Constructor: Joe Deeney
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: POET'S CORNER (47A: Westminster Abbey section hinted at by this puzzle's architecture)— two poets cross in every "corner" of the puzzle:
Theme answers:
Well this was over fast:
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Lord knows I enjoy poetry, but this puzzle fell a bit flat for me. I mean, there it is: poets in corners, POET'S CORNER, ta-da. The poets' names are all clued as ordinary words, so that gives the name set a loose kind of coherence—FROST and HARDY yes, but DONNE and WYATT no. But that's not exactly an interesting coherence—last names that are also ordinary words. And the poets seem mainly to be in the grid because their names are short. The group is bizarre. Several of these poets *are* actually buried (HARDY) or memorialized in (BURNS, POPE) POET'S CORNER, but then there's an Irishman and a bunch of random American poets with short names, so ... I dunno. There are poets, there are corners, the end. The cluing conceit here is kind of interesting, but mostly just redundant. I will say that "An Essay On Man" in the clue definitely helped with POPE, because no way I was going to get that from its straight clue. Yes, Vatican City, blah blah blah "smallest nation" but I never think of the Catholic POPE as leading a "nation," so Alexander POPE to the rescue! Mostly, though, the poem titles are tacked on and ornamental and unnecessary. I just wonder if there isn't a more entertaining way to execute a POET'S CORNER puzzle.
I don't remember much about the fill except KAMPRAD, LOL, no way, that looks like you quickly made up a name or smashed your face into the keyboard. Needed crosses for Every Last Letter. Thankfully, "HEY, MR. DJ" was a radio staple of my youth, and I knew who JEFF (another name!) Probst was, or I could've been in a hell of a lot of trouble with all those proper nouns colliding. As it was, I was in serious trouble back at the first "A" in KAMPRAD, because I had no idea who the "Norwegian-born suffragist" was *and* I had the PELS in as the PENS (bad time to confuse basketball and hockey!), so I had HENG- as the suffragist ... crossing K-MPRAD ... and that looked like one of the biggest Naticks of all time. But then I thought long and hard about how one might shorten "Pelicans" and realized "oh, right, probably you'd drop the "ican" part and not the "lica" part." So in went PELS and, well, HELGA is at least a recognizable human name, so problem solved. But the heart of all these problems, real and potential, is KAMPRAD, a name only a bloated, uncurated wordlist could love. NASIM was also a name I didn't know, but that seems much more like a name I might know or should know, and anyway it had a recognizable name-ness to it, such that I didn't absolutely *need* all of the crosses (though I can see how NASIM / MII might've tripped someone up). Speaking of curating your wordlist, UNPC? Still? It's garbage, junk, a right-wing talking point (I mean, now it's "woke," but same energy, for sure). It's an awful dated crosswordesey crutch and you should shoot it into the sun.
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- Alexander POPE / Ezra POUND (1A: Leader of the world's smallest nation ("An Essay on Man") / 1D: Use a hammer on ("In a Station of the Metro"))
- Adrienne RICH / Thomas HARDY (10A: Loaded ("Diving Into the Wreck") / 13D: Able to weather difficult conditions ("Channel Firing"))
- Robert BURNS / Gertrude STEIN (51D: Incinerates ("To a Mouse") / 69A: Drinking vessel that may have a lid ("Sacred Emily"))
- Robert FROST / Jonathan SWIFT (71A: Coat put on when it's cold? ("Mending Wall") / 56D: Fleet-footed ("A Maypole"))
Helga Estby (May 30, 1860 – April 20, 1942) was an American suffragist most noted for her walk across the United States during 1896. [...] Due to the financial Panic of 1893 and her husband's accidents, the family could not pay the mortgage or taxes on their home and farmland. Together with Clara, her 17-year-old daughter, Helga tried to save her family farm by walking 3,500 miles across country to New York City. Helga had made a bet with an unknown sponsor that would give them $10,000 if they did the walk in seven months. Clara and Helga started the walk from Spokane on May 5. The women walked 25-35 miles a day and were offered shelter along the way, spending only 9 nights without a roof over their head. On Christmas Eve, 1896, the New York World reported their arrival in New York City. On arrival in New York, the sponsor of the contest refused to pay or help them back home, saying the women had missed their deadline. Helga managed to return to her farm only to find that two of her children had died of diphtheria in her absence // After the Estby family lost their home in Mica Creek, Ole Estby began a construction business in Spokane, Washington. Helga was considered a deserter of her family and was shunned by much of the local Norwegian-American community. Helga went on to become a suffragist and wrote down her story later in her life. Her notes were destroyed, but her story was carried on through oral tradition, by her family and through newspaper clippings saved by her daughter-in-law. (wikipedia)
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I've heard TOFU DOG way more than SOY DOG, but I suppose the latter is valid (if somehow more awful-sounding). I enjoyed the bonus poetry clue on TETRA- (18A: Prefix with meter, to a versifier). Yesterday I taught Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which is written in iambic TETRAmeter couplets ("Had we but world enough and time..."). Great, freaky poem. Marvell ... not in POET'S CORNER, though his buddy Milton is. Marvell was instrumental in convincing Charles II not to execute Milton after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 (Milton having written anti-monarchical stuff that essentially justified the execution of the King's father, Charles I, in 1649). Marvell is buried elsewhere in London, in the church of St. Giles in the Fields. OK now I'm not talking about the puzzle at all, so I'll stop. Maybe go read some poetry with my coffee. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld