Constructor: Andrew Linzer
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: GROUPTHINK (60A: Intellectual conformity ... or a hint to interpreting 17-, 22- and 51-Across)— theme answers all begin or end with a string of three rebus squares containing an animal (three crows, three lions, and three ants, respectively); to make sense of the answers those squares are in, you have to interpret them as a collective, or group; so a MURDER of crows, a PRIDE of lions, and a COLONY of ants (in the Down crosses, each animal square functions simply as a series of letters):
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
I think this is a great idea for a theme, but it was also a great idea for a theme three years ago when Paolo Pasco published a Fireball puzzle with the same theme. I know that coincidences happen, themes sometimes get repeated completely unintentionally and accidentally, so I'm not exactly outraged, and I'm certainly not making any accusations, but there are a LOT of coincidences when you look at the two puzzles side-by-side. First of all, Fireball puzzles have titles, and the title of Paolo's puzzle was ... "Groupthink." That's the bit that really makes me wince. It's one thing to come up with the same concept independently from another constructor, but to represent *this* theme with precisely *that* word, well, that seems far less probable than duplicating the theme concept alone. But not impossible! Here's Paolo's grid:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
- (MURDER) (i.e. crow crow crow) MYSTERY (17A: Genre for Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle)
- (PRIDE) (i.e. lion lion lion) MONTH (22A: June)
- PENAL (COLONY) (i.e. ant ant ant) (51A: Early 19th-century Australia, for one)
Isla Lang Fisher (/ˈaɪlə/; born 3 February 1976) is an Australian actress and author. She began her career on Australian television. Born to Scottish parents in Oman, she moved to Australia at age six. After appearing in television commercials at a young age, she came to prominence for her portrayal of Shannon Reed on the soap opera Home and Away from 1994 to 1997, for which she received two Logie Award nominations.She made a successful transition to Hollywood in the live-action film adaptation of Scooby-Doo (2002), and has since appeared in Wedding Crashers (2005), Hot Rod (2007), Confessions of a Shopaholic(2009), The Great Gatsby (2013), and Now You See Me (2013). Her other notable film credits include I Heart Huckabees (2004), The Lookout (2007), Definitely, Maybe (2008), Burke & Hare (2010), Bachelorette (2012), Visions (2015), Grimsby, Nocturnal Animals, Keeping Up with the Joneses (all in 2016), and Tag (2018). She has also voiced characters in animated films such as Horton Hears a Who!(2008), Rango (2011), and Rise of the Guardians (2012). On television, she had a recurring role on the fourth and fifth seasons of Arrested Development (2013, 2018).
Fisher has authored two young adult novels and the Marge in Charge book series. (wikipedia)
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| [taken from crosswordfiend.com] |
As you can see, two of the three animals are the same (crows and lions; Paolo used fish (SCHOOL) where today's NYT constructor used ants (COLONY)). Further, every, single, one of the LION crosses is the same in both grids, and in exactly the same grid position (SCALLION, PAVILION, A MILLION). It's eerie. Now, it may also be by far the most likely way to handle three consecutive LION squares, I don't know, so again, this isn't proof of theft. It's just very hard for me to evaluate today's NYT puzzle when I know the Fireball puzzle exists. The theme is ingenious, and it's elaborate, and if it's already been done, and done so similarly, most anything I'd have to say about today's puzzle I should really be saying about Paolo's. I have no interest in saying which is better; they both execute the theme well. I just feel, I don't know, icky praising a puzzle that has soooooo much in common with another puzzle, particularly a less high-profile independent puzzle. When the behemoth copies the indie (intentionally or no), it just gives me bad vibes.
This puzzle has an Agatha Christie clue for the "murder" answer, Paolo's had a Christie *parody* as its "murder" answer. As with the "lions," all the "crow" crosses are essentially the same (CROWD, MICROWATT, ESCROW), and as with "lions," that similarity may have been inevitable (not a lot of "crow"-containing options). My favorite coincidence, because it's the most bizarre, is that both puzzle's somehow have ISLA Fisher in them (!?!?!?!?!!). In the NYT today, her first name appears as an incidental, non-thematic four-letter name, but back in Paolo's puzzle, the "fish" in her *last* name makes her part of the theme (part of the SCHOOL in PRIVATE SCHOOL). So ... big day for ISLA Fisher. Awkward day for me.
I really like the clue on KAYAK (8D: Boat going back and forth?) (the "back and forth" refers to its being a palindrome, i.e. reading the same in both directions). I also like the redundancy observation in the HIKES UP clue, which I had not thought of before (24D: Boosts, redundantly). And DOMIN(ANT) HAND is a real nice longer answer (29D: Cup holder, usually). The main difficulty of today's puzzle was simply uncovering the theme concept, which took me a while. I got the rebus part quickly enough, but I couldn't make the crows or lions do anything; I tried pronouncing them, or thinking what they're symbols of ... "Is June the birth month of Leos?" I wondered (no, Leos are primarily August). So I just jumped to the bottom of the grid to try to find the revealer, which I got quickly, and though it didn't help immediately, it helped eventually; I'd figured out the meaning of GROUPTHINK before I got to the ants.
Couple of tricky "?" clues today:
- 27D: Time period, or an anagram of one? (EON)—EON is an anagram of the word "one" (not of a time period)
- 54A: Water tower? (TUGBOAT)—the old "tower" trickeroo (here, it means something that tows) (you sometimes see the "flower" trickeroo on river clues)
Anyway, sorry to ruin your experience by showing you the earlier version of this puzzle. But not that sorry. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld