in the opposite direction from which he was facing, so the man was all "whoops" and did a 180 so he could pray in the right direction.
OPAL Tometi is going to be the BLM co-founder that gets the most xword love because, well, OPAL will always be with us, but TOMETI looks good, and what about the other co-founders: Alicia GARZA and especially PATRISSE CULLORS—doubt you've ever seen PATRISSE or CULLORS in a grid before. Just, you know, putting that out there. JUDOGI was the baffler of the day (66D: Traditional attire for some martial artists). JUDO, OK, I recognize that, but when I see JUDOGI all I see is a JUDO G.I., like a soldier just throwing dudes on the battlefield. But no, it's the name for the traditional Judo uniform. And now you know. Or maybe you knew. In which case, now *I* know. Weirdly, I think my favorite answer of the day was"IT WAS ME!" (45D: Words of admission). I thought it was going to be a different sense of "admission," something like "COME IN," something along those lines. I had "WHAT ONE?" before "THAT ONE" (20D: Choice words?) (my logic, to the extent that I had any: "WHAT ONE do you want? Make a choice!"). No big struggles, but as I suggested earlier, there were lots of little struggles in the short stuff that just added up to a slightly harder than usual solve.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Hear ye, hear ye, a message from Boswords Crossword Tournament organizer John Lieb; the Fall Themeless League kicks off with a Preseason puzzle *tomorrow* so get in there and get in on the hot puzzle action before it's too late. Here's more:
Registration for the Boswords 2021 Fall Themeless League is now open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Monday, September 27 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org
P.P.S. for the Sunday crowd: yesterday was this blog's 15th anniversary. Just wanted to make sure the Sunday-only solvers also knew how thankful I was for their readership and support. Here are the first three tweets of a 15 (!)-tweet thread I posted in honor of the occasion. Thanks again, everyone.
