Constructor: Andrew Kingsley and Garrett Chalfin
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: SPLIT PEAS (35D: Certain soup ingredients ... or a homophonic hint to the answers to the starred clues)— words with double "P"s are "split" across black squares, right between the "P"s:
Theme answers:
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"This better be good" / "Not good enough"—these were the phrases I either uttered or thought to myself just just before, and after, I got the revealer phrase. "All we're doing is splitting words? Why? I need a rationale." Well, I got one, and it was a letdown. I mean, cute pun, I suppose, but I like my Thursdays with a lot more bite than this. I don't think the journey is worth the joke. Not on a Thursday, anyway. If you're someone who routinely hates Thursdays because they get too tricksy, then this one was probably Right up your alley. You do get a gimmick that involves entering the answers in unusual ways, but it's nothing you can't navigate with a little patience. The only answer I can see tripping anyone up is EMILY—Saturday-level clue on that one, for sure (3D: ___ Greene Balch, American humanitarian who won the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize). But otherwise, this was pretty much a cakewalk. I think my issue isn't so much with the puzzle's theme, which does what it says it does, and does it competently enough, as with the puzzle's appearing on Thursday. The gimmick is perhaps *too* tricksy for a Wednesday puzzle, but that's where I might've enjoyed seeing it—on a day when I'm not expecting much and I get a little theme elevation, a little zing. But the final "joke" is just too corny, and the basic gimmick not interesting enough, to occupy the Thursday slot. And they even starred the damn theme clues for you—why? Figuring that kind of stuff out on your own is half the fun on Thursdays. This theme was remedial for a Thursday—which is great for a certain section of the solving population, I'm sure. Just not for me.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Easy
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Theme answers:
- WHIP/PETS (17A: *Dogs that can run up to 35 miles an hour)
- POWER SUP/PLY (28A: *Electrical current converter)
- PHILIP/PINES (45A: *Country composed of over 7,000 islands)
- FLIP/PANT (61A: *Lacking seriousness, as an attitude)
- REAP/PEAR (11D: *Show up again)
nounUS
• • •
It is true that the splits don't just split, they also split into what look like two distinct, stand-alone answers (e.g., POWERS UP on the one hand, PLY on the other). That is a nifty little architectural bit. Doesn't really have anything to do with solving enjoyment, but it's a nice touch. I just don't see it throwing people off the scent much, if at all. I mean, if the first themer you encounter is 17A: *Dogs that can run up to 35 miles an hour and you get WHIP, then, unless you are entirely dog-ignorant, you know that the PETS has gone missing. And even if you're entirely dog-ignorant, you can't possibly think that WHIP is the right answer for that clue, and anyway they've *told* you to look out for trickiness by flagging this clue with an * in the first place, so ... there's no real room to struggle, actually. You're being spoon-fed so much. I finished the NW easily and immediately thought "OK, where's the PETS?" I honestly thought the revealer was going to be NO PETS, and I was like "damn ... and they managed to use an *actual pet* as a themer ... how are they going to keep *that* up? How many pets have PETS in their name!?!?" But the PETS was just on the other side of the black square, ho hum.
Between getting the theme and *getting* the theme (i.e. between WHIP/PETS and SPLIT PEAS), things got ... grim, in a couple of ways. First, I got police brutality with the "bad"COP clue, which maybe I wouldn't have read so brutally if it hadn't crossed COMA. Then I get the grimness of World War II not once but twice—the real grimness there isn't so much the grimness of war as the grimness of repetition. I mean, you clued AT WAR *via* World War II (1D: Like much of Europe beginning in 1939) ... and then put WWII in the grid? (26D: "Jojo Rabbit" setting: Abbr.). So you dupe "war" (it's in AT WAR and it's what the second "W" in WWII stands for), and then you emphasize the duplication by making the clue on AT WAR explicitly about that same war. Editors are supposed to do better. I hesitated to write in WWII, even though I knew it was probably right, because I couldn't believe they would dupe both the word and the war itself. So, grim in subject matter, grim in technical execution. And in case that wasn't grim enough for you, we got ASSAD waiting for you at the bottom of the grid. From war to war to war criminal, great.
Didn't like the clue on "I INSIST" since ["No, really"] is more the thing you (maybe) say before you say "I INSIST," not a great equivalent *of* "I INSIST." ["No, really!"] looks is more a reaction to someone's disbelief, a rough equivalent of "IT'S TRUE!" or "I SWEAR!" But I'm just quibbling here, and anyway I kinda like an answer that starts with double-"I"s. Unusual. Thought ONE SEEDS (6D: Bracketologists' picks, often) were TOP SEEDS, which is basically the same thing, but the clue was weird to me because "picks" here seems to refer to picking the *outcomes* of the games, whereas I thought "bracketologists" made predictions about the brackets themselves, i.e. predictions about what the brackets will look like, and which teams will *be* ONE SEEDS. The "often" in this clue, though, suggests that the "bracketologists" in this case are, like any other schmo in a NCAA basketball tournament office pool, just picking ONE SEEDS to win the tourney. This is why I made "bracketologist" the Word of the Day. Looks like the word can be taken either way—referring to one who predicts both the "participants in and outcomes of" tournament games. Good to know. That's all. See you tomorrow.
P.S. I didn't even mention that this grid has a creepy asymmetry, which I do not care for. "Creepy" because it's not pronounced and purposeful—you can just tell that something is ... off. I first noticed when I saw there was no rotationally symmetrical partner for DISC (38A). The asymmetry here would make sense if it only involved the black square in REAP/PEAR, which (if you include the black square) is symmetrical with SPLITPEAS, but it goes beyond that. Those central black square formations just aren't ... right. DISC is in the center row, but offset, i.e. not dead center. Makes me a little queasy if I look at it too long. Boldly breaking symmetrical for thematic / artistic purposes, I can get behind that. But this slight alteration to symmetry ... it's Uncanny Valley territory for me. Do not like. I'd rather have a symmetrical grid where the split "P"s appeared in asymmetrical places, for sure.
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