Constructor: Ryan McCarty
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: KACHINA (20A: Ancestral spirit in Pueblo mythology) —
A kachina (/kəˈtʃiːnə/; also katchina, katcina, or katsina; Hopi: katsina [kaˈtsʲina], plural katsinim [kaˈtsʲinim]) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo peoples, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the United States. In the Pueblo cultures, kachina rites are practiced by the Hopi, Zuni, Hopi-Tewa, and certain Keresan tribes, as well as in most Pueblo tribes in New Mexico.
The kachina concept has three different aspects: the supernatural being, the kachina dancers, and kachina dolls (small dolls carved in the likeness of the kachina, that are given only to those who are, or will be responsible for the respectful care and well-being of the doll, such as a mother, wife, or sister).
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The puzzle was also hard, but it's supposed to be hard. It's Saturday. That said, it was definitely harder for me than most recent Saturdays have been. Not just hard, but a little scary, in that I got genuinely, alarmingly stuck in both of the small corners (not where I expected to get bogged down). Could get "Hot PASTRAMI" for the life of me, and wouldn't commit to CRYONIC for some reason—I knew CRYONICS was a word but wasn't sure about the "S"-less adjectival form. Anyway, not having these answers in place paved the way for a near-fatal error: instead of IDIOM / BASIC, I had ADAGE / BANAL (53A: Never say never, say / 43D: Not complicated at all). "Never say never" just didn't seem idiomatic—literally, don't say it. Don't say "never." I see now how it's got the figurative meaning of "don't give up" (whether you're actually *saying* anything or not), but still, as a bit of advice, as something posing as a truism, it felt much more like an ADAGE. And then the totally mysterious reality TV name was in there just to make matters worse. Oh, and I could not get the "R" in RUT, which would've helped with PASTRAMI for sure. Eventually JOT made me pull ADAGE for IDIOM and everything came together. The NE was similarly harrowing, if slightly less so. Again, as with SONJA in the SW, CRYPTEX (not a real thing) was gumming up the small NE corner. After I got USED TO BE, I couldn't make any of those short Acrosses work at first. And CAR TITLE, woof, no way (25A: Document for some travelers). Couldn't parse it. Had CART- and that really looked like the first part of the answer was going to be the document (a "carte" of some kind...? I dunno...). Clue is really set up to make you think of something in the "passport" or "visa" family. Finally broke through by just thinking "Where do people live by a river ... rivers ... rivers ... well, there's the Nile, that's ... D'oh!" And so EGYPT, not the stupid fictional decoding device, helped me finally decode this puzzle once and for all.
Look at this weird solving path I took today:
- 4D: Component of a sake bomb (ASAHI) — a Japanese beer, common to crosswords. Sake bombs are made by dropping a shot of sake into a glass of beer.
- 14A: ___ place (ONES)— in relation to the decimal point, there's the ONES place, the tens place, etc. (so, not "ONE'S place")
- 36A: Big to-do? (TASK) — I guess because TASKs are on a "to-do" list? Not sure what "Big" is doing here, clue-wise. The word TASK conveys, if anything, smallness.
- 47A: Street wear? (RUT)— because when you "wear" a street down (with your ox carts and what not) you get a RUT.
- 7D: French open activity, for short? (PDA) — well, this is referring to kissing (a "public display of affection"). The "open" part is a stretch, because, well, good luck "French" kissing with your mouth shut. Maybe the "open" is supposed to refer to the fact that you're doing it "openly," for all to see. Still, grammatically, that's iffy. As with [Big to-do?], the "?" misdirection feels forced here.
- 40D: What has stories of East Asia? (PAGODA) — I knew they were buildings (usually temples or other sacred buildings), but I didn't know those buildings actually had multiple "stories." I realize now I was confusing PAGODA and GAZEBO (!?). Anyway, still got this one easily.
That's all. See you tomorrow.
P.S.
