Constructor: David W. Tuffs
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME:"Ordering Seconds"— familiar two-word phrases have their "second" words re-"ordered" to create new familiar (though unclued) two-word phrases:
Theme answers:
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It is interesting that so many second words in familiar two-word phrases can be anagrammed to make different familiar two-word phrases, but I don't know how interesting. I want to say it's not exactly Sunday-theme interesting, but then Sunday themes are often dreary, so maybe that's not a good yardstick. I just know that my reaction to the theme was "yes, words are funny that way" and not, I don't know, "Wow" or "Haha" or "Cool" or some at least mildly emotionally inflected response. It's all a bit flat, though the PEANUT ALLERGY (gallery) trick is a pretty neat one and deserves its central place in the grid. But WET ONES (nose) ... shrug. And most of the rest are ... I don't know. Fine. The whole exercise feels like it should be an ancillary puzzle in the Sunday Magazine, one of those little puzzles I don't ever bother doing. It's a Games Magazine 1.5-star difficulty level puzzle, takes up maybe a half page, no more. What I'm saying is that the *concept* seems like it would be most ideally expressed in a different puzzle form—not a crossword. The whole unclued-answer angle, combined with the total lack of genuine wordplay (particularly in the clue), makes the whole thing feel rather odd and bland. Also, side note, but I don't really know what BLACK STAR is. That is, I don't know what thing / image the puzzle wants me to imagine. Is there a type of (astronomical) star that is a BLACK STAR? I know "BLACK STAR" as David Bowie's final album (2016), so I'm cool with the validity of "BLACK STAR" as a phrase for that reason, but I have a hard time believing that *that* is the BLACK STAR that is intended here. Oh look, here's an astronomical definition:
I wrote about the theme first because that felt like the thing to do, but honestly the only thing on my mind after I finished solving this thing was "whose bright idea was it to clue PEPE that way and how in the Whole Wide World did everyone in the chain of command, from the constructor to the test-solvers to the editors, sign on off on that clue. Why would you steer your crossword ship directly onto the rocks of white nationalism? That frog's creator had no ill intent and has been enforcing copyright and fighting white nationalists at every turn, so good for him, but as a symbol, PEPE the Frog is burnt, at least for the foreseeable future. It's inextricably associated with the very worst elements of the culture: the white-right and trolling, which has become the only political language the right wing in this country knows any more (besides fraudulent hysteria and violence, that is). Chances are, if you know this meme, you know it as a symbol embraced by the white-right. I do not get why the clue went this, why it made a deliberate choice to evoke this image and the white supremacist ideology it has come to represent. I get that PEPE Le Pew is problematic ... but if you've decided to go with PEPE the Frog instead, I, uh, don't think you fully grasp what "problematic" means. Consider "PEPE le moko" (1937) ... it's a great film, an important precursor to film noir. It stars legendary French actor Jean Gabin. Why not use that for your PEPE clue? Teach people something. Something a little less pustulant. Thank you.
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Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- ROCK IDOLS (23A: Unwavering) (rock solid)
- MOVIE TROPES (24A: Bit of cinema décor) (movie poster)
- POWER STRIP (34A: Outbursts of megalomania) (power trips)
- DEAD SPOT (47A: You might come to one suddenly) (dead stop)
- OIL PALM (55A: Antiquated source of light)
- PEANUT ALLERGY (67A: Spectators taking potshots, collectively) (peanut gallery)
- WET ONES (82A: Feature of a healthy dog) (wet nose)
- SEASHORE (90A: Fish with a prehensile tail) (seahorse)
- MIDDLE SEAT (99A: Birthplace of three major world religions) (Middle East)
- MENTAL LAPSE (115A: Advances in a baby's cognitive development) (mental leaps)
- BLACK STAR (117A: Demonology and such) (black arts)
Pepe the Frog (/ˈpɛpeɪ/) is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called Boy's Club. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspace, Gaia Online and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, it had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Different types of Pepe include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, 'rare Pepes' have been posted on the 'meme market' as if they were trading cards.
Originally an apolitical character, Pepe was appropriated from 2015 to 2016 onward as a symbol of the alt-right movement. The Anti-Defamation League included Pepe in its hate symbol database in 2016, but said most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context. Since then, Furie has expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol and has sued organizations for doing so. [...]
As early as 2015, a number of Pepe variants were created by Internet trolls to associate the character with the alt-right movement. Some of the variants produced by this had Nazi Germany, Ku Klux Klan, or white power skinhead themes. // During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)". Later in the election, Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of The Expendables on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play on Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase "basket of deplorables", which included Pepe's face among those of members of the Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right. [...] In January 2017, in a response to "pundits" calling on Theresa May to disrupt Trump's relationship with Russia, the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted an image of Pepe. White supremacist Richard B. Spencer, during a street interview after Trump's inauguration, was preparing to explain the meaning of a Pepe pin on his jacket when he was punched in the face, with the resulting video itself becoming the source of many memes. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)
• • •
A black star is a gravitational object composed of matter. It is a theoretical alternative to the black hole concept from general relativity. The theoretical construct was created through the use of semiclassical gravity theory. A similar structure should also exist for the Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations system, which is the (super) classical limit of quantum electrodynamics, and for the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Dirac system, which is the (super) classical limit of the standard model.There's also a rap group called BLACK STAR. So that's three. Three valid BLACK STARs. That should be enough for anyone.
Five things:
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- 40A: Educator Khan who founded Khan Academy (SAL) — I've seen his name a bunch now but wow SAL is just not gonna stick. Even after I got SAL I was like "that can't be right ... that's an Italian guy's name ... that's the pizzeria guy's name from 'Do the Right Thing' ... SAL?!" But yes, SAL. I'll try to remember this for next time.
- 61A: Where you might see scrolling credits? (IMDB) — is this because you are "scrolling" on your phone? Because "scrolling credits" are already associated with movies, so the "misdirection" here (to a movie database) doesn't really track as misdirection ... it's more "mildly adjacent reorientation." It's weird. I tend to think that these "?" clues should land perfectly or not exist.
- 45D: Finished the golf hole (ATE A SANDWICH) — I mean, basically
- 100D: Tackles (SETS TO)— I had SEES TO and it felt (and still feels) very very right. Really glad the cross was totally nonsensical with an "E" in that position (TOME> EOME, glaringly) (11A: It's not light reading).
- 41D: Imitation (APERY)— I would like to nominate APERY as the word with the highest seen-in-crosswords to seen-in-real-life ratio. I have seen "japery" in real life more than I've seen APERY, and that ... should tell you something about the commonness of APERY.
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