Constructor: Lee Taylor
Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday—themers took some thought, all else easy)
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THEME: Clue + [number] = other clue — add a number to (the middle of) one answer to get the actual answer:
Theme answers:
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I love cryptic crosswords, which may be why solving this particular puzzle was so deeply unsatisfying. It's like an awkward, remedial cryptic, phrased in mathematical terms. A normal cryptic clue for BARTENDS would be something like [Serves drinks for poets around 10], where you've got the literal part ("Serves drinks") and the figurative part ("poets around ten") combined into a plausible (if loopy-sounding) overall clue. [Big story: Gingrich swallows seven!] = NEWS EVENT. Something like that. The solver has to look at the clue and figure out which part is the literal and which part is the figurative and put the answer together from there. Here, though, you can clearly see that one side of the equation is the literal. There it is. You don't have to do any work at all if you don't want to. Just ignore half the equation. Or, you can "add" a number to a different answer, if you want, I guess, but who cares? I found the themer clues tricky only to the extent that I was distracted by the first half of the equations. There's nothing clever at all about the wording of the clues. All the delightful wordplay of a good cryptic clue has been swapped out for ... mathplay!? Solving this was actually like having a cryptic clue *explained* to me. And not even explained well, because the numbers are more engulfed than simply added. And what do the numbers even mean? I mean, what's the rationale? Do they ... add up to something? Why these numbers? I guess it's because these are the numbers you can do this trick with, i.e. good luck adding "SIX" to anything and getting a plausible final answer. But the whole thing feels pointless. All it did was make me wish I was doing a proper cryptic (my favorites are the American Values Club cryptic (eds. Stella Zawistowski, Francis Heaney and Claire Muscat) and Out of Left Field (by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto).
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Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday—themers took some thought, all else easy)
Theme answers:
- BARTENDS (16A: Poets + 10 = Serves drinks)
- NEWS EVENT (35A: Small amphibian + 7 = Story worth covering)
- STONE AGE (58A: Phase + 1 = Ancient period)
- BONINESS (18D: Supervisor + 9 = Quality that makes a fish hard to eat)
- "IT WORKED!" (28D: Annoyed + 2 = "Success!")
A lichen (/ˈlaɪkən/ LY-kən, UK also /ˈlɪtʃən/ LITCH-ən) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Lichens are important actors in nutrient cycling and act as producers which many higher trophic feeders feed on, such as reindeer, gastropods, nematodes, mites, and springtails. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not plants. They may have tiny, leafless branches (fruticose); flat leaf-like structures (foliose); grow crust-like, adhering tightly to a surface (substrate) like a thick coat of paint (crustose); have a powder-like appearance (leprose); or other growth forms. (wikipedia)
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I like the grid quite a bit, though. Chuck the math parts and make it a Tuesday themeless, and you're in business. The largish corners are (mostly) full of solid, colorful answers. I don't love LICHENS in the plural, and there's a reasonable amount of short overfamiliar gunk I could do without, but overall the grid has a lot of variety and bounce. ZIP, even. Got slowed down only a few times today. Parsing "IT WORKED" took my brain a few swings ("I ... TWERKED?"), and I couldn't remember how to spell NYONG'O (specifically, I couldn't remember the first letter). I also misspelled LICOLNS, thusly. I got UNTAKEN easily enough, but something about that "word" feels absurd. Frost wrote "The Road Not Taken," not "The Road UNTAKEN." You'd say "is this seat taken?" of course, but you wouldn't say "no, it is UNTAKEN," or "there are lots of UNTAKEN seats up front"—you'd say "open" or "empty" or something like that. The seat angle is somehow not working for me here. I hope that the last movie in the "Taken" series (so ... the 17th installment, made when Liam Neeson is 90) is called "UNTAKEN." That would be cool. And then you'd have a good clue for UNTAKEN.
I don't think any clues need explaining today, so I'm off to make coffee and bother my cats. See you tomorrow.
