Constructor: Jay Kaskel and Daniel Kantor
Relative difficulty: Easy
![]()
THEME: REPEAT AFTER ME (36A: Swearing-in words ... or a hint to 17-, 22-, 48- and 55-Across)— in each theme answer, a letter "repeats" after the letter string "ME" ... I think that's it
Theme answers:
Hello again from Lake Michigan. The write-ups for these next three days (T, W, Th) really are going to be shorter than usual because timing ... is just ... hard when you're on vacation. Drinking and eating and socializing really horns in on your crossword time, it turns out. So I'm sitting here just after 10pm writing fairly frantically while my wife and friends are all sitting around planning tomorrow's adventures. I could get up at 4:30am like at home but LOL that is not happening on this particular vacation. There's a reason I normally have people cover for me on vacation, and cover for me they will once my vacation switches VENUEs (headed to Los Angeles on Friday). But for now, you get squibs. Is that the word? Squib? Maybe I mean "stub," I don't know. Definitely not "squab," which is some kind of small fowl, I think. Onward!
![]()
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- FOR OLD TIMES' SAKE (17A: In remembrance of former days)
- STEAMED DUMPLING (22A: Dim sum serving)
- CONSUMER REPORTS (48A: Product-testing nonprofit since 1936)
- "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE" (55A: Late-night show starting in 2003)
noun
• • •
It's possible I'm missing something today, because I don't see what makes this particular concept special. A double letter following "ME," is that really it"? I thought maybe the repeated letters would spell some relevant ... something, but no. S + D + R + L, that doesn't spell anything I'm familiar with. I have no idea how high or low the difficulty bar is here. Seems like there must be a million phrases that feature "ME" and then repeated letters. Today, the repeated letters break across two words every time (that is, the first of the pair (e.g. the "R" in "CONSUMER") is the last letter in a word and the second of the pair (e.g. the "R" in "REPORTS") is the first letter of the next word. That's ... something. But it's not a particularly flashy or even noticeable thing. The concept just doesn't feel tight enough. Also, there should be no other "ME"s in a puzzle like this. If the theme is REPEAT AFTER ME, then that should hold for all "ME"s in the grid, which is why "ME"s should occur only in themers. But there are, of course, other "ME"s, like in MEATS. Eliminating all non-theme "ME"s from the grid is a way to make the whole theme seem more elegant. And it wouldn't have been hard to do. The grid is not tough to fill—in fact, the fill really could be saucier and more interesting overall, given how little pressure the theme puts on the grid. Mostly what we get is very familiar and predominantly dull stuff. It was really hard even to decide on a Word of the Day today, so uninspiring was the fill. Basically, where the fill was concerned, this puzzle OGLED OGRES. The point is, well, twofold: there should be no non-theme "ME"s and the fill in general should've been much more interesting.
There is nothing terrible about this puzzle. No big misses, nothing off-putting (except TASE, which, for me, is too strongly associated with police violence). The most jarring moment was trying to figure out 5D: Palindromic rental, getting D-D, and having no idea what that could be. I forgot that people still rent DVDs. Hell, *I* still rent DVDs, in that I still have (or recently re-got) the Netflix red-envelope snail-mail DVD/Blu-ray subscription dealie (and I love it). But cluing DVD as a rental still really threw me, since that is not how most people get their movies any more. OK, that's all, gotta go eat peaches. See you tomorrow.