Constructor: Spencer LeachRelative difficulty: Easy
THEME: none Word of the Day: The Count of Monte Cristo (
17A: Like the Count of Monte Cristo => IMPRISONED) —
The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. It begins on the day that Napoleon left his first island of exile, Elba, beginning the Hundred Days period when Napoleon returned to power. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book, an adventure story centrally concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness. It centers on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune, and sets about exacting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment.
Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès, a nineteen-year-old Frenchman, and first mate of the Pharaon, is falsely accused of treason, arrested, and imprisoned without trial in the Château d'If, a grim island fortress off Marseille. A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that his jealous rival Fernand Mondego, envious crewmate Danglars, and double-dealing magistrate De Villefort turned him in. Faria inspires his escape and guides him to a fortune in treasure. As the powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo (Italy), Dantès arrives from the Orient to enter the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s and avenge himself on the men who conspired to destroy him.
The book is considered a literary classic today. According to Lucy Sante, "The Count of Monte Cristo has become a fixture of Western civilization's literature." (wikipedia)
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[Man, Sammy the RICE owl looks like
he will mess you up]
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As you might know, I liked yesterday's puzzle fine. But once again I find myself on a Saturday thinking (happily), "Aha, here it is—my Friday puzzle!" This one had the zip and freshness and the whoosh-whoosh zoom-zoom quality that I have grown to expect but now seldom get from Fridays. Whereas Saturdays used to be ordeals (sometimes enjoyable and rewarding, but frequently grueling and occasionally humiliating). And now ... criss cross. I'm kind of getting used to it now. I feel a little bad for Friday, but I am very happy for Saturday, because, well, we get delightful grids like this one. This appears to be a debut, and feels very much like it was made by a young person—someone fluent in Online and Taylor Swift, someone totally at ease with LGBTQ+ terminology, maybe someone who has high
SAT SCORES and got into
RICE but is gonna take a
GAP YEAR before starting college, and yet ... the puzzle doesn't play as an obnoxiously generationally niche exercise at all. Far from exclusionary, it feels broad-minded, open-hearted, and wide in its scope of interest. You don't need lots and lots of proper nouns to signal what generational cohort you're from. Whoever the constructor is, it's best to just be ... yourself, and try to bring *everyone* along for the ride, especially people who are (demographically) nothing like you. You don't have to be young to do this. Do your thing, remember there are huge swaths of the solving world who are nothing like you, invite them to your party too, and bam, you got yourself a good time. (I actually have no idea how old this constructor is, btw, lol)
For the first few moments of this solve, I thought I was gonna get roughed up today. A rock-climbing ... grip? The grips have names? What in the world? And the British term for tea is ... not CUPPA? Is it ACUPPA? ... no? Yeesh. Trouble. I abandoned that corner, leaving just one sad piece of crosswordese behind (Anna SUI) (I'm sure she's not sad, but her solitude is sad, and it's sad (to me) that she was the only answer I got in that corner at first). I got REAPS APP SPACE- but then petered out there too. Finally another crosswordese hero came to my rescue—the mighty morphin' Brontë orphan Jane EYRE! Her little section went in at Monday speed, and now I had a (CRIMP-less!) toehold. I had wanted IMPRISONED for the Count of Monte Cristo clue, and now I could see it was right, so whoosh, there goes the Count, and then Whoosh Whoosh there goes SAT SCORES and PRIDE PARADES and POLE DANCE and the entire NW, like fireworks. Down into the center, HEADDESKing into the SW ... it all got so kinetic, so fast, all from that Jane EYRE spark. What a lady. Once I got going, I didn't struggle at all. Just rode the roller-coaster to its thrilling conclusion high atop Mount GAP YEAR (so weird to end in that part of the grid, but weird is good!) (13D: Break before starting college, for some).
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While I didn't struggle, I did have a few hesitations. "ART what? MUSEUM? No. Hmm, let's see ... ah, CENTER. Fine. Here's another: BORED TO TEARS! But ... wait, a [Smidge] is not a TAT, it's a TAD, so ... BORED TO ... what? Oh, BORED TO DEATH! Yeah, that also works. How 'bout DROPS A ... well I want HINT, but it could be CLUE (could it?), so I better check ... yep, it's HINT, alright alright." This was the kind of effort I was putting in—mild patience. It helped a lot that after every ??? moment I was rewarded with a solid-to-great answer. BORED TO DEATH! I miss that show.
The biggest challenge in the puzzle, for me, was "oh dear lord how do you spell 'Denise' again?" (35D: Soul singer Williams => DENIECE). I had a "Y" in there at one point (DENEYCE??). But the crosses were all very gettable, so the struggle was not long. Only other notable sticking point was when I wrote in SOOTHE for SOLACE (both six letters, both starting SO-, both fitting the clue) (24A: Comfort). Oh, and I had no idea that a zythophile liked BEER (56A: What a zythophile loves). Funny to have such a refined, erudite-sounding BEER term today after getting the much more downmarket BEERAMID yesterday. I also didn't know "BETTY"—thank god for crosses. I don't think I know that song. Is BETTY BATTY? Let's find out:
Appropriate to end on "I DIG" because I do. Dig. I do dig this puzzle. I dig it so much that I don't mind encountering the occasional bit of old-school crosswordese like "I DIG"! It crosses "I GOTCHA!" They have that dumb reduplicative clue thing (["Understood," once] + ["Understood"]) *and* they both feature the pronoun "I" *and* I don't care. The insane clue on DEL TACO (11D: Fast food chain whose name becomes another company when its last two letters are removed) makes up for any infelicity there, as does the rest of the grid, which is lovely. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. ENBIES are "N.B."s—short for "non-binary" (43A: Some users of they/them pronouns, informally).
P.P.S. I almost forgot to complain about
RUMOUR (2D: Bit of tea, to Brits). Ah, f*** it, I won't complain, just explain. "Tea" is a (very modern, right?) term for "dirt""gossip" etc. So, a term for "rumor," which the Brits spell
RUMOUR. I did not know that that particular bit of slang played in Britain. I thought we were looking for specifically British slang, not just British spelling. Of course I also thought we were looking for something beverage-related, so ... anyway,
RUMOUR, there you go
[Bonus music content!]
