Constructor: David Distenfeld
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: BUGATTI (35D: Alternative to a Lamborghini) —
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This one was fun, if a little desperate to establish its "Youth!" credentials. It's neck-snapping to go from puzzles that barely acknowledge the contemporary world exists to something like this that's just throwing "Dear Evan Hansen"s and Drake nicknames at you right out of the gate. The worst (by far) of the attitudinal stuff was "OK, BOOMER," a lazy agist insult that I really Really thought was behind us (23A: Modern-day put-down popularized by a 2019 TikTok video). If you spend a lot of time complaining about Millennials or GenZ, then you are a boring "in my day..." older person who would rather wallow in false nostalgia than try to understand the different social and economic situations of younger people today. *Conversely*, if your only way of registering disagreement with someone older than you is to pull out the most hackneyed of internet insults, first, your lack of imagination is disappointing, if not outright embarrassing, and second, don't expect anyone to empathize with you, ever. Generational generalizations are the lowest form of discourse. I think "OK, BOOMER" was amusing for about a week, just because of how fast it seemed to go viral and how many different contexts it spread to, but now the only people who use it are bottom-feeding trolls and unfunny middle-aged people trying to seem hip. Hacks. I think I'm much more mad at the laziness of the insult than I am at the fact of the insulting. If you're gonna hit someone, hit someone. For real. And maybe use your own words. This limp trollspeak that you're pinching from lemmings on the internet ... it's not working for you. It never was.
More stuff:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: BUGATTI (35D: Alternative to a Lamborghini) —
Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. (French pronunciation: [bygati]) is a French high-performance luxury automobiles manufacturer and a luxury brand for hypersports cars. The company was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group and is based in Molsheim, Alsace. In 1909, namesake Ettore Bugatti founded his automotive brand Bugatti here and, with interruptions due to World War II, built sports, racing, and luxury cars until 1963. Since January 1, 2018, the company has been led by Stephan Winkelmann as President. In late 2021 the company will become part of Bugatti Rimac owned by Mate Rimacand Porsche AG.
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Speaking of resolving generational conflict, I like that this puzzle has "DIG THIS!" and "YA HEAR!" kind of dapping there, touching corners like "Hey what's up? How you doin'?" Although maybe "YA HEAR!" isn't as current as it sounds to my ears. I may be thinking of "YA HEARD?" (roughly equivalent of "ya feel me?" or, less slangily, "Do you understand what I am saying to you?"). Whatever generation these colloquialisms come from, they liven up the puzzle, along with their colloquial counterparts "WELL, DAMN..." and "CAN WE NOT!?" I do not understand what is "grave" about the pronouncement "NOW MORE THAN EVER" (7D: Lead-in to a grave pronouncement). Was sure that the clue was punning on "grave" somehow, and that the answer was going to be something you'd say at a funeral or graveside, but the grave doesn't seem like the right setting for this pronouncement, so I guess "grave" just means "serious." But "grave" is so much stronger than "serious," and anyway, I don't imagine this phrase having a particularly dire tone. If anything, these days, it's an overused expression that people primarily use ironically, in faux-seriousness. I just think "grave" is all kinds of wrong here. No other strong complaints, though I winced hard when the TEST PILOTS (26D: Firsts in flight) went crashing into STERE ISRED. What a mess. ISRED in particular is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, so at least it's appropriately situated at the bottom of the grid with only the lowly ITSY for company.
- 26A: Vintage eight-track purchases, maybe (TRAIN SETS)— hard "boo!" on this one, but mostly I'm mad that my eyes somehow didn't pick up the "maybe." My reaction to getting this was "... eight!?!?! How big a model train room do you own???" Maybe there are simply eight track *pieces* ... which would then form one track ... I do not know.
- 36D: Furnish with feathers, as an arrow (FLETCH)— gotta believe this was a Chevy Chase-related clue that the editor overrode.
- 12D: Not-so-common extension (DOT NET) — this vague clue and Princess ATTA (?!) made the NE a *bit* of an adventure. I don't think of EDU COM etc. as "extensions," since they are necessary for the URL to ... work? I think they're technically known as TLDs, or "Top Level Domains." But I would not trust me to be letter perfect with the tech terminology.
- 48A: Challenge for a free soloist (CRAG) — a mountain-climbing term ("free soloist") that I only recently heard of, first from a movie called "Free Solo" ... and then from trailers for another movie, "The Alpinist."
- 27A: Stress specialist? (POET) — transparent to me, but I do spend a lot of my life dealing with iambs and trochees, so no surprise
- 39A: Pieces together? (SUITE) — a group of musical "pieces" can form a SUITE. Maybe this applies to furniture SUITE as well. Nice fake-out here, with a clue that suggests a verb ending in "S" ... but no.
- 7A: Scratch-off success (INSTANT WIN) — this is a lottery ticket clue
I give this puzzle something greater than NO STARS! Enjoy your Saturday.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]