Constructor: Kevin G. Der
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging to Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Zeljko IVANEK (40D: Zeljko ___, 2008 Emmy winner for "Damages") —
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Wow, they don't make 'em like this any more. Or they do, I guess, just rarely. This was a proper Saturday, a harder, better version of yesterday's 4-corner type of challenge. Lots of white space, lots of vague or tricky cluing, lots of technical terms and trivia, lots of opportunity to fall on your face. Repeatedly. But because every corner had *two* ways in, not just one, it had much better flow than these types of highly segmented grids often have, and what's really impressive is how clean this relatively low word-count grid ended up being. And not just clean, but often fresh. Yes, the "freshness" frequently comes via names of recentish fame, but it's also there in the cluing (on LAGOS, for instance (15A: Hub for Nollywood movies)). "Freshness" doesn't only have to mean "recentness," it can mean thoughtfulness and originality and cleverness as well. Because if the puzzle were entirely and aggressively up-to-the-minute it would feel narrow and faddish, whereas this one tempered its recent pop culture trivia with wide-ranging subject matter. You can feel some predilections, such as the way the grid leans into movies and television, and especially music (CLARINET, RUBATOS, ARIETTAS). This gives the puzzle personality. It was definitely a rough solve for me in places, but ultimately I felt like the puzzle prioritized solver enjoyment just as much as Saturday gruelingness. As Saturday puzzles go, it is something close to model.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging to Challenging
Word of the Day: Zeljko IVANEK (40D: Zeljko ___, 2008 Emmy winner for "Damages") —
Željko Ivanek (/ˈʒɛlkoʊ ɪˈvɑːnɪk/; Slovene: [ˈʒɛːlkɔ iˈʋaːnək]; born August 15, 1957) is an American actor of Slovenian-Croatian origin, known for his role as Ray Fiske on Damages, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award. Ivanek is also known for his role of Ed Danvers on Homicide: Life on the Street and Homicide: The Movie, Governor James Devlin on Oz, Andre Drazen on 24, Blake Sterling on the short-lived series The Event, and Emile "The Hunter" Danko in Heroes. From 2014 until 2019, he starred as Russell Jackson in the drama Madam Secretary. He also had a recurring role as FBISpecial Agent Jim Racine in the series Banshee.
For his active stage career, he has been awarded a Drama Desk Award and has been nominated for three Tony Awards. (wikipedia)
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Looking at the blank grid, one might imagine that the most troublesome spots were going to be the giant lakes of white space in the NE and SW, but those were actually the easier parts of the puzzle for me. Harder for me were the other, narrower corners, and harder still was the connective tissue. I foundered on both sides of that center diagonal line of black squares, where the 3- and 4-letter answers form little staircases of a sort, from the lower to upper half of the puzzle. This made zooming from one corner to the next, for me, impossible. And yet I didn't feel trapped. That is ... it was like being lost in a hallway rather than cornered in a room. I never ended up anywhere where I felt there was no escape. I just got stuck, but I knew help was eventually going to come from some other part of the puzzle to rescue me. So coming out of the NW, for instance, I got "TOOTSIE" easy (30A: 1982 film with the tagline "Behind every great man, there is a woman!"), but had only vague memories of "Catcher in the Rye" (last read age 13), so ALLIE was a bust (weirdly, I remember Holden's sister was PHOEBE, but ALLIE, gone ... probably, in part, because he's dead before the novel starts) (22D: Holden's brother in "The Catcher in the Rye"). Then I thought all those presidents used to be ELIS (not ELKS) (as you can see, above, ELKS was my very last answer) (28A: Group that counts Harding, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy as former members). LAOS was a guess, but not an informed one (25A: Home of the Plain of Jars, a UNESCO World Heritage site). I wanted INTERACTED but I also knew it could be INTERFACED or INTER-godknowswhat, and I've never seen a CLAM CAKE in my life (clam bake, crab cake) (6D: Specialty of Rhode Island cuisine), so I had to slide down to the SW in order to maintain momentum, and there, despite having no clue as to any part of IVANEK, I blew through the corner (LOL I have watched several shows featuring IVANEK, including "Damages," so I know his face well, but he's just "that guy in that thing" as far as my brain is concerned).
Coming out of the SW, I was excited to see the "Atlanta" clue (one of my very favorite shows, one of the greatest TV shows of this century), and was super-excited to see the name I have been waiting to see in crosswords. "It's ZAZIE ...! ZAZIE ...!" And here my brain froze (45A: Actress with an Emmy nomination for FX's "Atlanta"). I blame ZADIE SMITH. I even tried SMITH here. Which weirdly got me SINEW (wrong), which even more weirdly got me INTRO and EVADE (both right!). But I'm getting ahead of myself. Blanked on the BEETZ, but luckily Cameron DIAZ gave me the "Z" that made me remember the odd bit of municipal slang HIZZONER (35D: Informal title in city government), and I got going again ... only to get bogged down once more trying to get out of that corner and up to the NE (my last corner). BONEASH!!? Woof, that one broke me (32A: Material in some china). Made me question ARIETTAS ("is it ORIETTAS? ... or are you thinking of OPERETTAS and ORATORIOS? ... damn it!") (33D: Mozart's "Voi, che sapete" and others) And then again *all* of the short-answer clues that made up the connective tissue leading out of the SE were killing me. Kinda wanted BADE but wasn't sure. DONEE clue was too vague. No idea re: GONG (another music clue!) (37A: Subject of a smash hit?), wanted both ECU and SOU before D'OR (29A: Louis ___ (predecessor of the franc)), had FOUL before LONG. Eventually had to dip into the (empty) NE corner itself and (luckily) get EATING and REAGAN, which helped me get LUNGS (ugh) (26A: Pair of pants?) (because they are a pair ... that pants?), and I managed to work my way back through the short stuff from there. Torched the NE corner and ended up finishing up back at my first real trouble spot, which I'm calling ELKS Junction. The end. A magical, mystical journey, full of peril and wonder. But I survived the ordeal of BONEASH Pit, maneuvered past the gruesome ship WRECKS (14D: Settings for some scuba dives), powered-up with a magic CLAM CAKE (!), and completed my quest at last. Good times.