Game pieces in Othello and Connect Four / WED 10-19-22 / Looney Tunes bunny / Genre for Luther Vandross / John of "The Suicide Squad" / Home to over seven billion people / Swirl in a stream

 


THEME: Tom Swifties — Theme answers are puns that follow a specific structure ... here, Wikipedia can explain this better than I ever could

Word of the Day: CHOUX (46A: Pastry dough used in crullers and beignets) —

Choux pastry, or pâte à choux (French: [pɑ.t‿a ʃu]), is a delicate pastry dough used in many pastries. Basic ingredients usually only include butter, water, flour and eggs (auxiliary ingredients and flavorings are also added).

Theme answers:

• IN VERY POOR TASTE (17A: "You cooked this? It's *disgusting*!" said Tom ___)
• INCONSOLABLY (26A: "What do you mean there are no PlayStations left in stock?" asked Tom ___
• UNIRONICALLY (48A: "I'm worried I may have anemia," said Tom ___)
• FRANKLY INCENSED (63A: "You guys are supposed to be 'Wise Men' and *these* are the gifts you bring a newborn?!" asked Tom, ___)

Hi everyone, it's Rafa here filling in for Rex! Happy to be back to talk about a themed puzzle this time. This is a *very* tried and true theme, which we've seen before in 2020, and in 2001, and in 1994, and in 1988 (!), and probably many more times too, but I'm tired of searching.

Here's the deal: Tom Swifties ... are an old thing. They are in corny old "joke" books, probably, and they are definitely on websites (over and over and over again). In the end, what you have are ... adverbs. Well, one adverbial phrase, and then adverbs. That's it. You (yes you) can go to a Tom Swifties page on the internet, just find a bunch of adverbs that will fit symmetrically in a grid, and bam, you have a "theme" now, congrats.

 

That's a bit harsh IMO, as the finds today do seem novel within the genre, but in general I agree it can be hard to get excited about a theme/concept that feels stale without any sort of new twist. Though, I'm sure some people appreciate a well-done version of a standard concept.

Anyhoo, for this set specifically, I quite enjoyed the middle two, though the first and last didn't quite land for me. The VERY felt a bit out of place in the first answer (I think IN POOR TASTE is the more common in-the-language phrase), and the last one felt just a bit too contrived, though I did appreciate the attempt. But also ... maybe the frankincense and myrrh aren't the most exciting gifts, but they brought gold!!! If I ever have a child and you bring me gold as a gift, I promise not to make a crossword slandering you.

I had no idea what myrrh looked like ... apparently it's this

Outside the theme, there weren't any long (>7) slots, but some fun stuff in CHEW TOY, SPA DAYS, etc. And pretty smooth too, with only YAR, ECCE, INDC standing out to me as dings. Let's not normalize IN[city name] as crossword fill! (So easy to say as a solver! If you ever see me using this in a puzzle I make, please do not hold this against me)

This is an apatosaurus. It does, indeed, have a prominent NECK

I loved the vibe that ANAL, SEXY, LMFAO brought to the puzzle! Of course they were clued a lot more tamely than they could, but I enjoyed seeing all the somewhat boundary-pushing fill. There were also quite a few fun clue moments. I chuckled at the reduplicative "reduplicative" clues for ISIS and NENE, and was a fan of the fresh (to me) angles for SMOG, ASAHI, and others. Clue of The Puzzle for me was [One foot in "the grave," poetically speaking] for IAMB -- a really fun aha that made the whole puzzle worth it! (A foot in poetry is a measure of poetic meter, and an IAMB and a common type of foot)