Constructor: Enrique Henestroza Anguiano
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: SHANE Victorino (47D: Baseball's ___ Victorino, nicknamed "The Flyin' Hawaiian") —
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I'm somewhere in the vast middle between "IS THAT IT?" and ALL-TIME GREATS on this one. It started and ended well, as I opened with MATCHA (delicious, and answer-wise, fresh) and closed with the puzzle's best answer, BEERAMID (never drank enough to build one of these, but I've seen them in '80s teen movies, for sure). In between those first answers is a solid center stack, but the longer Downs all felt a little tepid to me, and overall there just wasn't as much Pop as I like in a Friday. The entire SE corner feels thrown away. Nothing down there. Admittedly, it's hard to make 6-letter answers pop, but in a themeless, every section should have *something* to offer in the way of flash, and today the NW corner shines much brighter than the SE in that regard. If the grid itself isn't terribly showy, there is at least some interesting stuff going on in the cluing—stuff that slowed me down in an otherwise fairly EASY puzzle. The clue on SPIN SERVE absolutely clotheslined me—and I've watched/played tennis plenty. There's just no way to know what kind of "point" the clue is talking about, and even after getting the SPIN- part I thought it still seemed possible that we were talking about the kind of point you make in an argument of some kind; maybe the SPIN had to do with P.R., I dunno. I needed a bunch of those short Downs up there to see SPIN SERVE. (It's too bad "SPIN CITY" didn't fit up there, as it would've made a nice '90s sitcom symmetrical counterpoint to "NEWSRADIO"). The other clue that tricked / misled me was 30D: Don't blow it! (BIG LEAD). I don't know what you call this type of "it" clue, where the clue seems to be making a familiar exclamation, and your job is to figure out the "it" (e.g. [Step on it!] for STAIR or [Beat it!] for DRUM, stuff like that). This one seemed to me to violate the spirit of that cluing type, though—usually the "it" puts the expression in a completely different context (e.g. [Step on it!] normally refers to stepping on the gas, so STAIR is unexpected). But here ... [Don't blow it!] means "don't screw it up" and blowing a BIG LEADis a form of screwing up. And yet I still enjoyed finding my way to the answer there. Both SPIN SERVE and BIG LEAD are good answers, so battling the clues felt rewarding.
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: SHANE Victorino (47D: Baseball's ___ Victorino, nicknamed "The Flyin' Hawaiian") —
Shane Patrick Victorino (born November 30, 1980), nicknamed "The Flyin' Hawaiian", is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He was primarily a switch-hitter until the 2013 season, when discomfort from various hamstring, back, and knee problems forced him to become an exclusively right-handed batter.
Victorino made his MLB debut with the Padres in 2003. He played for the Phillies from 2005 through 2012. With the Phillies, Victorino won three Gold Glove Awards, was named to two MLB All-Star Games, and was a member of the 2008 World Series champions. With the Red Sox, Victorino won his fourth Gold Glove Award and was a member of the 2013 World Series champions. He also won the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award in 2008 and the Branch Rickey Award in 2011.
Victorino was born on November 30, 1980, in Wailuku, Hawaii. (wikipedia)
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One answer that never got around to feeling rewarding was CASCADING MENU (34A: Computer flow like [Insert -> Picture -> From File]). Never heard of it. I mean, I've seen it, apparently, but that term meant less than zero to me. I had CASCADING and still no idea. MENU was blocked to my mind because I got kealoa'd* at 26D: Minus—I knew it ended in an "S" and I wrote in LESS (it's SANS, which is a horrible word to hear in English, truly, that "A"...). I needed literally every cross of MENU to see, well, MENU. "Oh, is that what that is called?" I learned a term, at least. I expect lots of people learned at least one name today, as this puzzle Really leans heavy into proper nouns, not all of them terribly familiar. My condolences to non-baseball fans on SHANE Victorino. I hope that didn't rough you up too bad. I loved "NEWSRADIO," but I feel like time forgot it. If you forgot it, or never knew it, at least the clue gave you some hope of getting it. I teach (old) comics, so ETTA Candy is a familiar figure to me. I kinda sorta know the name RENÉ Girard, but I don't know why (28A: Philosopher Giard who coined "mimetic desire") (Does the puzzle think most people know that term? I don't). And I enjoy the music of HAIM (as well as the acting of Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza), but I'm quite sure a lot of solver will not recognize the name at all. It's a bit of a name minefield, is what I'm saying. The marquee name should be familiar, though: ISABEL ALLENDE is a major (and prolific) Chilean novelist (now living in the U.S.) who has been called (per wikipedia) "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." I had to read her in college. She's still living and writing, which I know because she was a recent guest on Julia Louis-Dreyfus's excellent new podcast "Wiser Than Me," which features long conversations between the host and various old(er) women: Ruth Reichl, Jane Fonda, Fran Lebowitz, etc. So much more interesting than a "celebrity" interview show has any right to be, mainly because the host and her guests are so surprisingly, shockingly honest—it's like there's no P.R. person anywhere in the room, and these women are accomplished enough and old enough that they will say Whatever They Want (about sex, death, illness, exes, kids, parents, work, feminism, and on and on. Totally refreshing). Where was I? Oh, names. Lots of them. Some obscure. Hope you survived.
Anything need explanation? I had to explain to myself how the hell FADES works for 44D: Some short cuts ... turns out the "cuts" are "haircuts." Took me a few seconds of screwing up my face and tilting my head for that revelation to come to me.
The term "fade" originated in Black-owned barber shops and has become the popular term for an aggressively tight taper in men's hair. Hair at the sides and back is cut as close as possible with clippers and "fades," or tapers, up into almost any length on top. (byrdie.com)That's it for puzzling clues, I think. People know that CSA stands for "community supported agriculture," right? Anything else? Hmm. After getting kealoa'd by SANS, it happened again, this time in more classic form, at 37D: ___ Minor—wanted URSA, got ASIA. Oh, hey, I looked up "mimetic desire," which the puzzle generously but erroneously assumed I knew. Here's the gist of it, from Girard himself:
"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."
More wikipedia now: "Mimetic theory posits that mimetic desire leads to natural rivalry and eventually to scapegoating - Girard called this the scapegoat mechanism. In his study of history, Girard formed the hypothesis that societies unify their imitative desires around the destruction of a collectively agreed-upon scapegoat." I'm suddenly intrigued. Time for coffee. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
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