Constructor: Brandon Koppy
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: PICO DE GALLO (59A: Topping made with this puzzle's chopped and squeezed ingredients)— ONION, PEPPER, and TOMATO appear "chopped" inside the first three themers, and LIME appears "Squeezed" (i.e. rebused) inside a square in the fourth themer:
Theme answers:
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Conceptually this is OK. It's got one real high point—that rebus square that sneaks up on you in the fourth themer. "Sneaks" may not be the right word, though, since the rebusness of that square is telegraphed pretty clearly (the square is marked with a circle *and* the clue tells you to "squeeze"). FISH FOR COMPLIMENTS is also just a lovely stand-alone answer, the best one in the puzzle, so any charm or specialness the puzzle has really rides on this answer alone. It's nice. And it's absolutely necessary, because so much of the rest of the solve was not so nice at all. Even the beautiful LIME square is immediately and tragically undermined by appearing (in the cross) inside the highly unpalatable S(LIME)BALL. Worse, since I solved that rebus square before I'd made my way all the way to the revealer and knew what was going on, I had a couple of other guesses for [Real dirtbag], both of which fit the S_BALL pattern, and one of which ... well, LEAZE was obviously not going to work, but for a few seconds there I was genuinely curious to see what the hell the puzzle was going to do with a CUM rebus. I now see that CUZZ (like LEAZE) would also fit but not really work there. So anyway, there was C, U, M in my salsa, briefly, so ... yeah, that's not ideal. But much much Much worse was the truly abysmal fill in this puzzle, which started early and Just Kept Going. The theme is dense-ish, but not enough to excuse the wince parade that starts with AINTI and then tromps across the length of the grid. I kept stopping to take new screenshots of the wince moments, but there were too many. I took one at PORC and then *immediately* ran into another photo op at DERM.
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Five things:
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- OMNIPOTENCE (17A: Absolute power [chopped])
- PRIVATE PROPERTY (23A: Phrase on many No Trespassing signs [chopped])
- TRASH COMPACTOR (37A: Waste minimizers [chopped])
- FISH FOR COMP[LIME]NTS (49A: Self-deprecate, then pause to get a reaction [squeezed])
Eliot Rosewater is a recurring character in the novels of American author Kurt Vonnegut. He appears throughout various novels as an alcoholic, and a philanthropist who claims to be a volunteer fireman. He runs the Rosewater Foundation, an organization created to keep the family's money in the family. He is among the few fans of the novels of Kilgore Trout (another of Vonnegut's creations). // God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or, Pearls Before Swine, the first of Vonnegut's novels to feature the character of Eliot Rosewater, is also the one in which he is the most prominent. // The 1965 novel follows much of his life as the liberal son of a rich, conservative Senator from Rosewater County, Indiana who founded the Rosewater Foundation.Eliot Rosewater is convinced that he should spend the family riches to help the poor and uses the Foundation to this end, an idea looked down upon by his father. Norman Mushari, an opportunistic former associate of the Rosewater family lawyer, attempts to have Eliot declared insane so that the family wealth can be inherited by his new client, a distant relative to the east. This and other crises lead to a year-long mental blackout, after which Rosewater's favorite writer, Kilgore Trout, tries to explain to the Senator that Eliot's actions were sane and compassionate. // The New York Times called it "[Vonnegut] at his wildest best" and Conrad Aiken said that it's "a brilliantly funny satire on almost everything". (wikipedia)
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I don't know what aspect of the grid forced so many awful fill choices. The theme, as I say, wasn't too dense. Maybe insisting that the puzzle have such a low word count (74 instead of 76 or 78) was the problem. It's nice to have *two* long Downs in the NE and SW, but if the cost is some kind of cascading fill disaster that spreads across the grid, then it's not worth it. All I know is that if the SCUM/SLIMEBALL fiasco didn't sour me on the puzzle at the end, the EBOAT (!?!?!!) surely did. I had "E" and I thought "well it can't be EBOAT, so ... wait ... wait a min- ... oh, no." The EBOAT (again, !?!?!!?) may be "nonsubmerging," but it definitely sank this puzzle to the bottom of the deep blue sea. The revealer at that point came almost as an afterthought: a nice idea while it lasted but SLIMEBALL EBOAT Game Over, Man.
- 15A: Bad record to set (NEW LOW)— I could've used this to describe the fill quality today, but it wouldn't have been entirely true, and anyway, I actually like NEW LOW as an answer.
[NEW LOW]
- 27A: Including an unlisted number? (ET AL) — yes, this is a good "?" clue. I feel the need to praise them when I see them, as they so often go wrong.
- 8D: Opposite of radial (ULNAR)— aside from being less-than-lovely fill, I don't quite get "opposite." Is it because the ulna is "opposite" the radius ... in your arm. "Alongside" seems more accurate. There are two bones in your forearm. One is the radius. So the ulna is the "opposite" one? When I search [ulna radius opposite] google tells me the ulna is "opposite" ... to the thumb. This clue wasn't hard. I just don't know about "opposite."
- 11D: Id checkers (SUPEREGOS)— this one absolutely fooled me. Definitely read that as [ID (as in identification) checkers]. Plus it was hardish to parse with just those middle letters in place. One of the few areas of the puzzle that added some difficulty to the solve.
- 29A: Comic cry of dismay ("ACK!") — It's from "Cathy" and only "Cathy," just say "Cathy." I get that you're kinda sorta trying to echo 56A: Cartoon cry of dismay but no one else in "comics" says "ACK!" really so just be honest. (I have this weird feeling I have yelled about precisely this issue before. ACK!)
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