Constructor: Robert S. Gard
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (very name-heavy, so "difficulty" level is gonna vary widely)
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THEME: HALF-BAKED (59A: Description of 17-, 25-, 36- and 49-Across, in different senses?)— themers are all things that can be said (mostly facetiously) to be HALF-BAKED:
Theme answers:
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I don't know if I liked this theme as a whole, but I very much liked CONTACT HIGH, which is the answer for which the punny HALF-BAKED theme seems custom made. As for the others ... BIKINI TAN is a cute idea, but it doesn't work in at least two ways. First, you're far more than "half" baked if you have a BIKINI TAN, and second (and more importantly) the tan itself isn't HALF-BAKED—you are. The tan is the baking. I guess this logic applies to CONTACT HIGH as well, now that I think of it. The cake and the idea are themselves HALF-BAKED, but the tan and the high belong to people who are HALF-BAKED. In fact, "baked" is a synonym for "tan" and "high" (and not at all a synonym for "cake" or "idea"), so the theme is wonky on a fundamental level. And then there's the fact that WILD IDEA is not punny at all—that is, HALF-BAKED applies to "ideas" in regular, ordinary, everyday usage, whereas with the other theme answers in this grid, HALF-BAKED is a punny joke that takes the meaning of "HALF-BAKED" into unexpected territory. There's just no punniness with the WILD IDEA answer. Further, and lastly (as far as theme problems go), I don't think of a HALF-BAKED idea as being "WILD." I think of it as being poorly thought-out. I mean, I guess it might be wild, but wildness does not seem like an intrinsic quality of the HALF-BAKED idea. A WILD IDEA might turn out to be a great idea ("Let's go skinny-dipping! Fly to Paris! Buy a zoo!"), whereas a HALF-BAKED idea is never gonna go anywhere good.
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (very name-heavy, so "difficulty" level is gonna vary widely)
Theme answers:
- BIKINI TAN (17A: Evidence of a day at the beach)
- LAVA CAKE (25A: Chocolate confection with a molten core)
- CONTACT HIGH (36A: Effect of secondhand pot smoke)
- WILD IDEA (49A: Flight of fancy)
Ted Chiang (born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame in 2020–2021. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker Magazine, most recently on topics related to computer technology, such as artificial intelligence. [...] Former US president Barack Obama included Chiang's short story collection Exhalation in his 2019 reading list, praising it as the "best kind of science fiction". // Chiang has commented on "metacognition, or thinking about one’s own thinking" being something most humans, but neither animals nor current AI, are capable of, and that capitalism erodes the capacity for this insight, especially for tech company executives. (wikipedia)
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It's a shame the theme kind of breaks down at multiple levels, because it's got ... something. It's trying valiantly to stretch that "BAKED" metaphor, and gets closest with CONTACT HIGH (which sits, appropriately, in the marquee position, dead center). It's possible the pot meaning seems most relevant to me because there is a late '90s pot comedy called HALF-BAKED. There's also a Ben & Jerry's flavor, which (I'm now realizing) may be a pot pun as well. I mean, yes, it contains "baked" goods (chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge brownies), but it's also probably the perfect food if you're high and have the munchies. But then most food fits that description, so who knows? What I do know is that HALF-BAKED is about the worst movie I've ever seen. I should say "seen," quote unquote—I did go to see it, in the theater, when it originally came out (I wanna say 1998 ... wow, yes, how did I remember that?), but I walked out after about half an hour when I realized that a. I was not laughing, and b. if I rushed home I could still catch back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons in syndication (there was no on-demand television in the 20th century, kids, you had to catch it in Real Time (RIP, Real Time) ... or else have the foresight to set your VCR—a cumbersome process). I can't remember why I, a non-pot-enjoyer, thought HALF-BAKED would be a good fit for me. I must've reasoned: "Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle ... what could go wrong?" Plenty, it turns out.
As for the non-thematic fill in today's puzzle, it is ... I wanna say "HALF-BAKED," but I think it might be worse than that. I mean, the olde-tymey slang alone is bludgeoning (NERTS! MOOLA! Lah-di-DAH!), but then there are not one but two Shakespeare characters (including OSRIC, who remains alive in popular consciousness solely because of crosswords) (10D: Courtier who oversees Hamlet's duel with Laertes), and then old names like ELIE and TORMÉ and at least one abbr. I haven't seen for years (SSGTS), and then the always terrible prepositional phrase IN A TUB (38D: Like "three men" of nursery rhyme). IN A TUB makes EAT A SANDWICH seem brilliant (protip: never EAT A SANDWICH IN A TUB—bathing and foodstuffs are pleasures to be enjoyed separately). The puzzle really leans into names. While none of them were unknown to me, I don't think OSRIC / ASLAN is a great cross (not inferrable if you don't know both names, and plenty of people won't know at least one of those), and I don't much like TORMÉ crossing a late-model NHL team either. The Seattle KRAKEN have only been in existence since 2021! (46D: N.H.L. team with a mythological eponym) I guess the "R" in that cross should be inferrable (in that KRAKEN is a widely known mythological character), but still, crossing proper nouns ... you gotta be careful. Ted CHIANG will probably be unknown to many. In fact, I'm not sure how *I* knew him. I have yet to read anything by him (though it sounds like I should). Anyway, I'm not complaining about his name at all, just noting that it's Yet Another Name in this Namey puzzle. At least he's crossed fairly (even if one of those crosses is the horrid IN A TUB).
MAD MAX (9D: Cop-turned-vigilante in a postapocalyptic film), OLIGARCH (11D: Member of a powerful ruling elite), and CARL JUNG (36D: Swiss founder of analytical psychology) are all vibrant answers, so it's not all bad news with the non-thematic fill. But still, too much of the grid felt like sludge today. There were no real tough parts today, though. Puzzle played pretty easy for me. I wrote in VIDI before ISAW (21A: Middle of a classic boast from Caesar), and BOLD IDEA (!?) before WILD IDEA, and I spelled CARL with a "K" initially, but other than that, no problems. That's all for me today. See you next time.