Constructor: Julian Lim
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: Carmen MCRAE (37A: Singer Carmen) —
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A mostly enjoyable Saturday effort. Many tough parts for me, but I still got through it in very respectable time—8:57, on paper. Pangrams (of which this puzzle is an example) are generally less disastrous in themelesses than they are in themed puzzles because there's just so much more freedom for a constructor, i.e. you're not trying to shove every letter of the alphabet into a grid that's already pretty well taken up with theme answers. Still, whenever I see one, I have to wonder if the fill could've been better had the constructor put kwality above A-to-Z-ness. INURN is always very painful, and with ENTS (14D: M.D.'s with tiny flashlights) and FRESCAS (!), contributes to a rather ugly patch there in the NE. Also, DUCTED? Yuck-ted. URE PERF!? (8D: Strict follower? + 9D: Stamp feature, in philately lingo) Hoo boy, no. But: there's lots of spice and pizzaz here to make up for the short gunk. I especially liked QUICK BUCK, "I WAS HAD!", and CRAZY IDEA, and the entire SE (minus the R.R.N. at 60D) really looks great. I don't know what a HOME LAB is. I assume it's a LAB that you have in your HOME. I had noooo idea who ALAN PAGE was (40A: Football Hall-of-Famer who became a Minnesota Supreme Court justice), so I had to build him brick by brick. But it's a *cross*word puzzle, so even though I was ignorant about the football player, I could use *crosses* to fill in every letter. Also, because ALAN and PAGE are both common names, even if I hadn't known all the crosses, I could've *inferred* virtually any letter in ALAN PAGE's name if I'd had to. Sorry to get all basic on you, but sometimes it's important. ("¡Minas Muletas!")
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I'm somewhat surprised at how quickly I got through this thing given how laden it is with "?" clues and cross-referencing—things that tend to slow all solvers down. Maybe it wasn't so much the amount of cross-referencing as the placement. 24D: Like 49-Down is at the heart of the puzzle, connecting all the various parts together, and yet ... you can't get at it unless you get down into the SE *or* just piece it together from crosses. I chose the latter route, and ended up filling in RUBBERY and then using that to help me guess 49D: Stuff in a swim cap (LATEX). 11D: What a 64-Across may comprise was another important long answer that you needed to look elsewhere to understand. So again I just hammered at it with crosses until it resembled a word that might go with the clue at 64A: Gift for a TV buff. Getting ONE SEASON helped me change a wrong answer—IBMS to ABMS (not sure why I decided ICBMS might also be IBMS, but I did). I think the biggest aids to my quick solving today were the rapper and the JAZZ singer, both of whom were gimmes. God knows why I remember JA RULE, but I do (26A: Rapper with the 2002 #1 hit "Always on Time"). The "J" from JA RULE was undoubtedly important, but it's MCRAE who really opened up the grid, especially with the nearby cross-reference answer JAZZ (43A: Genre for 37-Across). "Z"s will break a puzzle Open! CRAZY IDEA and TANZANIAN came pretty quickly thereafter.
Bullets:
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: Carmen MCRAE (37A: Singer Carmen) —
Carmen Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1920 – November 10, 1994) was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable.[1] McRae drew inspiration from Billie Holiday, but established her own distinctive voice. She went on to record over 60 albums, enjoying a rich musical career, performing and recording in the United States, Europe, and Japan. (wikipedia)
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A mostly enjoyable Saturday effort. Many tough parts for me, but I still got through it in very respectable time—8:57, on paper. Pangrams (of which this puzzle is an example) are generally less disastrous in themelesses than they are in themed puzzles because there's just so much more freedom for a constructor, i.e. you're not trying to shove every letter of the alphabet into a grid that's already pretty well taken up with theme answers. Still, whenever I see one, I have to wonder if the fill could've been better had the constructor put kwality above A-to-Z-ness. INURN is always very painful, and with ENTS (14D: M.D.'s with tiny flashlights) and FRESCAS (!), contributes to a rather ugly patch there in the NE. Also, DUCTED? Yuck-ted. URE PERF!? (8D: Strict follower? + 9D: Stamp feature, in philately lingo) Hoo boy, no. But: there's lots of spice and pizzaz here to make up for the short gunk. I especially liked QUICK BUCK, "I WAS HAD!", and CRAZY IDEA, and the entire SE (minus the R.R.N. at 60D) really looks great. I don't know what a HOME LAB is. I assume it's a LAB that you have in your HOME. I had noooo idea who ALAN PAGE was (40A: Football Hall-of-Famer who became a Minnesota Supreme Court justice), so I had to build him brick by brick. But it's a *cross*word puzzle, so even though I was ignorant about the football player, I could use *crosses* to fill in every letter. Also, because ALAN and PAGE are both common names, even if I hadn't known all the crosses, I could've *inferred* virtually any letter in ALAN PAGE's name if I'd had to. Sorry to get all basic on you, but sometimes it's important. ("¡Minas Muletas!")
I'm somewhat surprised at how quickly I got through this thing given how laden it is with "?" clues and cross-referencing—things that tend to slow all solvers down. Maybe it wasn't so much the amount of cross-referencing as the placement. 24D: Like 49-Down is at the heart of the puzzle, connecting all the various parts together, and yet ... you can't get at it unless you get down into the SE *or* just piece it together from crosses. I chose the latter route, and ended up filling in RUBBERY and then using that to help me guess 49D: Stuff in a swim cap (LATEX). 11D: What a 64-Across may comprise was another important long answer that you needed to look elsewhere to understand. So again I just hammered at it with crosses until it resembled a word that might go with the clue at 64A: Gift for a TV buff. Getting ONE SEASON helped me change a wrong answer—IBMS to ABMS (not sure why I decided ICBMS might also be IBMS, but I did). I think the biggest aids to my quick solving today were the rapper and the JAZZ singer, both of whom were gimmes. God knows why I remember JA RULE, but I do (26A: Rapper with the 2002 #1 hit "Always on Time"). The "J" from JA RULE was undoubtedly important, but it's MCRAE who really opened up the grid, especially with the nearby cross-reference answer JAZZ (43A: Genre for 37-Across). "Z"s will break a puzzle Open! CRAZY IDEA and TANZANIAN came pretty quickly thereafter.Bullets:
- 10A: High-hatter's wear? (TOQUE)— Got it easily. Don't "get" it. It's high why? Does a pilot wear a TOQUE? I thought it was a chef's hat.
- 17A: Sheepskin source (ALMA MATER) — Nice clue. Hard to see at first because I had the first letter as "N" for a while (from incorrect HINDI at 1D: Studier of sutras (SWAMI), which I changed after finally deciding MOSTEST was correct at 19A: Maximum, nonstandardly).
- 38A: Fukuda's predecessor as Japan's P.M. (ABE)— yeah, I'm never gonna be able to keep Japanese P.M.s straight. Thank you, crosses!
- 39A: Italian game akin to pétanque (BOCCI) — seems tough until you realize, c'mon, how many "Italian games" do you actually know? That's right. You know one. This one.
- 49A: Yuri's beloved, in literature (LARA) — she of the Theme. Gimme gimme gimme.
- 2D: Final aim, to a philosopher (TELOS) — I use this word all the time in my teaching. Still took me a while to get.
- 13D: Supervillain from Krypton (URSA) — you'd think I'd've committed this non-contellation URSA to memory by now. You'd be wrong.
- 27D: Pace of "Pushing Daisies" (LEE) — uh, OK, if you say so.
- 31D: Baroque "key of glory": Abbr. (D MAJ.) — got the MAJ and waited ... for DUCTED. :-(
- 47D: Role for both Burton and Amos in a 1977 miniseries (KINTE) — "...blah blah blah 1977 miniseries." Answer achieved.
- 53D: With 54-Down, start of a historic telegraph message ("WHAT / HATH ...") — bit scary there for a bit, since I could only think of "Come here, Watson, I need you..." (yeah, phone, I know). Also, I had LED IN, not HAD IN at 58A: Welcomed to one's house, so instead of -HAT -ATH I had -LAT - ETH . After rejecting "FLAT BETH!", I proceeded in a more reasonable direction.