Constructor: Anne Rowley
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (somewhat slower than your typical Monday)
![]()
THEME: COMMON THREAD (54A: What ties everything together, including 20-, 32- and 42-Across) — theme answers all start with sewing verbs:
Theme answers:![]()
![]()
You darn a sock, you hem a skirt, and you stitch a whatever, and you do it all with thread, so all the themers have "thread" in "common,"COMMON THREAD, works for me. The problem for me was that STITCH IN TIME is pretending like it's a phrase that exists *anywhere* outside of the "saves nine" adage. There is no such phrase outside of the phrase "a STITCH IN TIME saves nine." Nowhere does it exist. So it is somewhat dishonest to clue it as if it is merely "prompt action when things are unraveling" unless you also add "in a familiar aphorism" or some such qualification. STITCH IN TIME was by far the toughest part of the puzzle, especially when crossed with LAY IN, which ... what is that? Sigh, I guess I know that one can LAY IN supplies (?) for ... whatever reason, but the basketball term is way way more familiar i.e. Monday than this [Stockpile] meaning. HALCYON (5D: Like the good old days) and PEPITA (9D: Pumpkin seed) also felt a little more Tues. or Wed. than Monday, though I love both answers and mention them here only to explain why the relative difficulty skewed toward Challenging, not to suggest they have no right to be here. I did not know ETHYL at all. I had ETHER, in part because I read the "Antiknock" of 27A: Antiknock fluid as "knockout" ... but genuinely I don't know how ETHYL relates to "Antiknock fluid." I assume it's the chemical involved in the car fluid (?) but I'm always hazy on chemical answers, and when you put chemicals and car stuff together, well, yeah, I have no clear idea what's going on. Also did not know that pugs SNORTed? Is that a breed trait? SNORTing? I was totally unaware of that. Is it because humans have bred them to have gruesomely short (i.e. "cute") snouts? If you'd asked me to name the top ten animals I associate with SNORT, "dog" wouldn't even have made the list, let alone "pug."
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (somewhat slower than your typical Monday)
Theme answers:
- STITCH IN TIME (20A: Prompt action when things are unraveling)
- HEM AND HAW (32A: Beat around the bush)
- DARN IT ALL (42A: "Oh, blast!")
Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about 1 m (40 in) in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between 20 and 35 kg (44 and 77 lb). All three of the extant species are members of the family Vombatidae. They are adaptable and habitat tolerant, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of southern and eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as an isolated patch of about 300 ha (740 acres) in Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland. (wikipedia)
• • •
I don't understand what ANAL is doing in this puzzle. You can do better than that pretty easily. I don't have a problem with ANAL per se (!), but I wouldn't use it if I could get something equally good or better in the grid without much trouble, and here you *definitely* can. Even leaving CURE in place, you can do lots of stuff. AGAR ABIT ATOM ... I like AGOG. The point is, if you don't have to make people think of assholes, you probably shouldn't. ANAL: use only when needed.
I don't mind ANAL in the grid but if you can do as good or better w/ other fill maybe do that? Esp. if ANAL crosses NUT? Just something to think about.
— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) December 20, 2021
The THEFT part of IDTHEFT was also toughish (Monday toughish) for me to get. I was thinking "goal" in terms of the things that were being stolen, not the stealing itself (43D: Goal of phishing schemes, informally). I think I confused Wyeth's HELGA with Ibsen's HEDDA Gabler, because I wrote in HEDDA (25D: Andrew Wyeth portrait subject). OBIES before TONYS, too (67A: Annual theater awards). Still, I did this in 3:08, which is a relatively normal Monday time. So maybe it's normal. I just don't notice so many sticking points, even minor ones, on a Monday. But again, conceptually this one works well. Solid Monday fare.