Constructor: Chase Dittrich and Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: Missing letters — theme answers are familiar phrases that, when parsed differently, explain why there are some letters missing from the clues:
Theme answers:
Well, this concept was a lot easier to grasp than it was to explain in writing, I'll tell you that. What you've got is essentially a clue/answer reversal sort of deal, where the answer in the grid gives you the clue you need to understand why there are letters missing from your actual clues. Even though the first one of these themers is the least elaborate, it felt the most perfect. I'm sure it had the benefit of being the first themer I got, i.e. the "aha" themer, but there's something simple, neat, and unforced about the no-"N" apology. Among the rest, only NORSE GODDESS felt as elegant. The correspondence between "badly" and "TOO" felt off to me in 28A: Badly dilapida_ed (NO-"T" TOO SHABBY). The other two are fine, but "secretary" is highly arbitrary as an example of JOB, and there was something slightly fiddly about "Championship belt." I mean, I think those last two work just fine, they just didn't land the way NO-"N" APOLOGY and NO-"RSE" GODDESS did. And please, no mail or comments about how actually Persephone is a Greek goddess, not a NORSE GODDESS—we know. In this particular thematic scenario, it's irrelevant.
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Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- 17A: "Beg your pardo_" (NON-APOLOGY) (i.e. NO-"N" APOLOGY (the apology "Beg your pardon" is missing its "N"))
- 28A: Badly dilapida_ed (NOT TOO SHABBY (i.e. NO-"T" TOO SHABBY (the phrase meaning "too shabby" is missing its "T")
- 38A: _ _ cretary (NOSE JOB) (i.e. NO-"SE" JOB) (the job of "secretary" is missing the letters "S" and "E")
- 46A: Pe _ _ _ phone (NORSE GODDESS) (i.e. NO-"RSE" GODDESS) (the goddess Persephone is missing the letter string "RSE")
- 61A: Championship _ _ _ t (NOBEL PRIZE) (i.e. NO-"BEL" PRIZE) ("Championship belt" is a kind of "prize" and is missing the letter string "BEL")
John Felix Anthony Cena (/ˈsiːnə/ SEE-nə; born April 23, 1977) is an American professional wrestler, actor, and former rapper currently signed to WWE. With the most world championship reigns in WWE history, Cena is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. [...] A joint-record 16-time world champion, Cena is a record 13-time WWE Champion and three-time World Heavyweight Champion. He is also a five-time WWE United States Champion, a two-time WWE Tag Team Champion, a two-time World Tag Team Champion, a two-time Royal Rumble winner, and a one-time Money in the Bank winner. He has also headlined multiple major WWE pay-per-view events, including its flagship event, WrestleMania, five times. His professional wrestling career has been met with mixed critical and audience reception, with praise for his character work and promotional skills, but criticism for his perceived over-representation and on-screen dominance relative to other wrestlers. // Cena first starred in The Marine (2006), and gained praise for his performances in Trainwreck (2015), Ferdinand (2017), Blockers, and Bumblebee (both 2018). He starred in F9 (2021) as Jakob Toretto, reprising his role in Fast X (2023), and portrayed Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad (2021) and the eponymous television series (2022–present). He released a studio album, You Can't See Me, in 2005. Outside his work in entertainment, Cena is known for his involvement in numerous charitable causes, namely with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, where he has granted the most wishes, at over 650. (wikipedia)
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| [13A: Non-Muppet owner of Hooper's Store on "Sesame Street" = ALAN] |
[Mentally singing "NON-APOLOGY" to the tune of this]
This puzzle played more like a Tuesday than a Thursday for me. The non-thematic elements in particular were surprisingly straightforward, even rudimentary, and the clues didn't seem to be trying very hard to make this a properly thorny Thursday. A lot of the fill was straight out of central casting—i.e. very familiar: NAGANO ARIAL ALOHA AGORA OBOE UTILE NEATO etc. They tried to make ALEC a non-Baldwin (and succeeded!) but an ALEC is an ALEC is an ALEC, and now you know some more ALECs (66A: Baseball's Marsh or Bohm). The clue on PALO is weird, in that ... it's still just a proper noun partial, same as always—still not great fill—but instead of getting the expected clue about the California city (home of Stanford), we get this tree trivia, which makes you (i.e. me) think that the answer is actually not going to be PALO (18D: El ___ Alto, California redwood that's more than 1,000 years old). But then it isPALO. It was all strangely anticlimactic. PHOTOBOMB is easy to like (10D: Ruin a picture of, in a way), but the rest of the fill runs a little to the dull side, for sure.
I imagined there was a DNA BASE out there somewhere (4D: Valuable resource for the Human Genome Project). I think I meant"BANK," but I wrote BASE. So that needed fixing. GAINS was way too vague as [Investment goals] go, so that took some work. Ran into that LOLLS / LAZES kealoa* pretty hard (53D: Kicks back). I wanted DIME (!?) and then TIME (!) before SEMI (64A: Quarter follower). I think that in tournament situations, I'm used to hearing both terms pluralized ("We made it to the SEMIs!""He got knocked out in the quarters"), so I just didn't make the connection, and instead went flailing wildly into the realms of numismatics and music (though I don't think "quarter time" is an actual thing in music; it just sounds music-y, like, I dunno, "quarter note," I guess). Never intentionally paid attention to pro wrestling, but it seems that I've encountered John CENA enough that he's now a gimme. He occupies the same part of my brain as Michael CERA, which is at least slightly weird, as they look nothing alike. I've known the term EDDA(S) forever (they teach it to you at crossword boot camp), but I had no idea there were just two (!?). They did not teach that to me at medievalist boot camp. Or I was napping. Possible.
Speaking of EDDAS, I ran into EDDIC yesterday in a fabulous cryptic crossword from 1977. I was doing said cryptic because I had just found out from my friend Matt Gritzmacher that coxrathvon.com exists—a massive archive of cryptic puzzles from the legendary constructing team of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon that goes back almost a half century! I went back to very early in the archive and man, those '70s puzzles hold up! Their cryptics frequently have some thematic element, some elaborate trick or gimmick that makes them extra-challenging and phenomenally entertaining. And if you go back to the verrrrrry first one in the archive ("Short and Sweet," Sep. 1977!), you'll see the pdf contains not just the puzzle, but a three-page explanation of what cryptic crosswords are and how to solve them. An extremely useful document. Anyway, the Cox/Rathvon website has given me years of clipboard fodder. I'm so grateful. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*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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