Constructor: Hemant Mehta
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL (17A: Line of Pokémon) —
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Really thought I might fly through this one after getting the Portuguese explorer and ARE (25A: Amount to) and, after a short, thoughtful pause, CLOVER (2D: Good luck with that!) (it's only the four-leafed kind that relates to luck, so this clue isn't good, and yet somehow I was able to see through it). Then I remembered James AVERY's name and then, whoosh, a total gimme at 17A: Line of Pokémon (GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL). I figured once I threw that first grid-spanner across, I was in business. And yet that was the moment at which everything came to a complete halt. Still could not see a lot of those shorter answers in the NW, including MEMO (22A: Bad thing to miss), ASTRO- (4D: Lead-in to physical), STAY (5D: Suspension of a sort) and EEC (6D: Onetime trade org.), which is one of those old-timey alphabet-soupy initialisms I can never keep track of because I don't know anything about them except that they appear in crosswords. I didn't get the MEMO is a phrase I've heard. "Missing" a MEMO ... I can imagine, but the phrasing on the clue did nothing for me. Same for ASTRO- ... physical??? Nah. I mean, sure, but "astrophysics" and "astrophysicist" are the only real variations of the suffix anyone would use in common parlance. DC-BASED is ... something I wanted, but only reluctantly, so I didn't write it in. Not exactly the strongest 1A. Plausible, but like so many other things in this corner, only just. Writing it in gives you a "... maybe?" feeling, not a "got it!" feeling. Anyway, the worst wound in this section was self-inflicted, it turns out I (predictably) misspelled DA GAMA (1D: Famed Portuguese explorer):
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Five things:
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Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL (17A: Line of Pokémon) —
Gotta Catch 'Em All is the English slogan for the Pokémon franchise. It may also refer to:
- The alternate name for "Pokémon Theme", the first theme song of the English dubbed Pokémon anime series
- "Gotta Catch 'Em All" (song), a 2001 song by 50.Grind (wikipedia)
• • •
I wanted 14A: Social elites to be ELIT...ISTS? But for multiple reasons, that wasn't happening. So I actually had to abandon the NW ship and go to the NE section to get traction, but the vibe wasn't exactly hospitable over there, either. Thank god for Susan ORLEAN, whose name I knew well and who made all the Downs in that section possible (before her, they were not ... except maybe TALKIES (12D: Silent counterparts, once)). After working my way through the NE, I figured out GIRLS Who Code (20A: ___ Who Code (nonprofit)), which gave meant I had the -AG in DRAG, which was all I needed to get DRAG INTO COURT (7D: Sue). It was then and only then that I felt a real sense of confidence with this puzzle. There's a tipping point with Th / F / Sat puzzles that I have to get to before I have the inner belief that I'll actually be able to solve the thing. Never mind that I've solved every puzzle to completion going back as far as I can remember—I still expect to be completely stymied every time I embark on a late-week puzzle, and it took longer than usual today to get that confidence. Side note: I thought the phrase was HAUL INTO COURT, but LOL when I GOOGLE that phrase in quotation marks I just get crossword sites. The DRAG version is apparently 100x more common.
[Warning: extreme booty content]
I didn't really have *fun* with this puzzle until STICKY FINGERS (15D: Propensity for pilfering). Since I balked at DRAG, DRAG INTO COURT didn't give me the thrill it should've, but STICKY FINGERS came close behind and did the job nicely. And then the middle of the grid ended up being pretty delightful. I didn't know Daisy Dukes were known as BOOTY SHORTS (28A: Daisy Dukes, e.g.)—I just knew them as short-shorts, denim cut-offs, but I will be honest and say the BOOTY part was not exactly hard to infer. I think I kinda like [Draft status?] for KING OF BEERS though it's weird to have a Budweiser slogan here with no direct reference at all to Budweiser in either the clue or the answer. Clydesdales are "draught" ("draft"!) horses, so I thought maybe there was some oblique reference there, but maybe that was accidental, since the "draft" in the clue clearly refers primarily if not exclusively to beer. Anyway, I still liked the clue, even if it feels ... odd. I also like GEOCENTRIC ORBIT, which has a deceptively innocent-looking and potentially highly misdirective clue (43A: Travel around the world).
- 38A: Sound of the West Coast (PUGET) — Puns! The PUGET Sound is off the coast of NW Washington. Seattle is on the Sound. This clue brought back fond (fondish) memories of the college recruitment brochures I received in the mail as a high school student from the University of PUGET Sound, which had the tagline: "How Does PUGET sound ...?" As I said, Puns!
- 23D: New York county near Pennsylvania (TIOGA) — As someone who lives in a New York county near Pennsylvania, my first thought here was "... all of them!?" What a bizarre clue. New York sits right on top of Pennsylvania. "Near Pennsylvania" tells you nothing. It's vague *and* bland. Just terrible. TIOGA County is part of the Binghamton, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area (I just found out). I drive through the county seat, Owego, every time I go to Ithaca. The point is, don't come into my backyard with junk clues. It's insulting. Look at alllllllll these counties that are "near" Pennsylvania!:
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| [PA is the blank space below NY. TIOGA County is in red] |
- 49A: Divinity (GODHOOD) — really wanted GODHEAD. Like, really really. I still kinda want it.
- 41D: Contests in which the competitors are eliminated one by one (BEES)— In retrospect, yes, of course, but somehow it took me an embarrassingly long time to see this.
- 13D: Where cruise passengers end up (ON LAND) — what is this clue doing? ON LAND? That's also where cruise passengers start. It's a ridiculously nonspecific phrase, one that also looks a lot like ISLAND (sorry if you fell in that hole). I mean, the answer may as well have been GRAVES for how meaninglessly "accurate" it is.
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