Constructor: Peter Gordon
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
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THEME: MARCH MADNESS (51A: Annual college basketball tourney, rounds of which can be found in the circled squares at their appropriate numbers)— an NCAA Basketball Tournament theme with various "rounds" of the tourney (FINAL Four, ELITE Eight, SWEET Sixteen) appearing in circles (i.e. "rounds"!) at their appropriate number (i.e. FINAL at Four-Down, ELITE at Eight-Down, SWEET at Sixteen-Across):
Additional theme answers:
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My feelings about this one ... you could say they bounced around. Speaking of basketball references, why in the world is AREA clued in reference to a tennis court!?!? (28D: 2,808 square feet, for a tennis court). If ever there were an opportunity for a little theme bonus answer—one that would not have felt forced at all—that was it. And we get tennis? Strange. (Note: the AREA of a standard NBA / NCAA basketball court is 4,700 square feet). Anyway, I started out thinking "ew, those teeny throwaway corners, wasted space, aesthetically displeasing" but they are just nine squares of AREA so they didn't exactly concern me. Then I descended into the meat of the puzzle via TOP BANANAS and finally, whoosh—or swish, I guess, maybe—that center answer broke the grid (and the theme) wide open:
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OK, so STORY was wrong, that's not really important. The important thing was I remembered "oh, right, it's Tourney Week," so I knew where this was going. Or I thought I did. At this point, I wasn't paying those circled squares much mind. I could see that the upper longer answer was probably gonna be BRACKET, something, probably BRACKETOLOGY (a word I know well, from decades of paying attention to this tourney earlier in my life, when I followed sports more closely). But weirdly I never looked at the BRACKETOLOGY clue. I wasn't solving Downs-only, but sometimes, especially if I'm not speed-solving, my habits of only looking at Downs *and* only looking at short stuff first really take over. I think I just wanted to see if I was right about BRACKETOLOGY without actually looking at the clue directly. So I managed to get the FINAL from 4D: ___ 4 but still wasn't really thinking about why it might be circled. Then I hit ELITE, noticed what was up, and went over and wrote in SWEET in the 16 slot. This was absolutely the peak moment of the solve. Got a legitimate "oh ... nice" out of me. That's an architectural feat that has some oomph and purpose to it. Built the whole damn grid so that the 4, 8, and 16 answers would come out five letters long, so that each one could fit the clue on two levels (a basketball and a grid level), and then put those answers in circles, which look like basketballs but more importantly are "round" (like the "rounds" of the tourney they represent). Yes, at this SWEET point, I was impressed.
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But like an arcing three-pointer at the buzzer, or any other ball thrown into the air, this one came down. I think the shot was good (if we want to continue this metaphor), but it clanked around a bit before going in. OLD DAYS definitely took some energy out of the puzzle. Doesn't stand alone terrible well. Also, heralded a major influx of OLD DAYS-speak, like GASSER and IN A PIG'S EYE. Between those answers and TOP BANANAS, the puzzle felt like it was doing a bit, some kind of olde-timey thing that didn't seem to fit with the very very timely puzzle theme (the Men's Tournament starts today). But despite that odd clump of dated slang, the fill overall seemed reasonably smooth and largely unremarkable. "AWGOON" looks funny in the grid, but I like it a lot as an abashed (or mock-abashed) expression of humility, even if the clue Once Again goes the corny mid-century route with the slang (10D: "Oh, yer joshin' me") ("AW, GO ON!").
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Additional theme answers:
- 20A: Process of picking winners in 51-Across (BRACKETOLOGY)
- 38A: What lower-seeded 51-Across participants hope to become (CINDERELLA TEAMS)
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As for difficulty, there wasn't much (unless you know nothing about the tourney, then there was maybe a lot). All the difficulty for me came with names, which is absolutely par for the course with Peter puzzles. No constructor is more obsessed with celebrity names than Peter, and while this means you learn a lot when you solve his puzzles, it also means (for me) a greater-than-average number of "who, what!?" moments. Mostly he manages to keep these "who, what!?" moments from crossing :) Anyway, I have definitely seen IGA, NIA and ALEX's names before, but alas I remembered none of them today. But the crosses were fair so no harm no ... foul! Did it! Stuck the landing with a basketball reference! Nothing but net! Ah. Feels good. OK, gonna go bask in the glory of that one. Have a nice (snow) day. Stay off the roads, Northeasterners!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]