Constructor: Bruce Haight
Relative difficulty: Medium ... maybe tipping toward Medium-Challenging (for a Tuesday ... those corners are big and at least one of these answers is ???)
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THEME:"HOLD MY BEER ..." (60A: Comment before a stupid stunt ... or a hint to the ends of 17-, 25-, 36- and 50-Across) — last words in theme answers are all things that can hold beer:
Theme answers:
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The theme holds (!) up pretty well. Certainly the revealer is by far the most original and interesting thing in the grid. I was a bit ... disappointed? ... when I got the revealer phrase and then went looking for beer brands hidden inside the theme answers, only to come up empty. If I'd read the revealer clue all the way to the end (who has time!?) I'd've seen that I was looking in the wrong place for the beer-related content. Anyway, hiding beer names *inside* theme answers would be well nigh impossible. You're welcome to give it a try, but I just looked at a list of the most popular beer names, and, you know, good luck. Maybe you can hide beer types as opposed to beer brands. IPA and LAGER and what not. LOL I just remembered, as I was typing this sentence, that I already did this myself. I'm seriously, genuinely laughing out loud that I had so completely forgotten a puzzle I'd constructed that I had to muse about the theme possibilities for another puzzle just to jog my memory. Wow. Anyway, my puzzle (co-constructed with Lena Webb) had the revealer BEER BELLY. And yeah, it was really challenging to find theme answers that worked, let alone ones that fit symmetrically in a grid.
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Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Medium ... maybe tipping toward Medium-Challenging (for a Tuesday ... those corners are big and at least one of these answers is ???)
Theme answers:
- BLOWN GLASS (17A: Fragile art form crafted with air and heat)
- ACE PITCHER (25A: Starter on the mound, often)
- SPACE CASE (36A: Type who's out of touch with reality)
- PORK BARREL (50A: Metaphorical source of some government funds)
Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections includes some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. [...] Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs over 1,100 staff and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (wikipedia)
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| [Nov. 11, 2015] |
Sorry for the memory lane diversion. Back to our puzzle—the theme works, the revealer is good. I like that the holders of beer get larger as the puzzle progresses (from top to bottom). My only issue was that ACE PITCHER is a little redundant and SPACE CASE ... well, I really wanted it to be SPACE CADET and (very) briefly thought there was some kind of trick or rebus going on that would make CADET somehow work. But no. CASE. I have certainly heard SPACE CASE, so that's fine. And I actually like PORK BARREL a lot, as a standalone answer, so thumbs-up to the theme. The fill wasn't terrible, overall, but it was gridotaged by a gridoteur toward the end, resulting in a disaster that made me forget anything good about the rest of the non-theme parts of the puzzle. ECO has always been a bit of a grid scourge, but the proliferation of ECO-prefixed words is really horrific, and ECOTEUR is beyond the limits. I don't even believe in ECOTAGE as a word (I've seen it in grids, unfortunately) so how in the hell do you expect me to buy into ECOTEUR. I challenge you to use that word in conversation—even ecologically minded people are going to go "Huh? What did you say? What is E-COUTURE?""I said ECOTEUR, E-C-O-T-E-U-R.""Oh, like ... a literary type who writes about ... plants?""No.""An arty director of plant movies?""No, someone who commits ECOTAGE.""Oh, like decoupage but with tree leaves. I get it now." [/scene] No one will misunderstand you if you say SABOTEUR or SABOTAGE, everyone will misunderstand you if you replace SABO- with ECO-. Kindly put ECOTEUR and ECOTAGE in your ECOCAR and drive it over a cliff ... but not into the ocean, that would be ECOTAGE.
POP TOPS before POP TABS (29D: Soda can features), OMITS before LACKS (1A: Doesn't include), and ACME before APEX (6A: Very top). Totally forgot who Sylvia SYMS was, despite having seen her name in crosswords before (57D: Jazz singer Sylvia). Wanted [Running on EMPTY], not FUMES. Had a little trouble turning up EARSHOT (11D: A voice might be heard within this). This all feels like slightly more struggle than I usually experience on a Tuesday, But maybe not. Enjoy your day. See you tomorrow.
P.S. forgot to say this yesterday, but congratulations to Tyler Hinman on winning his seventh (!!) American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this past weekend in Stamford, CT.
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— Tyler Hinman (@thatpuzzleguy) April 3, 2022
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