Constructor: Daniel Okulitch and Doug Peterson
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME:"Job Sharing"— jobs reimagined as other jobs (i.e. "side hustle"s):
Theme answers:
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Really wanted to like this one because Doug is my friend and I almost always love his work, but this theme didn't work for me at all. I think the idea is a fine one, but the execution here is just one clunk after another. I think my main problem is I really really hate the term "side hustle" in a way I did not fully realize until solving this puzzle. It's such a horrible coinage, born of an economy where living-wage jobs are disappearing but you're supposed to somehow feel like the problem is *you*, you're not *doing* enough, you gotta hustle, baby. Your problem is you're just not industrious enough, not that unfettered free-market capitalism is completely soul-crushing. It's gross because it makes the desperate need for more cash sound like a cool fun thing you do if you're a real go-getter. Seriously, I hate the term so much. Really, what you've got here are second jobs. "Moonlighting" would somehow have been less irksome, despite implying the same thing (i.e. that you need a second job to, uh, live). But beyond my aversion to the term, there are real problems, namely that roughly half the "jobs" are so vague that they don't land with any kind of oomph or precision. What the hell is a LAB SPECIALIST? What kind of lab? Specializing in what? I had by far the hardest time solving this puzzle in the area just above the SPECIAL part of SPECIALIST. There's just nothing *vivid* or specific happening there. LOCKSMITH, cool, BAGGAGE HANDLER, yes good, but the rest, as jobs, all feel pretty -ish. Kinda nebulous. SPECIALIST. COORDINATOR. TECHNICIAN. They just don't tell me anything. I needed all kinds of crosses just to make those parts of the theme answers come into view. I guess BASE COACH is a job ... though usually I hear the term with "first" or "third" in front of it, so again, the answer didn't exactly snap, crackle, or pop. I don't really know what a CIVIL ENGINEER does, but I've definitely heard of it, so that one can have a pass. The others just felt limp. I thought the nail person was a CLINICIAN ... or maybe just a cosmetologist? I don't doubt that all these "jobs" are real jobs that someone has, I'm just saying they are murky and vague in their terminology. INSURANCE SALESMAN seems well-defined and snazzy by comparison, and that's just sad.
Explanations and other stuff:
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- LOCKSMITH (23A: Side hustle for a hairstylist?) (because stylists shape locks)
- LAB SPECIALIST (34A: Side hustle for a veterinarian?) (... vets deal with labs)
- BAGGAGE HANDLER (50A: Side hustle for a therapist?) (... therapists handle your 'baggage')
- OUTPATIENT COORDINATOR (67A: Side hustle for an anesthesiologist?) (... anesthesiologists put patients under i.e. "out")
- NAIL TECHNICIAN (87A: Side hustle for a carpenter?) (... carpenters work with nails)
- CIVIL ENGINEER (101A: Side hustle for a marriage counselor?) (... counselors ... deal with ... civil unions, maybe?? Not really getting this one)
- BASE COACH (118A: Side hustle for a drill instructor?) (... drill instructors work on army bases)
A consumer price index is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time.
A CPI is a statistical estimate constructed using the prices of a sample of representative items whose prices are collected periodically. Sub-indices and sub-sub-indices can be computed for different categories and sub-categories of goods and services, being combined to produce the overall index with weights reflecting their shares in the total of the consumer expenditures covered by the index. It is one of several price indices calculated by most national statistical agencies. The annual percentage change in a CPI is used as a measure of inflation. A CPI can be used to index (i.e. adjust for the effect of inflation) the real value of wages, salaries, and pensions; to regulate prices; and to deflate monetary magnitudes to show changes in real values. In most countries, the CPI, along with the population census, is one of the most closely watched national economic statistics. (wikipedia)
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Further, everything just felt clued harder than usual. I sailed through some parts of this grid, but at other times I felt like I was just crawling because I just couldn't find the handle on some of these clues ... and then the answers would turn out to be something deathly dull like DATA or CPI. But seriously, that whole MASH-UP area was brutal for me. Genuinely thought I wasn't going to solve it. Finally looked at the MOUSER clue and that saved me because before that, with no idea about LAB SPECIALIST (again, ???) I could not get MAMA BIRD (that MAMA part, yikes), or SCULPT, or PARTIER, and definitely not MASH-UP or ARCANA (had an "S" at the end of that one for a bit). It's not a bad section, fill-wise, just ... really hard to access because LAB SPECIALIST was such a non-thing, which deprived me of crucial toeholds. Not a lot of longer non-theme stuff to spice up the grid today. Mostly 3-to-6-letter stuff, which is hard to make consistently interesting. LOSE-LOSE is good (ironically), and POGO STICKS is bouncy (literally), but everything else was just OK, and when cluing got tough ... well, it's just not terribly fun to struggle through the cluing for short stuff, since there's no payoff. There's just ... short stuff. The grid is clean enough, just not a lot of fun. In fact, with ALITO LEPER GHETTO REEKING LOSE-LOSE in it, the whole vibe of the puzzle is kinda downerish. Didn't know DARLA, but most of the rest of it I was familiar with; it just felt like a slog getting a lot of it to turn up.
Explanations and other stuff:
- 74A: Avid bird-watcher, say (TOM CAT) — any cat that's around birds will watch them. No idea why "tom" is apt here, except that it's an outdoor cat. But my cats are indoor cats and they too will watch the hell out of birds. And squirrels. And leaves that float in the wind.
🎶“I sometimes see you pass outside my door … Hello …”🎶 pic.twitter.com/iXibETm8Ph
— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) December 11, 2021
- 7D: Frodo's film franchise (LOTR) — "Lord of the Rings"
- 106A: Small sweater? (PORE) — your pores are small (relative to, I don't know, fire pits or moon craters) and you sweat through them
- 40D: Thrift-store fashion, informally (BOHO) — I got this quickly, which really isn't like me. What do I know about fashion? I couldn't even get the TECHNICIAN part of NAIL TECHNICIAN right. Anyway, BOHO is just a shortened form of "Bohemian."
- 66D: Aggressively mainstream, in slang (BASIC)— can you be "aggressively mainstream"? How do you "aggress" into the fat middle of the culture? "Screw you, independent-minded people, I'm gonna watch a whole season of 'Friends' and then I'm gonna listen to the new Adele album on repeat! *That'll* show you! Grrrr ... Aggression!"
- 82D: Sole ingredient in some cookies? (DATA) — really thought this was gonna be a fish pun. After I finally got it ... really wished it had been a fish pun. "A cookie is a small amount of data generated by a website and saved by your web browser. Its purpose is to remember information about you, similar to a preference file created by a software application." (techterms.com)
P.S. You wanna see a trick puzzle? And an easy one, so you won't get all angry? Here you go: a 7x7 with a fun little twist.
P.P.S. a timely and important (and puzzle-related) message from my friend and fellow crossword blogger, Rachel Fabi:
"These Puzzles Fund Abortion" (TPFA), a puzzle pack of 14 crossword puzzles by all-star constructors, raised over $60,000 this year to support abortion funds around the country. In light of the legal challenges to abortion access currently under consideration by the Supreme Court, a donor told TPFA that they will match donations to abortion funds up to $1500 -- just donate to an abortion fund (see here for a list) and forward your receipt to the email address on the TPFA page above to double your impact. Keep an eye out for an all-new TPFA pack coming in spring 2022!