Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME:"Turns of Phrase"— familiar phrases following an [X] OF [Y] pattern have their [X] and [Y] reversed (or "turned," I guess), creating wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):
Theme answers:
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So I've been solving cryptic crosswords on Twitch ... (I'm trying to imagine time-traveling to the '80s and saying this sentence to teenage me ... yeah, it's pretty funny) ... so I've been solving cryptic crosswords on Twitch (a live-streaming service used primarily by gamers, I think), every Friday night at 7pm, with my friends Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty, and just this Friday we solved a cryptic by Will Nediger, and it was a delight. This puzzle here, today, is far far too basic in its concept and too tepid in its humor to be a real delight. You just switch the words on either side of "OF"? Ok, it's true, sometimes very simple themes can work beautifully, but here, the bag is very very mixed. DRAWERS OF CHESTS is kind of funny, but FOOT OF FLEET is virtually nonsensical. BROTHERS OF BAND is syntactically super-awkward. And what is with the completely arbitrary pluralizing of some of the answers. I get why you'd pluralized LEAVES in ABSENCE OF LEAVES—you can't get the foliage pun with ABSENCE OF LEAVE. But why is CHESTS plural but CHAIN not? MAIDS plural but BAND not? I'm sure some of this has to do with just getting the answers to be the appropriate length, so that you can arrange them symmetrically in the grid, but it all seems haphazard. Still, the real problem is the lukewarmness of the whole concept. It hits there, misses there, and generally isn't consistently funny enough, considering how simple the theme is; considering how many ___ OF ___ phrases there are in the world (or in the language, anyway), these should've been funnier.
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Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- DRAWERS OF CHESTS (21A: Artists sketching pectorals?)
- HONOR OF MAIDS (33A: Vow to remain mum about hotel guests' secrets?)
- FOOT OF FLEET (52A: Small distance covered by a naval armada?)
- MAN OF RIGHTS (73A: Boxer lacking a left hook?)
- PLENTY OF HORN (89A: What brass band music has?)
- ABSENCE OF LEAVES (107A: Tree feature in winter?)
- COMMAND OF CHAIN (14D: What a dog walker and a strong-willed pooch might vie for?)
- BROTHERS OF BAND (45D: The Bee Gees' Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb?)
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement. // On January 10, 1957, following the Montgomery bus boycott victory against the white democracy and consultations with Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and others, Martin Luther King Jr. invited about 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Prior to this, Rustin, in New York City, conceived the idea of initiating such an effort and first sought C. K. Steele to make the call and take the lead role. Steele declined, but told Rustin he would be glad to work right beside him if he sought King in Montgomery for the role. Their goal was to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. In addition to King, Rustin, Baker, and Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Joseph Lowery of Mobile, and Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, all played key roles in this meeting. The group continued this initial meeting on January 11, calling it (in keeping with the recent bus segregation issue) a Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration when they held a press conference that day. The press conference allowed them to introduce their efforts:
- communicating what they had included in telegrams sent that day to applicable members of the Executive branch of the U.S. government (President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, and Attorney General Brownell)
- sharing an outline of their overall position regarding the restrictions against the "elementary democratic rights [of America's] Negro minority"
- and providing a short list of concerns they wished to raise with "white Southerners of goodwill".
On February 15, a follow-up meeting was held in New Orleans. Out of these two meetings came a new organization with King as its president. Shortening the name used for their January meetings, the group briefly called their organization Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration, then Southern Negro Leaders Conference. At its third meeting, in August 1957, the group settled on Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as its name, expanding its focus beyond buses to ending all forms of segregation.
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I also don't quite understand some of the fill decisions. In particular, I don't get why you'd got with TUBI, a proper noun that is also a company that is also a thing many solvers won't be familiar with, when the perfectly good TUBE and TUBA would've slid right in there. TUBI has only one potential way to clue it, whereas TUBA has many and TUBE, well, the possibilities are endless there. Is the idea to be novel? With your short fill? Needlessly? In manifestly exclusionary ways? I get that you want to seem "current," and I have no problem with TUBI if you need TUBI, but you absolutely do not need TUBI here and I don't get why it's a better choice than the more ordinary words with more interesting cluing possibilities. I also don't quite get SCLC, an initialism I've never seen before and one that has not been seen in the grid for *twenty-seven years*. I wanted SNCC (pronounced "snick" ) here, because, well, I've heard of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and it's also a civil rights org. of the mid-20th century. And it's been in the puzzle a dozen or so times in the Shortz era. But even SNCC I don't think is *great* if you can go with *words* instead of *initialisms*. I couldn't even infer what SCLC stood for. I figured it was Southern something Legal something, but only one of those was right. I'm happy to learn about the org., and again, I think that if you absolutely need SCLC to hold a corner together, then go for it, but this is a tiny and very flexible corner, and you absolutely do not need SCLC. For example:
Now, I'd get rid of SCAD in the singular too, if I could. It's just ... not a thing you'd say. One SCAD? No. I'd also clue J'AIME as the name JAIME, but that's another issue entirely. I guess there was probably some idea of making the grid more diverse or inclusive, which is normally a great instinct. But regular words > initialisms almost every time, esp. when the initialism is not universally familiar. And zero appearances in 27 years suggests it's not the most widely known initialism. These are small issues, in many ways—the crosses were ultimately fair, so who cares, I guess? I'm just expressing a preference for solid non-proper-noun words, in general. You can write more interesting clues for these, and they're gonna be more widely accessible as well. If you feel differently, well, clearly at least some people agree with you!
I think I said "Really?" out loud at the "I" plural EUCALYPTI. I'll take it from ABACI, I suppose, but it seems absurd in the longer answer. I think they're just called "eucalyptus trees," or even "eucalypts," though there is one instance of EUCALYPTI (italicized, i.e. in Latin) on the "Eucalyptus" wikipedia page. Loved the clue on BALD EAGLE (38D: Benjamin Franklin famously considered it " a rank coward" with "bad moral character") because it is hilariously unexpected (far funnier than any of the themers). Also liked seeing ENBIES, although ... hmm ... not sure how I feel about the clue including the word "nonbinary" when ENBIES is derived from the initials of "nonbinary" (i.e. N, B). I guess I'm OK with it, but generally you wouldn't clue initial-based answers using the words those initials stand for. [National Organization for Women, for short] is not an acceptable clue for N.O.W., for instance (albeit an extreme instance). But I'm just happy to see ENBIES at all, so clue shmue, today it's fine. I forgot CORN POPS existed. Do CORN POPS exist? (they didn't cover this in my Cereal Ontology class). I had the CORN and then ... no idea. Wanted CHEX, sorta, but that seemed too niche a cereal for a star like Woody Woodpecker to get involved with. Looks like they do indeed exist. Another Kellogg's product (to go with SPECIAL K earlier in the week). I like the FEE (from ADFEE) and FIE and FOE are in this puzzle, and that GOGO crosses GOOGOO. Sometimes weird little seemingly coincidental details like this can add a little dash of charm to the grid. I also just like the word BORDELLO (82D: Red-light district establishment). It just sounds cool. Fun to say. Olde-timey. So much more melodious than "whorehouse" or "brothel." Aside from SCLC, the only thing that was at all unfamiliar to me was this Thomas GAGE guy, whose name I've probably seen before (71A: Thomas ___, British general at Bunker Hill). I just can't keep all the generals of all the wars of all the wars straight. I just ... can't. But if the crosses are fair, it's fine: I'll deal. See you tomorrow (or next week, if you're one of those Sunday-only people :)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. hey it's time for another installment of the Boswords Crossword Tournament—the next one takes place next Sunday, Feb. 6. Here's the deets from tournament co-director John Lieb:
Registration is now open for the Boswords 2022 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 6 from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.
See the website for more details—John made a little video that explains everything very effectively. If you've never done a tournament before, they can be quite fun, and if you solve the NYTXW regularly, then the answer is yes, you are "good enough" :) You can compete as pairs in this one, so if you're at all reluctant to go it alone, grab one of your nerdy friends (or parents, or children). This should be a fine, fun way to spend a winter's afternoon.