Constructor: Robyn Weintraub
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: LEE Krasner (37D: Abstract artist Krasner) —
When I talk about that ideal "Zoom-Zoom" feeling that I look for in a Friday puzzle—well, this is it. This is pretty much Peak It. Feels like months since I've zipped around a grid with such a feeling of acrobatic joy, with long answers just unfurling Down and Across, plummeting, soaring. Very rollercoastery feel to this one, with the car somewhat slowly crawling out of its starting position in the NW and then ... whoosh, big drop through the CIRCULAR FILE and you're off!
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Bullets:
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: LEE Krasner (37D: Abstract artist Krasner) —
Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination between their two styles, the relationship somewhat overshadowed her contribution for some time. Krasner's training, influenced by George Bridgman and Hans Hofmann, was the more formalized, especially in the depiction of human anatomy, and this enriched Pollock's more intuitive and unstructured output.Krasner is now seen as a key transitional figure within abstraction, who connected early-20th-century art with the new ideas of postwar America, and her work fetches high prices at auction. She is also one of the few female artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. (wikipedia)
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And then, to borrow another metaphor, it's just fireworks—long, vivid answers just exploding in first one direction and then another. The puzzle could've stood to be a little harder, but if you make it Too hard, then the solver doesn't get the propulsive feeling that makes the puzzle so exhilarating. Only halfway through the puzzle and I already feel like I've been rocketing through space (with STARFLEET, past ICE PLANETs and god knows what else):
I had to work a bit to get started, which is normal. Wanted REBUS in that 1-Across slot (1A: Puzzle genre = LOGIC). Wanted LOBO but wasn't Sure sure, so had to fiddle around. Neither OLE nor OPAL immediately leapt out at me (though I did consider OLE), but then I hit GENE, and rode that backwards through my earlier failures, GENE to OLE to LOBO and OPAL, and then LOGIC was visible and off we go. Had a tad more trouble trying to get CANOLA and EBOLA from their back ends (-LA and -A, respectively) as I was trying to make my way down the west side. CELS would've helped a lot, by giving me the first letters of both words, but CELS was well and truly hidden—I went looking in space when the answer was in animation (25D: Images of Pluto, perhaps), so I used LEVAR to get LEVARage in there, and after I changed my initial misspelling of his name (from LAVAR to LEVAR), then ABET slid in there and things started moving. There were no other sticking points thereafter. Meanwhile, the fireworks just never stopped, even when I was making the final turn, counterclockwise up into the NE, colorful bursts of fill were still, uh, filling the grid:
If I have any criticism of this grid (and it's pretty weak, as criticisms go), it's that it's Too much for me. That is, it's a super duper Gen-X'y puzzle. If you had parents who were into Jimi Hendrix and/or The Monkees (mine weren't, but I certainly knew who those acts were since childhood), and then spent at least part of your childhood watching "The Carol Burnett Show" on CBS or Farrah Fawcett on "Charlie's Angels" (or had that iconic Farrah poster over your bed, as my stepbrother did) (15D: Designer Kamali who made Farrah Fawcett's iconic red swimsuit = NORMA) ... if you waited in huge lines to see "The Empire Strikes Back" on opening day (guilty), spent your adolescence watching George WENDT on "Cheers," discovered Judi DENCH movies in your '20s and then maybe watched "Gilmore Girls" or at least grew up to eventually discover and watch the show with your own child (23A: Graham of "Gilmore Girls" = LAUREN) ... if any or all of those things were true for you or those adjacent to you, then you probably had a reasonably easy time with this one. Of course, you might be 18 or 81 and still have found it easy. I am just slightly cautious in my raving in case I'm missing some kind of generational exclusivity that might make others feel different.
- 17A: Supplied with dough, as a bakery (BANKROLLED) — I can't tell what this clue thinks it's doing. [Supplied with dough] is plenty. The "bakery" thing not only doesn't add clear context, it distracts by attempting a clunky misdirection. I see that they are trying to do something with "dough" here, but when you add "as a bakery," it's like you're taking what should be a natural ambiguity / misdirection and forcing the issue. "Think of the wrong kind of dough!" the clue seems to be begging. Seems a cheap move. Also, I can't tell if there's some kind of pun on "roll" going on here or not. Puns are bad enough when you *know* they're happening.
- 21A: It's down in France (DUVET)— yeah, it's down elsewhere, too. We have DUVETs here now. And they're called DUVETs. So, again, weird additional clue words try to force the misdirection.
- 53A: Buildings with many wings (BIRDHOUSES) — OK, but this actually reads gruesomely, since I have to imagine disembodied wings, which I've seen plenty of at the base of the Security Mutual building downtown, where falcons absolutely feast on pigeons and leave the less edible pigeon parts for us to find on the sidewalk. So I just imagined BIRDHOUSES full of bird murder, is what I'm saying. Still, it's not a bad clue, and the misdirection is natural, not forced.
- 40A: Dressed, so to speak (DECENT) — this expression is old-fashioned in a way that I find adorable, despite the implication that there is anything indecent about being unclothed. It's got a colloquial quality I like, even if it's not something I would say.
- 48D: Private dining room (MESS)— more natural misdirection (not your typical adjectival "private"—the "private" here is in the Army)
- 6D: Looks like a jerk (OGLES) — about as good a clue as you're going to get on this leering bit of crosswordese. You could also have figured out a way to cross-reference CREEP here; I wouldn't have minded.