Constructor: John-Clark Levin
Relative difficulty: Easy (one of the easiest Wednesdays I've ever solved)
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THEME: LONGJOHNS (35A: Winter underwear ... or what appear four times in this puzzle) — Different 5-letter "Johns" have their last names made twice as "long" by having each letter appear twice:
Theme answers:
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That was a Monday. That was so easy it was almost non-existent. The theme is about as slight and pushoverable as any I've ever seen. Famous five-letter Johns? And all you gotta do is type each letter twice? And every John is 100% legitimately famous? OK, but in that case, we aren't gonna be at this long. Will there be anything else about the grid that's interesting? Any sparkly longer fill or ... anything? No? Just ... your regular old stuff? The Sparkle will top out at AIRBALL? Why are doing this again, exactly? To make solvers feel powerful? To take up space until the Thursday rolls around? It's hard to see what the point is here. The puzzle was so fill-in-the-blank, point-and-shoot, child's-placemat simple that I can tell you precisely, with crystal clarity, where I so much as hesitated in filling it in. First instinct for 1A: Some water bearers (MAINS) was EWERS, LOL, Extreme Crossword Brain at work right there. But then I got NIL (4D: Goose egg), switched EWERS to MAINS, and the next thing I know, the whole NW is filled in, with the first themer having this weird "GGLL" start. Must be an err- ... nope, it's John GLENN ... guess I just double every letter? Yup. And zoom, I'm off. Don't know *why* GLENN is GGLLEENNNN yet, but I'm off.
Relative difficulty: Easy (one of the easiest Wednesdays I've ever solved)
Theme answers:
- GGLLEENNNN (17A: First American to orbit the earth)
- LLEEWWIISS (25A: Selma march leader who served 17 terms in Congress)
- AADDAAMMSS (51A: Only U.S. president elected under the Federalist Party)
- EELLWWAAYY (62A: Broncos QB who won back-to-back Super Bowls)
Ad Astra is a 2019 American psychological science fiction film produced, co-written, and directed by James Gray. Starring Brad Pitt(who also produced), Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland, it follows an astronaut who ventures into space in search of his lost father, whose obsessive quest to discover intelligent alien life at all costs threatens the Solar System and all life on Earth. The project was announced in early 2016, with Gray saying he wanted to feature "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie". Pitt signed on to star in April 2017 and the rest of the cast joined later that year. Filming began around Los Angeles that August, lasting through October.Ad Astra premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 20, 2019, by 20th Century Fox. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Pitt's performance. At the 92nd Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Sound Mixing. The film grossed $135 million worldwide against an $80–100 million budget. (wikipedia)
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[PPRRIINNEE]
I somehow can't get the CHIP part of CHIP IN (10D: Contribute), but everything surrounding it is so easy that those squares get filled in pretty quickly anyway. I think of DJS as spinning vinyl, not CDS (32D: CD players?), so again I needed nearby fill to help, and again it helped almost instantly. I did not get either PROM (56A: Event with a royal court) or AIRBALL (44D: Court failure) at first glance, and I misspelled SAMOYED (as SAMOYAD, I think) (46D: Siberian sled dog), so I guess we can say that the SE was the "hardest" section, but "GLORY BE!" led to "I'LL BE" (horrid "BE" / "BE" crossing there, boo!), which fixed SAMOYED's spelling, and then BRO AIRBALL PROM and zoom, off again. None of the Johns were hard. The last two I got solely by looking at the first two or three words of the clues ("Only U.S. president,""Broncos QB"). I know my crosswordese, so neither LAILA (not LEILA, not LAYLA) ALI nor AYLA last-name-unknown (65A: "The Clan of the Cave Bear" heroine) could slow me down. Finished in the far far SW with the Brad Pitt movie I didn't know but since it was also clued as the Latin phrase I *did* know, whoomp, there it was, the end. If I still got high on speed, I might've had good feelings about this one. As it is, it felt remedial, and I feel cheated.
[PPRRIINNEE]
If your clue begins "Italian" poet and it's five letters (esp. if I have some letters in place), I don't need the rest of the clue. If your clue begins "Norse god" and it's four letters (esp. if I have *any* letters in place), I don't need the rest of your clue. The clues needed to be putting up obstacles and roadblocks today, and they absolutely were not, not ever. If you'd shown me 18D: Fish with "snowflake" and "sawtooth" varieties *and* I'd had no idea how many letters it was *and* I'd had no letters in place, I would've been stumped. But in three letters, with any letters in place, it's EEL. I mean, it's crosswords, of course it's EEL. They retired GAR a long time ago, I think, so unless it's Old-Timers' Day at the Crossword Ballpark, the three-letter fish is always EEL. I had one write-over, and that's when I read a clue poorly (too quickly) and wrote in OVEN instead of NAAN (15A: Tandoori chicken accompaniment). See "Tandoori," see four letters ending in "N," write OVEN, pure instinct. NAAN is the more crosswordy word (and the only answer that actually makes sense here), but a TANDOOR is literally an OVEN, so that's why my brain did what it did.
[PPRRIINNEE]
Puzzle had an overall old-ish feel, from "GLORY BE!" and "MY EYE!" to "M*A*S*H" and "Kate & ALLIE" to all the Johns to the old "trick" use of "fast" in the EAT clue (62D: Make a fast stop?). I hope lots of people broke their Wednesday records today, because I'm not sure what else this puzzle is good for. 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]