Constructor: Carter Cobb
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: BITMAPS (23D: Alternatives to GIFs) —
I don't really know how BITMAPS is being used here. I think it's just those dumb pictures people make out of keyboard characters on Twitter, but turns out I was thinking of ASCII art (like this):
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And despite my weariness at all the try-hard "?" clues, I did really like the clue on GO COMMANDO! (17A: Join a boxer rebellion?). Nice historical misdirect there. In case you didn't know, to GO COMMANDO is to not wear underwear. This is something that Joey Tribbiani taugeht huge swaths of America in the 1990s.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: BITMAPS (23D: Alternatives to GIFs) —
A bitmap (also called "raster") graphic is created from rows of different colored pixels that together form an image. In their simplest form, bitmaps have only two colors, with each pixel being either black or white. With increasing complexity, an image can include more colors; photograph-quality images may have millions. Examples of bitmap graphic formats include GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, XBM, BMP, and PCX as well as bitmap (i.e., screen) fonts. The image displayed on a computer monitor is also a bitmap, as are the outputs of printers, scanners, and similar devices. They are created using paint programs like Adobe Photoshop. (Indiana University)
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So I have no idea why or when you'd use BITMAPS in place of GIFs. GIFs are everywhere on social media. JPGS are a very common image file format. And even after looking it up I still don't quite understand BITMAPS, or know what they look like. Is it really just pixel art? Shrug. Definitely struggled with that answer, a struggle compounded by the fact that I thought the slangy lunch fare was SAMMIES (a term I hear all the time) not SAMMICH (a term maybe Popeye says?). SAMMICH abuts BITMAPS, so ugh. And those answers occur right at a passageway from one section (NW) to another (SE), so they really gummed up the works. The whole grid was very quadranted, so the whoosh-whoosh flow never happened. Nice answers here and there, and a pretty clean grid overall.
The "?" clues eventually got irritating. Turns out there aren't *that* many of them (six), but *five* of them come on long answers, so it somehow felt like there were a lot, possibly because I had to spend more time with them. No idea what a PHARAOH ANT is (had PHARAOH CAT there for a bit, before I read the clue more closely) (15A: Pest so named because it was originally found in royal tombs). I thought HARDPAN was something related to the earth (it is); no idea it had make-up relevance (it apparently just means any kind of "hardened, impervious layer") (41D: Dense buildup in makeup powder containers). So lots of stuff today that was just outside my familiarity. But then even the stuff I know well I was a bit slow with today. Took me a minute to get English LIT, a subject I ostensibly teach. Only other thing I struggled with was TESTY (31A: Easily put out), which I had as TENSE, and later TECHY (not "tecky" but with the "ch" pronounced like in "touchy"). Looks like TECHY *is* an obsolete form of TETCHY, which would very much have fit the clue (it means "touchy; irritable; peevish"). Not knowing that answer made seeing the Downs in the NE tough. I had TEASETS before TEAWARE but fixed it quick by way of WAVE (38A: It can mean hello or goodbye). Oh, and I definitely had ROLL A JOINT at 29D: Prepare some leaves for burning? (ROLL A CIGAR). I mean that answer *really* wanted to be ROLL A JOINT. See, ROLL A JOINT, that's a good answer, whereas ROLL A CIGAR ... well, that's closer to "EAT A SAMMICH" category of answer. Weird how some "[verb] A [noun]" phrases feel stand-alone perfect and others ... don't.
I like this puzzle's commitment to sleep. As an EARLY RISER who needs his BEAUTY REST, I share that commitment, which is why I despise Daylight Saving Time, which is a lie on its face, as you cannot "save" daylight, as I explain here in this Twitter RANT:
you cannot “save” daylight there’s just daylight and there’s as much of it as there is, you just relabeled it, I mean we should reject DST based on that fraudulent advertising language alone, it’s some Freedom Fries bullshit
— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) March 15, 2023
Anything else need explaining? JUMP SCARES are the reason I avoid most horror movies (being scared like that just makes me angry). These are the moments designed to make you jump. Loud non-diegetic noise or music (which always feels like a cheat) combined with things coming out of nowhere. Pass. A DRAG MOTHER is mentor to an aspiring drag queen. [Just for kicks and giggles] is a bowdlerized version of what people actually say (when you google "just for kicks and giggles" you get a lot of sites referring to this puzzle, which is how you know it's not the real thing). Replace "kicks" with something more scatological and you're there. [It's past due] is a Methuselah-old clue for TRE that plays on the fact that "due" is Italian for "two" (and TRE is "three," so one more than or "past" due). DAVE Grohl (formerly of Nirvana) has fronted Foo Fighters for decades now (16A: Rocker Grohl).
I hope I covered all the stuff that might need explaining. Take care, see you tomorrow.
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