Constructor: Billy Bratton
Relative difficulty: Easy (extremely easy for a puzzle wherein I had little-to-no clue about at least three longish answers)
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THEME: UP, UP and ... UP ... and another UP ... I mean, there's no theme, I'm just counting "UP"s at this point, you can move on ...
Word of the Day: ESPERANTO (34D: Language with its own "green star" flag) (why is "green star" in quotes?—there's literally a green star on the flag) —
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Hello, I'm currently "celebrating" my considerable jet lag by staying up to blog the crossword instead of getting up at 4:30am to do it, which is the normal M.O. Any unsavory, untoward, or incoherent parts of this write-up are to be blamed on the jet lag, whereas any good parts are to be credited to my talent, handsomeness, and heroic commitment to the public good. Let's begin. This puzzle is extremely online and really Really wants you to know it. Like, really. OK, message received. On computers, playing games, asking Reddit things for some reason ... got it. Not a huge fan of getting your freshness exclusively from a rash of proper nouns that really require you to belong to certain FAN BASES in order to know them. To be clear, I actually like the answer FAN BASES, but TOADETTE (18A: Mario character with a mushroom head and pink braids) ... not so much. I have "oof" and [frowny face] written in the margin of my puzzle next to ASKREDDIT. Also, does BuzzFeed even exist any more? When it stopped having a crossword, I stopped paying attention, and honestly I don't see anyone linking to it much, if at all, any more. As for Reddit, I know people who are DEDICATEd Redditors (ugh, that word) and find a lot of value in it, but I have been there for a few things, including certain crossword conversations, and the vibe ... not for me. I don't like hive minds and I don't like being online more than I already am, so ASKREDDIT, I will not be doing. I'd sooner Ask Jeeves, which was a thing, in the last century, or else I fever-dreamed it, also possible. Much of the '90s internet feels that way (not always in a bad way). Is "SO DOPE" really the equivalent of "Da bomb" (speaking of the last century ...)? [Da bomb, today] feels like it would've been closer to correct, and at least gets at "Da bomb"'s semi-comical datedness. There is something trying-too-hard about this puzzle's attempts at Now-ness. But then there are undeniably interesting parts to it. My Goodwill Meter went down to about zero after ASKREDDIT but the puzzle got all of it back with ZIGGY STARDUST—would've loved a (much) harder clue on that one, but ... it's hard not to love a puzzle with *that* as the central, marquee answer.
Relative difficulty: Easy (extremely easy for a puzzle wherein I had little-to-no clue about at least three longish answers)
Word of the Day: ESPERANTO (34D: Language with its own "green star" flag) (why is "green star" in quotes?—there's literally a green star on the flag) —
Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /ˌɛspəˈræntoʊ/) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes". [...] Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate. Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" (Esperantistoj). (wikipedia)
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And then BAD HAIR DAY and MCGRIDDLES (two things I never have) take the puzzle all kinds of funky places, as does the made-up (sorry, "constructed") language of ESPERANTO, which I always thought was a Utopian (IDEALIST) goof but apparently the dream is still alive. Actually, lots of really interesting connections to spiritism. For instance: "The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists." And: "William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist and occultist in the United Kingdom, co-founded the first Esperanto club in the U.K." (wikipedia). Did you know that William Shatner starred in a 1966 horror film ("Incubus") filmed entirely in ESPERANTO!? Well, now you do:
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The one objectively terrible thing about this puzzle is not one not two not three but four UPs. What the hell? Are you doing a bit? Is there a hidden UP theme? Because ... yeesh. And three of those UPs are crammed into the bottom left corner, and two of them are crossing. Just a sloppy wreck. Lots of other preposition-ending answers: SIT BY, ACT ON, FIT IN, WISE TO ... But those prepositions are all fine, largely because There Aren't Four Of Them. TERAFLOP is another one of those "extremely online" answers that alienated me a bit (37D: Large unit of computing speed), but that one's entirely on me. There are some things that you don't know that you just know you should know, you know? I, like many of you, probably, some of you, surely, went with TERABYTE and then couldn't square the (intriguing!) -YY ending on 57A: At a high interest rate? (KEENLY) and so SCRAPPEDTERABYTE. Then wanted something like TERAFLOW (reasoning—reasonably, I thought—that "computer speed" might be measured in terms of "flow"). But nope. FLOP. My solving skills there, not SO DOPE. But despite being occasionally way out of my wheelhouse and tonally ... not my thing (much of the time), I did enjoy working it all out. I'm oddly impressed by "OW! OW!" (48A: "Man, that hurts!"). Feels original. I like its compactness, as well as its expressiveness. I had YEOW there at first, as, again, I'm sure, many, or at least some, of you did as well.
What else?:
- 21A: ___ Solo, son of Leia Organa (BEN)—LOL, BEN Solo, really? I am so tired of having to learn tertiary and even more minor characters in these damn IP universes I swear to god ... BEN Solo is the TOADETTE of the "Star Wars" universe.
- 20A: Jollity (MIRTH)—had the "M" and went with MERRY, as in "to make MERRY"
- 23A: Perfectly cromulent (FINE)—I believe I used "cromulent" the other day in a puzzle write-up. I love that a made-up word from a decades-old throwaway "Simpsons" joke has now become simply "a word":
- 56D: Patty and Selma's workplace on "The Simpsons," for short (DMV)—look, puzzle, if you're trying to win me over by leaning heavy into the sitcom that absolutely defined my young adulthood, then you can just ... keep going, actually. It's working great. Patty & Selma > BEN & TOADETTE
- 54A: Producer of many popular singles (KRAFT)—did someone say "64 slices of American cheese"!?
- 27A: His initial stands for Tureaud (MR. T)—this is Charles Entertainment Cheese-level inside info. SO DOPE!
OK, good enough. Happy New Year's Eve! See you tomorrow for the first puzzle of the new year!
P.S. anyone else give this answer a shot? [see below] I wrote it in as a mini-prayer: "please oh please let this be right so the Angry Villagers can burn CrossWorld to the ground and we can start anew..." But it was not to be [warning: profanity! run away!]:
