Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin
Relative difficulty: Easy
![]()
THEME: DECISION FATIGUE (38A: Modern term for the psychological exhaustion showcased in this puzzle's theme) — phrases of indecision, clued by phrases from an imagined speaker trying to decide between "A" and "B" (and by the end, "even C") ...
Theme answers: ![]()
![]()
I'm not really seeing the FATIGUE here. Also, I don't really know the phrase DECISION FATIGUE. Is it "modern"? It doesn't feel "modern." In fact, nothing about this puzzle feels "modern." It is decidedly (!), emphatically, unequivocally rooted in the last century, from the entire crew of proper nouns (I.M.PEI, DESI, LOMBARDI, MISS M, The Rolling Stones'YAYAS) to the quality and character of its overall fill (AER ITSY SST ASPER CRU etc.). Feels like a puzzle that was made entirely by hand—the cheater squares* (before CRU, after HIS) are otherwise totally inexplicable. This should've been easy to fill much more cleanly with software assistance, without having to resort to unnecessary black squares. Making puzzles entirely by hand is *hard* so I'm just going to assume that this one was made that way and give it a bit of a break on the fill. Still, slightly ironic that the revealer phrase is allegedly "modern" when the grid as a whole is very much ... not. (With apologies to ANN Patchett, who is, in fact, very much of this century).
![]()
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- ON THE FENCE (16A: Thinking A or B ... hmm ...)
- WISHY-WASHY (23A: Thinking A ... no, B ... no, A)
- OF TWO MINDS (48A: Thinking A ... but also thinking B? Gah!)
- UP IN THE AIR (60A: Thinking A ... B ... maybe even C?)
Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach and executive in the National Football League (NFL). Lombardi is considered by many to be the greatest coach in American football history, and he is recognized as one of the greatest coaches and leaders in the history of all American sports. He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. (wikipedia)
• • •
Anyway, as I said, I don't think FATIGUE is conveyed very well at all here. You've got indecision. That's what you've got. I guess if you take the themer clues as one long monologue, you could imagine that the would-be decided is "fatigued" by the end there (I know I was). But really you've just got four adjectival phrases conveying indecision, the end. I don't think WISHY-WASHY goes with the others. It's not really a this-or-that decision-related word—"feeble or insipid in quality or character; lacking strength or boldness," says Oxford Languages (aka Google). Yes, I guess lack of boldness i.e. total commitment is a kind of indecision. Ish. Sorta. But not nearly to the same degree that ON THE FENCE, OF TWO MINDS, and UP IN THE AIR are. There's nothing surprising or particularly clever going on here, thematically. Just four indecision-related phrases that fit symmetrically. The cluing is trying its darnedest to make the theme into something more ... dramatic, or cohesive, I guess, but having a generic voice go "A? B?" isn't exactly evocative of ... well, anything.
The long Downs are rock solid, and FAT CHANCE and "I SAW THAT!" are winners under any circumstances. There wasn't much that was challenging about this puzzle *except* the clue on ECHOES (4D: REPEATS, repeats, repeats), which, in my software *and* on the NYT puzzle site, appears to have the last "repeats" in some kind of subscript. I thought for sure that there was some technical glitch in my software, so I went to the NYT puzzle site, but found basically the same thing:
Now I see that what was happening was that the font size was shrinking ... which is a cool way to convey the fading sound of an echo. The apparent subscript thing just interfered with the effect. Anyway, I had the initial "E" for that one and semi-confidently but possibly wishywashily wrote in not ECHOES but ETCETC. But after I finally got that cleaned up, the only significant hesitation I had for the rest of the solve came while trying to parse MAESTRI from the back end (57A: Super conductors?). -I, -RI, -TRI, -STRI ... still no idea. -ESTRI ... there, finally, I got it. MAESTRI. Oof. Not a great aha, this arbitrarily Italianed plural ("maestros" is totally acceptable, probably more common, and certainly less pretentious than MAESTRI in English). Wrote in "I'M LATE" before "I'M BUSY" (29A: "It's going to have to wait"). Enjoyed the serendipitous intersection of TWO (in OF TWO MINDS) and DOS (45D: Twice 32-Down (i.e. twice UNO)). That's all I've got to say about this one. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld