Constructor: Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME:"Sea Change"— word ladder that starts with SHIP and returns to SHIP, the premise of the puzzle being the "thought experiment" called the SHIP OF THESEUS (22- and 121-Across: Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replace one by one):
Theme answers:
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I solved this one on Twitch with my friend Rachel, who is no longer forbidden from making NYTXW puzzle-solving videos with me since, well, she no longer works for the NYT. "You can't do those solving videos with Rex any more" always struck me as a weird, paranoid, petty employment condition. But NYT's gonna NYT, whaddyagonna do? Just glad Rachel has her freedom back. Anyway, the video of us solving this one appears below. The upshot of my solving experience was: wow, this one went places. High, low, good, bad. I felt all the feelings. In the end, I have to admire the avant-garde boldness of the whole endeavor. Word ladders are among the tiredest and least satisfying of crossword themes, and the ladder itself was blah—some of the themers ended up being cool, some bland, whatever. The ladder laddered. It would've been a huge nothing without the absolutely bonkers core concept, which is that the word ladder is actually a literalization of the "thought experiment" referred to by the first (and last!) themer. But but but (you might sputter) there's a major violation of crossword rules here! The last themer is the same as the first! To which the puzzle itself replies: IS IT? The whole point of the "thought experiment" is to question the very concept of "same"ness. So the answer duplication is artful, intentional, provocative, defiantly anti-conventional, and for that, I love it. I didn't love how dang easy it was to fill in every single themer once you know you're dealing with a word ladder. And I think the puzzle loses style points, or elegance points, by not having the letters in SHIP completely replaced by the dead center of the grid. That is, instead of having all four new letters by that point, the puzzle is already putting the SHIP back together (returning the "S") before the "H" has even been replaced yet. A perfect expression of this theme would have all four new letters sitting dead center, and then a complete return to SHIP by the end. But that was not to be. Maybe Will tried that and the theme answer options just weren't pretty, so he went with this slightly wonkier but ultimately just as effective ladder. At any rate, I am into this theme in a way I haven't been into a Sunday theme in ages.
[warning: seriously, it's violent]
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- SHIP OF THESEUS (22A: Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replace one by one)
- CHIP AND DALE (33A: Acorn-loving duo)
- CHOPSTICKS (48A: Restaurant pick-up option?)
- CHOW YUN-FAT (51A: Hong Kong action hero who frequently collaborated with John Woo)
- SHOWBOATING (71A: Ostentatious behavior)
- SLOW MOTION (87A: Dramatic action-movie effect)
- SLOP BUCKET (90A: Pail for feeding pigs)
- SLIP-ON SHOES (107A: Loafers, e.g.)
- SHIP OF THESEUS (121A: Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replace one by one)
The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?
In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity. (wikipedia)
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The fill is all over the map. Mostly it's good, and it's certainly ... uh, trying? Trying to be fresh? I think. Stuff like LATA and APPA felt very intentional. That is, I've never heard of either, and I'm guessing that's true of lots of solvers, but the puzzle makes those answers very gettable, so I was happy enough to learn them. Although, I should probably actually *learn* LATA Mangeshkar now. Hang on. Here we go. Per wikipedia:
Lata Mangeshkar ([ləˈt̪aː məŋˈɡeːʃkər] [...]; born Hema Mangeshkar; 28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer. She is widely considered to have been one of the greatest and most influential singers in India and one of the world's greatest singers, according to BBC. Her contribution to the Indian music industry in a career spanning eight decades gained her honorific titles such as the "Queen of Melody", "Nightingale of India", and "Voice of the Millennium"
OK yeah that definitely sounds like someone whose international stature makes her crossworthy. As I told Rachel while solving, "if she's the 'Queen of Melody' the way Aretha is the 'Queen of Soul,' then that would make her very much worth knowing, I guess."APPA crossing ATTA might've been tricky for some, but first of all everyone should know ATTA by now and second of all even if you didn't, the "palindromic" in the clue meant that the cross with APPA should not have been a problem. If you've got the "A" from TOASTS (and why wouldn't you...?), then you've automatically got the initial "A" in APPA. There were a lot of names in this one, particularly pop cultural names. CHAO NOSRAT PAOLO EMMA CORRIN—these were really the only places in the puzzle that were likely to slow you down. Not usually the biggest fan of relying almost exclusively on proper noun trivia for "difficulty," but again, because the puzzle was so easy, I didn't mind the glut of names too much. I was actually happy to be reminded of CHOW YUN-FAT, a handsome and charismatic actor many solvers won't know, but who is a genuinely huge star in Hong Kong cinema, and had a brief star moment stateside in the '90s when he starred opposite Mira Sorvino in The Replacement Killers (1998). He's best known for his work with John Woo in the '80s and '90s, in the crime dramas A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992)—movies where Woo's "bullet ballet" style is in full effect. Violent, but gorgeous, and hugely entertaining.
Rachel and I were unsure how we felt not just about OTIOSITY as a word, but about the OTIOSITY / NULLITY crossing, which feels like a sci-fi thought experiment of its own. Is it possible to be so lazy that you literally cease to be? This is the existential question at the heart of ... The OTIOSITY NULLITY (coming from Riverhead Books this fall). Speaking of "does it exist?" ... FETTLE. Really not a fan of this word standing there all by its lonesome. What even is FETTLE? It sounds like feed for your stock ("SLOP BUCKET's empty! Fetch some more FETTLE!"). But it just means "condition," from what I can tell, and you never ever see it unless it's preceded by "in fine." Bah. I also balked at HADIN (95A: Invited over). Rachel thought it was fine. I thought the phrase was "had over." You have someone over and you ask someone in. HADIN feels forced/off. We both agreed that we'd never heard UPPISH, ever, but Rachel thought she might like to hear it, and anyway both of us agreed that it's better than the answer we had in there originally, which was UPPITY, yuck (43D: Hoity-toity). OK, that's enough, the cats are getting crazy and crawling all over my desk and keyboard, which means it's feeding time. See you later.
[Here's the link to the video of me and Rachel Fabi solving this puzzle] [I'll embed the video on this page sometime this morning...]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld