Constructor: Daniel Sheremeta
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: none—there's a dumb little ABC/XYZ thing (see below), but I don't think that constitutes a "theme")
Word of the Day: UTHER Pendragon (29D: King Arthur's father) —
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Well, they can't all be ME DAYS. After yesterday's gorgeous thriller, I expected maybe a bit of a come-down, but nothing this precipitous. This is admittedly a personal-taste thing (For The Most Part), but this grid was just crammed with unappealing things, and often *gratuitously* unappealing clues, starting from literally square one. I didn't know there even was an AGE OF MAMMALS (presumably still ongoing?), but leaving the validity of the term aside, the clue ... why would you steer directly into the slaughter of animals solely for the attractiveness of their fur? So that rich people can look good? Farming animals for their fur ... you want to not only bring that up, but make a cutesy joke about it? I mean, that is *a* choice, certainly your prerogative, but that cluing decision put me off the puzzle right away. But things would quickly get somehow worse. After getting traction at the back ends of the longer answers up top. I whipped back across the grid and right into a pile of answers that seemed designed to disappeal to me, personally. It's like the grid was actively hostile. "Hey, I hear you hate this, have some." Let's start with GOSS, which takes us full circle from the abomination that is SESH through the epically cloying GOSSIP SESH (which was in a puzzle earlier this week) to end finally in the puddle of muck that is the alleged abbrev. GOSS. Who says this, and are they related to the people who (somehow, still) say TRUE DAT (28A: "You said it!," informally)? Oof. Then we get more animal torture with BEAR TRAPS, which, yes, I see, is clued as "financial lingo," but for me "financial lingo" is really only one step up from animal torture in terms of appeal, so no joy there (13D: Misleading market downturns, in financial lingo). And then, for a little added flourish of ugh, there was NFT, the absurd fad that every bitcoin blockchain bro in the world is currently trying to memory-hole because it was just a pile of fraud and embarrassment and idiocy. You can tell how generally unappealing NFT is to constructors by how *in*frequently it has been in puzzles—this is just the second appearance, and the last one was in late 2022. Some answers are just inherent cringe, and NFT is one of them. GEO / OFT > GEN / NFT Every Single Day of the Week. See also GPA / AFT.
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: UTHER Pendragon (29D: King Arthur's father) —
[Anthony Head as King UTHER Pendragon in the BBC TV series Merlin]
Uther Pendragon (Brittonic) (/ˈjuːθər pɛnˈdræɡən, ˈuːθər/; Welsh: Ythyr Ben Dragwn, Uthyr Pendragon, Uthyr Bendragon), also known as King Uther, was a legendary King of the Britons and father of King Arthur.A few minor references to Uther appear in Old Welsh poems, but his biography was first written down in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in most later versions. He is a fairly ambiguous individual throughout the literature, but is described as a strong king and a defender of his people.
According to Arthurian legend, Merlin magically disguises Uther to look like his enemy Gorlois, enabling Uther to sleep with Gorlois' wife Lady Igraine. Thus Arthur, "the once and future king", is an illegitimate child (though later legend, as found in Malory, emphasises that the conception occurred after Gorlois's death and that he was legitimated by Uther's subsequent marriage to Igraine). This act of conception occurs the very night that Uther's troops dispatch Gorlois. The theme of illegitimate conception is repeated in Arthur's siring of Mordred by his own half-sister Morgause in the 13th century French prose cycles, which was invented by them; it is Mordred who mortally wounds King Arthur in the Battle of Camlann. (wikipedia)
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So things were very much not to my taste, very early on, but at that point, the most objectively bad thing hadn't even come up. Beyond all that fur and goss and nft stuff, beyond the apparently unkillable BATED, beyond the Johnny DEPP content, beyond the absurd plural MEDAYS and the absurder plural ACELAS, beyond the awkwardly truncated PUT ON THE RITZ (it's "PUTTIN'" and only "PUTTIN'," come on), we get a dupe so egregious, so startling that I thought I must be missing a theme. Like ... how in the world do you justify putting TRAPDOOR in the same grid with BEARTRAPS?!? I have to assume that there's some kind of in-joke or hidden theme, something that would make sense of that kind of flagrant word repetition. I know the editor doesn't care much about dupes, that's clear, but I didn't realize he cared This little. If there is a trap theme here somewhere—if the puzzle itself is a trap of some kind—I apologize for missing it. As of now, I can't find any clear justification for the double-trap. I don't understand caring so little about basic construction protocol. Meanwhile, the puzzle has decided that "hiding" little ABC / XYZ bookends in the grid is important (first letters of long answers up top / last letters of long answers down below). I do not understand the puzzle priorities on display here today.
Bullets:
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At least it was all very easy, so I didn't have to linger over any of the unpleasantness. After changing DHS to TSA (17A: Org. created on Nov. 19, 2001—because why not add a 9/11 reference to this funfest?!), LESS ATIT SRTA got me going today, and there wasn't much after that to stop or even slow me. I wrote in NIEVE instead of MAEVE because I had gotten so complacent by that point I didn't even bother to read the clue fully (30D: Irish girl's name that's one letter off from a shade of purple) (NIEVE is an Anglicized version of the Irish name NIAMH—which was the name of one of my Kiwi relatives' dogs, which is the only reason I know it). That error caused some trouble around the trickily clued METEOR (30A: What creates a line for the shower?) (a meteor shower) and the ambiguously clued ERS (27D: Ventilator settings, for short) (I thought the settings were part of the ventilator itself, and I was like "how do I know what the settings on a ventilator are!?" But no, it's the settings where one would find the ventilator itself). Otherwise, the puzzle was so easy that I was able to no-look not only short stuff like SANAA (filled in almost entirely from crosses) but also ELECTRA COMPLEX *and* PORT AUTHORITY *and* PUT ON THE RITZ. That's right, I didn't bother to read a single one of those long Across clues because I didn't have to. Worked the short stuff (as I always do) and when the time came to check the long stuff, the answers were all obvious—no clue-reading required. That ... shouldn't happen on a Saturday. I should say at this point that if you take out AGE OF MAMMALS and PUT ON THE RITZ and BEAR TRAPS, the longer answers in this grid are quite good. RENT MONEY / TO THE MAX was probably my favorite juxtaposition, but BROWNIE BATTER / CEASE AND DESIST is also strong (I like the idea of the baker shouting "CEASE AND DESIST!" at you as you try to surreptitiously shove BROWNIE BATTER into your face).
Bullets:
- 33A: Harry Potter, e.g. (ORPHAN)— ah, gratuitous JK Rowling content. Le coup de grâce! This puzzle really knows how to please.
- 7D: Singer whose debut 1988 album had a record four #1 hits (ABDUL)— don't know if I'm ashamed it took me so long to remember her name, even with the "A" in place, or ashamed to admit I loved that album and bought the remix album when it came out. I think I'm done with shame. Love you, Paula.
- 23D: Booker's workplace (SENATE) — in case it wasn't clear, the "Booker" here is NJ senator Cory.
- 44D: Curmudgeon of children's TV (BERT) — this is a great clue. BERT is underrated. He gets upstaged in his own apartment by the ever-chipper ERNIE, and even as a curmudgeon, he gets upstaged by Oscar (is a grouch the same thing as a curmudgeon?—you'd think I'd know).
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