Constructor: Hemant Mehta
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: TANGRAMS (40A: Seven-piece puzzles) —
Can you wavelength a constructor just by following them on X (née Twitter)? Is "wavelength" a verb now just because I want it to be? Whatever the answers to these provocative questions, I absolutely destroyed this puzzle. I don't time myself anymore, but it feels like I would've been somewhere near a record Friday time today. Hit the ground running in my NIKES (1A: Jordans, e.g.) and Did Not Stop. OK, I paused, slightly, in a couple of places, but virtually every clue just seemed transparent, even the ones that seemed to want to get tricky or vague or trickily vague on me. So there was lots and lots of whoosh today. Almost too much whoosh (not usually a problem!). The marquee answers could maybe have used a little more spice, but they're all rock solid and occasionally lovely. Except "I'M ON A DIET"—it's solid enough, but ugh, "dieting," the practice and especially the industry, boo. Much better were FELL IN LOVE (yay) and LOSING SLEEP (boo in life, yay in grid) and CHEESE WEDGE (mmm) and CTRL-ALT-DEL (esp. as clued—makes it sound hilariously profane) (53A: "Three-finger salute," to help reboot) (and it's a little poem, too; like "Be kind, Rewind," only ... longer). Laughed professionally at 56A: Outpaces the syllabus (OUTREADS) since some small but significant portion of my students seem never even to have read the syllabus itself. "It's In The Syllabus" is maybe the longest running professor joke. Evergreen response 1/2 of all student questions. Put it on a T-shirt (pretty sure someone already has). LOL, there's an entire Etsy store dedicated to this phrase!
So it was easy. This is not to say that I didn't make a few wrong moves along the way, starting with SNIDE COMMENT at 5D: Cutting lines (SNIDE REMARKS). "Lines" did not necessarily mean the answer was going to be plural, since a bunch of "lines" can be understood cumulatively as a single "comment," so COMMENT in the singular didn't faze me. But then I checked the COMMENT crosses, starting (as always) with the shortest cross, and, well, I know my Scottish islands reasonably well, especially the four-letter ones, and I don't know of one with "T" in the second position, but I do know SKYE, so in went SKYE, out went comment, and in went REMARKS ("K" is a high-value letter in both Scrabble and crosswords). Wasn't sure about the Navy answer—thought it might be NAVY or NAVAL something or other, but I wanted CADET and NAVAL CADET didn't fit so I tried NAVY CADET and whaddya know? Perfect. Eventually had the PLAN part of FALLBACK PLAN and couldn't think of anything but BACK-UP PLAN, which I guess is the same thing as a FALLBACK PLAN, just with BACK in a different place. Took a little hacking at the crosses to make the FALLBACK part come into view, but just a little hacking. Not strenuous hacking. Had the CAB- part of 28A: 1873 invention first used in San Francisco and ironically couldn't do anything with it. I say "ironically" because I was born in San Francisco and so books about the place, usually featuring CABLE CARs on the cover, figured large in my childhood.
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BEDIM before GO DIM (34A: Fade out) and LEGAL before LEGIT (25D: Not sketchy) and STOP before DROP (57A: Not keep hanging on). Wow, that last one is pretty literal, and potentially painful!
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: none
Word of the Day: TANGRAMS (40A: Seven-piece puzzles) —
The tangram (Chinese: 七巧板; pinyin: qīqiǎobǎn; lit. 'seven boards of skill') is a dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat polygons, called tans, which are put together to form shapes. The objective is to replicate a pattern (given only an outline) generally found in a puzzle book using all seven pieces without overlap. Alternatively the tans can be used to create original minimalist designs that are either appreciated for their inherent aesthetic merits or as the basis for challenging others to replicate its outline. It is reputed to have been invented in China sometime around the late 18th century and then carried over to America and Europe by trading ships shortly after. It became very popular in Europe for a time, and then again during World War I. It is one of the most widely recognized dissection puzzles in the world and has been used for various purposes including amusement, art, and education. (wikipedia)
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| [What I pictured when I read "Dessert skipper" (37D)] |
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| [from phdcomics.com] |
Was prepared to be mad at the clue for CMAS for including the word "Award," which I thought was what the "A" stood for (23A: Awards won by George Strait in three separate decades, familiarly). But no, the "A" stands for "Association," as in "Country Music Association," so having "Award" in the clue doesn't violate any cluing rules (namely, the rule where you can't clue an initialism using any of the words represented by the initials in question). Not much to explain today. ROKU is a popular streaming service with set-top boxes that attach to your TV (11D: Modern TV attachment). The "rows" in 21A: Long rows? are "arguments,""fights," i.e. FEUDS. We don't really say "row" (rhymes with "cow") on this side of the pond, but that's OK, it's not exactly obscure. CAGER is holy-cow-old slang for a basketball player. Like, it was old when I was young. I am no longer young. It was one of the first bits of crossword slang I learned back when I started solving in the early '90s. Me: "Wait ... how is this basketball slang? I've been following basketball for most of my life and I have never, never ever, heard anyone use this term?" Crossword: "Welcome to crosswords, buddy! We've got all kinds of stupid words! You're gonna love it!"
[I learned about this (great) song from Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) when she played it on one of the episodes of her Apple Radio program "St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service"]