Constructor: Erik Agard
Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)
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THEME: MARIAH CAREY (24D: Chanteuse with chart-topping hits found at the tops of 4-, 14-, 16- and 19-Down) — Her #1 songs "Someday,""Hero,""Honey" and "Fantasy" all "top" the answers in which they appear (i.e. they're the first words in answers that run Down):
Theme answers:
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Wow, two exemplary early-week puzzles, back to back. The theme concept and execution on both yesterday's NOSE puzzle and today's MARIAH CAREY puzzle are really impressive. Probably not a coincidence that both puzzles were made by young-but-veteran constructors who are also editors of mainstream daily crossword puzzles (David Steinberg of Universal, Erik Agard of USA Today). Both puzzles were harder than usual, by about a day or maybe even more on the weekly difficulty scale. That is, yesterday's felt (to many) like a Tuesday or Wednesday, and today ... well, this definitely felt at least Wednesday to me, primarily because of proper nouns (Alyssa THOMAS (15A: W.N.B.A. All-Star Alyssa), YVETTE Lee Bowser (61A: "Living Single" creator ___ Lee Bowser)) and terms I'd never heard of (HONEY LOCUST (16D: Tree whose pods contain a sweet-tasting pulp), HALO-HALO ... though HALO-HALO feels like something that I've laid my eyes on but failed to store in my memory banks). The elegance of today's theme is in making all these one-word #1 songs fit into symmetrically arranged answers *and* making them run Down, so that those song titles "top" their respective answers the way the songs themselves "topped" the charts. It helps that the theme answers themselves are original and lively, and the cherry on top of the whole thing is that center stack—those are all themers. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone triple-stack long themers, especially on a damn Tuesday. I don't know why we're commemorating MARIAH CAREY today (as opposed to any other day of the year), but I also don't particularly care. I wish that *actual* tribute puzzles (the ones that sometimes get pushed out quickly after a celebrity's death, or that commemorate anniversaries of one kind or another) were typically this thoughtful and carefully made. The execution here is what really makes this theme artful.
Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)
Theme answers:
- SOMEDAY SOON (4D: Not too long from now) (1990)
- HERO FOR HIRE (19D: Luke Cage's title in his first comics appearance) (1993)
- HONEY LOCUST (16D: Tree whose pods contain a sweet-tasting pulp) (1997)
- FANTASY SAGA (14D: Giant narrative that may be about giants (and elves as well)) (1995)
Halo-halo, correctly spelled haluhalo, Tagalog for "mixed" (the more common spelling instead literally equating to "mix-mix") is a popular cold dessert in the Philippines made up of crushed ice, evaporated milk or coconut milk, and various ingredients including ube jam (ube halaya), sweetened kidney or garbanzo beans, coconut strips, sago, gulaman (agar), pinipig, boiled taro or soft yams in cubes, flan, slices or portions of fruit preserves and other root crop preserves. The dessert is topped with a scoop of ube ice cream. It is usually prepared in a tall clear glass and served with a long spoon. Halo-halo is considered to be the unofficial national dessert of the Philippines. The term "halo-halo" is supposed to mean "mixed" in English because the dessert is meant to be mixed before being consumed. Although strictly grammatically incorrect, this spelling has come to describe any object or situation composed of a similar, colorful combination of ingredients. (wikipedia)
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But then you get the overall fill, and there again, it's a stunner. What stands out most to me is ... well, let's just say I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't Feb. 1 because this really felt like a puzzle that was ushering in Black History Month. From the theme subject to Alyssa THOMAS to YVETTE Lee Bowser to SHUG from The Color Purple to Luke Cage: HERO FOR HIRE to "Deliver Us from EVA" to Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's My Monticello (in the clue for UVA) to ETHIOPIA to the Delta Sigma Theta SORORITY to ... well, sorry if I missed one, but honestly this is one of the Blackest puzzles I've ever solved that didn't have Blackness itself as a theme. Black women in particular take center stage. The puzzle may be a little name-heavy, but probably not any more than average, and ... well, solving this puzzle really makes me aware how much puzzles have historically skewed white. Erik's out here showing how breadth of perspective and general inclusion can be done easily, elegantly, if you really wanna do it.
I know three of the four MARIAH CAREY songs. Tellingly, everything before 1995 is right up my alley, but "Honey" (1997) ... I just missed. My connection to pop culture fades out a bit in the five-year period when I'm transitioning from grad student to professor. It's a real blur and in that time, MARIAH CAREY goes off radar. Whereas I actually owned a CD Single of "Someday" and "Fantasy," and "Hero" feels like "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in that it seems like it has always been there and I couldn't place it in time if my life depended on it (it's 1993, btw). I had a leg up with the Luke Cage clue, since I own the first Luke Cage comic. HERO FOR HIRE is probably gonna be tough if '70s comic books aren't your thing. OK, now I have to look up "All HAT no cattle" because I feel like I saw that expression for the first time *yesterday* and I've already forgotten the context. Ah, right, it's when your look is out of step with your reality, i.e. you wear a cowboy hat but are definitely not a cowboy. It's used metaphorically for being a phony—all talk and no action. Hate to blog and run but the bus is not going to wait for me. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]