Constructor: Vaibhav Srikaran and Matthew Stock
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (easy through the rainbow, more normal Tuesday down below)
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THEME: DOUBLE RAINBOW (52A: Rare sighting after a storm ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — ROYGBIV (the letters representing the colors of the rainbow) is spelled out in double letters, in circled squares, arranged in an arc-like shape across the grid
Word of the Day: YELENA Belova, a.k.a. Marvel's Black Widow (47D) —
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The idea here is great but the execution here is off in at least one important way. I'll give you the creative color arrangement—that is, of course rainbows aren't banded, with color stripes running vertically alongside one another, as this theme's ROYGBIV arrangement suggests (red on the left, violet on the right). The color placement doesn't match, but the concept is strong enough that you can just go with it. What matters is that you see a DOUBLE RAINBOW shape across the grid. That's the gimmick, that's the hook, that's all that matters. Only... two things. The first (less important) thing is that DOUBLE RAINBOWs have space between them. I saw one earlier this year. You see rainbow then open sky, then More Rainbow (it's pretty cool). The two arcs are not pasted to one another. You need the gap. But OK, let's say you're continuing to feel permissive about the execution—let's just say the theme relies heavily on wordplay here (with a doubleletter conveying the doubleness of the rainbow), and we don't really need the thing to look exactly (color arrangement-wise, arc arrangement-wise) like the thing in purports to represent. Just give us the letters and the arc! The arc's the thing! Only... this brings me to my second thing (more important), which is: that's not an arc. That's a tent, or a pitched roof, or an arrow pointing to heaven, but there's absolutely no arc to that thing. No rainbow I ever saw, double or not, ever turned at a right angle at the top of its "arc." It seems theoretically possible to do this exact theme with the double-letters arranged in a more arc-like fashion. I don't know what happened, but this visual image is once, twice, three times not a rainbow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (easy through the rainbow, more normal Tuesday down below)
Word of the Day: YELENA Belova, a.k.a. Marvel's Black Widow (47D) —
Black Widow (Yelena Belova; Russian: Елена Белова; Ukrainian: Олена Бєлова, romanized: Olena Bielova) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She is depicted as a spy and was the second modern-era character to use the Black Widow name. She first appeared in Inhumans #5 (March 1999) and was created by Devin Graysonand J.G. Jones. She was trained as a spy and assassin in the Red Room. Originally, Yelena was a foe of Natasha Romanova and was sent to kill her, but the two later became allies. She was also a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., Vanguard, and HYDRA; the latter organization changed her into a version of Super-Adaptoid. As Super-Adaptoid, she was one of the members of the High Council of A.I.M. She reverted to her original codename Black Widow in 2017.
Florence Pugh portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Widow and will reprise her role in the upcoming miniseries Hawkeye (both 2021). (wikipedia)
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The fill was mostly smooth and entertaining. Genuinely (if quietly) cheered the KOOKABURRA, a bird I doubt I would know if I wasn't married to a New Zealander (2D: Cackling Australian bird). And yes I know the two countries are very very different, let's not start a whole thing, but there's definitely an antipodean ecosystem down there, where each country is far more familiar with each other than we are with either of them. Anyway, my wife lived in Australia for a time, a couple of times, and I guess there's a song about the KOOKABURRA, sitting in a gum tree? Maybe? It has a distinctive call. I think it's named (very roughly) after its call. Yes, here we go:
Kookaburras are terrestrial tree kingfishers of the genus Dacelo native to Australia and New Guinea, which grow to between 28 and 47 cm (11 and 19 in) in length and weigh around 300 g (11 oz). The name is a loanword from Wiradjuri guuguubarra, onomatopoeic of its call. The loud, distinctive call of the laughing kookaburra is widely used as a stock sound effect in situations that involve an Australian bush setting or tropical jungle, especially in older movies. (wikipedia)
Despite teaching comics, I didn't know YELENA Belova (I gave up completely on the MCU a few years ago), and despite teaching Shakespeare, I struggled with BEITSO—probably more than any answer in the puzzle (48D: Words of agreement in Shakespeare). Ah well, expertise is overrated, I'm sure. BIGDO took some doing, and BOWSAW was a word I made up by inference; had BOW, thought "must be SAW, sure, why not?" And I was right. Big Wordlist Energy, that one (27A: Tension-based cutting tool). The grid shape is innovative and the fill overall was not at all unpleasant. But again, that image in the grid—that's an alp, not a rainbow, I'm telling you.
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