Constructor: Adam Aaronson
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: white-eye (14A: Like white-eyes and wheatears) —
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This is a fine grid and there are many things in it that I like but *man* is it a trivia test. Who is this actor? What is this website? Director? Singer? Character? What is the capital of this country? That country? Where is this airport? This mosque? Who makes this product? Who is this hockey player? Etc. etc. etc. It leans hugely and heavily into proper nouns, in both the fill and the clues, and doing so gives it a "here are a bunch of things I'm into and know about!" vibe, as opposed to a "welcome to my puzzle, please have a good time" vibe. Again, I enjoy and know of many, in fact most, of these proper nouns. But I did feel often like I was on some game show I don't watch or like, with questions being fired at me that I either knew or didn't know, rather than clever clues being ... fired at me, I guess ... that caused me to have to think my way to the answer. Trivia-based clues tend to be togglers: YES I know, NO I don't. And some of these are inevitable in any puzzle, and they are enjoyable; they give the grid life and range and yeah, cool. But they aren't the most enjoyable way (for me) to achieve Difficulty in a puzzle. I'd rather have my slog end with an aha that comes from decoding the clue properly, rather than end with a name ... that is a name ... but possibly means nothing to me. "The hockey player's name is KANE!""Huh ... you don't say." The flip side of the Trivia Game is that the puzzle can get too Easy. "STRANGER THINGS—instant get. TIMOTHÉE Chalomet—instant get. I get the thrill of recognition, and I get to feel like a champ, but I don't get *so much* the thrill of *solving*. Again (again again) this is all a matter of *balance*; I'm happy seeing People and Places and even Brands in the grid. Just ... sprinkled, not doused. You don't have to try so hard to make your puzzle feel "Now!" Also, there are other ways to do it. I mean, PROBS (which I loved :)
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Five things:
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: white-eye (14A: Like white-eyes and wheatears) —
The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the western Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Guinea. Discounting some widespread members of the genus Zosterops, most species are endemic to single islands or archipelagos. The silvereye, Zosterops lateralis, naturally colonised New Zealand, where it is known as the "wax-eye" or tauhou ("stranger"), from 1855. The silvereye has also been introduced to the Society Islands in French Polynesia, while the Japanese white-eye has been introduced to Hawaii.
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The best, and I mean the Very Best thing in the grid is DURAG and its clue! 6D: "Anyone who has ever worn a ___ spells it '___,'" per a 2018 New York Times article. Thank you, Adam, for using the NYT to tell the NYT to Stop Spelling It "DORAG" (and if the clue is somehow Will's and not yours, well good for both of you). I've screamed this point for years, but to see it done in the grid itself: genius. The longer Acrosses today are really colorful. I don't know who uses the term CLEAN PLATE CLUB (42A: Something good eaters "join")—is it for children? It sounds like a bad, coercive, food-issue-causing club ("good" eaters? yeesh), and yet I knew it and it just sounds so happy, like the Mickey Mouse Club or something, so I enjoyed seeing it. Do BATH BOMBS really "explode"? Even metaphorically? I've been in LUSH a lot, but mainly for shaving and face-cleansing stuff, ooh, and this shower gel I like ... but I haven't gone in for BATH BOMBS yet, I confess, so I don't really Know what they Do. Great answer, though.
All of my trouble came early, as I hate drones as a concept and have no idea who makes them, and I've never heard of either white-eyes or wheatears, and I wrote in RHEA before GAEA (1D: Mother (and wife!) of Uranus), and RAILROAD was well and truly disguised (that's how you do difficulty!). I got OVERSLEEP easily enough, but forgot PIRATE BAY existed (haven't thought about that site since the aughts), so without the letters in GOPRO to help me out with the long Downs, I was not going pro, or going anywhere. Then I moved to the adjacent northern section and immediately spun out on the trivia trifecta of DILI (nope) IRENE (kinda wanted it, but had zero confidence) and KANE (now that I see his name, sounds familiar, but during the solve ... nope). But then "STRANGER THINGS" came to the rescue in a big way—I rode that answer back into the NW and up into the N/NE. Exhilarating, though I felt guilty that the most helpful answer was such a gimme.
From here on out, as I say, things got much easier. I got stalled out a bit going from the center of the grid to the bottom, but then I was able to drop TACKLE BOX (29D: You might take the bait from one), the *second*-most helpful answer of the puzzle, down to the "X" at the bottom of the grid, and the rest of the grid just bloomed off of that.
Five things:
- BBS (31A: Not-so-big shot) — stared for far too long at _BS wondering what the hell this could be
- NAIL CARE (36D: You might have a file for this) — got the NAIL part easily, but then ... nothing. Silence. The answer's next word ended up being so general (CARE) I never suspected it.
- MENSA (59A: Collection of brains)—meh, we all have brains, and the intelligence of this group continues to be widely and embarrassingly overvalued by crosswords.
- PISA (50D: Site of a famous tilt in European history) — ah, wordplay. I thought of "tilt" as a joust (stupid medieval literature degree!), but it's just the literal "tilt" of the tower. Yes. This is the trickery I (sometimes) enjoy.
- JOHNS (19D: Heads)— I feel like all of these toilet euphemisms are very bygone, very pre-"Psycho" (where you get to see a bathroom with an actual functioning toilet in a movie, the horror!). They seem to have an afterlife, though I can only imagine them being said by a wacky older uncle, possibly while excusing himself from the Thanksgiving table. We just say "bathroom" or "restroom" now and it's fine. It's great, actually.
P.S. yes, 9-to-5, *those* are ODDS (26D: 9-to-5, say). ONE PERCENT is not ODDS. Thank you for issuing this correction to Wednesday's puzzle.
P.P.S. geekily happy to learn about white-eyes, which in NZ are called tauhou, which in Maori means "stranger," which means that, in NZ, white-eyes ... are STRANGER THINGS. Have a nice day.