Constructor: Dan Caprera
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: PLOT (62A: What's spelled out, appropriately, after mapping the coordinates indicates by this puzzle's circled letters) — theme answers contain letter strings (in circled squares) that serve as plot coordinates, and those coordinates (N2, A9, D1, and K7) lead you to the letters P, L, O, and T, respectively:
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Though you do need the actual coordinates in your grid in order to "solve" the theme part (my software doesn't show them—here's what the puzzle grid looked like online):
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Baffled by this—not so much by the fact that you would go to all this architectural fuss for a thematic element that doesn't affect the solve one iota, but that the end result of said fuss would be so astonishingly anticlimactic. It's like some kind of anti-puzzle, a joke about puzzles, a send-up of puzzles. Is it art? I have no idea. I just no that you *told me* that PLOT was what I would get if I plotted ... so why ... would I bother ... to plot, then? Couldn't I just take your word for it? There should, at the very least, have been *some* element of revelation to this thing—even if we do end up with some non-answer like "PLOT," at least Let *Us* Arrive At It. Make this a contest puzzle or something, where solvers have to actually *find* something. This is like handing a kid a connect-the-dots puzzle or a maze that has already been solved—have fun, kid! From where I was sitting, this was just an undersized, extremely easy (i.e. non-Thursday) puzzle with black bars on two sides ... for some reason. My software was screaming at me "There are notes! We can't replicate some of the grid elements! Do it onliiiiiine!" but as usual I ignored my software and plowed forward, only to find out that I didn't need those grid elements At All except to figure out some post-puzzle thing that the puzzle had actually already figured out for me. Seriously, what are we doing here?
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: Dmitri MENDELEEV (32D: Dmitri ___, formulator of the periodic law) — - STUNTWOMAN (16A: Lucy Lawless had one on "Xena: Warrior Princess")
- CANINE TEETH (26A: Fangs)
- INDONESIAN (42A: Rupiah spenders)
- BREAKS EVEN (55A: Neither wins nor loses)
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (sometimes transliterated as Mendeleyev or Mendeleef) (English: /ˌmɛndəlˈeɪəf/ MEN-dəl-AY-əf; Russian: Дмитрий Иванович Менделеев, tr. Dmitriy Ivanovich Mendeleyev, IPA: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ mʲɪnʲdʲɪˈlʲejɪf] (listen); 8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1834 – 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1907) was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is best known for formulating the Periodic Law and creating a version of the periodic table of elements. He used the Periodic Law not only to correct the then-accepted properties of some known elements, such as the valence and atomic weight of uranium, but also to predict the properties of three elements that were yet to be discovered. [...] A very popular Russian story credits Mendeleev with setting the 40% standard strength of vodka. For example, Russian Standard vodka advertises: "In 1894, Dmitri Mendeleev, the greatest scientist in all Russia, received the decree to set the Imperial quality standard for Russian vodka and the 'Russian Standard' was born"[65] Others cite "the highest quality of Russian vodka approved by the royal government commission headed by Mendeleev in 1894". // In fact, the 40% standard was already introduced by the Russian government in 1843, when Mendeleev was nine years old. It is true that Mendeleev in 1892 became head of the Archive of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg, and evolved it into a government bureau the following year, but that institution was charged with standardising Russian trade weights and measuring instruments, not setting any production quality standards, Also, Mendeleev's 1865 doctoral dissertation was entitled "A Discourse on the combination of alcohol and water", but it only discussed medical-strength alcohol concentrations over 70%, and he never wrote anything about vodka.(wikipedia)
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| [28D: Eliot Ness and co.] |
The puzzle was very easy, which I think is the new way of appeasing solvers, of distracting them when there's no there there—when you're high on success, you're far less apt to be critical of the puzzle. I was slow in only a couple of places. ENTRAP, for some reason (27D: Set up, in a way). Just took me forever to see. And then I still don't know what the hell kind of "exercise"TOETAPS are supposed to be (23D: Core-strengthening floor exercises). I'm tapping my toes right now. [Looks at core] ... Not seeing it. I guess I need to be on the "floor." Anyway, slowish there. And then I couldn't quite spell MENDELEEV's name right. I think I thought he was some other scientist guy. A geneticist, maybe? Ah, here we go: Gregor MENDEL. That's what my brain was thinking. Ah well, not like the answers crossing the end of his name were hard. The doubling of the letter string "INCA" was really distracting, mostly because they are side-by-side just one column apart (in INCAS and INCANT). Since both of them run through the always horrible UNPC, I think I'd've torn allllll of that section out and rethought it. I like MADELEINE (10D: Small shell-shaped confection), and I really like the MADELEINE / MENDELEEV symmetry. Mellifluous. TATAS in the plural, on the other hand: hard no (17D: Farewells). My only true mistake was STORK for OTTER (2D: Animal with webbed feet). Special thanks to the OMNI for being a familiar friend (first thing in the grid!) despite the fact that as far as I know I've never seen an OMNI irl. It's a mythical place to me. I imagine the fancier ORCs stay there. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld