Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: RHONDA Vincent (45D: ___ Vincent, bluegrass singer inducted into the Grand Ole Opry) —
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The absolute heft of this grid! Four thick corners larded with three longer answers each, plus the two long zingers across the middle, and a grid as clean as all get out. I winced precisely zero times while solving this (except the inevitable wincing that comes with confronting one's own ignorance—had a few of those moments, for sure). This was a Proper Saturday, an "I've come to push you around, whaddyagonnadoaboutit" bruiser that knows you (I) like it tough, but ultimately rewarding. Make me sweat and make me like it, that is what I want from my Saturdays, and this one delivered. Complete wash-out on my first pass at the NW? Check. Multiple confident answers that ended up being wrong? You better believe that's a check. Answer after answer that made me think "ooh, nice" or "ohhhhhhh ... dang"? Check and check. I was staring at a lot of empty space and a sad, lonely RILL before I finally hit on FAT, my first *real* answer in the grid (RILL was first, but FAT (21D: Nickname for France's Louis VI, with "the") was the first thing I could confirm with crosses, namely THIEF). Then a hero showed up in the form of Ving RHAMES and finally got me going (typical of KAC's grids to have a film answer or two in them—see also LAURA DERN and "LARA" (though she wasn't clued cinematically) and Willem DAFOE, what the hell, I had no idea he was in *either* of those movies (2D: Actor in "American Psycho" and "Nightmare Alley")). Then the first answer I ran up into the NE corner was ... SNAP PEAS! (14D: Produce in pods). Looking good ... until it wasn't. Almost willing to accept that there was some vegetable called a MAYA that I hadn't heard about (18A: Remoulade ingredient => MAYO), but no way was the [Grp. influenced by the 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique"] gonna be N.O.P., so I took another look at the peas and saw that they were SNOW, not SNAP. Finally, I had a corner locked down. And what a corner! "I CAN'T EVEN!" right alongside "DO YOU MIND!?" Huge hit of colloquial goodness.
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Never too thrilled by businessspeak or tech stuff, so TECH START-UP, GET, and SIEMENS created a bit of thrill-pause for me there as I transitioned out of the NE, but then the puzzle got RED HOT again as I crossed the grid and spilled down into the SW via SCARE AWAY (wanted SCARE OFF, but, you know, letter count). And here I made another costly ERROR—thought I could handle the Ghanaian ethnicity clue and with the "W" in place wrote in ... IWOS (54A: Millions of Ghanaians, ethnically). This, it turns out, was me conflating a *lot* of things. Actually, it's me taking the thing I really wanted—IBOS—and just changing one of the letters to a "W." Sigh. Turns out IBOS (or Igbos) live primarily in Nigeria, not Ghana. Ah, that bracing reminder of one's own ignorance. Thank you, Saturday puzzle. The actual answer here turns out to be an ethnic group in sheep's clothing, namely EWES.
After finally getting hold of EWES and the rest of that corner, I rode "MEANING WHAT!?" (another burst of colloquial energy) out of the SW and over to the SE. Wait, no, at some point I must've realized that the NW was still empty and since I wasn't going to get any more help with crosses, I should go back and face it. Tough getting in. I had originally wanted BUSH HOG (?) to be some kind of HOE, but now that it was a HOG, I didn't know what to do (8D: Land-clearing tractor attachment). I had ARTISTES but it wasn't helping much. STITCH was eluding me. Somehow I just ... got ... CARICATURE, from the final two letters (and the "I" from RILL), and that was pretty much that for the NW (15A: Sketchy boardwalk offering?). Once you drive a long answer through a corner like that, you're really in business. No more panic. When I got ADDRESS BAR (1A: Field of computing) I had this quick flicker of emotion, going from "what the hell?" to "ohhhhhhh ... man ... [grumble grumble] ... yeah, that's good. Not the greatest answer, but a very, very good clue" (an ADDRESS BAR is a "field" to the extent that's a blank space you have to fill in). Finished up in the SE, which felt very easy until I got to 53D: Miss, which I wanted to be PASSed (i.e. "that was the exit back there, we just PASSed it"). And the cross on that first letter was an island involved with a film festival that I thought for sure I didn't know. But when I got it down to -IDO, I thought "well, PIDO seems very wrong, so ... I've heard of LIDO, does that? ... yep! Miss, LASS, that works!" Done and done.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: RHONDA Vincent (45D: ___ Vincent, bluegrass singer inducted into the Grand Ole Opry) —
Rhonda Lea Vincent (born July 13, 1962) is an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.
Vincent's music career began when she was a child in her family's band The Sally Mountain Show, and it has spanned more than four decades. Vincent first achieved success in the bluegrass genre in the 1970s and '80s, earning the respect of her mostly male peers for her mastery of the progressive chord structures and multi-range, fast-paced vocals intrinsic to bluegrass music. Vincent is an in-demand guest vocalist for other bluegrass and country music performers, appearing on recordings by Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson, Tanya Tucker, Joe Diffie, Faith Hill and other notables.
Vincent is an eight-time Grammy nominee, winning the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2017. In 2020, she was inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. (wikipedia)
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Two kealoas* for me today: wanted ACRID before ACUTE (1D: Sharp) and (of course) wanted SIS before SIB (39A: Fam figure). Never heard of the bluegrass RHONDA, but I'm gonna take a listen today. I grew up with bluegrass music in the house, but I don't recognize her name. Nothing much else that I didn't know today (beyond what I've covered—i.e. EWES, BUSH HOG). Frank NORRIS is kind of a toughie, but not for an English professor. I can never remember exactly what "unicorn" means in techspeak, but I feel like it typically involves making awful people very rich. "Privately held start-ups valued at over $1 billion." There you go. "Unicorns" (so-called because of statistical rarity, though wikipedia says there are over a thousand of them). Let's think about nicer things. Like UFOLOGISTS! (17A: Ones tracking disc-overies?). And that fantastic clue on ADELE (49D: Who had us at "Hello"?). I always forget she sang a "Hello"—for me, there will only ever be one:
Hope you persevered with this one, and had a good time doing it. See you next time.
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) 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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