Constructor: Dan Ziring
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: SHORT / FILMS (37A: With 39-Across, some Sundance submissions ... or a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle where four films with short *titles* are smushed into four squares throughout the grid:
Theme answers (movie titles in red):
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Really hard not to like this one, but I found a way. Kidding! It was fun, even if the theme was exceedingly easy to pick up. Maybe it was fun *because* the theme was easy to pick up—with some theme concepts, you pick them up and then it's just a dreary march to the end, finding more of the same things you've already found, or performing more of the same "wordplay," or whatever. But SHORT / FILMS!? Sign me up. That is an Easter egg hunt I am happy to go on. If the concept is interesting, then I am happy to go tiptoeing through the rebus minefield, waiting for the completely non-violent and delightful explosions. I still say the late-week puzzles are being excessively defanged, presumably in the interests of being solvable by a broader chunk of the paying public (a motivation which *sounds* noble, but is entirely about $$$). I would like my late-week puzzles to push me around a little, in a fun, consensual way. And this one didn't. But it made up for it with the high entertainment value of the content. I liked that there were other film-related answers in the grid, including one that contained one of the SHORT / FILMS in question (MEET-CUTES). There's also Irene DUNNE (legend—more than just a crossword answer, kids!) and Oscar-winner Rami MALEK (54A: Best Actor winner for "Bohemian Rhapsody"), whose name I managed to spell right on the first try today. And I just spelled his first name right too! I know there is a publisher called TOR, after the [Craggy peak] of crossword fame, but is there a movie, or anything movie-related, called "TOR"? Reason I ask ...
CAMIS ICH SHAHS LEECH—that's how I started, without hesitation, and I was off like a shot. Before long, I had found the first rebus square ("ET tu, rebus!?") and then found my way straight to the heart of the grid, where the reason for the "ET" square was revealed.
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Notes:
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers (movie titles in red):
- ARETHA / MEET-CUTES ("E.T") (17A: "Queen" of 40-Down / 3D: Rom-com staples)
- RADIO EDITS / AHI TUNA ("It") (18A: CeeLo Green's "Forget You" and the Black Eyed Peas'"Don't Mess With My Heart")
- SUPERSTORM / GROUPON ("Up") (61A: Increasingly common weather event akin to a hurricane / 47D: E-commerce site with a portmanteau name)
- PC USER / SOUL MUSIC ("Us") (63A: One with Windows / 40D: Otis Redding's genre)
Us is a 2019 American horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The film follows Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o) and her family, who are attacked by a group of menacing doppelgängers. [...] Us had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 8, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 22, 2019, by Universal Pictures. It was a critical and commercial success, grossing $255 million worldwide against a budget of $20 million, and received praise for Peele's screenplay and direction, Nyong'o's performance, and Michael Abels' musical score. (wikipedia)
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• • •
- TORT
- TORTA
- TORAHS
- TORERO
- SUPERSTORM
- AERATOR
You can also see it backwards in PROTÉGÉ. If you solve long enough, the puzzles will start whispering to you, and then eventually you whisper back, and it's a whole thing. If you're a novice solver, I would say "get out (!) while you can," or at least "never solve more than one puzzle a day"), but you're gonna do what you're gonna do, and honestly, if this is how my Crazy manifests—seeing things in grids that quote-unquote "aren't there," ascribing significance to coincidental letter strings—then I'm OK with that. Congrats to this puzzle for its bite-sized pleasures, and for managing to cram Fritz Lang's "M" into the grid a full seven times! Now that's what I call a bonus answer!
CAMIS ICH SHAHS LEECH—that's how I started, without hesitation, and I was off like a shot. Before long, I had found the first rebus square ("ET tu, rebus!?") and then found my way straight to the heart of the grid, where the reason for the "ET" square was revealed.
To my great joy, that first rebus square had nothing to do with Latin, and while it did have to do with aliens, I wasn't staring at the prospect of having to find 3-to-god-knows-how-many more "ET"s in my grid. I was, instead, on a short (-titled) film hunt. The game was afoot and I was all deerstalker-capped, magnifying-glassed, tobacco-piped, houndstooth Inverness-caped and ready to go. But at first, and for a long time, no movies turned up. I got this far before the lack of movies got suspicious, so I stopped to take a screenshot:
What I wanted to say was "How have I gotten this deep into the puzzle without encountering a second movie squares!?" But it turns out I already had encountered said square. If I'd realized that 18A: CeeLo Green's "Forget You" and the Black Eyed Peas'"Don't Mess With My Heart" was asking for a plural and not a singular, I would've found the clown hiding under the sewer grate or whatever the hell happens in "It." The remaining movies came pretty easily. Well, "Us" very easily (what else was gonna follow SOUL but MUSIC?). "Up" was a little tougher, since I didn't remember that SUPER was a kind of STORM, so I had to back into that corner via SORORAL (a word my software is angrily red-underlining), and then sort things out from there. IRATE TORTA ENYA, the end.
- 56A: Grist for a mill (LOG)— sincerely, probably the hardest thing in the grid, for me. I had LO- and no idea what was going on. "Grist" had me thinking of grains, for some reason (anagram of "grits"?!). Huge tree parts ... never thought of them as grist. Clearly I don't spend a lot of time thinking about grist.
- 10D: What Britain left in 2020, in brief (THEEU)— I love this answer because it just looks so incredibly stupid in the grid. It looks like a minor Lovecraftian monster—maybe something Chthulu feeds upon. THEEU! Anyway, this and PCUSER were today's minor parsing challenges.
- 69A: Genderqueer identity (ENBY)— Nonbinary => N.B. => ENBY. I don't think this is the first time we've seen the term (my memory is correct—we saw it in the plural (ENBIES) back in January).
- 60A: Underground N.Y.C. group (MTA)— that's the Metropolitan Transit Authority. In charge of the subway, which is "Underground," don't ya know...
- 22D: Ridiculous introduction? (UTTERLY)— I like this clue a lot, though it is UTTERLY ridiculous that there are so many -LY-ending adverbs in this puzzle (see also BARELY, SLIMLY). OK, not UTTERLY. OK, not ridiculous at all. Just remarkable. Not as remarkable as this puzzle's mysterious TOR-storm, but remarkable nonetheless.
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