Constructor: Robert Logan
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: EVEN ODDS (64A: A 50/50 chance ... or a description of the lengths of this puzzle's Across and Down answers respectively) — Acrosses have even number of letters in them, Downs have odd
Theme answers:
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I got bad, eerie vibe off of this one right from the start. The grid has a weird look—boxy and plain, like a generic "crossword grid," with no answers over 10 letters long, so it looked like it was gonna have bad "flow" and few if any real marquee answers. So my gut was telling me something was up, and then I dove in and that gut feeling only got stronger. I finished the NW corner and there was nothing shiny or sparkly about it, nothing that seemed purpose-built—why would you stack 8s in a themeless? What good could come of that? The best you're gonna get is "OK." And the worst you're gonna get is ... well ADP (5D: Big inits in payroll services). That answer alone was like a giant red alert. It's a terrible bit of fill, the kind you'd only trot out if you needed it to hold together an *amazing* corner ... and that NW corner is not amazing. I kept going, of course, and found that the fill wasn't bad so much as blah. Then I got a bit worried a theme was developing when "YOU BETCHA" crossed "YES, INDEEDY." This worry only intensified when I hit "OKEY DOKEY" ... Am I really enduring this bone-dry grid just so I can have a "folksy phrases of agreement" theme? Because that would be bad. But then "HARD TO TELL" interrupted the apparent theme pattern, and I was back to just an inexplicably bland puzzle. But then, at the end, explicability. Tragic explicability. A genuine revealer, one that brings sudden and, in this case, truly horrid illumination. A Bizarro revealer with an upside-down "AHA" (which is "AHA" spelled backward ... see, you can't even tell it's Evil. It looks just like the Good "AHA"! Scary!). The jolting, abrupt ending to all this Uncanny-Valley Friday nonsense was the revelation that the puzzle did, in fact, have a theme. Not "folksy phrases of agreement." No, that theme actually seems reasonable now. No, our theme is a completely invisible, no-enjoyment-added letter-count theme. The Acrosses have even letter counts and the Downs have odd. This would've been disappointing on a *Wednesday* (which is about where the difficulty level was); on a Friday, it's criminal.
See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- all of them, I guess
Aidan Mackenzy Bryant (born May 7, 1987) is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the late-night variety series Saturday Night Live (2012–2022), beginning in season 38, and leaving at the end of season 47. For her work on the series, she has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, including two nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Her other work includes a voice role in the animated series Danger & Eggs (2017) and a starring role in the sitcom Shrill (2019–2021); for the latter, she also served as writer and executive producer and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. (wikipedia)
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I got bad, eerie vibe off of this one right from the start. The grid has a weird look—boxy and plain, like a generic "crossword grid," with no answers over 10 letters long, so it looked like it was gonna have bad "flow" and few if any real marquee answers. So my gut was telling me something was up, and then I dove in and that gut feeling only got stronger. I finished the NW corner and there was nothing shiny or sparkly about it, nothing that seemed purpose-built—why would you stack 8s in a themeless? What good could come of that? The best you're gonna get is "OK." And the worst you're gonna get is ... well ADP (5D: Big inits in payroll services). That answer alone was like a giant red alert. It's a terrible bit of fill, the kind you'd only trot out if you needed it to hold together an *amazing* corner ... and that NW corner is not amazing. I kept going, of course, and found that the fill wasn't bad so much as blah. Then I got a bit worried a theme was developing when "YOU BETCHA" crossed "YES, INDEEDY." This worry only intensified when I hit "OKEY DOKEY" ... Am I really enduring this bone-dry grid just so I can have a "folksy phrases of agreement" theme? Because that would be bad. But then "HARD TO TELL" interrupted the apparent theme pattern, and I was back to just an inexplicably bland puzzle. But then, at the end, explicability. Tragic explicability. A genuine revealer, one that brings sudden and, in this case, truly horrid illumination. A Bizarro revealer with an upside-down "AHA" (which is "AHA" spelled backward ... see, you can't even tell it's Evil. It looks just like the Good "AHA"! Scary!). The jolting, abrupt ending to all this Uncanny-Valley Friday nonsense was the revelation that the puzzle did, in fact, have a theme. Not "folksy phrases of agreement." No, that theme actually seems reasonable now. No, our theme is a completely invisible, no-enjoyment-added letter-count theme. The Acrosses have even letter counts and the Downs have odd. This would've been disappointing on a *Wednesday* (which is about where the difficulty level was); on a Friday, it's criminal.
I like themes on Friday (or Saturday) even less than I like themelesses on Sunday, but at least a themed Friday (or Saturday) has a chance with me. The theme just has to be stellar. You took away my favorite puzzle of the week from me (the themeless Friday), so OK, replace it with something better then. But this ... isn't better. It's so far from better that it has left "better"'s gravitational pull entirely and floated off to become basically space junk. There was some incidental fill that I would've liked in a better conceived puzzle that wasn't intruding on my Friday themeless pleasure. I actually like "A WORD..." and "YES, YOU!" They're terse yet colorful. Colorful is hard to do in short fill. But on a Friday I should not be telling you that my favorite fill was 5 or 6 letters long. Why make a less-than-mediocre themeless just so you can make the EVEN ODDS joke!? Which doesn't even really work on a literal level—as a "description of the lengths of this puzzle's Across" answers, EVEN is (adjectivally) correct. As a "description of the lengths of this puzzle's [...] Down answers," ODDS is non-adjectival, and thus not really a "description" at all. Ill-conceived and extremely ill-slotted on a Friday, this puzzle. Baffling, truly. But people will likely be so focused on their personal best Friday times (YES, YOU) that they won't care much that the puzzle was, at best, a shrug. To which I say, great. Take your enjoyment where you can get it!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Happy to see the wonderful Aidy BRYANT in the puzzle, but surprised we didn't up seeing her as AIDY first. Seems like a potentially useful four-letter answer. If y'all wanted to make AIDY the next ENYA, I would not be mad.
