"The Duck Variations" playwright / WED 3-16-2022 / Swiss author of "Elements of Algebra" / Butterfly also called a common tiger or wanderer

THEME: Ducks! — Lots of things clued using the word "duck" plus a lovely image of a duck in the center

Theme answers:

• Duck-- AVOID (1A)
• Duck-- SHIRK (5A)
• Duck-- TAKE COVER (17A)
• ___ Duck-- DONALD (25A)
• Duck, e.g.-- BATH TOY (46A)
• "The Duck Variations" playwright-- MAMET (58A)
• Duck-- STOOP DOWN (60A)
• Duck-- DODGE (65A)
• "Duck, duck ..." follower-- GOOSE (67A)
  
• Something a duck lays-- EGG (59D)
• Bugs and Daffy in "The Iceman Ducketh," e.g.-- DUO (61D)

Word of the Day: TANA (Largest lake in Ethiopia) —

Lake Tana (Amharic: ጣና ሐይቅ, romanized: T’ana ḥāyik’i; previously Tsana) is the largest lake in Ethiopia and the source of the Blue Nile. Located in Amhara Region in the north-western Ethiopian Highlands, the lake is approximately 84 kilometres (52 miles) long and 66 kilometres (41 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of 15 metres (49 feet), and an elevation of 1,788 metres (5,866 feet). Lake Tana is fed by the Gilgel Abay, Reb and Gumara rivers. Its surface area ranges from 3,000 to 3,500 square kilometres (1,200 to 1,400 square miles), depending on season and rainfall. The lake level has been regulated since the construction of the control weir where the lake discharges into the Blue Nile. This controls the flow to the Blue Nile Falls (Tis Abbai) and hydro-power station.

In 2015, the Lake Tana region was nominated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve recognizing its national and international natural and cultural importance. (Wiki)

• • •

I opened this puzzle and gasped, which is such a melodramatic response to a crossword puzzle that then I was embarrassed for myself. But have you ever seen a duck in the middle of a grid?? Incredible!! Grid art sometimes requires you to squint and say "uhhhh okay.... sure...." but this one really does look like a duck! I wonder how many iterations of the grid art this constructor went through, or if the duck was already complete within the empty grid before he started his work. It was already there, and Joseph just had to chisel away at the superfluous material.

Also, by the way, debut! Congrats!

There were quite a few things I enjoyed about this theme, aside from the above. It is very impressive to me that the across entries were near-symmetrical within an asymmetrical grid. (The exception was MAMET, which makes me wonder if the editors changed that clue to be duck-like after the fact, along with EGG and DUO.) I also liked that we got a little variation within the clues. They were all duck-y, but we still got a fill-in-the-blank, an example, a definition, etc. And we got a good mix of the different meanings of the word (shirk, dodge, and the animal). 

I think a weak spot for this puzzle is that ultimately the theme answers on their own aren't too interesting, so we really are relying on the clues and grid art to delight us. One thing I like to think about is if a theme answer in a theme puzzle would be a nice entry in a themeless puzzle. Something like STOOP DOWN wouldn't, but it still takes up a lot of real estate.

I've been forcing my friends to crosswords lately (the good kind of peer pressure, I like to think) so one thing that I've been very cognizant of is clues that don't make sense to new solvers even after the puzzle is complete. I think if I were very new to puzzles and finished with NTH for [Imaginary ordinal] or TWAS for [Opening on Christmas Eve?] or YESES for [Sís or das] I would still be pretty lost.* In my opinion, those types of clues are okay on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, but not on a Wednesday. What do y'all think? (Oh, and while you're sounding off about that, can you please explain [Word of leave-taking] for PEACE?)

Bullets:

• I have never heard the term AREA MAP outside of crossword puzzles, and would love for these entries to always be re-worked to Area Man
• TEA clued as [Cozy "spot"] is very cute
• Cluing NEVER with a quote from "Romeo and Juliet" really threw me off because usually the Times reserves its Shakespeare quotations for old-fashioned words like "ere"
  
• Happy Women's History Month! This puzzle referenced about ~ten males (depending on what you think counts**) and zero females. Every human mentioned in this puzzle (six) is white.

xoxo Malaika

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* Explanations: 

• An "ordinal" is what it's called when you add (usually) the "th" to a number, like fifth or tenth. In math (and occasionally other places) you'll refer to some large, unspecified number as N, e.g. "to the Nth degree"
• The word "twas" begins (or "opens") the poem "A Visit from St. Nick" which you might read on Christmas Eve
• The word sí means yes, as does the word da. So in their plural form, they are yeses

** Males of various species: Mike MYERS, DONALD Duck, ELI Whitney, Raphael, MAMET, EULER, Romeo, J. R. R. Tolkien, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck