Constructor: John Westwig
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: THE CATCH (13A: Famous game-saving 1954 World Series play by Willie Mays) —
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Weird U-shaped beginning to this solve, as I went ETHOS, SEEPED, and then, tentatively, JIBED (8D: Agreed).IRANI was also tentative, though JAM UP was more confident, and finally UNO CARD went in, the first thing that actually felt rock solid (11D: Skip or Reverse). That answer may also have been the highlight of this puzzle for me, as PINERY (?) set things on a rough track (12D: Dole Plantation, e.g.), and then the first marquee answer, HOLD A SEANCE, continued down that track, only a little more so. Look, HOLD A SEANCE is not exactly EAT A SANDWICH in its arbitrary verb-phrasiness, but it's definitely EAT A SANDWICH-esque. HOLD A SEANCE is tighter, for sure, more focused. I don't even dislike it, really. It's just that ... there are only two other answers in the whole puzzle that are this long or longer, so it's bearing a lot of weight, this answer; maybe if the rest of the grid had been really humming, HOLD A SEANCE would seem like a fine, even colorful addition to the party. But the bright, longer answers are simply few and far between today, and the other stuff is merely OK. HOLD A SEANCE isn't really up to the task of being one of so few marquee answers today. Early in the solve, that answer just felt a bit clunky, *as marquee answers go*, and it didn't feel like a harbinger of good. Once I dropped through NOT GOOD and CRAPPY, it felt like the grid was trying to tell me something. Confessing something.
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Luckily THE CATCH ended up being a gimme, and the corner fell from there. Only real error today came slam-bang in the middle of the puzzle, where, faced with -DDAYS at 34A: Romps, I wrote in SALAD DAYS. But then I got out of that jam with the help of the LADIES, who gave me the "L"—"Take the L," they said (This seemed unkind ... but then I understood). The "L" helped me ditch SALAD and replace it with different greenery: FIELD! I finished the puzzle having no idea how I was supposed to get from [Unsalted, perhaps] to ICY. Just baffled. Was thinking about snacks, cocktails ... people's dispositions ... it was only after I started down the road of "what are some things that are ICY?" that I hit upon "sidewalks in winter," and bam, the connection between salt and ice all of a sudden made sense. Maybe if I'd solved this puzzle in winter, that connection would've been clearer. We certainly salt our walkway and sidewalk multiple times each winter to keep ourselves and our neighbors from, you know, dying. But here in early November, no ice as yet, so the clue did not compute. And today, no ice again. 70 degrees in fact. Gonna go soak it in while I can. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: THE CATCH (13A: Famous game-saving 1954 World Series play by Willie Mays) —
The Catch was a baseball play made by New York Giants center fielder Willie Mayson September 29, 1954, during Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, New York City. During the eighth inning with the score tied 2–2, Cleveland Indians batter Vic Wertz hit a deep fly ball to center field that had the runners on base poised to score. However, Mays made an over-the-shoulder catch while on the run to record the out, and his throw back to the infield prevented the runners from advancing. The Giants won the game 5–2 in extra innings, and eventually the World Series. The Catch is regarded as one of the greatest plays in baseball history. (wikipedia)
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I don't actually think the puzzle was CRAPPY, but ... take CRAPPY (38A: Bad). I really hate it in my grid. I mean, I say it, from time to time, but it's an ugly word. It makes the grid ugly and depressing in a way that CRUMMY or CRUDDY just doesn't. IOSAPP is also ugly, in a different way—a somewhat worse way, because it feels like it wants to be original and fresh, but it just looks made-up and weird. I mean, it's a real thing, but it's just not an entertaining answer. Feels forced. PRSAVVY also feels forced. Very forced. Like, extremely forced. PRSKILLS googles twice as well, and even that feels a little iffy. I get that the it must be tempting to debut an answer, but maybe that answer in your swollen wordlist isn't ... great. Consider it.
HIDE AND GO SEEK ... is a thing (14D: Game where it always counts) (cute clue, clever use of "it"). I wouldn't say the "GO" part, nor would most people in most circumstances, but it's definitely ... a thing. I do love PRIVATE EYES—a very big part of both my leisure and working life—and I love both the movies in the clue, so that was the real winning answer today, for me (50A: Figures in "Knives Out" and "The Maltese Falcon"). But it just wasn't enough to lift this one out of the humdrum. The puzzle was properly tough, so I got a good workout, but I didn't get much of what you'd call "enjoyment." The one thing this puzzle did give me was a feeling of vocabulary power, as I had no trouble with [Ochlocracy], a word I learned from a *brutal* Bob Klahn puzzle back in 2007!
Always nice to learn something from a crossword and then be able to put it to use ... fifteen years later (!). What else? Not sure why we're still doing Harry Potter clues, honestly. I mean, if you've got SNAPE, then you don't really have any other cluing options, but RAT!? To be clear, I am, in fact, trying to "cancel" J.K. Rowling. That is precisely what is going on. I won't succeed. But she's the rich white nice-lady face of a global bigotry movement, so ... pass. "RAP GOD" feels exceedingly hard as clued (17D: Eminem track with the Guinness World Record for "most words in a hit single"). I'm not nearly as rap-averse as many of you—not rap-averse at all, in fact—but the very existence of this song was news to me. But I don't mind it, in that you can infer the answer from fair crosses, and you learn a bit of trivia along the way. I got super-annoyed at the puzzle when I tried to move up into the NW corner from below, towards the end, and while I could work out CHAI TEA from -TEA (2D: Cardamom-containing coffeehouse creation), the other two 7-letter Downs leading up into that section were giving me -ING and ... -ING (not helpful!):
