Constructor: Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: None
Word of the Day: EARL Boykins (50D: ___ Boykins, longtime N.B.A. player who stood at only 5'5") —
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Got a little worried there that this was gonna be a themed Saturday. The "Space Invaders" alien look of the grid suggested a possible theme, as did the way the longer answers were arranged (lots of longer Acrosses that stood out somewhat from the pack). And then one of the first clues to a longer answer that I encountered was a wacky "?" clue, which further made me think, "OH GOD, theme." But then, no, the sesame seed clue was just a standalone wacky "?" clue (22A: What might be said by successful bettors ... or sesame seeds? => "WE'RE ON A ROLL"), not part of a set, and the grid has an unusual shape just ... because. Danger averted! Once I realized a theme was not going to jump out of the woodwork and attack me, I settled in and really enjoyed this one quite a bit.You've got TAKE CENTER STAGE as your headliner (fitting!), and then you funnel down into a really impressive set of three stacked colloquial expressions ("WE'RE ON A ROLL,""SAY NO MORE,""LET'S EAT"), broadening out once again once you hit EXPLICIT CONTENT, and filling in the biggish corners from there—assuming you solved top to bottom, which I was able to do with no problem, this puzzle being easier for me than yesterday's. Not sure I like this trend of having no clear difficulty differentiation between Fri. and Sat., but that's neither here nor there where the quality of this puzzle is concerned. Good fill, good flow, low gunk factor. I'll take it.
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: EARL Boykins (50D: ___ Boykins, longtime N.B.A. player who stood at only 5'5") —
Earl Antoine Boykins (born June 2, 1976) is a former American professional basketball player. Standing at 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) in height, he is the second-shortest player in NBA history behind Muggsy Bogues, who is 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) tall. He was the head coach for the Douglas County High School boys varsity basketball team. He is now serving as an assistant coach for the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Miners. // Boykins was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1976. As a child his 5' 8" father, Willie Williams, would sneak Boykins into a gym in his gym bag. [...] Boykins played college basketball at Eastern Michigan University from 1994 to 1998. Eastern Michigan won the MAC tournament in 1996 and 1998. He earned All-Mid-American Conference first-team honors in his junior and senior year. Also, during his senior season, Boykins was second in the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship in scoring, with an average of 26.8 points per game. [...] Boykins was never drafted by an NBA team, but he was signed to short-term contracts by five different NBA teams before signing a five-year, $13.7 million contract with the Denver Nuggets prior to the 2003–2004 season. On November 11, 2004, Boykins scored 32 points in a 117–109 Nuggets' home win over the Detroit Pistons, making him the shortest player in NBA history to score 30 or more points during a game. (wikipedia)
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"WE'RE ON A ROLL" is dad-joke stupid, which is probably why I liked it. Talking sesame seeds, why not? If you're gonna be silly, be Big Silly. I was able to get EXPLICIT CONTENT without looking at the clue because I drilled right down through the middle of that answer with ease and then explicitly (?) stopped to see if I could make out the answer from those center letters without looking at the clue. It wasn't hard. I had -ICITCON-, which means you pretty much gotta break the answer between ICIT and CON, and once you do that, bam, the answer's right there. The only hard speed bump I encountered was OIL PASTEL, which ... I don't know what that is. In art contexts, I know what OILs are and I know what PASTELs are, but OIL PASTELs, no sir. I was kinda proud of myself for taking a look at -ILP- and getting OIL PENCIL. Never heard of such a thing, but my brain was satisfied, very satisfied, with that answer's plausibility. And then the final "L" was right so I was feeling pretty happy with OIL PENCIL ... until everything broke down immediately thereafter. ALTA and PEER really wanted to be ALTA and PEER, which screwed with PENCIL. So (speaking of "screwed"), I screwed SCREW TOPS into place, pulled PENCIL, wrote in PEER, wrote in PASTEL, pulled CAPS, wrote in TOPS, and finally I was back in business. I say "finally"—it probably didn't take all that long. But that corner stood out from the rest of the grid, as it actually required some concerted effort.
Dropping down from top to bottom on this one was probably the most dangerous-seeming part. I failed to break through with ON THE INSIDE (no idea about the INSIDE part) (23D: Where spies work), but AMERICAN LIT was a cinch (25D: English class largely unconcerned with the English?), and I was able to get at the INSIDE part of ON THE INSIDE from below. Not much else to say about this one. It seemed a little "?" happy, but not in a way that was excessively off-putting. I had trouble making sense of the clues on FOAM (2D: Head of the bar?) (it's the "head" on your beer) and TURN (52D: Take for a spin?) (it's self-explanatory, but for some reason the clue just didn't compute—TURN was kind of anticlimactic, as "spin" is just a synonym for "TURN," so all the rest of that clue just felt like clutter; very low "wackiness" factor). I did not know Natasha's last name was FATALE, as in "femme FATALE," that's great (10D: Natasha ___ ("Rocky and Bullwinkle" antagonist). I even kinda liked the SHARD clue (36A: Item that can be described by changing its last letter to a P). Not usually a fan of the "... if you change three letters and then move the first letter to the end and say 'Candyman' three times" type of clue, but the simplicity of the change here, and the close connection between the two words, made this one feel clever. The ART pile-up in the SE is a mini-inelegance that I could do without (crossing ART with ARTIE and throwing ARTEMISIA (?) into the bargain), but I really don't have any significant gripes about this puzzle. Felt Friday, not Saturday, but I (more often than not) like Friday, so I'm happy. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]