— or, you know, "Curses!" would maybe be a good description. Anyway, ordinary two-word phrases are clued as if they are curses:
Theme answers:- BLOODY NOSE (16A: "My allergies are really acting up!")
- FREAKING OUT (23A: "That third strike cost us the game!")
- DARN SOCKS (36A: "I keep losing things in the dryer!")
- ROTTEN APPLE (52A: "My iPhone never works!")
- BLASTED OFF (61A: "This bug spray is useless!")
Word of the Day: ICE BOWL (
44D: Nickname for the subzero 1967 N.F.L. Championship Game) —
The 1967 National Football League Championship Game was the 35th NFL championship, played on December 31 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
It determined the NFL's champion, which met the AFL's champion in Super Bowl II, then formally referred to as the second AFL–NFL World Championship Game. The Dallas Cowboys (9–5), champions of the Eastern Conference, traveled north to meet the Western champion Green Bay Packers (9–4–1), the two-time defending league champions. It was a rematch of the previous year's title game, and pitted two future Hall of Fame head coaches against each other, Tom Landry for the Cowboys and Vince Lombardi for the Packers. The two head coaches had a long history together, as both had coached together on the staff of the late 1950s New York Giants, with Lombardi serving as offensive coordinator and Landry as defensive coordinator.
Because of the adverse conditions in which the game was played, the rivalry between the two teams, and the game's dramatic climax, it has been immortalized as the Ice Bowl and is considered one of the greatest games in NFL history. NFL 100 Greatest Games ranked this game as the 3rd greatest game of all time. [The Packers won, 21-17] (wikipedia)
• • •
My main reaction here is "How is this a Thursday?" The trickery is really not that substantial, and I haven't solved a Thursday puzzle this easy overall in I don't know how many moons (many, probably). As for the concept ... I don't know. It didn't do anything for me, and it seems pretty wobbly in the execution. The NOSE and the SOCKS don't change meaning in their clues, but OUT, APPLE, and OFF sure do. Also, I assume the curse word "rotten" actually derives from the actual concept of rotten, and the locus classicus of rottenness (along with the rotten egg) really is the
ROTTEN APPLE, so that clue doesn't really move the meaning of "rotten" all that much (compared to how much the other "curse" words are moved).
DARK SOCKS is a rotten stand-alone answers (unlike the others, which stand alone just fine). Also, something about FREAKING doesn't seem like a plausible curse. You'd at least drop the "g." More likely you'd use "friggin'" if you really needed a euphemism for the "F" word. The whole thing felt kind of corny. No real laughs, no surprising cleverness. Like a
MIDWEEK (i.e. T or W) puzzle from 20+ years ago. The fill also felt that old—at least that old. I would list all of the relevant fill, but I'm tired, and presumably you can see it right in front of you (or in the grid I posted above).
ISI? RES? DYER? An
OMIT NEMO ETNA stack? The return of
COED?
NRA again, on back-to-back days!?
ERE NOLA LOO?
LITE EKE? It's all pretty grueling. My favorite part of the grid, as I look it over, is the spooky short story I've imagined using the words in the 14th row: gather round the campfire, everyone, it's time to hear the tale of "
SADE and the
EERIE EWER." In my imagined story,
SADE is the one-named singer, and she has some kind of adventure in a haunted house ... or a museum with a lot of still-lifes, I guess. Yes, I am a
WEIRDO, but when the puzzle lets you down, you gotta entertain yourself somehow.
I blasted (!) through this grid with almost no resistance. I wrote in LAB RATS instead of LAB MICE, an inevitable and easily fixable mistake (1D: Maze runners). But after that, I didn't hesitate much at all until 45D: Balls in a pocket (FALAFEL). That's a decent Saturday-level clue that forced me to put on the brakes and work a lot of crosses. I also weirdly couldn't get WEIRDO at first pass, even with -DO in place (57A: Wackadoodle), probably because WEIRDO is a noun and (as I know it) "Wackadoodle" is an adjective. But maybe it can be a noun. Or WEIRDO can be an adjective?? I don't know. Don't much care, either. I am terrible, truly terrible at [Word with ___ or ___] clues. Even if you give me a more specific hint, like [Word that can follow ___ or ___] or [Word before ___ or ___], my brain frequently just seizes up. So STREET didn't come quickly either (48D: Word with fair or fight). But with everything else, it was just "fill in squares as fast as you can." The fill didn't thrill me, but the SE corner is decent (and tasty), and something about IMNOUSE is making me laugh, both because of the Charlie Brown-level patheticness, and because I imagine it's being said over and over again by a guy named NOUSE who can't get people to understand his name, or who keeps getting mistaken for someone else. "Dr. House?""No, I'M NOUSE.""Well what good are you, then?" [walks away].
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Happy birthday, Penelope :)
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