Constructor: John Rippe and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: "Savings Plan" — we get to watch various animals GO EXTINCT (fun!) (104A: Disappear ... like the circled creatures might do, if not for the 112-/114-Across (i.e. the ENDANGERED / SPECIES ACT (112A: With 114-Across, conservation law that celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 2023)); long Down answers (marked BEFORE) contain the names of animals (in largely non-consecutive circled letters), and then the Down answers directly beneath those answers (marked AFTER) are words made up of the letters that remain if you remove the animal names from the answers directly above them. So:
Theme answers:
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Somehow watching a bunch of animals GO EXTINCT did not make for a pleasant solving experience. The theme is architecturally impressive, in its way, but it's grim, and a bit disingenuous. I mean, it purports to be about the ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, but it ritually eliminates animal after animal (whether the animals in question are actually in danger of "extinction" appears to be beside the point). "If the tiger goes extinct, what will we have left? Just GENA Rowlands ... really makes you think." I dunno. So you get a bunch of four-letter words ... so what? How are you supposed to get excited by stuff like WORD and (for god's sake) ALL'S? I'm sure there's software somewhere that will tell you what words / phrases contain various letter strings (animal names, for instance), and then from those potential answers you can see which have letters leftover that make ... literally anything. And there's your theme. It "works," in that removing the animals does result in ... stuff. But while I was happy when I finally had that "aha" moment where I realized what was going on, I can't say that anything besides that moment was at all entertaining or interesting or fun. If you wanna run a 50th Anniversary commemoration puzzle, run it in the correct month, at least. The gimmick here seems like it might've been hard to work out (finding the right BEFORE answers with plausible AFTER answers, all of them fitting symmetrically), but solving it was a pretty ho-hum experience. Ironically, I was just noticing earlier today that Sunday is my lowest rated day of the week in 2024 (by far), and that the best Sunday puzzle I've done all year, per my rating system, was ... the WHAC-A-MOLE puzzle (Jan. 28, 2024). So this Sunday puzzle has a top-center theme answer that was the actual theme of a different Sunday puzzle from earlier this year that I liked quite a bit better. Weird. (Highest rated day of the week this year: Saturday! It's the new Friday!)
Nothing in the puzzle seems very hard, though I suspect there are probably quite a few people who have no idea what or where LOMA LINDA is (8D: City in San Bernardino County). I think all the crosses are fair, but I'm not sure. KOHL'S, does everyone have those? ADLER, does everyone know him? (49A: Psychoanalyst Alfred) Did everyone get that ACE was correct because [One on the links?] refers to a "1" on your scorecard, i.e. a hole-in-one? Everyone's heard of Bel PAESE cheese (53A: Bel ___ cheese)? I think LOMA LINDA is ultimately fairly crossed, very gettable / inferable, even if the name is not terribly familiar, but I'm never entirely certain where solvers might trip. I was worried *I'd* be tripping over that BETTY person (13D: Smith who wrote "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn")—no way of knowing if she was a BETTY or a BETSY—but despite my general non-handiness, I knew that FRETSAW was a thing and that FRESSAW (probably) was not (28A: Carpenter's curve cutter).
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- LIMIT ONE / MITE (2D: BEFORE: Coupon stipulation / 56D: AFTER: Tiny amount) [LION "goes extinct"]
- GET IN GEAR / GENA (36D: BEFORE: Begin operating effectively / 96D: AFTER: Actress Rowlands) [TIGER "goes extinct"]
- CRASH INTO / CAST (19D: BEFORE: Rear-end, e.g. / 74D: AFTER: Like some statues) [RHINO "goes extinct"]
- WHAC-A-MOLE / CAMO (9D: BEFORE: Game with annoying pop-ups? / 70D: AFTER: Military pattern) [WHALE "goes extinct"]
- CORPOREAL / PORE (21D: BEFORE: Having physical form / 75D: AFTER: Target of a facial cleanser) [CORAL "goes extinct"]
- MALL SANTA / ALL'S (40D: BEFORE: December temp worker / 101D: AFTER: Shakespearean title starter) [MANTA "goes extinct"]
- SEA WORLD / WORD (16D: BEFORE: Theme park chain / 64D: AFTER: Slangy "Amen")[SEAL "goes extinct"]
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) is a landmark United States federal law which aims to curb inflation by possibly reducing the federal government budget deficit, lowering prescription drug prices, and investing into domestic energy production while promoting clean energy. It was passed by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 16, 2022.
It is a budget reconciliation bill sponsored by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The bill was the result of negotiations on the proposed Build Back Better Act, which was reduced and comprehensively reworked from its initial proposal after being opposed by Manchin. It was introduced as an amendment to the Build Back Better Act and the legislative text was substituted. All Democrats in the Senate and House voted for the bill while all Republicans voted against it. (wikipedia)
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My favorite thing about the puzzle, by a country mile, was the clue on CHINA SHOP (74A: A bull market it is not!). CHINA SHOP sits almost dead center of the grid like it knows it's the best thing. All those animals getting murdered all around it, and it's just floating peacefully on a COMET, which is floating on a ROC on the south side of CHICAGO. It's poetic, that middle section. Far more poetic than what's going on down below. The theme stuff down there, the two revealers, are fine, but ASATEAM and INALARM are both wincey prepositional phrases, and ADSITES, ANOD, YORKER, none of these are helping brighten the place up. I have no idea what Roman numeral belongs to which space mission, so APOLLOI was a shrug (110A: Mission honored by the "Fallen Astronaut" lunar memorial). I had DISCO before DANCE (103D: Get down, so to speak) and (more catastrophically) TUTTI before TUTTE (89A: Mozart's "Cosi Fan ___") (I blame Squeeze's 1985 album Cosi Fan TUTTI Frutti). This left me staring at very confusing letters for 90D: Pinnacle achievement, metaphorically. Something that looked like "I'VE ..." up front and "...BEST" down below. But then "I'VE REST!" didn't really track, and thus I saw my error. I also had "IT ISN'T FAR" before "IT'S NOT FAR," but that's an incredibly boring mistake, so let's not speak of it any further.
Fast out of the gate with a 1-Across gimme (1A: First name in 1990s alternative rock = ALANIS). Wasn't sure ALANIS (Morissette) counted as "alternative rock," but she has a very crosswordy "first name" so I just went for it, and was rewarded. Just taught a Donne poem that mentions "ATALANTA's balls" (balls/apples, same thing), so her name was oddly fresh in my brain (3D: Greek heroine tempted by golden apples). I also teach the Aeneid on a regular basis, and would have described Troy as besieged, not just SIEGED (6D: Like Troy in the "Iliad").
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| [Yes. Thank you, Google] |
My final comment is "who is responsible for Biden's branding?" and "can they try harder?" I can't think of a more confusing, and therefore useless, term for your "signature legislation" than IRA ... an initialism that already exists— multiple times over. "Thank god for Biden's IRA, right?""Uh ... you mean his retirement account?""No, the IRA! Biden's signature legislation!""The Irish Republican Army? He legislated that?""No, the *other* IRA! It's very well known, why don't you know it!?" I had to look up what it stood for. I wasn't aware he had any "signature legislation," but then I have tried very hard not to pay attention to national US politics since 2016, so the IRA could've been any three letters and I'd've bought it. "Oh, of course, the ZWO, I absolutely knew that Biden ... did ... that."
Bullets:
- 15D: Member of an elite fighting force (U.S. MARINE) — seems like the clue should contain an abbr. indicator of some kind
- 78D: Houston sch. (TSU) — Had TCU. I'm guessing TSU is Texas State University.
- 23A: A.P. Stylebook entry that lost its hyphen in 2011 (EMAIL) — took me roughly 12 years to catch up to this change
- 40A: App used to track fertility (MIRA)— MIRA, of course, is Spanish for "Look! You're fertile!"
P.S. earlier this week, I said "citation needed" when the puzzle insisted that OREO was a "common name" for a tuxedo cat. Well reader Barbara N. decided to go ahead and provide that citation in the form of a picture of her own tuxedo cat, who is, in fact, named OREO. Like all cats, he is perfect.
