Constructor: Hemant MehtaRelative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for me, might just be me)
THEME: none Word of the Day: NOISE MUSIC (
11D: Nonmelodic genre) —
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.
Noise music can feature acoustically or electronically generated noise, and both traditional and unconventional musical instruments. It may incorporate live machine sounds, non-musical vocal techniques, physically manipulated audio media, processed sound recordings, field recording, computer-generated noise, stochastic process, and other randomly produced electronic signals such as distortion, feedback, static, hiss and hum. There may also be emphasis on high volume levels and lengthy, continuous pieces. More generally noise music may contain aspects such a improvisation, extended technique, cacophony and indeterminacy. In many instances, conventional use of melody, harmony, rhythm or pulse is dispensed with. (wikipedia)
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No flow whatsoever today, but I don't think it's the puzzle's fault. Not entirely. I just couldn't find the handle on a ton of clues, and much of the grid was just outside my knowledge or off my wavelength. I think the low point for me was looking at HO-DESKED and ... looking at HO-DESKED and ... just looking, really. Figured I had an error, but no. HOOD-DESKED? No, wait, too many letters. Ran the alphabet to get "T," and immediately thought "Oh, yeah ... I guess I heard that somewhere" (
36A: Shared a workspace, in modern parlance). Basically "I guess I heard that somewhere" was the order of the day. And I'm speaking as someone who flat-out knew both
BALLERS and
PLAYER-HATERS ... though the latter took me a few beats because hoo boy shouldn't that have "in times of yore" or "once" or "quaintly" or something attached to it? I feel like I haven't heard that term since the '90s.
BALLERS is most common in sports (to describe people who are very good at them) but has extended out from there to have (professional athlete) lifestyle implications ("baller" is also an adjective, just fyi). But back to my not knowing things:
NOISE MUSIC (11D: Nonmelodic genre). I am sure I've heard the phrase before, maybe seen it in xwords, but that didn't help me at all when I had -MUSIC. That NE corner pushed me around badly until I managed to get
SCHOLARSHIP up there (
10D: Knowledge, or a means to acquire it).
NOISE MUSIC is definitely a thing but also definitely a supervague thing that I never hear mentioned despite listening to and reading about music literally every day. I'm told Sonic Youth falls in this category, so apparently I am very familiar with
NOISE MUSIC and just didn't know it. Really thought I heard some "melodies" on
Goo but maybe I don't know what "melodies" are. Not sure what I know at the moment. All bets are off!
Speaking of "in times of yore" or "once" or "quaintly": MAKES LOVE! (30D: Pursues a passion?). Oof, that phrase has always made me cringe—it's got a creepy euphemistic quality about it, but its non-explicitness made it (for a time) exceedingly popular as a phrase for sex in popular music (back when popular music mostly wasn't allowed to be explicit about such things). Exceedingly popular. And yet I had MAKES- and just blanked. I couldn't really accept that the puzzle was gonna reach back to the 20th century for the sex term, so after MAKES OUT (which didn't fit), I just didn't know. Also didn't know: the OVER- part of OVERGRAZED (54A: Like some land no longer good for livestock) and the NOT ONE part of "NOT ONE WORD" (51A: "Keep this between us"). Me: "Well, MUM'S THE WORD doesn't fit, I quit."NOT ONE WORD seems like something you'd say when someone is about to sass you or taunt you or otherwise give you s**t and you want to indicate that they had better not if they want to avoid injury. So despite the fact that the grid looks like it should've been whoosh-whoosh—lots of interlocking long stuff—my experience was definite slog-slog. But then I blanked on stuff I knew today, so I don't think my judgment can be trusted. I had MERCY- and thought "ugh, what do they call it when they invoke the MERCY rule (!) to end a game? MERCY ... KILLING? No, way too harsh. MERCY ... CALL? That sounds wrong." Etc. That was the kind of day it was. Seeing the actual answer and looking right over its shoulder. (30A: Youth sports mismatch ender)
LOLLS and MULLS before MILLS (20A: Idly moves (about)), which had weirdly serious implications for getting "I COME IN PEACE" and LOINS (the latter was particularly baffling, as I thought the literal meaning of "Mutton chops" was meat and so was thinking the "?" wanted me to think about the sheep's ... actual mouth? ... I dunno man, I slept 7 hours so I don't know what's up with my brain this morning). The very idea that the word MEMO is on a check baffled me today—and I actually still handle and write checks on a regular basis.My [Tough nut to crack] was a PECAN before it was a POSER (speaking of "in times of yore" / "once" / "quaintly"—crosswords are literally the only place I see POSER). No idea what Spit is so SLAP is just four letters to me, absolutely no clue there (43A: Action in the card game Spit). SLAP hurt because it crossed CLING, which had the vaguest clue of them all (40D: Stick). I even picked wrong on the NOM/NOD kealoa* (51D: Academy recognition, for short). Tripping over my own shoelaces everywhere I went. The grid looks good, but the cluing and I just didn't get along. Nothing to be done about that. Just ... come back and try again tomorrow, I guess. See you then.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. OK one complaint—that clue on SEGA is terrrrrrible (6A: Company whose name, aptly, is an anagram of GAMES minus a letter). "Minus ... a letter?" I got news for you, if you gotta anagram it and drop a letter, than you have lost your right to use the term "aptly." This is like saying that LUCY is an apt name for someone with CURLY hair because see you just drop the "R" and then mix up the letters, see, see!
P.P.S. OK one last complaint—"living large" is already slang; no need for "in slang" to be in that clue for BALLERS (23A: Ones who live large, in slang).
*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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