Constructor: Victor Barocas
Relative difficulty: Easy
![]()
THEME: Constellations? — ordinary phrases clued as if they were constellations:
Theme answers:
![]()
Took a while for my brain to register the gimmick. The first theme answer is the weakest of the lot (in that something might be called "overbearing" but no one actually uses "overbear," to say nothing of OVERBEARS, as a word… and the pun is weakest there, too; the “bears” are … “over” … you? … in the sky? Mmmkay), so I mostly didn't register anything there except for the most awkward kind of wordplay, and I kept moving on. By the time I got to NIGHT CRAWLERS (20 seconds later??) I somehow had completely forgotten the clue to OVERBEARS and so the clue, [Scorpio and Cancer?], had me thinking "oh, a zodiac theme!" But then I got down to the clue for SHOOTING STARS, and the presence of Orion in that clue made me realize, finally, that it's just constellations—constellations used as wacky clues. Actually, this theme is a bit of a wacky theme reversal, in that the answers are the kinds of things you'd usually see as wacky clues. [High horse?] is a completely plausible clue for PEGASUS, for instance. The others you'd have to imagine in the singular, and their wackiness would be more of a stretch, but still, it is a bit like we got answers as clues as clues as answers. Which is fine. I think the theme is cute, and I like that I got OVERBEARS out of the way early so the rest of the themers could lead me to a brighter (!) place. I will say that I sincerely didn't know PEGASUS was a constellation. I mean, it's been clued that way in the past, so it's not like the idea is new to me, or mind-blowing. I just know PEGASUS for so many other things that it never stuck as a constellation, whereas I know Orion and Ursas pretty much exclusively as constellations. But my ignorance here had zero effect on the solve, for once, thank god. So this one left me feeling pretty good. The theme works, it improves over the course of the solve, *and* I get to think of myself as a SHOOTING STAR! (born 11/26 19-something or other I forget)
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- OVERBEARS (17A: Ursa Major and Ursa Minor?)
- NIGHT CRAWLERS (29A: Scorpio and Cancer?)
- SHOOTING STARS (49A: Sagittarius and Orion?)
- HIGH HORSE (65A: Pegasus?)
Bratislava (/ˌbrætɪˈslɑːvə/ BRAT-iss-LAH-və, US also /ˌbrɑːt-/ BRAHT-, Slovak: [ˈbracislaʋa] (listen); Hungarian: Pozsony [ˈpoʒoɲ][...]), historically known as Pressburg (German: Preßburg), is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of the official figures. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia at the foot of the Little Carpathians, occupying both banks of the River Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital to border two sovereign states. (wikipedia)
• • •
But back to my ignorance: BRATISLAVA! Got it easily enough with a few crosses, so it's definitely a place name I'd heard of, but I learned all my geography (or most of it) in high school, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decomposition of the U.S.S.R. and the war in the Balkans and all the other things that seriously changed the European map, so some of the more recently-formed countries and their capitals still haven't fully registered with me. Wikipedia says that "Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia, sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce." OMG "Velvet Divorce"! That's fantastic. Sounds hot. I don't want to get divorced, I love my wife more than I can say, but if we *had* to get a divorce, I hope it would be velvet. So soft. Also, constructors, you are encouraged to put VELVET DIVORCE in your grids now—totally valid, based solely on my having run into it during a random wikipedia search just now. Come on, you know it's better than half the stuff you were planning on putting in your themeless grid anyway, go for it! Also, I would eat a dessert and/or drink a cocktail called the "Velvet Divorce." The phrase just has so many suggestive possibilities ... Anyway, back to BRATISLAVA, it borders not one but two countries (Austria and Hungary)! That's pretty cool. Odd enough to have your capital border even one, but two!? I mean, I have no burning desire to go to Hungary right now, but still, seems cool that you can essentially walk to two foreign countries and still be home for tea. Like VELVET DIVORCE, BRATISLAVA sounds like a dessert I would eat—a kind of fancied-up baklava, maybe. I feel like I'm learning / making up so much today...
The fill on this one was OK. Of course, the hardest part of the solve was the part where they decided they were going to do that paired successive clue thing—32D: Defensive line? / 36D: Offensive line? Love to fight my way to ... SLUR? *That* kind of SLUR? Pfffft. Don't need to think about *those* kinds of SLURs any more than this stupid world already makes me think about them. I guess the ALIBI clue is OK. I just hate when the cluing gets ugly or warped just because the cluer (whether constructor or editor) thinks they can get off a "clever" clue pairing. I don't read the clues in succession or solve them successively, so whatever cuteness is supposed to be there is always lost on me and I'm left just wondering why, why lord? That ALIBI part was the only part that was even remotely tough today, mostly because I couldn't really understand the clue on WRAP (again, it's trying way, way too hard) (26D: It's filled, and may be filling), and I somehow still haven't read / watched Dune, so "???" on SPICE, which is far more generic a term than I thought I'd be dealing with (40A: Critical resource harvested in "Dune"). But as I say, this puzzle was easy so these hang-ups were nothing out of the ordinary for a Wednesday and barely count as hang-ups. Looking over the grid, maybe it's actually better than OK. In addition to BRATISLAVA / GANGSTA RAP (splashy answers both), you've got bouncy stuff like ELIXIRS and JIMMIES and GARISH (a great word), and there isn't much that's grating (beyond ESME and her condescending clue) (61D: She's found in "She loves me not"). Anything else I might complain about amounts to little more than NITS. Not exactly a BLOG RAVE today, but yeah, this is pretty good Wednesday fare. See you tomorrow.