Constructor: Kyle Dolan
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: REMY Ma (55A: Rap artist ___ Ma) —
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If you look at this grid, it looks fine. Solid. Lots of long answers, no real junk. Well, one bit of long junk, but we'll get to that. For the most part, grid looks healthy. But the solving experience was strangely unpleasant, and that's (almost) entirely down to the editorial voice, i.e. the cluing. "?" clue crossing "?" clue *crossing* "?" clue *adjacent to* yet another "?" clue, very early on. There are only five such clues in the entire puzzle, but somehow four of them are wadded up together in the NW (Pop tribute? / Someone to push around? / Show runner? / Bad time to take stock?). These clues are notoriously [shrug]-inducing at first glance, so you move to crosses ... only to find it's just more "?" clues. Ugh. When "?" clues are spaced out, and (esp.) when they really, truly land, I like them quite a bit. But this clumping of them all up front sapped a lot of my good will. I *love* Friday and Saturday puzzles—if you read regularly, you know these are the ones I'm most likely to enjoy, the ones most likely to shine (sidenote: what this means is that themed puzzles are actually very hard to do well, which is why I love and respect well-executed themes, even when they are really simple). But today's puzzle just didn't deliver for me. Some of it was simple demographics, i.e. I don't care about many of these things. Marvel movies, for instance, or Animal Crossing, LOL. No, not my thing. I did like how the Animal Crossing clue at least gave me a chance to think about REDD Foxx, that was fun. But "Thor," no. Well, I saw untold Marvel movies before I finally got tired of being disappointed and just gave up. I even saw "Thor," I think. But who can remember any individual Marvel movie? Anyway, I know who RENE RUSSO is, fine, I can get her from crosses, I can do this puzzle, but none of it is really speaking to me. The bigger problem, however, as I say, was the cluing, which was hard to understand and frequently had no payoff (bad combo).
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As you can see, I've got BEAR something, DRY something, SUN something, and PET something all lined up and ... not moving forward. I had DRY HANDS at first. So I was stuck in a lot of places, and stuck in this very specific, very irritating kind of way. Four (4!) different answers where the first word doesn't give me the next? That's some very bad luck. Worst moment of the puzzle for me, though, came when struggling mightily to make any sense of the SW. Bad enough that I don't really truly know what SEA NETTLE or SUNBURST are ... they seem like familiar words, but I did not know the mere clearing of cloud cover was a SUNBURST, for instance. Sounds more ... astronomical. Anyway, rough section. Never would've called BACOS a "meat substitute" (I might've thought it was actually bacon). The clue on ZEROSTAR was brutal (good, but brutal) (33D: Awful, or worse). Even after I got the "Z" from the "oh is that how we're spelling it?"ZHUZH, I had no idea. And speaking of problems with the editorial voice / cluing, what the hell is "Sockdolager"? It's so awful to use one of these olde-timey words no one knows, esp. for a word which is itself olde-timey (though at least familiar) (LULU). I know bocks and lagers and the actor Clu Gulager (RIP), but "Sockdolager," oof, that is up there with the most nonsense word I've ever seen in a clue. It's like the clue is *trying* to make the experience unpleasant. And then ... all these SW answers I've been discussing run through, or are adjacent to, the Real problem in this SW corner, which is ... PET CUSHION. Cushion!?!? I had PET and could not make *anything* out of the latter part. There are dog beds and cat beds, but PET (?) CUSHION (?), er, maybe for your SEA NETTLE? Maybe it's a marketing thing, where said "cushions" are made to be used by all manner of creatures. But in reality, in your house, they are dog and/or cat beds. Cushion, jeez. "Where's the dog?""She's on her PET CUSHION." No. Never.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: REMY Ma (55A: Rap artist ___ Ma) —
Reminisce Mackie (née Smith; born May 30, 1980), known professionally as Remy Ma, is an American rapper. Discovered by Big Pun, she came to prominence for her work as a member of Fat Joe's group, Terror Squad. In 2006, she released her debut studio album There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story, which became a modest success, peaking at number 33 on the Billboard 200 chart. Ma's most commercially successful songs include "Whuteva", "Ante Up (Remix)", "Lean Back", "Conceited", and "All the Way Up".
She is one of only four multiple winners of the BET Award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, which she won in 2005 and 2017. Ma is the recipient of two Vibe awards, two Source awards, and has been nominated for three Grammy awards. Since 2015, she has starred on VH1's reality series Love & Hip Hop: New York, alongside her husband Papoose. (wikipedia)
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Sometimes "?" clues work. I liked [Pop tribute?] for SODA TAX because it's on the money, and the answer itself is interesting. The clue looks like one (real) thing, but ends up being another (real) thing. Unexpected, clever, good. But the BEAR MARKET clue, eerrrrgughwoof, ouch (19A: Bad time to take stock?). I had the BEAR and no idea because I could not get BEAR to square with "time." BEAR ... SEASON? That's a time. A hunting time. But I could not think of any "times" that started with BEAR. The whole idea of "time" = MARKET, my grammatically sensitive brain just could not process. Markets exist in time, but I don't think of them *as* times. This is where "?" clues get irritating: when they're hard ... and then the reveal leaves you feeling "what? come on..." rather than "oh, yeah, good one."SODA TAX = "oh, yeah, good one."BEAR MARKET, yeesh. Worse, far worse was the "?" clue on WEST (34A: What was once due to American pioneers?). So "due" is an oft-played with word in crossword clues, esp. when it's the Italian word for "two" in disguise, as exemplified in the classic crossword clue, [It's past due] for TRE. But I can't make the Italian work in today's clue. I get it down to -EST, still no idea. As you can see (in the grid screenshot, above), I basically end the puzzle at this square, getting the "W" in WEST from WAY AHEAD (34D: Unlikely to be caught). But WEST, man, I can't tell you how groany that is—worse, it's just ... arbitrary and weird. Pioneers headed west, sure, but "due" West? West is not "due" to the pioneers any more than it is to anyone standing on the globe. Also, the grammar is preposterous. Due west is due west no matter who you are or what you're doing. It's due no more to the pioneers than to you or me. "Once due?" Why would due west stop being due west? You can make this due pun some other way, some way that makes some kind of sense and is not an elaborate, jury-rigged, duct-taped fantasia of a clue. [Ye old name?] = WEST. There. You can have that one for free.
VUVUZELAS feels like an answer that thinks it's being current but is actually being very 2010 or whenever that word entered the general lexicon as a result of fan's blowing them at one of the World Cups, I forget which (oh, look, South Africa, 2010! Nailed it). I've seen the answer a number of times and it was a gimme; it's basically lost any freshness or luster it might've had. It had its moment, the moment passed. I realize I am basically describing half of the answers in any given crossword, but somehow, VUVUZELAS seems frozen in a very particular moment in time. Apparently they can cause serious hearing damage. Just FYI. Hardest thing about the puzzle ended up being the fact that there were So Many answers where I would get the first word and have no idea what was supposed to follow. Here's the grid, at peak "What Is The Next Word!?!?"
[CLU GULAGER! LEE MARVIN! JOHN CASSAVETES! ANGIE DICKINSON!]
Gonna go have coffee with my cat now. She has "cushions" galore to choose from, but she doesn't use them. She's more a couch / floor / lap / paper bag kind of gal. See you tomorrow.
