Constructor: Kate Hawkins
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Booth School of Business (42D: Many Chicago Booth grads) —
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Well this one is GORGEOUS and it knows it. Once again (over and over now) we get the Friday puzzle on a Saturday. Breezy, flowing, chock full of snazzy terms and expressions. It's wide-ranging! This is the thing I really love in a late-week themeless. When the puzzle works the same plot of land over and over, when it doesn't give all kinds of people from all kinds of age groups a shot, when it over-relies on proper nouns and trivia, well, it can feel exhilarating if it's *your* plot of land that it's working, and if you're part of the in-group it's calling out to, but ... I get too much mail from both teenagers *and* 90-year-olds explaining how the puzzle can (sometimes, often) make them feel left out, and while some amount of this feeling is inevitable for all of us, puzzles can do their best to, you know, roam. Roam, if you want to. Roam around the world. Take us on a trip. And this one did. I want to say it was in my wheelhouse, but I don't think it's flexing much of a wheelhouse, this puzzle. You don't need to be part of a particular generation or be extremely online to appreciate the colloquial zing of "IGNORE THAT!,""CUT TO THE CHASE!,"HITS A NERVE, and "LET'S SEE SOME I.D." (that last one so unexpectedly good, I almost cheered out loud, but wife's still asleep, so shh). Look what great use the puzzle makes of its longer answers. Just ... pairs of winners everywhere you look. GO OUTSIDE for the MOONSHOT! Take your BEACH READ to the ART HOUSE! There's something for everyone here. Cannot imagine not finding this puzzle at least pleasant and charming, if not outright brilliant. ENCHANTing, even.
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Funny to want ACHE at 1A: Smart and be wrong ... only to have ACHE be right later in the puzzle (32A: Long). This is what Andrea Carla Michaels (I think) once dubbed a "malapop"—a wrong answer that ends up being *right* somewhere else in the grid. It's a useful term, and it's a phenomenon that happens a weird lot. I need a word for the phenomenon of a wrong answer that's accidentally helpful because it (by chance) has some correct letters that help you get crosses (see my FROG error, above). As for other wrong answers ... I had KICK before BUCK (37D: Resist) (a very unexpected kealoa*). Had the -NSE at 41D: Flush (RINSE) might be DENSE (as in "Rife (with)" ... somehow). I struggled most with short stuff, ambiguously-clued stuff like RINSE and TEST (29D: Screen, in a way) and TUNES (33A: Some jams), and unfamiliar proper nouns like SUSAN (didn't know her) (39A: ___ Wojcicki, C.E.O. of YouTube beginning in 2014) and LEN (didn't know him ... although I've seen him many times by now, I know, I know ... I just refuse to commit "Dancing With the Stars" knowledge to memory, apparently) (49D: ___ Goodman, longtime judge on "Dancing With the Stars"). Also hard, unsurprisingly, were some of the "?" clues, particularly TRUE LOVE (33D: Unconditional condition?). I had the -RUE- part and wanted ... something to do with logic or reason, maybe, like ... well TRUE/FALSE wouldn't fit, but something like that. Then I considered the possibility that I was dealing with something CRUEL... but I worked it out, and nodded approvingly when I did. A proper Saturday clue, that one. Hope you liked this even half as much as I did. Great end to a remarkably good week of puzzles.
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: Booth School of Business (42D: Many Chicago Booth grads) —
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth or Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 Nobel laureates in the Economic Sciences, more than any other business school in the world. The school has the third-largest endowment of any business school.
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I struggled out of the gate, slightly. I thought 1A: Smart (CHIC) was ACHE ... and when that didn't work for the Downs, I took it out and decided to start with the Aristophanes clue, 1D: "You cannot teach a ___ to walk straight": Aristophanes. Well, Aristophanes wrote The Frogs (he remembered, proudly, perhaps even smugly), so the answer must be FROG. "You cannot teach a FROG to walk straight, yes, I buy that! Has the ring of truth, for sure." Well, sometimes you botch your way to success, because FROG, though wrong, had an "R" that was correct, which got me RAGÙ (14A: Grocery brand with an accent in its name). Eventually it was clear that the Marvel character had to be AUNT May (not OLLA May or whatever I was contemplating for a half second), and so everything got tidied up and then bam, like a shot, I went flying out of that NW corner on the wings of IGNORE THAT!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. AERO chocolate bars have little air (aer?) bubbles in them, hence 43D: Chocolate brand with the slogan "Irresistibubble"; "The Marvelous Mrs. MAISEL" is an Emmy-winning show "comedy-drama" on Amazon (42A: Title Mrs. played by Rachel Brosnahan).
*kealoa = a pair of words that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
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