Constructor: Claire Rimkus
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (on the slow side for a normal Tuesday, just because of the nature of the theme)
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THEME: Places to play ... — ordinary verb phrases are clued as noun phrases related to sports (with each first word reimagined as a different sports event location):
Theme answers:
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I liked this. It's got kind of a double theme element to it, in that all the first words are reimagined as sporting event sites *and* reimagined as nouns (not verbs). I realize the second part is necessitated by the first, and yet somehow it was the second part (the nouning of the verbs) that felt like the definitive feature of the puzzle as I was solving. It's certainly the part of the theme that gave me the most trouble, that made every single themer at least a little bit of a thinker. I could get to the different areas of play easily enough from the sports mentioned in the theme clues, but getting to a common verb phrase via a wacky noun phrase, that through some wrenches in the system. "We're asking for a wacky noun phrase related to sports, but *you'll* know the answer better as an ordinary, non-sports-related verb phrase" ... whatever my brain had to do to make those transactions happen, it didn't do it easily. Hence the solve felt slowish. But not baddish. Goodish. The rest of the puzzle was suitably easy and remarkably clean. LINEAL was probably the most outré thing in the grid, and it's not terribly strange, actually. OUTRÉ is probably more outré than LINEAL, frankly. ONADARE always seems sad as a standalone adverbial phrase. It's not EAT A SANDWICH sad, but I don't love it. Nothing else causes much wincing today. Lots of solid stuff. Not a ton of sparkle, but the theme is doing the sparkling today. All the grid has to do is not wipe out, and, well, mission accomplished.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (on the slow side for a normal Tuesday, just because of the nature of the theme)
Theme answers:
- COURT DISASTER (20A: Catastrophe at a tennis match?)
- FIELD QUESTIONS (30A: Uncertainties at a football game?)
- RING ALARM BELLS (36A: Security alerts at a boxing match?)
- POOL RESOURCES (51A: Supplies at a swim meet?)
Opuntia, commonly called prickly pear or pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae. Prickly pears are also known as tuna (fruit), sabra, nopal (paddle, plural nopales) from the Nahuatl word nōpalli for the pads, or nostle, from the Nahuatl word nōchtli for the fruit; or paddle cactus. The genus is named for the Ancient Greek city of Opus, where, according to Theophrastus, an edible plant grew and could be propagated by rooting its leaves. The most common culinary species is the Indian fig opuntia (O. ficus-indica). (wikipedia)
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Outside the theme, the parts I struggled most with were fill-in-the-blanks. This is usual for me. I had "IT'S cute!" before "TOO cute!" and then (to add insult to injury) couldn't come up with "IT'S" when I needed it, at the next fill-in-the-blank colloquialism (59A: "Oh, ___ on!"). Actually, there's one more fill-in colloquialism like that (16A: "___ you good?"). Then there's the best colloquialism of the day, "I'M TOAST" (37D: "Things don't look good for me!"). No fill-in-the-blank there, but it keeps up the lively, talky vibe of the puzzle overall. Getting started in the NW was rough because I screwed up "TOO" and I had ULTRA instead of UNDUE (I blame a recent Wordle) and I couldn't make any sense of the clue for PILOT (4D: Spirit guide?)—I've never flown Spirit in my life, so the fact that it is an airline, wow, really really not on my radar. I mean, once the puzzle was over, and I went back to the clue, and I thought about it, I remembered "oh yeah, that's an airline ... or so I've heard." It's actually a fairly prominent "ULTRA- (!) low-cost carrier." But it has never flown where I needed to go.
TOMS seems maybe slightly hard, but I own several pairs of TOMS, so not hard for me (33D: Casual shoe brand). The clue on MARK definitely threw me off (48A: Signify). But overall, as I say, the fill didn't pose a problem. The theme was the thing with teeth, though it was only ferocious *for a Tuesday*—still easyish overall.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]