Constructor: Carolyn Davies Lynch
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: STIMMING (3D: Repetition of self-calming movements, such as finger-tapping or hair-twirling) —
Just couldn't find the handle on this one. I mean, I got through it, but I just wasn't on its wavelength. Ever. Well, almost never. One of the biggest problems for me was the cluing, specifically the cluing of spoken phrases. Over and over, those clues just clanked for me. The equivalency just didn't seem to be there, exactly, or else things were so vague I just had trouble getting to the right answer, as with the very first answer I tried to get, which was "I'LL BET" and "OH, SURE" before it was "I'M SURE." But that one was just normal-level frustrating. Others made me make unhappy faces. Like ["I'll count us in"] for "ON THREE." Count to what? Into what? And then there was ["Yes, I would love that!"] for "PLEASE DO"? I mean, yes, in certain imagined contexts, I can see that, but there are way too many other imagined contexts where "Yes, I would love that!" and "PLEASE DO" are not equivalents at all. "Let's go out dancing tonight!" for instance. In that case, "Yes, I would love that!" would be a welcome response, whereas "PLEASE DO" would be a terse and kinda mean way of saying "have fun by yourself!" The worst of these spoken-phrase misequivalencies came with "AT MY AGE..." (35D: "When you get to be this old..."). This old? What old? What is "this"? Are you pointing at something or someone? I thought the speaker was telling a child how old they had to be before they could, I dunno, vote or ride a ride at the fair or get a tattoo or something. The referent for "this" was in no way clear. You can lawyer up a defense for these clues, sure, but clank clank clank they went, and only after I got them from crosses could I kinda sorta reconstruct the scenario I was supposed to have imagined in the first place.
Bullet points:
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Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: STIMMING (3D: Repetition of self-calming movements, such as finger-tapping or hair-twirling) —
Self-stimulatory behavior, also known as "stimming" and self-stimulation, is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, words, moving objects, or other behaviors. Such behaviors (also scientifically known as "stereotypies") are found to some degree in all people, especially those with developmental disabilities such as ADHD, as well as autistic people. People diagnosed with sensory processing disorder are also known to potentially exhibit stimming behaviors.
Stimming has been interpreted as a protective response to overstimulation, in which people calm themselves by blocking less predictable environmental stimuli, to which they have a heightened sensitivity. A further explanation views stimming as a way to relieve anxiety and other negative or heightened emotions. (wikipedia)
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| [56A: Bends down] |
The fill seemed solid and even original at times today, but it wasn't terribly exciting to me. SWIFTIES is apparently a debut, but we've been getting lots and lots of Swift content of late, so it didn't feel new. No idea about the "CHA CHA" part of CHA CHA SLIDE (19D: Wedding staple with the line "Take it back now, y'all"). The only slide I've ever heard of is the Electric Slide. But then I haven't been to a wedding for over a decade, and before that, I think the last wedding I went to was my own (2003). This is what much of this puzzle was like for me—the answers seem fine, they just missed me on some fundamental level. STIMMING is original, but didn't come easily, as it's a term of recent coinage (i.e. I didn't grow up with it—first known use = 1983, but popularized only much more recently), and it's strongly associated with autism and other forms of neurodivergence (context that the clue could've used, I think). SOLAR NEBULA seems great, but I also don't really know what that is and just inferred words I'd heard before after getting a few crosses (34A: Gaseous cloud in which suns and planets form). Took a while to get INTRACTABLY, in part because I was expecting a multiword phrase (usually works the other way around—you expect the answer to be one solid word but it comes in pieces), and in part because I cannot spell and so ended up (for a bit) with INTRACTIBLY! Correcting that answer led to the nicest, whooshiest, happiest moment of the solve: uncovering TWICE AS NICE, which has a pleasing lilting rhyming quality to it (14D: Doubly better). Wish there'd been more of those moments for me. I hope there were for you.
Spanish trouble today, in that I had ESTA- and no idea what the last letter was going to be (I know enough crossword Spanish to know that ESTAN ESTAR and ESTAS are all things, but not enough actual Spanish to know what the hell I am talking about). Again, a normal sort of crossword frustration, but then that frustration got rekindled when the puzzle decided it also wanted to throw ERES at me. I got ERES much more easily, but now I kinda resented the puzzle on laziness grounds. Doubling the clue (["You are," en español]), doesn't make your overreliance on Spanish forms of the verb "to be" any more enjoyable. WAITERS bring a lot to tables, plural, over the course of a shift, maybe, but if I just order drinks, or an appetizer, then the waiter does not, in fact, bring a lot to the table (47A: They bring a lot to the table). They bring a little to the table. I see that you are trying to make a cute little misdirection here, trying to get us to think metaphorically while you go literally, but once again, the vagueness, the -ish-iness, the failure to stick the landing on some of these clues was kind of deflating.
Bullet points:
- 25A: ___ Garibaldi, revolutionary sometimes called the "mother of Italy" (ANITA) — first I'm hearing of it. Luckily her name is a common name shared by women I have heard of. Seems like ANITA Garibaldi is more famous as a revolutionary in her native Brazil (first sentence of her wikipedia page calls her a "Brazilian republican revolutionary," full stop). There is a statue of her in Rome (erected by Mussolini!) and another in Laguna, Brazil. She wasn't in Italy all that long. She went with her Italian husband (considered Italy's greatest national hero) to fight in the Revolutions of 1848 (against the Austrian Empire) and died in 1849.
- 7D: Part of a clutch (CHICK)— kept trying to think of different parts of a handbag. Then thought of eggs ... so close.
- 43A: Hit, as the lights (FLICK) — really thought this was about driving. Like ... all greens, no reds, all go, no stop, that kind of hitting the lights. Again, the equivalency here is rough. You FLICK the light *switch*. You've got a metaphorical clue for a literal answer, boo.
- 49A: Lacking, for short: Abbr. (SYN) — an old and cheap trick that apparently I still can't see straight through. "Lacking" and "short" are (in sommmmme contexts) SYNonyms. But since "for short" is common crossword clue language, indicating abbreviation, you probably read the clue wrong, initially (the addition of "Abbr." to the clue should probably have tipped me off that "for short" was not an "Abbr." indicator, but alas, my brain was not up to that kind of logic this morning)
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