Constructor: John Hawksley
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: It's all Greek (or Latin) to me... — obscure words with familiar suffixes are clued both as what they mean and what they do NOT mean ... the NOT part is what helps you figure out the spelling of the word:
Theme answers:
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Did not think much of the theme at first, but somehow warmed to it as the puzzle went on—that is fairly rare. Usually the arc of feeling runs in the other direction: a puzzle strikes me as cute or interesting and then just wears thin by the end. My first thought was "so it's just obscure words that look like they mean something different than what they mean?" And yes, that is it. But there's something I ended up liking about the idea that giving me *wrong* information is actually *helping* me solve the puzzle. There's an odd consistency to it, or near consistency: their opening parts all look deceptively familiar (i.e. they look most like very familiar things ... that have nothing to do with the actual meaning of the word); they all have very familiar suffixes, which help us piece everything together (I thought these were all suffixes of Greek origin, but the -DUCATES part of MANDUCATES is from the Latin ... but I think the familiarity, not the etymology, is the important thing); and, maybe most importantly, their apparent (i.e. NOT) meanings are almost all entertainingly silly, with the silliest of them all, PANTOPHOBIA, sitting dead center, in pride of place, where it belongs. Even though I warmed to the idea as I went on, I think the themers are a little weaker on the bottom—neither MANDUCATES nor METROLOGY has the crystal clear NOT meaning that the first three themers have. MANDUCATES looks more like it means "educates a man" than "educates (a woman) *like* a man. I get that the clue is trying to make an analogy from "mansplaining," but that feels a bit forced. As for METROLOGY ... that's the only one of these five answers where I might actually have guessed the correct meaning. It definitely looks like it could mean "the study of urban areas," but it just doesn't have the "what the hell!?" wackiness or deceptive quality that the others do. Still, conceptually this works, and piecing together the odd words ended up being oddly enjoyable.
The puzzle played a little slow to me, largely because of the weird theme words. The piecing together just took some time. ARCTOPHILE took the most time, as I realized, early and with alarm, that despite having seen Timothée CHALAMET in several movies and knowing his name very well, I somehow knew how to spell his (unusual) *first* name but had neglected to register what all the vowels were in this *last* name (5D: Timothée of "Beautiful Boy" and "Dune"). This is to say I thought maybe CHALOMET ... which, now that I look at it, seems improbable, but that's where I was at. And then I had COS at 22D: Sin : y-axis :: ___ : x-axis but started to doubt it when it really seemed like the clue wanted me to think "Arctic," i.e. ARCTI-, i.e. "I" not "O." So now I'm doubting my 11th-grade trigonometry memory and things are getting to be a bit of a mess. Eventually the "O" became undeniable, but that answer gave me minor fits, and the NE corner in general wasn't helping me along. Utter blank on SPADAY. Needed every cross. Do people still say "Staycation"? Or SPADAY? When I see [Staycation option] I think "... couch?" The worst thing about that corner, though, was of course E-BILL, which is so bad I literally laughed out loud. Actual LOL. Just the worst E-answer I've ever seen (please, constructors, don't use EANSWER, that was not a suggestion).
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- TYPOMANIA (17A: Obsession with being published ... NOT a flurry of transcription errors)
- ARCTOPHILE (24A: Lover of teddy bears ... NOT a devotee of polar regions)
- PANTOPHOBIA (35A: Fear of everything ... NOT a fear of trousers)
- MANDUCATES (50A: Chews ... NOT elaborates condescendingly to a female)
- METROLOGY (59A: Science of measurement ... NOT the study of urban areas)
Diane Rehm (/ˈriːm/; born Diane Aed; September 21, 1936) is an American journalist and the host of Diane Rehm: On My Mind podcast, produced at WAMU, which is licensed to American University in Washington, D.C.. She also hosts a monthly book club series, Diane Rehm Book Club, at WAMU. Rehm is the former American public radio talk show host of The Diane Rehm Show, which was distributed nationally and internationally by National Public Radio. The show was produced at WAMU.
Rehm had announced her plans to retire from hosting the show after the 2016 elections. The final program was recorded and distributed on December 23, 2016. Rehm announced she was going to host a weekly podcast, which she began doing in January 2017.
Rehm is the co-producer, narrator, and interviewer of When My Time Comes, distributed by PBS stations across the country. Her book by the same name was published in 2020 by Knopf. The Washington Post describes Rehm as a leading voice in the right to die debate. (wikipedia)
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Mistakes? Well, I wrote in MASTICATES at first for that fourth themer because it's a word that means "Chews" (how many words for "Chews" do we need!?). No other out-and-out mistakes, but I struggled with SITSKI (1D: Para alpine sport equipment). I think if "Para" had been attached to "alpine" in some way I might have figured it out sooner, but I did not get the disability angle from stand-alone "Para" somehow. If I'm shopping, I think of a "find" as an item that I am purchasing, not the tag *on* that item, so the clue on SALE TAG was tough for me today (45A: Fun find for a bargain hunter). That's it for struggles. None of the struggles amounted to much; they just put me a little on the slow side. I think the fill on this one stays largely clean and largely interesting, even outside the themers. Strong Downs in all the corners. You've got crosswordese here and there (you know, RESOD, ENIAC, etc.), but there's not much, and anyway it's just functioning as glue, holding ample good stuff in place. There's something old-fashioned-seeming about this theme, and even the overall fill, but it's a delightful kind of old-fashioned. I'm into it. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. One big gripe that I left out, re: the MANDUCATES clue: "to a female"!?!?! "... elaborates condescending to a female"!?!?! Unless you're elaborating condescendingly to your pet or a farm animal, that should really be "woman." Maybe there was some idea of not wanting the clue to contain any form of "MAN" (even "wo-MAN") since "MAN" was part of the (fake) cluing concept, but ... calling women "females," oof, whatever kind of feminist intent this clue was supposed to have really backfired there.