Sorrento and Telluride / WED 1-4-23 / Amazon-owned home Wi-Fi brand / First of the Chinese dynasties

Word of the Day: "The Song of the LARK" (Willa Cather novel) —

Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community.

Hey besties, welcome to another addition of Malaika MWednesday! I write to y'all from Mexico City where I will be vibing for the next several weeks. Tonight I was sipping on some mezcal from a brand called Mala Idea, which means "bad idea"-- I loooove that name. I have a zillion things to say about this puzzle, so let's dive in!

First of all.... I think I know one of the constructors?? Like not as in "we talk on Twitter" but as in she and my sister went to the same very small middle school together roughly fifteen years ago and we would sometimes give her a ride to school and watch episodes of Psych in the car but we have not interacted since then. Laura, if you are ISK Laura, hi! Crazy running into you here.

Next, let's talk about the theme. I think this type of theme sits very well on a Wednesday. It doesn't fit into one of the Standard Crossword Themes (TM), like "add a letter to make a wacky phrase" or "all the last words can follow the same word" but it isn't quite diabolical enough for a Thursday. And "reading the letters in the circles" is definitely a Known Crossword Concept, but I've never seen it executed with this subject matter.

Arranging letters into those patterns is very tough from a constructing standpoint, and I am impressed that we still got some fun answers like OREO THIN and WEIRDOS and MAGENTA. There were some harder things-- for example, I am very much a Tech Girl but had never heard of EERO. Had y'all? I also don't love to see random Roman numerals, like CDL, in a puzzle, but at least they gave it an easy clue! And, I am positive I have complained about NOES as the plural of "no" on this very website and I am also positive that the commenters have reassured me that it is correct actually. But it just looks so weird!!

What I loved most about this puzzle was the grid design (soo pretty) and the revealer, which reminded me of the "Heavenly Bodies" theme of the 2018 Met Gala. (Actually, I literally thought the theme was CELESTIAL BODIES until I just now Googled it to find out what year that happened.) Any entry that reminds me of these legends is a welcome sight.

My least favorite thing about the puzzle was the shapes of the theme answers. Whenever there's some attempt at turning the squares of a puzzle into a shape, people will argue about whether it was successful or not. For example, I loved this duck, but other people didn't see it at all. I liked the depiction of COMET here, but the rest didn't quite convince me.... MOON in particular was depicted as a square.... I don't know much but I know that moons are not squares. And isn't our GALAXY more of a spiral shape than a large circle? What did y'all think? Maybe I just don't know enough about space!

Bullets:

• ["Evita" setting: Abbr.] for ARG: One thing I hate is when an entry has an existing modern meaning, but the editors at The Times pick a clunkier or more dated reference. To me, ARG is a common term in Python programming, but instead they chose to use a kinda random abbreviation. :/ (See also, GIT and LOCS.)
• [Type of car whose name comes from the French word for "cut"] for COUPE: A coupe is also a type of glassware. I was recently at a party where a friend was drinking out of one and she said "I have a fun fact-- but don't fact check it!!" The fact was that the first coupe glasses were molded after Marie Antoinette's breasts and indeed that is very fun and I will never fact check it.
• [Circus barker?] for SEAL: Nothing to say here beyond I loved this clue!

xoxo Malaika

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