Constructor: Bruce Haight
Relative difficulty: medium? idk, i was way more than three sheets to the wind and still finished in under four minutes [ETA: also apparently it's slightly larger than usual at 15x16, which just means it's an extra dose of "why am I slogging through this"]
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THEME: VICHYSSOISE— theme entries are just ingredients in the soup? and the clues are just instructions on how to make this? tbh who the fuck cares? is this what passes for a $750 puzzle in the new york times these days? hard fucking pass
Word of the Day: VICHYSSOISE (Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients) —
OLIO:
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Relative difficulty: medium? idk, i was way more than three sheets to the wind and still finished in under four minutes [ETA: also apparently it's slightly larger than usual at 15x16, which just means it's an extra dose of "why am I slogging through this"]
THEME: VICHYSSOISE— theme entries are just ingredients in the soup? and the clues are just instructions on how to make this? tbh who the fuck cares? is this what passes for a $750 puzzle in the new york times these days? hard fucking pass
Word of the Day: VICHYSSOISE (Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients) —
Vichyssoise, also known as potage Parmentier, velouté Parmentier, or crème Parmentier, is a thick soup made of boiled and puréed leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and chicken stock. It is traditionally served cold, but it can be eaten hot.
Recipes for soup made of pureed leeks and potatoes were common by the 19th century in France. In 19th-century cookbooks, and still today, they are often named "Potage Parmentier" or "Potage à la Parmentier" after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French nutritionist and scholar who popularized the use of potatoes in France in the 18th century. The French military cookbook of 1938 includes a recipe for "Potage Parmentier for 100 men" using milk instead of cream but with proportions and directions that are similar to the recipe for "Vichyssoise Soup" given later by Julia Child.
The origins of the name Vichyssoise are a subject of debate among culinary historians; one version of the story is that Louis XV of France was afraid of being poisoned and had so many servants taste the potato leek soup that, by the time he tried it, the soup was cold, and since he enjoyed it that way it became a cold soup. Julia Child called it "an American invention", whereas others observe that "the origin of the soup is questionable in whether it's genuinely French or an American creation".
• • •
You ever open a puzzle and react like "ah shit, here we go again"? That was me opening today's puzzle. There's a reason I don't solve the NYT puzzle most days; in general, it's not good! And this is one of the constructors that I dread solving and that, tbh, I wouldn't solve if I hadn't already volunteered to blog this puzzle.I had some hope halfway through this puzzle that the reveal would, you know, actually be a reveal, and tell me some cute and/or clever wordplay relating to the themers that I hadn't yet noticed. In all honesty, I don't really solve the NYT any longer, because 90+% of the puzzles are not worth solving; if anything, they're worse than puzzles you can get from (e.g.) the AVCX, Universal, USA Today, LA Times, etc., and imo this is 110% related to the editor and what they prioritize, and increasingly it's clear that the NYT is (pardon the pun) behind the times on catering to solvers who are online and/or actually constructors (rather than, say, your average syndicated solver in the middle of nowhere, Upper East Side and/or flyover country, USA).
Anyway, tl;dr, no, this puzzle did not have a clever reveal. I thought it might, because in the past italicized clues have generally been used to indicate some mischievous wordplay or something, but no, this is a puzzle whose theme clues could've just used an asterisk. It's a recipe, nothing more, nothing less, and all I have to say is: who the fuck cares? Is this what passes for a goddamn theme these days at the (alleged) standard-bearer of crosswords? (I notice that, on xwordinfo, the constructor notes that "I'm pretty sure I will have zero in the queue" after this puzzle, to which I can only say: thank fucking god.)
Theme answers:
Theme answers:
- Two pounds, peeled and chopped [NEW POTATOES, which, WTF, has anybody ever said this in their fucking life]
- Five cups, after lengthy simmering [CHICKEN STOCK, at least this is a valid phrase]
- One cup, after cooling [HEAVY CREAM, sure, I guess rolls eyes at the clue; at least the answer's fine]
- Four cups, cleaned and sliced [SAUTEED LEEKS, again with the green paint here, this is not a valid entry by any stretch of the imagination]
- Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients [VICHYSSOISE, which, good luck spelling this correctly without crossing letters, and again let me reiterate: who the fuck cares? Why are you going to the crossword for your recipes when there's an entire section of the website (that they charge too much for) to give you such recipes (that probably don't rely on green paint phrases like NEW POTATOES or SAUTEED LEEKS, although I can't be arsed to look up any actual recipes on the NYT website for this)]
OLIO:
- CLIO [Mythical figure often pictured holding a book] — I actually liked this because I learned something here; you usually only see CLIO clued w/r/t the advertising award, so it's nice to learn something (while at the same time being able to figure it out from context w/ the "mythological figure" part; educational yet guessable / inferable; contrast w/ "mountain nymph" for OREAD, which is a boring-ass clue for a boring-ass answer)
- LEE [Surname derived from the Chinese word for "plum"] — Ditto for liking this because it's something that I didn't know but do now, and like the above answer, you can still infer it / easily get it from crossings; a rare fun fact in a sea of not-so-fun clues.
- I...really don't have anything else here? Almost every clue is obscenely short and boring (and incredibly straightforward—where's the fun? where's the wordplay?) and again, if I did not have to blog this puzzle, I wouldn't have just quit in the middle of it—I would not have started solving this. It's not a good puzzle by any stretch of the imagination. Like, if you were trying to get a friend or loved one into solving crosswords, would you give this puzzle to them? Absolutely not, because it's not interesting in any way, shape, or form, nor by any stretch of the imagination. It's almost actively (and aggressively) anti-crosswords.
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