Feeling that can be caused by the final three letters of this answer / WED 6-5-24 / "Obsequy" and "exequy" are fancy terms for these rites / Their drawers might contain drawers

Word of the Day: WESSEX (Bygone kingdom of ancient Britain) —

The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until England was unified in 927.

Hey folks, and happy Malaika MWednesday to all who celebrate! I found this puzzle to be very breezy, the slower time is because I solved it alongside my boyfriend who has been solving puzzles for only a couple of weeks now. I think it's very fun watch where he gets stuck and which clues are easy for him. Anyway, please let the record show that this is somehow the second Duck Puzzle that I have reviewed while subbing for Rex!!

I think this theme is very well-done and fitting-- sometimes it's hard to make the geometry of a theme answer line up with the wording of the revealer (a 15x15 crossword is soo constrained), but in this case the ducks quite literally are not in a row. My biggest complaint is that only two of terms are Known Ducks to me-- when I got TEAL early on, it didn't really help me figure out what was going on. (I was able to clock that EIDER is a bird because I'm familiar with "eiderdown" but didn't realize it was a duck til I got the central answer.) I also liked that RUBBER was saved for last because it's a little different than the others.

There was quite a lot of medium-length fill in here, and while most of it was fun (GRANDMA, PUFFIN, T-SHIRTS, ARMOIRES with the cute clue), I must call out DAIRYMAN because I simply refuse to believe that's a thing. When I go to the butcher, he is not my beefman!! When I get my produce, he is not my fruitman!! Am I totally off base here? Is this something that people know?? Maybe I'll ask my aunt who lives in Wisconsin.

Other tricky spots for me were HGT (a made up abbreviation, in my opinion), LYRA (I wanted "lyre," or at least a reference to His Dark Materials), and AER (I had no idea what AER Lingus is, although don't worry I did Google it after solving and... will probably immediately forget). It's impressive that in a grid so packed with theme material, there were only four entries that I wasn't a fan of! This is probably because David used a couple more black squares than average (themed puzzles tend to have around 38; this had 42), which is exactly what they're there for, in my opinion-- to make the rest of the entries smoother.

Bullets:

• [Mine is ⬛️⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️: Abbr.] for SSN— This was a great new clue for a frequently-seen entry
• [____-violence (really tearing into an Indian appetizer?)] for NAAN — Oh man I did not like this... so weird! Is it a pun? Is it trying to be a joke? Honestly I just think this is confusing and out of place.
• [Judo rank] for DAN— This was one of my final entries. I'm very unfamiliar with judo, and was looking for the entry to be something I was unfamiliar with, rather than a term I know by a different meaning. 
  

xoxo Malaika

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