Constructor: Addison Snell
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: coded message — I guess this is supposed to have something to do with ALAN TURING (25A: English computer scientist who pioneered the breaking of ciphers generated by the 98-Across) and the movie "IMITATION GAME" (40A: 2014 movie portraying the work of 25-Across, with "The") in that the grid contains a CRYPTOGRAM (114A: Sort of encoded message found in this puzzle's grid [SEE NOTE]), but if this is what an ENIGMA MACHINE is (98A: W.W. II-era encoding device), I could not be less impressed—basically all you do is a translate the circled squares via a simple letter-substitution code, which is just handed to you in a "note" ... like ... what? This is child's placemat stuff.
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Relative difficulty: Easy
A four-year-old probably couldn't solve this crossword puzzle, but a four-year-old could damn sure "crack" this "code" if you actually just hand said four-year-old the code. Did you ever see "A Christmas Story"? Well I am basically Ralphie after realizing that all that his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring does is tell him "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE," only in this case the hidden message is "CODES ARE PUZZLES, A GAME JUST LIKE ANY OTHER GAME" (which is nonsense, why would you make your big reveal complete nonsense!?)
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This was grim. Grim. I honestly can't get my head around the idea that anyone thought this would be "fun" to solve. ("OVALTINE!? A crummy commercial!? Son of a b—!") Basically I solved the entire puzzle, easily, with no need to decode anything. If I didn't have to write this here blog, I guarantee you I would not even have bothered to do the letter-by-letter "decoding" to get to the "hidden" message, which is one of the great non-messages in the history of messages. What a banal and also inaccurate observation. "Like any other game!?" Games are different from one another. So many games, all of them with different rules and conventions and everything. "Just like any other game," bah. What an absurd generalization. And what does it reveal to us? What about it is unexpected or insightful or interesting or Anything? I guess I am supposed to be impressed that the "code" was rendered in the form of eight symmetrically arranged 5-letter words. Sure, congrats, but from the solver's perspective, there is zero, nada, nothing intriguing about writing in BYSEX or AVERS. It's just ... fill. Ordinary. Unremarkable. The longer "theme" answers are ... well, there are only four of them, and they are cohesive but mostly they just take up space—the bit we're supposed to ooh and aah at is all the code stuff, and it's hard to imagine a more anti-climactic outcome than solving this particular code. Not even worth doing. I'm told that the app does the code-breaking for you? Like ... maybe once you finish something software-y happens and you're supposed to ooh and aah at that? I'm just baffled at the idea that solving this would be anyone's idea of a good time. Looking at it, admiring its architecture, maybe. But solving it? Grr.
Notes:
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The code:
Word of the Day: GOITER (7A: Pain in the neck?) — - JITSU / EASED / LOOKS / EVERS / CLUNK / BY SEX / PINGS / AVERS
Decoded message:
- "CODES / AREAP / UZZLE / AGAME / JUSTL / IKEAN / YOTHE / RGAME"
A goitre, or goiter, is a swelling in the neck resulting from an enlarged thyroid gland. A goitre can be associated with a thyroid that is not functioning properly.
Worldwide, over 90% of goitre cases are caused by iodine deficiency. The term is from the Latin gutturia, meaning throat. Most goitres are not cancerous (benign), though they may be potentially harmful. (wikipedia)
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What's worse than the theme is the fill, which stopped me in my tracks multiple times, so unpleasant was it on the whole. INATEXT!? LOL what? That is a terrible prepositional phrase, and esp. bad since you've already got INOIL in the grid, practically right next door. I went INATEXT, INOIL, INRI ... and I had to take a deep breath, because it's like the puzzle was deliberately trying my patience. It gave me nothing in the way of sparkle or pizzazz. RESEATS RENEGE REEXAMINE ... where is the joy? Probably the most fun I had during this solve was figuring out how to spell DUMMKOPF (Two "M"s!? Wow, OK!). I also kinda like ERNIE PYLE, but when your spiciest answer is ERNIE PYLE, it's possible you have a spice problem. Maybe I'll throw ANNA WINTOUR in there too. But OF YORE!? LOL, man, did I BLINK AT that, for sure. It's hard to do a Sunday puzzle well—it's hard to do any themed puzzle well, but to have to do it over that much terrain (21x21) is a tall order. I sympathize. But I have rarely felt like a Sunday puzzle whiffed so bad, on both theme and fill. It's not even that the puzzle was *bad*, exactly. It's like it was very committed to an idea of *good* that I could not fathom. Everything was riding on that code, and ... well, from where I was sitting, that gamble just did not work out.
Notes:
- 87D: Bird of the Baltic (SMEW) — on the one hand, I am always happy to see more bird names in the grid. On the other, more important hand, SMEW is crosswordese OF YORE and so I was not entirely happy to see it return (I needed every cross—I'd actually forgotten it existed—used to get it confused with its crosswordese cousin SMEE all the time).
- 89A: What a "Wheel of Fortune" contestant might buy when looking for _NSP_RAT_ON (AN "I") — the ANI, like the SMEW, is a crosswordese bird OF YORE. It was so named because its call bears an uncanny resemblance to the voice of singer-songwriter ANI DiFranco. The only thing I want to say about today's ANI clue is, what kind of ... person ... stares at _NSP_RAT_ON and thinks "Uh ... I dunno ... I better buy a vowel"?
- 74D: Alvin ___, first African American to be elected Manhattan's district attorney (BRAGG) — we need to know *district attorney* names now!? That is a tall, tall order. U.S. Attorneys General, sure, those are national. But municipal DAs!? Pfffff, OK ...
- 61A: Thin porridges (GRUELS)— when's the last time, or any time, you saw this word in the plural? Aside from right now?
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