Constructor: Adam AaronsonRelative difficulty: Easy (2:38 without really trying)
THEME: DOUBLE-A TEAM (63A: Tennessee Smokies or Portland Sea Dogs ... or what the answers to the starred clues comprise?)— all themers start with two "A"s:
Theme answers:- AA BATTERIES (17A: *TV remote inserts, often)
- AA MEETING (21A: *Sobriety support group session, informally)
- AARDVARK (30A: *Animal whose name means "earth pig" in Afrikaans)
- A.A. MILNE (40A: *"Winnie-the-Pooh" writer)
- A AVERAGE (47A: *4.0 on a transcript)
- AARON PAUL (53A: *Three-time Emmy winner for "Breaking Bad")
Word of the Day: AARON PAUL (
53A) —
Aaron Paul Sturtevant (born August 27, 1979) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for portraying Jesse Pinkman in the AMC series Breaking Bad (2008–2013), for which he won several awards, including the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (2014), Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries, or Television Film (2013), and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. This made him one of only two actors to win the latter category three times (2010, 2012, 2014), since its separation into comedy and drama. He has also won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television three times (2009, 2011, 2013), more than any other actor in that category. He reprised the role of Jesse Pinkman six years after the end of the series in the 2019 Netflix film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, earning further critical acclaim.
Paul began his career with roles in several music videos, guest roles in television, and minor roles in films. In 2007, he had a recurring role as Scott Quittman on the HBO series Big Love (2006–2011). Following Breaking Bad, he starred in films such as Need for Speed (2014), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), Eye in the Sky (2015), and Central Intelligence (2016). He also voiced Todd Chavez in the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman (2014–2020), on which he was also an executive producer, and portrayed Eddie Lane in the Hulu drama series The Path (2016–2018) and Caleb Nichols in the HBO science fiction drama series Westworld (2020). (wikipedia)
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I guess this is a kind of vanity puzzle? Constructors initials ... or first two letters of his last name ... one of those, surely. Whatever, that's fine. Mine yourself for theme ideas, why not? The results aren't terribly inspiring, though, and something just doesn't quite sit right about the theme set. Those answers all do indeed start with "AA" so ... you can't argue with that. But there's a consistency issue for me. Sometimes the "AA" stand alone in the answer (
AA MEETING), sometimes they're part of a larger word (
AARDVARK). The answers aren't sufficiently different from one another somehow. I mean, you say "A.A." with both Milne and the meeting, which is unfortunate, because otherwise you'd have different pronunciations for every answer. And you actually call the batteries "Double-A batteries," which kind of takes the oomph out of your revealer,
DOUBLE-A TEAM, since you've already mentally heard "Double-A" (even if you haven't seen it written out) before you hit the revealer. The set just feels rough, ragtag, not well curated. It feels like one of those puzzles where it's clear the theme isn't that scintillating so the constructor tries to compensate by just putting in a lot of it. A lot of theme. Seven total theme answers on a Monday is a Lot. But as I say, none of it is that exciting. It's just dense. I like
AARON PAUL because it's original, and because I'm watching a lot of "BoJack Horseman" right now. But there's not much else that's very exciting. The only wordplay is in the revealer, and it's pretty tepid. The grid isn't built to showcase the fill: it's all short stuff except the themers and then the two long Downs, which are fine, but nothing to write home about. The grid is clean, but that's about as much as I can say about. No sparkle here today.
Not sure I'd use any form of ALE (e.g.
ALE KEG) (
27A: Pub barrel) if I already had IPA (or
IPAS) in my grid (
1D: Many hoppy brews, in brief), since IPA stands for India Pale ALE, and dupes like that should be avoided if at all possible. Are people going to complain? Well, I am, but
people? Probably not. But you know it's inelegant. You know. So fix it. Other than that, there's not much to say bad or good about this puzzle. It's pretty straightforward, fairly plain. There are no challenging parts, no places to get stuck. Hardest thing was
1A: "Ain't that the truth!" ("I'LL SAY!") and that's just because it was the first thing I looked at and so I had nothing to go on and didn't get it at first glance. A few crosses later, I got it, and I never failed to get an answer at first glance again after that. I'm betting lots of people set personal speed records on this thing. I was about 10 seconds off my own record, and I am a *terrible* sprint-solver, mainly because my typing fingers are terribly clumsy. Every fifth keystroke or so seems to go awry, when I'm typing generally (like now) and when I'm solving. So finishing clean in 2:38 without actually trying to speed, that tells me this thing was spectacularly easy, even for a Monday. I enjoyed the clues on
COY (
11A: "You don't need to be ___, Roy" (rhyming Paul Simon lyric)) and
SHEA (58A: Word with butter or Stadium), and enjoyed learning the etymology of
AARDVARK. But on the whole, as a puzzle, this one didn't quite measure up.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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