Constructor: Caitlin ReidRelative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none Word of the Day: Tracee ELLIS Ross (
15D: Actress Tracee ___ Ross) —
Tracee Joy Silberstein (born October 29, 1972), known professionally as Tracee Ellis Ross, is an American actress, singer, television host, producer and director. She is known for her lead roles in the television series Girlfriends(2000–2008) and Black-ish (2014–present). She owns Pattern Beauty, a hair-care line for curly hair.She is the daughter of actress and Motown recording artist Diana Ross and Robert Ellis Silberstein. She began acting in independent films and variety series. She hosted the pop-culture magazine The Dish on Lifetime. From 2000 to 2008 she played the starring role of Joan Clayton in the UPN/CW comedy series Girlfriends, for which she received two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. She also has appeared in the films Hanging Up (2000), I-See-You.Com (2006), and Daddy's Little Girls (2007), before returning to television playing Dr. Carla Reed on the BET sitcom Reed Between the Lines (2011), for which she received her third NAACP Image Award.
Since 2014, Ross has played the starring role of Dr. Rainbow Johnson in the ABC comedy series Black-ish. Her work on it has earned her three NAACP Image Awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. She has also received nominations for two Critics' Choice Television Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. In 2019, she co-created a prequel spin-off of Black-ish titled Mixed-ish. In 2020, she starred in and recorded the soundtrack album for the musical film The High Note. (wikipedia)
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It's a very solid puzzle, but way more slog than thrill-ride for me. The only thing I (predictably?) genuinely got excited by in this puzzle was
NUDE SCENE (good answer, well clued —
54A: Raw footage?). It's a very choppy, highly segmented grid, so the flow is not great. Felt like I was seeping through this puzzle more than zoom-zooming through it. And the longer answers never really come together to produce a strong effect. There are pairs in all the quadrants, but (aside from
NUDE SCENE) none of the involved words are sensational, and at least one of every pair kind of lands with a thud. Hard (for me) to get excited about
MATHLETE or
SEMITONE or
TWO POINTS or (esp.)
A-LISTERS. Some of the shorter connecting stuff is actually really strong, in a low-key sort of way—I'd like to give some love to
GET REAL and
CHATS UP in particular. But because the fill rarely sizzles, and the clues try so so hard to get cute (more on this below), the overall vibe was a bit plodding. The central answer is solid enough ... but because its clue duplicates a clue type that already got used earlier in the grid and really should only be used once in a puzzle (that is, the "literal clue with an exclamation point" clue type), I wasn't so taken with it. Some clues are meant to be used only once—going back to the well just deadens the effect. And
16A: That's the spirit! already used up the "literal!" clue type, so
OPTICAL ILLUSION's clue just made me think "again?" rather than "ah, cool."
The thing where you repeat a clue, or nearly repeat a clue (today:
41A: In and of itself +
44A: In and of itself?) almost always yields terrible, cringey results, and one of them is always hard because the clue just Isn't Right. I don't know why this kind of echoing is thought to be clever or enjoyable. Unless both clues are Dead On, it's actually awful. You've wasted an attempt at an original clue in order to make some kind of "joke." And when both clues are in the same section (as they are today, right on top of each other), ugh, huge pleasure drain. I don't even really get how
META works here.
PER SE was easy, but
META ... I mean, it means self-referential, in a way, but the "?" in the clue is doing a lot lot lot of work. This section was already a drag because of
SHO, which I had as HBO because I barely know what "Shameless" is and it just sort of floats free of any particular channel in my mind (
33A: "Shameless" airer, for short). And HBO made me think the "leafy perennial" was BASIL (instead of
HOSTA). Also, I don't really know what a
SEMITONE is, not specifically, so basically everything east of and including
SEMITONE in the middle there was just a chore. Which is sad, because
SIREN SONG is a very nice answer. Too often (for my taste) the clues got super vague and misdirective. Good clue on
SPF, but very Saturdayish (
63A: Letters on some foundations). I had PETS for
REVS (
51D: Makes purr, purrhaps), perhaps because I just fed the cats. Diamonds
are pretty awful so I've never purchased them and know nothing about the cuts,
ERGO OVAL meant zero to me (
60A: ___ brilliant (diamond cut)). These last three answers all cross each other. This is what I mean when I say the puzzle was more slog than whoosh for me.
Thought A-LISTERS were STARTERS (50A: Biggest stars). Thought SUNSETS (??) were STREETS (27A: Subjects of Monet paintings "in Venice" and "at Lavacourt"). Like diamonds, SeaWorld is awful, so why would I know its "rollercoaster" names? (MANTA). Had SO SMALL for NOMINAL at one point, which I thought was a very creative wrong answer (48A: Hardly worth mentioning). I thought PEAS were legumes which I thought were separate from "fruits" but apparently no, alas (19A: Tiny seeds of green fruits, technically). Hardest answer in the puzzle for me had a very clever clue, but sadly the answer itself was just meh, which made the struggle feel not quite worth it. I'm talking about TWO POINTS, which was just about the last thing I wrote in the grid. 3D: Safety net? refers to the number of POINTS you "net" (gain) on a "safety" ... in American football. You net TWO POINTS. It's a confusing clue because "safety net" suggests trapeze and TWO POINTS + "net" suggests basketball ... but no. It's football. Wish this one had more snap to it. But as I say, the grid itself is solid throughout; no actual weak parts, nothing actively off-putting. Just not as lively as I would've liked, I think. And the clues ... I wish they'd missed ... less. OK, see you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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