Constructor: Sue Fracker
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: ELBOW ROOM (64A: Adequate space to move around ... as found in this puzzle's circled letters) — circled squares are arranged in elbow shapes (90-degree angles) throughout the grid
The ROOMS:![]()
Liked this one. The revealer was a proper revealer, in that I had no idea what was going on until I hit it, and when I hit it I thought "ah.... yes, good, okay." So the revealer ... revealed. And the basic joke is cute and consistent: five different types of room (specifically, words that can precede "room") bend like an elbow joint. One of them is not a real room ("Romper Room" is exclusively a TV show, right?) and one of them is not a room that 99.9% of people have or have ever been in (I imagine) (I know "Panic Room" as a paranoid rich person's house feature, and mostly only as a fictional thing, a la the David Fincher movie of the same name). The other three are very familiar, ordinary types of rooms. Anyway, no matter how common or uncommon or fictional the room types are, the premise holds up. It's a nice Monday/Tuesday-type theme. The fill is pretty dreary overall, relying very heavily on repeaters, e.g. STN ANTE INCAS ARTY PSST SSTS EDYS INGE AORTA OBI AMOR ULNA ... Speaking of ULNA, a constructor friend of mine told me that a popular online crossword puzzle he writes for is so strict about its fill being clean and familiar to ordinary, non-diehard solvers that they won't accept certain very familiar repeaters, and the example he gave me was ULNA. Me: "But that's ... just a regular bone ... in the human body." He just looked at me and shrugged. "Yep." Seems a bit strict, but I really do like the idea of someone policing the gunk and pushing the fill back toward common and familiar terrain, which will always have more and more varied cluing possibilities. There's not much in the way of noteworthy fill today outside the longer Acrosses. Just the two long Downs, as far as 7+-letter fill goes, and they're acceptable, but only acceptable. My favorite answer was STIR CRAZY. My favorite shorter answer was probably JIGSAW, the pleasures of which I refamiliarized myself with on my recent Northern Michigan trip.
One last thing:![]()
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
The ROOMS:
- BOILER
- GUEST
- DRESSING
- PANIC
- ROMPER
Gaza (/ˈɡɑːzə/; Arabic: غَزَّة Ġazzah, IPA: [ɣaz.zah]), also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of 590,481 (in 2017), making it the largest city in the State of Palestine. Inhabited since at least the 15th century BCE, Gaza has been dominated by several different peoples and empires throughout its history. (wikipedia)
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| Puzzle by "Puzzles of Color" |
The puzzle played very easy, except the SW corner, which was comparatively quite slow, largely because I completely forgot the vacuum brand ("ORSON? ORLON? ORKIN? DYSON? Is the "O" wrong?"). Then I looked at the Acrosses down there for help but yikes, 63A: Ten pins in two bowls (SPARE) was inscrutable to me. I didn't know the attempt to knock over pins was called a "bowl.""It took me two bowls to topple all the pins" sounds super weird and stilted to me. But I guess that was the point of the clue—to make it look like the "bowl" in question was a basin and not an act of ball-rolling. Then I had SASH for 56D: Window part (PANE). So it got messy down there. So it got messy down there. But that was the only trouble spot. Other mistakes ... looks like I tried GIZA before GAZA. I should've known that one, since the Milton play about Samson is called "Eyeless in GAZA," not GIZA (sorry, that’s actually a *phrase* from the Milton play—play itself is called “Samson Agonistes”; Huxley wrote a novel called “Eyeless in GAZA”). Ah well. My literature Ph.D. fails me again. Had AMIGO before AMIGA and did the typical kealoa* two-step at 60D: Win easily after getting the initial "R" ("ROUT or ROMP!?") Aside from the overcommonness of the fill my only complaint is that "ON" is used not once not twice but thrice (RUN ON, UP ON, LED ON). Seems like at least one too many "ON"s. "On" too many.
- 16A: Backing, or the name of Athena's shield (AEGIS) — this is my starting Wordle word this week (I'm working my way through the dictionary) (yes, really). It's not a bad one. This was yesterday:
Thank you for reading my "online musings" (44D). Good day.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]