Constructor: Jess Rucks
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy + PADIDDLE) (?!)
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: PADIDDLE (1D: Game played on a road trip) —
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Well this was great, but unfortunately I ended on PADIDDLE, which is ridiculous. Just completely ungettable nonsense for me. The wikipedia description of the "game" is so full of "[citation needed]" that I couldn't use it, so I went to the OED, where the first citation was from a 1940s Archie comic strip, and OK, that starts to explain things. 1940s teen slang, I am not up on (despite my fondness for Archie). The way I can tell this term is (super-) dated is that the OED has citations going up through 2003 but everything after the '60s frames the game as something bygone: "Years ago, in some parts of the country," begins one of them (1991), and "It's just one of those one-eyed cars. What was it she used to call them when we were little, my mother?" reads another. Maybe this "game" is making a comeback with Generation Whatever-Is-After-Z, but from where I'm sitting, PADIDDLE looks like a bloated wordlist word, one that should have had "in old parlance" or some such qualifier in the clue (not that that would've helped). I mean, if you're going to introduce a word like this, at least give some clue what the "game" entails.
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy + PADIDDLE) (?!)
Word of the Day: PADIDDLE (1D: Game played on a road trip) —
An exclamation shouted in a game by the first of a group of people who spots a motor vehicle with only one working headlight, this person being entitled variously to kiss or hit the others. (OED)
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| [from OED.com] |
As far as I'm concerned, there are only two valid [Game(s) played on a road trip]: I SPY and PUNCH BUGGY (self-descriptive games, the both of them). But then this 2012 "article" about PADIDDLE at B98.5, which appears to be a radio station (?) ("Central Maine's Country"), starts with the claim, "We've all played it," so ... maybe you've all been playing this game behind my back my whole life and this puzzle is some kind of colossal "Gotcha!" project aimed solely at me. Well, if so, mission accomplished. (Apparently the term started out as "padoodle"; I encourage crossword constructors not to take this new-found fact as some kind of dare)
But besides PADIDDLE, everything else about this puzzle was delightful. OK, asking me to know Jason's (?) pet (??) in "FoxTrot" (!??) is very close to a bridge too far, but the rest of it: gold. Big Friday Feelings. A 72-worder with marquee colloquial answer after marquee colloquial answer. Whoosh and zoom and hurray. Much better energy and much more freshness than yesterday's puzzle. Love the sarcasm and "had it up to here" tone of some of these: "HAPPY NOW?""YOU TELL ME!""I'M WELL AWARE.""IS THAT A NO?" The disbelief of "SAY AGAIN?" The friendliness of "COME ON IN." The Dolly Parton of DOLLY PARTON. All of that and very little dreck. DAH is about the only answer I would insist on throwing into the sea. Oh, and GIBE, but that's more a me problem, as my brain refuses, after decades of trying, to sort out the whole JIBE / GIBE business. Yes, sitting here now, I can tell that JIBE means "agree" and GIBE means "taunt," but JIBE is also a variant spelling of GIBE, so I just give up. I never use either word and I wouldn't care if I saw neither of them again. But I will. I have come to terms with that. So I'm not mad at GIBE. The only thing I'm mad at is PADIDDLE, which we've established.
Are SNOWNADOs real? They sound about as real as Sharknados, but the puzzle is telling me they're real, and I had fun inferring the answer, so COME ON IN, SNOWNADO! I guess you might be mad at "SAY AGAIN," thinking it should be "COME AGAIN" (which is what I tried to squeeze in there at first). But I say "SAY (it) AGAIN?" all the time, largely eating the "it," and with a polite excuse-me kind of "?" tone, so "SAY AGAIN" tracks reasonably well for me. In general, I thought this puzzle had a very good ear, and a pleasingly broad range of interests—light on the narrow-demographic pop culture, heavy on familiar and/or sparkly phrases and terms. I had a wide range of initially wrong answers today, the dullest of which was ELEC for ECON (40A: Utility subject, in brief), and the most fantastic of which was DAYBED for GAY BAR (26D: Place to go out and be out). I was thinking of napping, as I often do (when I'm not actually napping). Actually, it looks like I had only one other initially wrong answer (that I can recall): I had SO-SO where I should've had"SHOO!" (57A: Cry while swishing one's hand). I was thinking of that gesture where you hold your hand out flat, palm down, and turn it back and forth real quick ... you know, the "SO-SO" gesture. The "not really""it's iffy""kinda sorta" gesture!? It comes with accompanying dubious facial expression. But yeah, "SHOO!" is good too. A lot depends on what the word "swishing" suggests to you.
Notes:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Notes:
- 29A: Marion Crane's sister in "Psycho" (LILA)— first thing in the grid. I'm obsessed with this movie, and with LILA in particular. She's our protagonist, the one we sympathize with and care about, after her sister, uh, leaves the picture. She never smiles and doesn't take *&$% from the P.I. (Ar-bo-gast) and I love her. A grown-up Nancy Drew.
- 52A: What's sharp near the bottom? (DIAPER PIN) — oh, that bottom. Good one.
- 3D: Creatures with the scientific name Monodon Monoceros (NARWHALS) — I can't believe the scientific name actually helped me out! I figured "-ceros" was "horn" (from "rhinoceros") and "mono-" is obviously "one" so what has "one horn"? Well, a unicorn, yes, but also: NARWHALS! When it fit, and worked—thrilling.
- 25A: Fit for a queen? (DRAG) — "Fit" = slang for "outfit." This is quite a good "?" clue. Not forced at all. "Fit for a queen" is a perfectly familiar standalone phrase, and then the "?" just ... bends it.
- 28A: Music disc? (GONG) — took me until -ONG to have any idea, and even then I was like "... SONG?" This isn't quite as good as [Fit for a queen?] — "music disc" not being a phrase anyone says — but it still works. It evokes "compact disc" (as well as records, which are disc-shaped) but then what you end up getting is a musical instrument that's shaped like a disc. Unexpected.
- 13D: Street food filled with queso (AREPA) — The Age of AREPA is upon us and you don't have any excuse for not knowing this one any more. It's the ARENA of street foods, i.e. it's gonna appear in grids a lot, forever and ever, amen. Also, delicious.
- 33D: Personal styles, in brief (MOS) — "M.O." = modus operandi ("way of operating")
- 46D: Modern fashion portmanteau (JORTS) — second portmanteau of the day (after SNOWNADO). This one is "jeans" + "shorts." We used to just call them "jean shorts," but apparently that was exhausting.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]