Constructor: Kyle Dolan
Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (the clues were really ... trying)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: AUDRE LORDE (11D: "Sister Outsider" essayist/poet) —
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Honestly, I have no idea how hard this was. It felt like the clues were putting a lot of effort into being tricksy and cutesy and misleading, so I made a lot of confused faces and never really got a good flow going ... and yet I never really got *stuck* stuck, and the confused faces usually never lasted more than a few seconds, probably, so who knows? The clues were where most of the entertainment lay, because the fill, while solid, doesn't really get off the ground very far. Lots of ordinary phrases, nothing particularly striking. I am struck by the fact that somehow we got AUDRE LORDE's full name in the puzzle before we ever got AUDRE in the puzzle (that seems like it would be a useful five-letter answer, what with all those vowels and the "R" to boot). AUDRE LORDE was a household (or, I guess, "dorm room") name thirty years ago when I was in college, at least among the literary/feminist crowd. I think half my friends were Women's Studies majors, and AUDRE LORDE was a syllabus staple. So open the AUDRE gates! Why not? She's a very important and influential poet and writer. The rest of the grid, as I say, was just fine. No real complaints. But my main feeling during the solve was "man I'm having to deal with a lot of try-hard clues," not "whoa, what a cool answer!" When your clues on stuff like AMY (19A: Tan writing books) and MAGS (10A: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, in brief) and BIRDS (21A: Duck, duck, goose, e.g.) are upstaging your longer answers, well then your Friday priorities are a little different than mine.
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Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (the clues were really ... trying)
Word of the Day: AUDRE LORDE (11D: "Sister Outsider" essayist/poet) —
Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri lɔːrd/; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia."
As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery, and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity.
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The biggest "Aha!" / "D'oh!" moment of the solve for me was when I finally got SPECIAL K (39A: Food brand whose last letter is its company's stock symbol). Parsing that was ... an event. I had the -IALK and thought "well, you ****'d something up again, genius." Seriously considered pulling AIN'T (37D: The Beatles'"___ She Sweet") in favor of some weird variant like, I don't know, ARN'T (!?!), but -RALK didn't make any more sense than -IALK as an answer ending. Not a big fan (i.e. not a fan at all) of stock symbol clues (dull, don't care), but I do kinda like those parsing surprises when they finally come into view. (Note: if the recent Kellogg's strike / boycott were still happening, I wouldn't be giving this clue the time of day—the company, which makes Froot LOOPS, among other breakfast cereals, remains pretty labor-unfriendly).
Why in the world would you clue ALIEN as a [Video game franchise based on a sci-fi film franchise]? If you're going to use a lot of ink on a clue, this is a ridiculous place to use it. It's a sci-fi film franchise. That's why it's famous. The video game thing ... adds nothing. Maybe it's supposed to make non-gamers think it's something they don't know, but then voila!? But that's weak. Such an odd use of cluing space (which is limited, as the puzzle still has to fit into a designated space in the newspaper). The only bit of ye olde fill was SHROVE, which I got easily (thank you, years of reading Middle English), but which is probably an odd word to most solvers (25A: Heard the confession of an absolved, old-style). Also, are people still saying TURNT? (43A: Extremely excited, in modern lingo). I feel like LIT survived the pandemic, but TURNT has quickly become bygone. But it was never my slang to begin with so for all I know, things are TURNT all over. That's the thing about very current slang—it risks becoming laughably dated very quickly. The clue leaves out the fact that TURNT is most commonly used to describe someone (or some party) that is heavily under the influence of alcohol/drugs. "Extremely excited" kinda sorta gets at that, but only obliquely.
I had ACTS before BITS (22A: Routine parts), ALMAY (?) before ARDEN (38A: Big name in cosmetics), and ... well I didn't write in SWIT or ALDA, but those were the only four-letter "M*A*S*H" actor names I could come up with until I got the "F" for FARR (I FARR-got about FARR). Never heard of ADA Twist so the ADA / ATOP / is-it-YIKES-or-is-it-YIPES section was briefly dicey, but only briefly. Not sure anything needs explaining, clue-wise. BLACK HOLE has a strong gravitational "pull," you might see bears on camping trips so BEAR CLAW is "appropriate" for such an event, AMY Tan is the [Tan writing books], AUNT MAY is the aunt of Peter Parker aka Spider-Man (38D: Comics-based film character played by Rosemary Harris, Sally Field and Marisa Tomei), "Kid" is a young goat that's slaughtered so you can have soft SUEDE shoes (20A: Kid in expensive shoes?) ... yeah, that should do it. Oh, a BRACE is a [Pair]—just a fancy semi-bygone word for a set of two. I never see it irl, but I know it. And while most of you all know it too, I am certain it's a new word to someone out there. That's all for me today. See you tomorrow.