Constructor: Sam Buttrey
Relative difficulty: Hard! (25:25, had to "check puzzle" once)
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THEME: TRADING PLACES— Famous duos are clued as though they are words, and their clues are switched
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Bullets:
Relative difficulty: Hard! (25:25, had to "check puzzle" once)
THEME: TRADING PLACES— Famous duos are clued as though they are words, and their clues are switched
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: TRADING PLACES (Classic 1983 comedy … or a hint to what the answers to four pairs of starred clues are doing) —
Hey besties and welcome to a delayed Malaika MWednesday. I am so sorry for the mix-up in days that resulted in a late post... totally my fault, and thanks to Rex for hopping back in on what was supposed to be his day off. No solving music today, as the Lakers game was playing in the background.
- BILL got the clue [Acronym of talks] and TED got the clue [Unwelcome bit of mail]
- LAUREL got the clue [Able to endure difficult conditions] and HARDY got the clue [Kind of wreath]
- PENN got the clue [Bank employee] and TELLER got the clue [Philadelphia university, familiarly]
- CHIP got the clue [Hill's partner] and DALE got the clue [China problem]
Word of the Day: TRADING PLACES (Classic 1983 comedy … or a hint to what the answers to four pairs of starred clues are doing) —
In 2010, nearly 30 years after its release, the film was cited in the testimony of Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief Gary Gensler regarding new regulations on the financial markets. He said:We have recommended banning using misappropriated government information to trade in the commodity markets. In the movie Trading Places, starring Eddie Murphy, the Duke brothers intended to profit from trades in frozen concentrated orange juice futures contracts using an illicitly obtained and not yet public Department of Agriculture orange crop report. Characters played by Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd intercept the misappropriated report and trade on it to profit and ruin the Duke brothers.The testimony was part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act designed to prevent insider trading on commodities markets, which had previously not been illegal. Section 746 of the reform act is referred to as the "Eddie Murphy rule".
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Y'all, I thought this was so hard!! I didn't clock the theme until literally the last minute of my solve, at which point I had shrugging-ly filled in a lot of the pairs due to crosses. (Even though I got the movie pretty early on! Which I am very proud of by the way!! Long-time readers will know that I know basically zero pop culture references from before 2000, but in this case I have both seen Trading Places and deeply enjoyed it!! So there!!)
As a result, this played like a themeless puzzle for me and this fill was..... oof. AFORE, TOMS, NINEVEH, TOED clued as golf jargon, MOA, ELL, TRALA (??????????????????), EIDER, LAMINA, LISTERIA, ROPER. Yikes. I was fighting for my life. I think this is definitely the kind of puzzle that is much more fun if you pick up on the theme early-- the clues are starred so you know which ones to look at, but you do still have to figure out which pairs go together, which in my opinion is the perfect amount of opaque. And it's so impressive that the constructor squished four of those pairs in.
Bullets:
- ["Sim," in Brazil] for YES — This really tripped me up because I expected the reverse order... Like I read this clue as "The entry is how you say the word "sim" when you are in Brazil" and I was like "Well why on Earth would I know that."
- Can someone explain to me why [Hill's partner] is a clue for DALE?
- [Black: It.] as a clue for NERO — This is totally unrelated to the puzzle, but I hate how The Times styles clues like this. They were totally baffling when I first started solving. Please just say ["Black," in Italian]
- [Bananagrams pieces] for TILES — Nothing else to say here except that I love to play Bananagrams.