Constructor: Sid Sivakumar
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME:"Tones of Voice"— Theme answers are all two-word phrases where the first words sound like a color + a letter. The answers are clued regularly, but also "exemplified" by other answers that contain a COLORFUL CHARACTER (98A: Interesting person ... or what's included, phonetically, five times in this puzzle), i.e. a square containing both the color and the letter suggested by the first words. So...
Theme answers:
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Oof. Color. OK. Did not really get that until about 1/2 way through my solve on (colorless) software. I was like "well, CHANCE means OPPORTUNITY, but I don't really see how GOLDEN factors in here." Eventually I looked at the puzzle on the NYT puzzle website and there they were: colors. Shrug. Pretty tedious, in the end. Just five of these colored squares, and two are "E"s, and ... yeah, if you really feel the need to make use of non-traditional elements like this, it should seem worth it, i.e. more spectacular than this. In the end it's all kind of programmatic. Yes, your word meaning "opportunity" has a gold "N" in it ... because you made that one letter gold, so what? Like, why is one "I" in AVIATION red and not the other? No reason. Who cares? I think about how great the Pride Flag Sunday puzzle was from earlier this year, what thoughtful and meaningful use of color that one had. And then I look at this puzzle. And ... meh. Also, it's a PINKY SWEAR. In Stand By Me, it's a PINKY SWEAR, and if River Phoenix says it's PINKY SWEAR, it's canonical. The wikipedia entry is for PINKY SWEAR (with PINKY PROMISE appearing as an acceptable variant). I've never heard PINKY PROMISE. I assume people say it, because here it is in the puzzle, but it's a weak version of the real thing, which is snappier and therefore better.
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Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY (25A: Special moment exemplified by 24-Across) => word containing a "gold N" that means "opportunity" => CHANCE (24A: One of three spaces on a Monopoly board)
- RED-EYE FLIGHT (36A: Air travel option exemplified by 34-Across) => word containing a "red I" that means "flight" => AVIATION (34A: The Wright stuff?)
- BROWNIE MIX (58A: Baking aisle purchase exemplified by 56-Across) => word containing a "brown E" that means "mix" => BLEND (56A: This and that)
- GRAVY BOATS (72A: Thanksgiving table sights exemplified by 68-Across) => word containing a "gray V" that means "boat" => VESSELS (68A: Containers)
- PINKY PROMISE (91A: Agreement exemplified by 88-Across) => word containing a "pink E" that means "promise" => PLEDGE (88A: Sister-to-be, say)
A fan edit is a version of a film modified by a viewer, that removes, reorders, or adds material in order to create a new interpretation of the source material. This includes the removal of scenes or dialogue, replacement of audio and/or visual elements, and adding material from sources such as deleted scenes or even other films. // In their most common form, fan edits resemble the work done by professional editors when creating a director's or extended cut of a film, although fan edits are usually limited by the footage already made available to the public with the official home video release of a film, while professional editors working for a film studio have access to more and higher quality footage and elements. In addition to re-editing films, some fan edits feature basic corrections, such as colors or framing, that maintain or restore consistency within the film, such as the Star Wars fan-restoration Harmy's Despecialized Edition, which aims at restoring the Star Wars Original Trilogy to its original, pre-Special Edition form. Other types of fan edits, such as Cosmogony, Bateman Begins: An American Psycho and Memories Alone, merge footage from various films into an entirely different production. While many fan edits are viewed as reactionary to perceived weaknesses in the original films, one film scholar at the University of Kansas has argued that such edits allow fans to creatively reimagine films instead of merely attempting to fix such works. (wikipedia)
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I have no idea how difficult the puzzle was, because I switched solving interfaces midway. The first half I did color blind, so it felt kind of hard (I kept "getting" theme answers and not understanding fully what they meant). Then I moved to the properly colored interface, just so I could have a completed color grid to post here, and ... I don't know, maybe things got a little easier. The non-theme stuff wasn't too tough, except for somewhere about 2/3 of the way down the grid, when I had real trouble dropping answers into the bottom third. That SPYFALL (???) RAU (???) BOOK LIST (????) triad, yikes, couldn't get any of them. Absolutely never heard of SPYFALL (wasn't that a Bond film? ... no, wait, that's SKYFALL) (86D: Game in which one player tries to glean information from the other players without being caught); probably seen this RAU person before but forgot them (92D: Author Santha Rama ___); and I don't really get BOOK LIST in this context (82D: Librarian's offering). Do you mean, like, book recommendations? What is the list for? Librarians might "offer" you any number of "lists" depending on your needs. I tried to make BOOK RECS work. No dice. Also found APPLEPAY very very hard (despite using it regularly) (84D: iPhone charger?), which made descending into the bottom part of grid hard on the east side as well. APPLEPAY / "YO, DUDE!" / FAN EDIT may be the toughest mash-up of the grid, though I didn't find the latter two terms all that tough. All three of those answers are just recentish and / or slangy, so I can see them possibly causing some solvers problems. But beyond that, I don't see many real problem spots in this grid. If you solved on your phone or the website, and could see the colored squares from the outset, this one might even skew easy.
The fill gets real weak up top in that CAEN-CORP-singular-GALOSH section, and no one ever wants to see ST. LEO again, but overall things felt pretty smooth, and "OH GOD, YES!" gave the grid some much-needed life. No idea what a REDOX is (you can read about it here—my eyes glazed over after the first sentence) (36D: Certain chemical reaction), but I do know that RETILE and REROLL are pushing my RE-tolerance. A little. It will surprise no one that I'd never heard of the shoe designer either. The puzzle was desperate for people named ILSE, I guess. How desperate? Well, here's the ILSE line-up from the entire Shortz Era—three ILSEs, all of them different:
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| [xwordinfo] |
In Pre-Shortz Times, there was [Pianist von Alpenheim] and then dozens of ILSEs just clued as [German girl's name] or [Fraulein's name]. Oooh, back in 1948 there was [___ Marvenga, stage and screen actor]. She starred on Broadway in something called "Naughty Marietta"
Ooh, look, ILSE Marvenga paper dolls!
Where was I? Oh right, shoe designer ILSE. Uh, sure. If you say so. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. thanks to everyone who helped push my friend Rachel over (way over) here initial fundraising goal for her Out of the Darkness charity walk for suicide prevention. Very generous of you.
P.P.S. I recently said I liked getting postcards and that I would post them if you sent them and I got two this week, one wishing me a happy wedding anniversary and the other offering a movie recommendation.
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| [Van Gogh, “First Steps”] |
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| [Michael Knutson, “Vertical Contracting Brackets”] [Pretty sure the artist is the postcard sender himself!] |