Constructor: Christina Iverson and Katie Hale
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME:"Body Language"— idioms containing body parts are represented literally (spatially) in the grid:
Theme answers:
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OK, yes, I really like this theme. I like its wackiness and its unpredictability. The execution isn't always, uh, on the nose, or pretty (THEANOSE is super-awkward imho), but each new bit of body-part buffoonery was surprising and entertaining. And themers ended up in some unexpected places, making the whole solve a real adventure. PAT on THE BACK is probably the blandest of the lot, CHETONGUEEK the most grotesque (I feel like I'm looking at a tongue growing straight out of a cheek), small-MINDED the sneakiest, and "all EARs" just the overall best (also the first thing I got). The hardest one for me was small-MINDED because I simply wasn't expecting to find a themer lurking in a seemingly out-of-the-way three-letter answer. I wanted BI(ND)I at 71D: Forehead mark on Hindu women but then I am also very ready to believe that I have totally misremembered the name of terminology from religions and countries that are not mine, so I just assumed my memory was faulty and the answer was something like, I don't know, BIDI. You'd think the quotation marks around "Petty" in the 83A clue would've tipped me to the theme, but quotation marks a frequent feature of clues, including many non-thematic clues in this very puzzle, so no, the quotation marks didn't help me notice that 83A: "Petty"was a theme answer. I just assumed it was slang for "petty." But the themers were all very gettable in the end, and in almost every case I had a genuine feeling of "aha" or "nice" or at least [politely approving nod], so well done. Maybe the trick to good Sundays is not running your one-note theme into the ground, but instead just hiding all kinds of unforeseeable surprises all over the place.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- 2D: "Fully ready to listen" (all ears, i.e. EAREAREAREAR)
- 7D: "Walk around at a rest stop, say" (stretch one's legs, i.e. OONNEESSLLEEGGSS)
- 69A: "With 74-Across, gesture of approval" (PAT on THE BACK)
- 83A: "Petty" (small-minded, i.e. "minded" shrunk into just three squares => (MI)(ND)(ED))
- 99D: "Bankrupt" (belly-up, i.e. YLLEB)
- 113A: "Insincere, as a remark" (tongue-in-cheek, i.e. CHETONGUEEK)
- It's possible that "SEE WHAT I DID THERE" is also some kind of winky part of the theme, since its in a theme position, i.e. symmetrical with "stretch one's legs" (42D: Question following a clever trick)
1: esoteric doctrines or practices
2
: the quality or state of being esoteric
• • •
ESOTERY is the one huge clunk in this puzzle. Just ... what? I am stunned to find that the word has appeared two times before this in the Shortz era, but I am not at all stunned that it went through a 35-year (!) period of remission between 1955 and 1990. Maleska himself barely even touched this one, and his name is virtually synonymous with ESOTERY. And this ugly answer sits nearly alongside SPITS AT, a very ugly answer, so that little section in the WNW was briefly unpleasant. But nothing else rose to that level of repugnance. TSETSE over UTAHAN isn't great (the latter, and its variant "UTAHN," always makes me laugh—so awkward, so little called-for in everyday speech), and they both cross EAT A SANDWICH, I mean EAT A TON, but since those answers all occur right at the site of a theme answer stack (PAT on THE BACK), I can forgive them a certain amount of infelicity.
Mistakes, I made a few. Wrote in MIA for MIB, which was MIBad, for sure (36D: Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones film franchise, for short) (short for "Men in Black"). I just could not come up with the first word of CALL DESK (96A: I.T. help center, often). I know the phrase HELP DESK and after that, pfffffft, I got nothing. Needed almost every cross. Worst mistake was also the tiniest mistake, i.e. S.O.S. for TOW (90D: Emergency request). This added to the slowness woes in the small-MINDED / BINDI section. Otherwise, I got the theme early with all-EARs and never really got held up for very long. The puzzle felt toughish, but it was never a slog. Toughish but breezy, if that's possible. Hurray for an enjoyable Sunday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld