Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson
Relative difficulty: Hard!! 16:13
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THEME: OOPS I DID IT AGAIN — Phrases that already contain the word "it" have the letters IT inserted a second time, to wacky effect
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Relative difficulty: Hard!! 16:13
THEME: OOPS I DID IT AGAIN — Phrases that already contain the word "it" have the letters IT inserted a second time, to wacky effect
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: ZAX (Stubborn Seuss character, with "the") —
Hey pals! Happy Malaika MWednesday to all those who celebrate. This evening I had Indian food and then saw the movie Polite Society with a friend on 34th St. Then we watched all the Knicks fans exit MSG as though it were the great wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. Anyway, puzzle time.
- WHO CAN IT BITE NOW-- Vicious pet handler's query?
- ITS A GOOD TITHING-- Observation when the collection plate is overflowing?
- I GUESS ITS FINITE-- "So much for my theory that the universe has no end"?
Word of the Day: ZAX (Stubborn Seuss character, with "the") —
A story from the book The Sneetches and Other Stories features The Zax from the Dr. Seuss book. They are stubborn and arguable and have messy hair and hairy bodies. They live in the Prairie of Prax. Varieties of Zax include a North-Going Zax and a South-Going-Zax. Due to their stubbornness, they refuse to go in any direction other than their assigned directions. If a south-going Zax encounters a north-going Zax, they cannot solve their issue and the world progresses without them as years pass by, such as a highway being built over them and a city nearby while still standing grumpily at each other.
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My thought when I started this puzzle was definitely blechhh.... I do not do well with pun themes, and I honestly only skimmed the clues of the long answers. Until!! I got to the revealer. Britney!! My girl!!!! I dropped in the entry with zero crosses, and also immediately changed my solving music (Prince + Rosie Gaines' version of Nothing Compares 2 U --> Britney's Toxic). What a reinvigorating entry. At the end of the day, this is still Add-Some-Letters Wackiness, but I loved the "reason" for it.
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| our queen |
The non-theme stuff felt a little tricky or crunchy or tortured, whatever you want to call it. Lots of fill that made me wrinkle my nose, like KIR and SERA and SEZ and SECO and EFT and RIOJA and SSR and AFI. I filled those in with ease because I've seen them all before, but if you're a new solver, those are the types of entries that might make you think crosswords are only for people who are wine experts or herpetologists or whatever. (New solvers!! Please know that very few of us are wine experts!!!! We just look at the solution the first few times, and then memorize all those little words for future use.)
I was also aware of how many prepositional(?) phrases there were. (Is that what they're called?? Someone correct me.) Things like HOP IN / SEE TO / STIRS IN / IRON ON / IN TIME / GLOM ONTO. The phrasing of clues for those types of terms can feel sort of clunky, and they're tough to parse when you're new to Crossword Grammar.