Constructor: Matthew Stock
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: AVA Max (36D: Pop singer ___ Max) —
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A suitably tough Saturday puzzle that seems to have been made for a certain kind of guy (one who enjoyed MATH TESTS in school and now plays DISC GOLF on the weekends and runs TECH DEMOs at his high-paying and I'm sure very interesting job), but that guy wasn't me. I shouldn't imply it was an overly gendered puzzle, as it did seem to take care to include conventionally feminine things, even if those things were extremely, well, conventional (i.e. hair- and make-up-oriented: TONER, NAIL FILE, GLAMOROUS). Mostly this just seemed like somebody else's idea of interesting. There's a certain vibrancy to stuff like "I'M SO SORRY" and HAS IT ALL and HEAD FAKES and even LAVA LAKES, but too often the longer answers were lackluster, and, with astonishing frequency, involved two-word or two-part phrases where the second word seemed like it could be anything, so getting it was a double drag—first, the drag of getting the first part but still being stuck with a shrug, and second the drag of finally getting the answer and having it be no great shakes. ETSY ___ ... and it ends up being SHOP. MATH ___ ... and it ends up being TESTS. That is the kind of plodding energy that I was getting from this puzzle most of the time. TOLL blank, TECH blank, COFFEE blank (BOOTH? SHOW? TIN?). And often these ambiguous second words would come at a choke point, at a gateway from one part of the puzzle to another. So flow wasn't great. It was a good workout, but didn't have much about it that was genuinely delightful.
So many errors today.
Errors today:
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Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: AVA Max (36D: Pop singer ___ Max) —
Amanda Ava Koci (born Amanda Koci; February 16, 1994), known professionally as Ava Max, is an American singer and songwriter. After moving from several states in the United States to pursue a music career since her childhood, Max signed with Atlantic Records in 2016, where she released the song "Sweet but Psycho" in August 2018. It became her breakthrough single after peaking at number one in 22 countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and New Zealand. The song also peaked at number two in Australia, and at number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In March 2020, Max released the song "Kings & Queens", which peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number 19 on the UK Singles Chart. It was followed by the release of her debut studio album, Heaven & Hell, in September 2020, which charted at number two on the UK Albums Chart and at number 27 on the US Billboard 200. In November 2020, the song "My Head & My Heart" was released, which peaked at number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number 18 on the UK Singles Chart. (wikipedia)
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I see a small handful of proper nouns that might've given solvers trouble today. When your primary claim to fame is a 20+-year-old song that peaked at no. 11 on the Hot 100, there's a good likelihood that huge numbers of solvers, young and old, are going to struggle to come up with your name, though having "LIL" as a part of that name really helps with the inference (13A: Rapper with the 2001 hit "Superwoman Pt. II") (LIL MO). Never heard of Kelley O'HARA, but I can infer O'HARA, since it's a reasonably common surname that I've seen before (credit to the puzzle for steering clear of "Gone With the Wind"). And AVA Max, LOL, I forget which recent (non-NYTXW) puzzle included her full name ... probably a Peter Gordon "Fireball" puzzle, or maybe an American Values Club crossword, but the point is I actually learned a name from a puzzle (earlier this week) and then Got To Use That Knowledge when that name came up again (today!). In our highly siloed pop cultural landscape, it's harder and harder to register the fame of people who aren't in the movies you like or the shows you watch or who don't sing the music you listen to. The proliferation of all media means that the public square is a bygone concept, which means that I can float along not only not knowing the secondary members of TV shows I don't watch, but in many cases, Not Even Knowing That Those Shows Exist. The point is ... I forget what the point is, exactly. Just that now, more than ever, huge fame to a certain demographic can still mean near- or complete invisibility to other demographics. This isn't a new thing, but the degree to which it is true is much much higher now than it was, say, 25 or even 10 years ago. That doesn't mean you should never include only kinda-famous, or niche-famous, people in the grid, just that you have to treat those names carefully, with extremely fair crosses (today's puzzle seemed to do that ... no fatal "NES(SUN) DORMA" / ELIE Saab crossings here).
Errors today:
- NACRE (!?) for OCHRE (2D: Hue made from limonite)
- FRO for FOE (11D: Other side)
- THROB for TIRED (8D: Beat)
- RINSE for TONER (56A: Step two in many skin-care routines) (the power of "lather RINSE repeat" compels me!)
- PET TREATS for CAT TREATS (1D: They might smell fishy)
- 30A: Modern initialism for one skimming text (TL;DR) — stands for "too long / didn't read" and it feels very Old Internet. Or just old. I encountered it first as a troll-y and dismissive comment on any post deemed too long, but sometimes it gets used to signify a condensed version of some longer take, e.g. someone might summarize a long article or their own long comment thread with a "TL;DR" version. I don't really see this initialism that much anymore. But maybe I'm just tuning it out, or I've muted everyone who uses it.
- 15A: Off the mark? (ERASE)— where "Off" is ... a verb? Like ... you put out a mob hit on the (pencil) mark? You made lead eat lead? Huh. OK.
- 37A: Like some gallery displays (ARTSY) — absolutely not. Galleries contain actual art. ARTSY is about affectation. Boo hiss to this clue.
- 58A: Gram alternative (NANA) — so we're dealing with nicknames for grandma ... and here I thought we were dealing with nicknames for social media (if Instagram can be "the GRAM" then ... maybe the "alternative" is ... FACE? BOOK? SNAP? TWIT?)
- 57A: Right on (APT) — crossing INEPT!? That's gruesome. Those words are too related, sense- and soundwise, to be crossing each other.
- 49A: Spiritual wanderer (LOST SOUL)— this didn't hit right. I think of a "spiritual wanderer" as someone who is wandering purposefully, whereas LOST SOUL seems like someone who's damned, or at least has no idea what to do. We had OLD SOUL yesterday and LOST SOUL today. I wonder what kind of SOUL we'll get tomorrow. Maybe KIA.
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