Constructor: Colin Adams
Relative difficulty: Easy (12:31 while on a crowded train)
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THEME: Themeless
Word of the Day: PECOS (Cowboy Bill) —
Hey squad! Off-schedule Malaika MWednesday today! I solved this puzzle, which I loved, on the train home from a volleyball game while listening to Beyonce's two new songs on repeat. I'll link 16 Carriages here since I slightly prefer it.
Bullets:
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Relative difficulty: Easy (12:31 while on a crowded train)
THEME: Themeless
Word of the Day: PECOS (Cowboy Bill) —
Pecos Bill is a fictional cowboy and folk hero in stories set during American westward expansion into the Southwest of Texas, New Mexico, Southern California, and Arizona. These narratives were invented as short stories in a book by Tex O'Reilly in the early 20th century and are an example of American folklore.
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When I first opened the puzzle, I was a little put off because there aren't many long entries-- there are only three that are longer than eight letters! But that was super unfair of me. Eight-letter terms can totally be interesting, and Colin totally proved it here. My first entry was SPAMALOT, and then I checked all the down entries that branched off from it. I immediately put in MESSY BUN, a phenomenal entry that made me actually kick my legs back and forth in delight, and I basically grinned through the rest of the puzzle.
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| Marianne from "Normal People" is simply the queen of the Messy Bun |
Eight of the ten eight-letter entries were delightful and cute and interesting (PATIENTS and WORN DOWN were kinda meh, but I appreciate that they were clean entries!), I simply loved OH BOOHOO and FOOD COMA. And all three of the longer answers were great-- HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS I was able to put in with zero crosses, and INNER DEMONS and DONT TEMPT ME are so evocative.
This puzzle was everything I'm looking for in a Friday-- breezy and lively and fun. But I will say that it definitely rewards long-time solvers-- I was able to easily plunk in entries like NENE, EWER, SERA, and I TINA which are not exactly common in the real world. I could imagine Malaika From Four Years Ago giving up in the lower right corner, where ELMORE (who it seems was mainly active in before I was born) was also unknown to me.
Bullets:
- [Bacon bits] for ESSAYS— Can someone explain this? Is "Bacon" referring to a person, maybe?
- [Stand-up person?] for NO SHOW — This reminded me to recommend "The No-Show," a lovely book that I read a couple months ago. I think it's marketed as a romance novel, but I wouldn't call it that-- it's more of a Novel With Romance.
- [Northern hemisphere?] for IGLOO— Amazing clue!!
- [Eldest daughter of Oceanus and mother of Nike] for STYX— This was a hard clue! I am more familiar with it as a mythological river
- [Sitarist Shankar] for RAVI — He is the father of Norah Jones, which makes her (like me!) half-Indian
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