Constructor: Evans Clinchy
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: BIBIMBAP (1A: Popular Korean rice dish) —
This felt like a Saturday. It wasn't terribly hard—maybe a little harder than usual for a Friday—but it just had that more plodding, leaden feel that I tend to associate with Saturdays (vis-a-vis Fridays). The grid shape was highly segmented, with largish blocks of white squares, so that feeling of flow that I love to experience in a Zingy Friday puzzle just didn't happen. You toil in one room, you move to the next, etc. The middle of the grid was by far the nicest part because you've got those longer answers streaking Across the grid, 1 2 3, and there's an alliterative quality to them, with all those "H"s (HOT ... HITS ... HOLY SMOKES!). But most of the rest of it felt workmanlike. Solid but not particularly splashy. Definitely felt like an older puzzle. Even the colloquialisms feel slightly quaint. FREEGAN is the one answer that really places this grid in somewhat recent times. Otherwise, it's a little heavy on trivia, with a cultural center of gravity that's more AGEE than ICE-T (who himself is now old, but at least alive). Whole puzzle kinda feels like VISIGOTHS invading ASSYRIA—that is, like something that might've happened a long time ago.
Some more stuff:
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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: BIBIMBAP (1A: Popular Korean rice dish) —
Bibimbap (/ˈbiːbɪmbæp/ BEE-bim-bap, from Korean 비빔밥 [pi.bim.p͈ap̚], literally "mixed rice"), sometimes romanized as bi bim bap or bi bim bop, is a Korean rice dish. The term "bibim" means mixing rice (burned rice at the bottom of the dish and cooked rice), while the "bap" noun refers to rice. Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) or kimchi (traditional fermented vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, or doenjang (a fermented soybean paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The hot dish is stirred together thoroughly just before eating.
In South Korea, Jeonju, Jinju, and Tongyeong are especially famous for their versions of bibimbap. In 2011, the dish was listed at number 40 on the World's 50 most delicious foods readers' poll compiled by CNN Travel.
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| "Am I ... MONSTER?" |
This one started out very promising with a delicious order of BIBIMBAP and BOBA, but nothing that exciting came along afterward. It's a little disappointing to see long answers wasted on stuff like ITTY-BITTY and (especially) ESTATE TAX—that is a long and boring way to go for an "X." And ITTY-BITTY is not only cloying baby talk made out of crosswordese parts (I'm looking at you, ITTY), but it's also a giant kealoa*, in that you don't know if it's ITSY-BITSY (better) or ITTY-BITTY until you get two very specific crosses. So yeah the longer Downs could've packed more punch. Fill-wise, again, it's fine. Your overcommon short stuff appears only rare, and in unremarkable places. It was unfortunate that I *finished* on the worst answer of the puzzle (APRS, plural, yuck), but these things happen. Would've been cooler to end on GALAXIES, say, but your path is your path and it is what it is.
The only real difficulty I had was more frustration than difficulty. I came out of that NW area really itching to round that corner with some momentum. Screeching tires and everything. But instead my tires screeched because I had to come to an abrupt stop. You'd think getting the front ends of those long Acrosses would give me some rocket propulsion, but no. I end up staring at a THAT, which could be followed by anything, and a HOLY, which, surprisingly, could be followed by a lot of things. I wrote HOLY TOLEDO in there at one point, I think. COW, MOL(E)Y, MOSES ... there are probably more HOLY exclamations. Anyway, the point is, momentum stalled, buzz killed. I got going again pretty quickly, but no zoom zoom today. Thankfully, both the THAT and the HOLY answers ended up being strong. I was just itching to streak hotly, but despite the advertised HOT STREAKS, that did not happen. More chug chug than zoom zoom. Dutifully, I finished the crossword.
- 16A: Offline activity? (IMPROV) — hmm, as I understand it, in IMPROV, you don't have lines at all, so ... you're not really "off" lines, unless you're using "off" like in the sense of dietary restrictions, like "I'm off caffeine this month" or something like that. I liked this clue about as much as I like (most) IMPROV.
- 1A: Popular Korean rice dish (BIBIMBAP) — sorry, forgot to mention above that one of today's revelations was that in my mind I was spelling this popular Korean rice dish as three words, and also I was misspelling it BOP, like it was some kind of music or dance: "Do the BI BIM BOP!" (seriously, do it, it's delicious)
- 5D: Northern New Jersey county (MORRIS) — why would you deliberately make your clue this boring? What do I know from NJ counties? I had MONROE in here for a bit. "Family Circus" creator BIL Keane saved me, what a guy.
- 26D: Fast finish? (MEAL) — when you are done fasting, you eat ... maybe you eat a MEAL
- 46D: Some smears (LIBEL) — argh, fake plural! One of my many mortal enemies! Plural-looking in the clue, singular in the answer. By a logic which you can probably figure out if you think about it for a little (hint: bagels are involved), I (begrudgingly, angrily) had LOXES in here for a while.
- 30A: Tears (HOT STREAKS) — I assume they mean "tears" in the sense of being "on a tear," not in the sense of HOT STREAKS that run down your face when you cry.
- 40A: Pleasantly flavorful (SAPID) — who keeps inviting this word to the party!? You never (never) hear anyone use it in the wild, but every month or so (it seems), SAPID just struts into the room like "hey guys, how we doin'?" and you're like "ugh, SEE ME, did you invite this dude?" and SEE ME's like "wasn't me, man ..." and then SAPID gestures toward his date and goes "You all know IRES, right?" and you valiantly suppress an eyeroll while muttering "yeah, hey, how's it going?" and then you go stand alone by the food table eating GENOA salami wondering why you didn't just stay home and read POE.
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