Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Easy (but themed, so I'm not sure it counts as a real Saturday)
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THEME: Chinese New Year — it's today! (2/10/24)
Theme answers:
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OK, this write-up is actually going to be short today. I often say that, and then end up with a full write-up, but today, this morning, oof. I got like four hours sleep because we went out to the THEATER last night, and while for normals, this would be just an ordinary Friday night, for me, as someone who gets up at 3:45am, and whose cats start getting food ideas around 3am, staying up past even 10pm is rough, and past 11pm, dang near lethal. We'll see what kind of energy I have. If those first few sentences are any indication, I'm not sure it's looking very promising. Because of the sleep deprivation, I was grateful to get a straightforward, easy, semi-themed puzzle today. A holiday puzzle on the holiday itself, always nice! The one issue I have with this puzzle, as a puzzle (if that makes sense, I can Not tell right now), is that it's kind of stuck in a no man's land between themed and themeless. It doesn't have enough thematic components to really qualify as themed, and it doesn't have as many of the flashy longer answers and all-over grid sparkle that themeless puzzles do (or should). Plus, I'm not sure about certain aspects of the theme. Is ORANGE a theme answer. It damn sure seems like one (24D: Common gift during Chinese Spring Festival); Chinese Spring Festival *is* the celebration of Chinese New Year, beginning today and ending with the Lantern Festival two weeks from now. But if ORANGE is a theme answer ... then is CAT DAD a theme answer? Because that is ORANGE's symmetrical counterpart. If CAT DADs are an integral, or even peripheral, part of Chinese New Year, awesome. But I have a feeling they have about as much to do with Chinese New Year as MEGACON. So ORANGE is either bonus material (generous reading) or wonky asymmetrical weirdness. Let's just go with the former. This CAT DAD doesn't have the energy to cause trouble this morning.
Assorted thoughts, baked and half-baked:![]()
Relative difficulty: Easy (but themed, so I'm not sure it counts as a real Saturday)
Theme answers:
- 16A: 2024, e.g. (YEAR OF THE DRAGON)
- 51A: Celebratory greeting for 16-Across ("GONG XI FA CAI!")
- 24D: Common gift during Chinese Spring Festival (ORANGE)
MegaCon, short for Mega Convention, is a large speculative fiction convention that caters to the comic book, sci-fi, anime, fantasy, RPG, and gaming communities, often occurring in spring at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. The convention is the largest fan convention event in the Southern United States and second largest in North America with an attendance of 160,000 recorded in 2023. (wikipedia)
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The hard part of this puzzle for me was GONG XI FA CAI, every letter. I know I've seen it before, but that didn't help at all. Thank god I know CATE is a CATE and not a KATE. Seems like that crossing might kneecap some people today. All the other crosses seem quite fair. Only other part of the puzzle where I encountered resistance was the west, which actually wasn't hard once I got in there and got WARSAW, but trying to back in, from the back ends of WORE and (esp.) AREAS (31A: Pentagon figures) and RACKED (35A: Like some brains and pool balls) was not easy. And then coming up from below, I wasn't sure what kind of LEAGUES I was dealing with. But I had LEAGUES, at least, which got me SNL and then I finally looked at the WARSAW clue and things fell from there. This mini-struggle is only really noteworthy because the rest of the puzzle was so easy. The difficulty involved was nowhere near typical Saturday levels.
Assorted thoughts, baked and half-baked:
- 15A: Sara who wrote the "Pretty Little Liars" books (SHEPARD)— no idea, not my thing. Top of this grid felt pretty damn name-y (SHEPARD, ARYA, KERRI, EDNA), but at least they were women's names. And back-to-back solo woman constructors now! That's 29 men, 2 women this year. Progress!
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- 31A: Pentagon figures (AREAS) — lots of forced cluing today. Pentagons have AREAS ... because they are closed two-dimensional figures? All of which have AREAS? And not even a "?" on the clue to make it sassy. Boo to this. Boo also to the ATM FEE clue, since ATMs dispense other denominations than 20s (1A: Banking annoyances associated with the 20s?), and to [Personal number?] for AGE (is "personal number" supposed to be a phone number misdirection?), and [House speaker's place]—again, not even a "?" on this one. The speaker's "place" is not the STEREO; the speaker *is* the stereo—part of it, anyway. It's like the editors were scrambling to make the clues harder, but only made them ... off-er.
- 39A: Annual mecca for sci-fi and fantasy fans (MEGACON) — LOL that we're supposed to be familiar the *second*-largest US fancon. In Orlando. If you say so!
- 56A: Apple Pay, e.g. (E-WALLET) — definitely had I-WALLET here for a bit (the "Apple" made me think of all the i- prefixes. Pad, Pod, Mac, Tunes, what not. Did Wall-E have an E-WALLET? I bet he did.
- 40D: One born between the mid-1960s and 1980 (GEN X'ER) — Present!
- 22D: "Canvas" for digital art? (NAIL) — sigh, what are these quotation marks doing? You don't need them when you have the "?" already doing "play on words!" work for you. If you use the quotation marks, then you absolutely do not need the "?". NAIL art is literally digital (i.e. related to the fingers), so the "?" is unnecessary, esp. if you've got the quotation marks around "canvas."
- 43A: Setting for a Twins or White Sox game: Abbr. (CDT)— Central Daylight Time. Should've specified "home game," probably, but no biggie.
- 54A: Bull-like (TAURINE) — probably the most "obscure" word in the puzzle, in that it's the one you're least likely to encounter irl, but for me it was a blessed gimme, giving me entree to that SW and thus the west, where I made my last stand. Speaking of lasting, and standing, I bid you good day (and Happy New Year to all who celebrate)
P.S. is the grid supposed to look like a dragon? Because ... I could almost buy that.