Constructor: August Lee-Kovach
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: JUST ADD WATER (35A: Simple recipe instruction ... or a hint to the answers to the four starred clues) — you need to mentally supply "water" (i.e. H2O, i.e. HHO) in order to make sense of the theme answers:
Theme answers:
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Back when I was constructing, some variation of this theme occurred to me at some point, as I'm sure it has to lots and lots of constructors. I'd be absolutely floored if the "HHO" trick hasn't been done, in some way, multiple times in puzzles throughout the years; perhaps in other venues, but still, H2O has very obvious potential to a constructor whose mind is alert to theme ideas. The question is: what are you going to do with your "HHO" idea? Just put the letters in circled squares? Maybe do a rebus? Maybe something ultra-fancy with the molecule shape? Who knows? You brainstorm ideas and see where it goes. The version we see today has a very promising revealer. It's a common instruction that you might find in simple, back-of-the-box recipes, and it's clear. It tells you exactly what to do. So that's good. The revealer is strong. But what about the rest of it? What does it feel like to solve it? And for me the answer was, it didn't feel that good. The answers are gibberish. You look at the grid: gibberish. You want to ADD WATER, OK, but you cannot actually ADD WATER because there is nowhere to add it, so all you've got, then, is dry pancake mix, and you can't eat that. FRENCRNS!? I'm not eating that, no. Having to mentally supply the HHO adds a level of challenge to the puzzle, for sure—I kept repeatedly failing to parse the waterless entries correctly. This was especially true with HIGHHOLIDAYS, which I kept wanting to have HOLY involved somewhere, despite the redundancy of HOLY HOLIDAYS. And I thought the French horn was singular (as the flute is (bird), as the clarinet is (cat), as the oboe is (duck), in "Peter and the Wolf"), so I had FRENCHRN ... obviously a violation of the whole theme idea. So it ended up being somewhat unsatisfying to solve. And very much unpleasant to look at.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- HIGLIDAYS (16A: *Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) ("High Holidays")
- FRENCRNS (25A: *The wolf in "Peter and the Wolf") ("French horns")
- BEACUSES (42A: *Cape Cod retreats) ("beach houses")
- ELEVENTUR (56A: *Last possible second) ("eleventh hour")
: a short line (as of gut) by which a fishhook is attached to a longer line (merriam-webster.com)
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That NW corner was brutal on me. And I wanted ORBS right away! And SNL! But then ... off the "N" in SNL ... I wrote in AS IN instead of THAN (13A: Part of a comparison). And that was absolutely lethal. Could not bring myself to take it out. Seemed perfect. Also, Hammer's pants are PUFFY, or at least that's the adjective I associate with them, so that answer was confusing me (3D: Like Hammer pants = BAGGY). And RHINO, forget it, no, I couldn't see that at all. ENG could've been anything. Not sure why it took me so long to finally see ROYCE (a gimme)—that answer finally gave me the momentum to power through that thorny first-themer area. The rest of the grid was pretty manageable. Figuring out where the HHO bits were and how to write its answer into the grid was the only significant challenge. So, as is typical with Thursday tricks, there's an indefinite period of struggle just to identify the trick, and then the post-aha part, which is significantly easier. I wanted YALE at 14A: Its motto is "Fiat lux" (UCLA), which the puzzle must've known I would want, since it then taunted me with the actual YALE motto later in the grid (59A: Its motto is "Lux et veritas").
The fill was crustyish in places, for sure. EN-LAI SNELL is one of the less appealing pairs of fives I've seen in a while. Real "out of the past" energy. Meanwhile, ERST is nearby, nodding his approval: "Yes ... EN-LAI SNELL ... my old friends ... it is good to be together again ..." I'm sure TURN A LOSS is a phrase but it still rings awkward, esp. when you set it alongside its far more common counterpart, "turn a profit." You take losses, you turn profits. So no love for that long answer. Everything else is fine. Holds up. Not remarkable one way or the other.
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Bullets:
- 39A: She met her husband Frank after beating him in a shooting match (ANNIE) — wow, once that curly-haired kid moved out of that orphanage, her life really went places ... (I know, I know, just let me pretend) (this "Oakley"-free clue is weird)
- 27A: ___ People's Democratic Republic (LAO) — the official name of LAOS
- 37A: Measures of cellular strength (BARS) — think phones, not biology
- 17A: Start of some souvenir shirt slogans (I HEART) — this one wants you to think it's fresh and clever, but it's really just a weird partial. I do not heart it.