Constructor: Christina Iverson and Caitlin Reid
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (though I made some awful dumb mistakes)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: ATTA (1A: It's kneaded to make naan and roti) —
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This was slowish for me. At first, it was the puzzle's fault. Later on, it was most definitely (mostly) my fault. Let's start with the puzzle's own, built-in difficulty, and for me, it came right away, first clue: 1A: It's kneaded to make naan and roti (ATTA). Four letters, Indian food, mental rolodex [whirrrrrrrr] well, two of those four-letter words are in the damn clue, so they're out. DAAL can be four letters, but it's usually three and anyway involves lentils ... what about DOSA?! But no, that's a finished food, not a dough or FLOUR. And that was that. Stumped. No hope for 1-Across. And I could not get a grip on anything in the NW without it. No idea which 3-letter tribe I was dealing with at 22A: Tribe known for ranching and oil and gas operations (UTE). Never use the term REFI or see it much out of crosswords, so I couldn't come up with anything much there besides ... I don't know, RENT? (26A: Take advantage of low A.P.R., perhaps). It was bad. Oh, worst of all, I had SAW IN instead of LED IN (16A: Brought through the door). Not sure how I can tell the difference without crosses. Nobel Prize winner, also a mystery for a bit (4D: Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ghana => ANNAN). And then there's TODIEFOR, which was always going to be hell to parse, but with everything else up there not working, it was nearly impossible (I wanted GOD-something (2D: Absolutely divine). I think I managed to claw my way toward clarity with the IN from the incorrect SAW IN, and then TWIG FLOWN ANNAN. In the end, ORIGAMI helped a lot, but FLOUR, yeesh, that clue—super hard (14D: Grocery bagful). Anyway, looks like if you knew ATTA right away, that corner was probably easy, but if not, uh, not. I'm not thrilled that the mystery answer ended up just being old-school crosswordese in new clothing, but if A(T)TA is indeed "the most widespread FLOUR in the Indian subcontinent" (as the wikipedia definition, above, claims), then I, and any of you who also didn't know that answer today, would be well advised to learn this definition of ATTA immediately. Hard to question the validity of a term with that kind of clout.
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Bullets:![]()
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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (though I made some awful dumb mistakes)
Word of the Day: ATTA (1A: It's kneaded to make naan and roti) —
Atta/Ata (Urdu: آٹا; Hindi: आटा, Bengali: আটা, romanized: Āṭā) or chakki atta is a wholemeal wheat flour, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used to make flatbreads such as chapati, roti, naan, paratha and puri. It is the most widespread flour in the Indian subcontinent. (wikipedia)
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My problems rolled on even after I got out of that section. I wanted GRAN for 28A: Many a nanny (GOAT), which had to be an intentional trap. That mistake made APRICOTS really hard to see, and this is where the puzzle started to annoy me. APRICOTS are just ... a fruit. You can find them in the produce section. Why are they being clued as a brand? [Sun-Maid snack]!? I'm sure they ... make them? Process them? Are these driedAPRICOTS? Let APRICOTS just be APRICOTS. Sun-Maid, shmun-maid. Once I got into the NE, the puzzle finally got fun for a bit. ATE FOR TWO / POLAR BEAR / ROLL AGAIN is a nice stack, as is its counterpart in the SW—just lovely. But in the SW, I had a hell of a time because one little mistake of mine ended up snowballing and creating enormous havoc. Weird that in the beginning it was a four-letter word that did me in (ATTA), and the later on, the same thing happened. Only with ATTA, that was just pure ignorance, whereas with the next four-letter mistake, I just didn't read the clue right. See, at 42A: One of the six reaction buttons for a text on an iPhone, my brain just saw [blah blah blah blah iPhone], and the letter pattern -A-A. And so my brain went "DATA!" and I wrote that in and wow you would not think a tiny word like that could cause so much damage, but parsing "OH HELL NO!"?? Completely impossible ("OH TELL ... ME? ... TELL IT?") (34D: "Not on your life!"). And the [Religious exodus], HAHA, no. I had DE-I--. Incomprehensible. And then I went and spoiled it more by doing something stupid like completely misreading the clue at 50A: Give a little (SAG), which my brain (really off his game today) read as [Give a title], and so in went DUB (!?!?!). This meant that at 46D: Quit, slangily (BAG IT) I had BUG-- and I actually wrote in "BUGGA" (figuring ... I don't know ... it was some kind of Brit-inflected version of "bugger off" which somehow also meant "quit," I guess). So, HAHA, face-plant number two was self-inflicted. Clumsiness upon clumsiness. I did like those NE and SW corners, as I say, and RIDE SHOTGUN is sweet too. Those parts made bearable an otherwise painful gruesome solving experience.
[wikipedia: "Hijrah or Hijra (Arabic: الهجرة) was the journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date equates to 16 July, 622 in the Julian calendar. The Arabic word hijra means "departure" or "migration", among other definitions. It has been also transliterated as Hegira in medieval Latin, a term still in occasional use in English." (my emph.)]
Bullets:
- 25D: Nowheresville (PODUNK) — I think of the clue as a noun and the answer as an adjective, although I guess the clue *can* be an adjective or the answer a noun if you slang hard enough.
- 54D: Org. whose history is profiled in the 2015 best seller "To Make Men Free" (GOP)— the book sounds great, actually, but at this fascist moment in time, turns out there are No circumstances, no clues that are going to make me happy to see GOP in the puzzle, or anywhere. It's a white supremacist death cult now. No values but "liberal tears." If you still have an "R" after your name, you should be ashamed. You don't have to have a "D," that's for damn sure, but ... yeesh. Get out.
- 39D: "By all means," in old parlance ("PRAY DO") — Wow they weren't kidding about "old parlance." I like that PRAY crosses PSALM (39A: Song featuring up to 176 verses). I also think that PRAY-DOH would be a good name for a religious-themed Play-Doh. You could use it to sculpt cathedrals and Bible scenes and stuff. Surely someone has already beaten me to this idea. Ah, look. Urban dictionary, comin' through:
- 40D: Sedan : U.S. :: ___ : U.K. (SALOON)— absolutely floored by this. Not sure how I got to be this old without ever learning this bit of Britishness. I guess when I've been in the U.K., I've hardly ever been in a car, let alone thought about purchasing one, so it hasn't come up, but still. Boot, lorry, lift, flat ... you absorb a lot of these over time. But I did not absorb SALOON. We drink in our SALOONs. I hope that Brits don't in theirs.
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