Constructor: Philip Wolfe
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: Brace yourself! — phrases with DOUBLE, TWICE, and TWO in them (respectively), are represented in the grid by a doubling of an adjacent word in the answer. Thus:
Theme answers:
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Compared to a few recent Thursdays, this one felt pretty listless. It was easy, tended toward crosswordese in the fill, and had a clever but fairly basic theme that didn't quite reach to Thursday levels of trickery and toughness. ABRA at 1-Across is a very, very bad sign. I think we had the full ABRACADABRA the other day, and I remember thinking to myself, "ah, the full incantation, that's nice; usually we're just subjected to that awful and completely alleged incantation *part*, ABRA" ... and here we are. Right from the top. ABRACADABRA is one word. Full stop. End of story. Why, in the 21st century, are we continuing to allow ABRA to stand on its own. Also, why (why) would you lead with it, or ever use it at all unless you were phenomenally desperate. And maybe if you're that desperate, you should redo the corner. Looking at that corner and seeing BROT (!??!!?), I'd say, yeah, you need to redo that corner, really and truly. And it's not like the rest of the grid disabused me of my sense that ABRA was an omen of fill to come. INURE STET ERATO TALI ASP NEER ELS ERIE, all the hits. The short fill is so weak (bland, really) that it was actually surprising to me when the long Downs turned out to be as strong as they were. PISCO SOUR is a bold, bold move, especially considering the NYTXW has never even had PISCO on its own in the grid before. I don't think I've had a PISCO SOUR, but I do enjoy cocktails and read about them sometimes, so I had the advantage of having heard of it. Lovely answer, imho. FRIVOLOUS and DOOFUSES are also a-OK in my book. But too much of this grid is laden with repeaters
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- "YOU ONLY LIVE LIVE" (for "You Only Live Twice")
- BLIND BLIND STUDY (for "double-blind study")
- GOODY SHOES SHOES (for "goody two-shoes")
Pisco is a colorless or yellowish-to-amber colored brandy produced in winemaking regions of Chile and Peru. Made by distilling fermented grape juice into a high-proof spirit, it was developed by 16th-century Spanish settlers as an alternative to orujo, a pomace brandy that was being imported from Spain. It had the advantages of being produced from abundant domestically grown fruit and reducing the volume of alcoholic beverages transported to remote locations.
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As for the theme, here's the main problem: way too easy and more "huh, OK" than "wow." It's nice that the themers all came out to grid-spanning length—gives the puzzle a certain structural elegance—but once you get one of them, you can get the others immediately. The puzzle gives up everything at once. It took me a long time to finally make sense of the first themer, but I spent that "long time" easily filling in the whole top of the grid, so the first themer didn't play tough so much as mysterious. Anyway, I didn't get that second LIVE, and thus the theme gimmick, until right here:
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But after that, I was able to go instantly to this:
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Game over. Basically. Easy as pie. Too easy for a Thursday theme. The only bite in this grid came from the PISCO SOUR. Add this to the list of the many ways in which cocktails have made me happy.
I made some errors! They were inconsequential! But I will rehearse them here! I know Dante's Inferno way way too well to even think of ABYSS as an answer for 1D: Hell, to Dante, LOL. I mean ... true enough, I guess, but I really wanted the Italian word for "hell" there ... which, it turns out, funnily enough, is "Inferno." I had the AB- and still no idea. Did I mention I teach Inferno every year, sometimes twice a year? Sorry, SOMETIMES SOMETIMES A YEAR. It's true. Moving on. Had the usual E/I hassle at 15A: Accustom (INURE). Wrote in CONS for OFFS (10A: Does a hit on), which is a weird choice, in retrospect. I never really know what era or planet the NYTXW's "slanginess" is going to be from, or whether it's going to be accurate or awkward and tin-eared, so the clue just sounded like some kind of slang for running a scam. But OFFS is better, yes. Had DRESSY before DREAMY (40D: Very handsome, as a beau) and UPSHOT before UPTAKE (60A: Comprehension). I do believe that's it for screw-ups and struggles. I hope you enjoy the remainder of your Thursday, or whatever future day you happen to be reading this on. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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