Constructor: Adam Wagner
Relative difficulty: Medium (I picked up the gimmick pretty quickly; your mileage may vary)
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THEME: CROSS YOUR "T"S (61A: Proofreader's reminder ... or some advice for finishing here?) — there are twelve clues that can be understood only if you imagine that their lowercase "L"s are actually lowercase "T"s (actually in one case it's an uppercase "I" that gets crossed and changed to an uppercase "T"); i.e. you have to mentally turn all those "L"s (and that one "I") to "t"s, or CROSS YOUR "T"S:
Theme answers:
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Despite the fact that the imagined context of this puzzle is preposterous—what "proofreader" these days is working on handwritten text!?!?!—I still enjoyed this theme a lot. I like that it's sneaky (even after I figured it out, I kept forgetting it and getting surprised by "l" clues), and I like that the theme clues are all genuinely misdirective and highly plausible, such that when you have your "D'oh!" moment, it's very jarring. The "goalkeeper" to "goatkeeper" clue, for instance, or the "libel" to "Tibet" one—that abrupt and drastic shift in context precipitated by the "l" to "t" change is pleasing somehow. So that even though I knew what the gimmick was fairly early on, there was still lots of solving delight to be had as I worked my way through the grid. I supposed having one of the crosses being not an "l" but a capital "I" is a bit of a cheat, but ... I just think of it as a wacky twist, though it's easier to feel this way if you remember that ROKU exists. If ROKU isn't really on your radar, then that clue, which violates the norm of the theme *and* doesn't have any indication that it's about television, might trip you a bit. It might get especially messy in that ROKU section because that's where the knottiest clump of names and technical words are: I'm speaking specifically of the TAZO to ZEROTH to HAYAO pipeline. I'm really lucky I remembered that TAZO was a brand (of tea), and had some idea of Miyazaki's first name, because dear lord, ZEROTH?! What a bizarre non-word used by no one outside of (I'm guessing) technical scientific/mathematical contexts. Before you get your STEM-loving brain twisted with indignation, look ... everyone knows first, second, third. Everyday words. ZEROTH is not even close to an everyday word. It's a no-day word. Never used it, never seen it except maybe once or twice in a crossword (which is why I "knew" it today). And the clue makes it *seem* so normal (31D: Beginning of an ordered sequence). LOL what ordered sequence!? *I don't mind that ZEROTH is in this puzzle!!!!!!* But crossing a brand and an unusual first name (I can't name another HAYAO), ZEROTH becomes somewhat atrocious. Miyazaki is very famous, legendary, but he's known by his last name. Also, keep in mind that if you don't know TAZO, you not only have trouble on your hands with ZEROTH, you've also got a *completely* blind cross in the first vowel with ETALI- (whose last letter can plausibly be "I" or "A"). When puzzles don't handle their names, brands, and technical terms carefully, when they cross them in places that set up very real Natick potential, it bugs me. A lot. I was not stumped by this section—No Naticks for me!—and yet, on behalf of solvers I *know* were roughed up by this section, I am bugged. Not thrilled about the DERULO / SECO cross either, but "O" is probably the only sane guess there, so we'll leave that one be. Jason DERULO is very famous, but because the contemporary world is so culturally and generationally segmented and siloed, huge swaths of older solvers will have no idea who he is (his name makes its NYTXW debut today):
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Medium (I picked up the gimmick pretty quickly; your mileage may vary)
Theme answers:
- 16A: Where a [steeping] bag may be found (TEA CUP)
- 18A: Warm [coats] (DOWN JACKETS)
- 20A: Shakespearean [foot] (IAMB)
- 33A: [Watts] in a cinema (NAOMI)
- 39A: Key [time] (MOMENT OF TRUTH)
- 64A: Agcy. making [tax] laws (IRS)
- 65A: One who makes [bait], perhaps (ANGLER)
- 2D: One for whom [Tibet] is an issue (DALAI LAMA)
- 4D: [Hurt], say (SAD)
- 27D: [TV] device found in many homes nowadays (ROKU)
- 38D: [Goat] keepers' kin (SHEPHERDS)
- 63D: [Squatted], say (SAT)
Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao, [mijaꜜzaki hajao]; born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation. [...] Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. He directed numerous films with Ghibli, including Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992). The films were met with critical and commercial success in Japan. Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke was the first animated film ever to win the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year, and briefly became the highest-grossing film in Japan following its release in 1997; its distribution to the Western world greatly increased Ghibli's popularity and influence outside Japan. His 2001 film Spirited Away became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, and is frequently ranked among the greatest films of the 2000s. Miyazaki's later films—Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), and The Wind Rises (2013)—also enjoyed critical and commercial success. Following the release of The Wind Rises, Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature films, though he returned to work on the upcoming feature film How Do You Live? in 2016. (wikipedia)
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When did you have your initial "Aha!" moment with this puzzle? Mine came right here:
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| [33A: Walls in a cinema] |
First thought: "That's not a thing; there is no word for 'walls in a cinema'." Then: "Ooh, is there an actress named 'Walls'!?" Then: "Hmmm ... no. There's an actress named 'Watts," and *her* name starts with 'N', but ... Ohhhhhhhhhhhh." And that was that. You can see that by the time I made it to NAOMI, I had already been baffled by the DALAI LAMA clue and the IAMB clue. After discovering the gimmick, the ride to the end of the line was very pleasant (except for that bumpy journey through the ZEROTH Pass). I balked at [Nonunion?] for UNWED until I realized "oh, 'nonunion' is an adjective!" (I'd been reading it as a noun). The clue on HE'D is so bizarre, having literally nothing to do with the contraction HE'D, that it gave me more trouble than almost anything else in the grid. Even after the last letter I had a brief moment of "hed ... what is hed? Oh HEEEEE'D. ugh." My wife told me yesterday that when she was little it took her a while to realize that the characters KANGA and ROO together spelled the word "kangaroo." She lived so completely in that world that she never thought about the 'meanings' of their names. Anyway, when she told her class this, she said there was at least one student who was like, "wait ... what? WHAT!?" Funny the things your brain just doesn't bother noticing (49D: Offspring of Kanga = ROO). Anyway, congrats to this theme concept and especially to the theme clues, which managed to sound completely plausible in both the "l" and "t" versions. I mean, [Key lime] (!!) => [Key time] => MOMENT OF TRUTH. That's perfect. I think I'm dealing with pies, but then comes ... The MOMENT OF TRUTH! Dum dum DUM! Fantastic.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. the "1942 romance movie" in the ILSA clue [1942 romance movie heroine] is "Casablanca." I assume most of you know that. But some younger solvers ... maybe not? It's hard to know what people know and what they don't know. Older people? Kids these days? Middle-age Gen-X guys? What do they know? Do they know things? Let's find out!