Constructor: John Guzzetta
Relative difficulty: Extremely Easy except for two answers, one in particular
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: TAIKONAUT (47A: One aboard the Tiangong space station) —
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Strange puzzle—Tuesday-level difficult, but with two Saturday-plus-level difficulty answers conspicuously plunked down inside it. Absolutely jarring to have such stark disparity between just two words and the rest of the grid. The puzzle basically starts with HAGIOLATRY and ends with TAIKONAUT and it's hard to remember anything else that happened along the way (though I remember the journey being enjoyable, however quick). I think I found HAGIOLATRY more disturbing / bizarre ... in fact, I know I did. TAIKONAUT I just flat-out didn't know, so it was frustrating, the way ignorance is frustrating, but it didn't annoy me the way HAGIOLATRY did. With HAGIOLATRY, I knew the word parts just fine. HAGIO- means "saint," though, so I was very (very) confused as to what the Kardashians had to do with any of it (15A: Adoration of the Kardashians, e.g.). "Hagiographies" are saints' lives (I had to read a bunch of them in grad school). The -LATRY part has to do with fervency of worship (think "zealotry" or "idolatry"). So HAGIOLATRY ... means worshipping saints? And ... the Kardashians are there ... somehow? Well, I looked it up, and, sigh, it appears that HAGIOLATRY somehow also means "undue veneration of a famous person." News to me, never heard it. Bizarre. Try using it in conversation and see if anyone has any idea what you're talking about. But at least I knew the word parts, and that got me through. After that, almost no resistance from the puzzle until TAIKONAUT, where I had ASTRONAUT, then, after that "T" from STAT (36D: "Right away!"), I had TERRANAUT (LOL I think I learned that from some mid-century sci-fi in my vintage paperback collection) (The Terranauts is also a recentish T.C. Boyle novel). After that, I just gave up and let the crosses do all the work, with the "K" in KAPPA doing the final, frightening work ("please be right please be right please be right"). Nothing else really happened in this puzzle, except this one glorious drop to the bottom of the grid:
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Relative difficulty: Extremely Easy except for two answers, one in particular
Word of the Day: TAIKONAUT (47A: One aboard the Tiangong space station) —
The name used in the west for a Chinese astronaut. It comes from the Chinese word ‘taikong’ meaning space or cosmos. The official Chinese name is yuhangyuan, meaning ‘travellers of the Universe’. (Oxford Reference)
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I suspected, from the moment they just handed me SHIVA (1D: Jewish mourning period), that this one was gonna skew Easy, and then I went SHIVA ADDLE OGLED DOG ERA IRA VEES IDLEGOSSIP with almost no hesitation, and those initial suspicions were confirmed.
Hardly anything unfamiliar in the grid, everything clued simply ... except for The Aforementioned Two. So that was my only truly Saturday experience: two answers. Like I said, at least the rest of the grid was (largely) clean and crisp and well put-together. Just wish it had been a little more memorable, and a little thornier.
[Crossword content! I repeat, crossword content! Unexpected!]
No idea who LILA Kedrova is (38D: ___ Kedrova, Oscar-winning actress for "Zorba the Greek"). The only LILA I know is LILA Crane, Marion's sister in "Psycho" (played by Vera Miles) (how is she not listed among the fictional LILAs on the "LILA" wikipedia page!? Somebody fix that!). That clue was Saturday-level, I guess, though somehow "random woman's name" is the kind of thing I fight through all the time, and so didn't trouble me nearly as much as The Aforementioned Two. The highlight of the grid was "IT'S A FREE COUNTRY"—a great 15-letter colloquial expressions, and (as I say) a thrilling whoosh-whoosh plummeting ride to the bottom of the grid. All the longer answers in this one are strong. SKYBOX SEAT felt a little iffy to me at first. SKYBOX, definitely a thing, SKYBOX SEAT ... I mean, yes, there are seats there, but the phrase doesn't exactly snap. I think of Skyboxes more as enclosed suites that you have to be invited to, or completely rent out. I dunno. Something just feels a little wobbly. But SKYBOX SEATs definitely exist, so probably not as wobbly as it sounds to my specific ears. Worse for me was ALPHA NERDS, a phrase I don't think exists at all, and especially not as clued (29D: Group members who are the most tech-savvy). "Tech-savvy" is not not not not "nerdy." Not! Stop it. Geeky, maybe. Maybe. But nerds ... OK, nerds are (conventionally) hardcore math/science types, and even when "nerd" is applied to other realms, "nerd" should always refer to people who are absolutely unfashionably into the things they're into. The mainstreaming of that word to mean any kind of enthusiast, including tech bros ... bah. No.
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| [Vera Miles as LILA Crane in "Psycho"] |
SWORDSMITH was probably the hardest answer to get at besides The Aforementioned Two, primarily because of that "?" clue (1A: Expert with a temper?), but at least "temper" gave me some idea that it would have to do with metal somehow, and at least SWORDSMITH is a thing I've actually heard of, so that was just regular themeless stuff. Not sure how well "a temper" works with the answer (I think of "temper"as exclusively a verb), but it's a "?" clue, so ... horseshoes, hand grenades, close enough. We've had both "EID Mubarak" and DAX Shepard recently, so even if the latter might've given me trouble at some point in my solving career, no trouble today. I had to work backward to ZOROASTER from the more familiar "Zoroastrian," but that wasn't too hard (32D: Iranian sage who inspired Nietzsche). Wrapped things up in that corner with TERP, URSA, STU, all Monday-level short stuff. Would love the difficulty of a Saturday to be more ... even and consistently spread out, but I didn't find this one unpleasant at all. A few strong entries, a couple of "??????"s ... I learned something, I laughed, I cried, I thought about nerds ... it was an experience. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld