Constructor: Alina Abidi and Matthew Stock
Relative difficulty: No idea ... as a Downs-only solve: Challenging
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THEME: animal + gait — familiar phrases that follow the "animal" + "gait" pattern:
Theme answers:
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Oof, do you know how bad the [define "bear crawl"] results are on google? It's just horrible "fitness" site after horrible "fitness" site without a decent simple definition anywhere in ... sight. This is what google has been reduced to—largely useless except for a. wikipedia and b. jerks wanting to sell you stuff. I guess BEAR CRAWL is some fitness fad? I dunno. Something about your core. I have a personal trainer, go to the gym 2-4 times a week, and I have no idea what a BEAR CRAWL is. Probably too hard ... core for me. A bear claw, I know what that is (not a food favored by the BEAR CRAWL advocates, probably). I also know what a BEER CRAWL is ... or I thought I did. As I was solving Downs-only (as is my Monday routine), I deffffffffffinitely thought this was a BEER CRAWL. I know the more familiar term is "pub crawl," but given BE-R CRAWL, the only sensible letter there seemed like it had to be "E." Give me a BEER CRAWL over a BEAR CRAWL any day. A BEER CRAWL with a bear claw waiting for me at the end. Perfect. I'll hit the gym tomorrow.
Relative difficulty: No idea ... as a Downs-only solve: Challenging
Theme answers:
- RAT RACE (13A: Corporate grind)
- SALMON RUN (28A: Aquatic migration sometimes aided by a fabricated ladder)
- FOX TROT (43A: Ballroom dance in 4/4 time)
- CATWALK (45A: Platform at the center of a fashion show)
- BEAR CRAWL (54A: Core-building exercise that starts on all fours)
The bear crawl is almost identical to the standard crawl, but the feet are used instead of the knees, which creates an arched or squatted body posture. This works as a faster crawl but requires more effort to maintain. (wikipedia)
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Do bears really crawl on their toes? Does it even matter? Sorry, really hung up on this dumb "core-building exercise." There are SO MANY core-building exercises, why are you sprint-crawling around like a bear? Where do you even find the room? Sigh. Annnnyway, this theme seems to have an interesting idea on its hands, but the themer set gets looser the bigger it gets. It's actually the RACE part that seems out of place to me. All the others seem like specific paces or gaits, but RACE just seems reduplicative of RUN. It's too general a term. Not gait-y enough. It's true that CRAWL is also more metaphorical, less specifically gait-ish, but it's RACE that feels like the outlier to me. It's cute, the whole animal + "word describing forward movement" conceit ... the answers are colorful, and there sure are a lot of them. Plus, the grid shape is unusual, what with its mirror symmetry and its oddly giant non-thematic SW and SE corners. As a grid, I think it's probably more interesting than most Monday grids. The theme wobbles a bit. Not the tightest. But it's more than tolerable.
From a Downs-only solving perspective, this was tough. The hardest I've done ... maybe this year. I was genuinely concerned I wouldn't be able to finish. The BEER CRAWL thing alone ate up a ton of time. But the whole NW was full of missteps for me. Was not sure about FOLK (wrote it in, pulled it, wrote it in again later). But it's the pig sound that did me in. After OINK, the only place I could think to go was SNORT ... and I "confirmed" that (eventually) with the "T" from STAB, so ... youch. And then the next couple of Downs (the ones that ran through what would eventually become KING ME) were opaque. GASLIT, no way. Not from that clue (20D: Psychologically manipulated, in a way). Not gaslighty enough, by a long shot. And then ... well, actually I had the -MBA part for the dance, but I'd written in SAMBA, not RUMBA (13D: Afro-Cuban ballroom dance). Throw in my iffiness on FOLK, and you have a real mess up there. I also had real trouble with GAFFE (31D: Social blunder). Then I had a stupid stupid typo that left me with DDS where I wanted DRS to be (40D: Jekyll and Pepper, for two: Abbr.), which completely screwed me up for a while (this was in no way the puzzle's doing, just stupid human error). Looking back, it's really the SNORT-for-GRUNT and the BEER CRAWL-for-BEAR CRAWL errors that slowed me down the most. But I got there eventually. Success is success when you're solving Downs-only. Take the win and be happy you didn't wipe out. That's it. See you tomorrow.