— Famous paintings are clued via literal descriptions that contain numbers; the whole thing is tied together by the final theme answer,
Theme answers:- AMERICAN GOTHIC (23A: Two Iowans (1930))
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| [Grant Wood] |
- GUERNICA (37A: Six Basque villagers (1937))
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| [Pablo Picasso] |
- THE STARRY NIGHT (42A: 12 orbs (1889))
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| [Vincent Van Gogh] |
- GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (68A: One gemstone (1685))
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| [Johannes Vermeer] |
- THE PERSISTENCE / OF MEMORY (86A: With 99-Across, four timepieces (1931))
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| [Salvador Dalí] |
(
28D: Vocalist Vikki) —
Florencia Vicenta de Casillas-Martínez Cardona (born July 19, 1940), known by her stage name Vikki Carr, is an American vocalist. She has a singing career that spans more than five decades. Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican parents, she has performed in a variety of musical genres, including pop, jazz and country, while her greatest success has come from singing in Spanish. She established the Vikki Carr Scholarship Foundation in 1971. Vikki Carr has won three Grammys and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 at the 9th Annual Latin Grammy Awards. [...]
Under the stage name "Vikki Carr" she signed with Liberty Records in 1962. Her first single to achieve success was "He's a Rebel", which in 1962 reached No. 3 in Australia and No. 115 in the United States. Producer Phil Spector heard Carr cutting the song in the studio and immediately produced his own cover version with the Blossoms(though it was presented as a recording by The Crystals) which reached No. 1 in the United States. In 1966, Carr toured South Vietnam with actor/comedian Danny Kaye to entertain American troops. The following year, her album It Must Be Him was nominated for three Grammy Awards. The title track reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in 1967, sold more than 1 million copies and received a gold disc. [...] Carr followed with two US Top 40 hits: 1968's "The Lesson" and 1969's "With Pen in Hand". Around this time, Dean Martin called her "the best girl singer in the business". In total, Carr had 10 singles and 13 albums that made the US pop charts. [...] Carr appeared to great acclaim in a 2002 Los Angeles production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies, which also featured Hal Linden, Patty Duke and Harry Groener. In 2006, Carr made a cameo appearance in a straight-to-video thriller called Puerto Vallarta Squeeze. (wikipedia)
• • •
I had a feeling this was going to be bad early on. By early on, I mean precisely here:
The single
ALGA actually gave me a small "oof," and then that bloomed into a much bigger "Oof" before I even escaped the NW. The 1-2 of
ALGA / A PRIORI would be a lot to take in such little space, but to have the laughable
GREAVES running right through that same section, ye gods, wow. And I'm a former D&D enthusiast and sometime medievalist who actually knows a lot of terms for armor—but even I misspelled
GREAVES at first pass (GRIEVES!). I haven't even hit the theme material yet, and already the vibe is bad. Then I hit the first themer and, having no idea what the gimmick is, with just AME- in place, throw down
AMERICAN GOTHIC (23A: Two Iowans (1930)). Great painting, but the clue was so dumb and literal that I couldn't even fathom what the theme could be. And so, completely contrary to habit, I decided to jump to the bottom of the grid and work out the revealer before I went any farther. That led me into a bizarrely split solving pattern (just the NW and SE done, with acres of white space in between). It also led me to ...
Annnnd that's where the puzzle lost me. Completely. For good. That is ... not a word. Nope. Stop. Stop. If you told me you were an
AMBIVERT I would congratulate you on leading your best life and encourage you not to let anyone kink-shame you. After you patiently and earnestly explained to me that it's not a sex thing, and then explained what you believed
AMBIVERTS meant, I would then ... quietly ... exit the conversation.
The worst part is that this word is now gonna be in Everyone's database and I mean we haven't even seen the singular yet, we just jumped right to the plural? Of a non-thing stupid word? Do
AMBIVERTS wear
GREAVES?
Do AMBIVERTS Dream of Electric GREAVES? I grieve the introduction of
AMBIVERTS to my vocabulary, that I know for sure. And this is all before I realized what a dud the theme is. I worked the revealer, ended up getting
PAINT BY NUMBERS (which, come on, should really be PAINT
ING BY NUMBERS), sighed, shrugged, and decided, "well, this solve is already a wreck, let's see if we can't get all these paintings from just their clues." Who doesn't love an art test!? I got
THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY solely from having most of the "
OF MEMORY" part filled in. The others, I needed a little push with, but not much of one. Shortly I was here:
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| [I forgot there was one more to hunt down: the symmetrical counterpart to "OF MEMORY," i.e. GUERNICA] |
Don't think I knew there was a definite article in
THE STARRY NIGHT. Also probably thought it was STARRY STARRY NIGHT. For reasons. You know the reasons.
I never look at social media until I'm done with the puzzle, but when I'm done, sometimes I check in to see what reactions are out there. This one really spoke to me:
Unlike this solver, I knew every painting. Cold. And that didn't help with the enjoyment factor. At all. I mean, yes, I enjoyed thinking about the paintings, I love art, hurray for art, but as a puzzle, no this didn't work for me. As for the "Naticks," I didn't have any, but I can absolutely understand someone's wrecking on PIAF / FAGIN (5A: "La Vie en Rose" singer / 8D: "Oliver Twist" antagonist) (two proper nouns! crossing! at an uninferrable letter! PIAF is a legend, so you should probably know her, but still, I sympathize), and whether you wrecked or not, PAWL is bad (esp. crossing AAH WII LLC dear lord, what a grim little stretch) (9A: Mechanical catch), and HA'PENNY is not great either (my brain wants this piece of bygone coinage to be "HAyPENNY") (87D: Two farthings, colloquially), and TROPPO ... well that's not bad, actually (91A: Too much, musically), but it's definitely highly technical, and will be tough for many. I can't share the consternation with OGLALAS, though (79A: Crazy Horse and kin)—or, rather, I can, but only with the fact that it's got an "S" on the end. The plural of OGLALA is OGLALA. Crazy Horse is OGLALA. His kin are OGLALA. They are The OGLALA. We have seen OGLALA in the NYTXW many times this century, whereas we haven't seen OGLALAS since 1968.
The big, huge problem with the theme is that it has no boundaries, no limits. Any painting with any countable amount of anything in it qualifies! Here's [Three diners (1942)]
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| (or [Two coffee urns (1942)] or [Seven stools (1942)]) |
And here's
[Three picnickers (and some other lady, is she with them or not, who knows?) (1863)]
It is true that not many paintings are famous
by name, so finding ones that are sufficiently famous *and* contain different ... numbers ... of things? ... *and* making those fit symmetrically, I'm sure that took some work. But still, as a cluing conceit, the number thing does Nothing. It adds on dimension, no trickery. Nothing. All for a revealer that doesn't really stick the landing. In a grid that's full of ... not always top-tier fill. I think my disappointment is augmented by the fact that I really do love art and do love the idea of an art-based theme (Liz Gorski's
Guggenheim-themed Sunday being the Ideal Sunday theme that I carry around in my head and heart). This one just doesn't seem to be giving enough puzzle bang for my puzzle buck
Bullets:- 27A: Patton crossed it in 1944 (SEINE)— while the PIAF / FAGIN crossing didn't give me any trouble, the SEINE / FAGIN crossing sure did. So many five-letter European rivers ... and I spelled it FAGAN to start.
- 109A: Eyelike openings (OCULI)— crosswordese of the first order. Always feels like cheating when I just "know" this stuff (from decades of doing crosswords). It's an architectural term.
- 14D: Actress Graff of "Mr. Belvedere" (ILENE) — speaking of crosswordese, this actress's name would be largely lost to time if it weren't for her highly convenient first name (five letters, alternating vowel-consonant pattern, beginning and ending with vowels, all common letters ... if you want your kid to be a crossword answer some day, start by naming them ILENE) (or ARELA, that would kill)
- 34D: Sorry excuse for a pillowcase? (SHAM) — I got this because I know "pillowcase" = SHAM. I don't exactly see how "SHAM" = "sorry excuse." I would not use "SHAM" that way. SHAM implies fraud, "sorry" merely weakness. Oh well. Maybe there's some deeper connection to pillowness (or sorriness) that I'm just missing.
- 38D: QB stat: Abbr. (ATT) — short for "attempt" (as in attempted pass, in U.S. football: attempts / completions => completion percentage, an important stat)
- 55D: Fresh perspective (NEW TAKE) — this feels like "Green paint," i.e. something someone might say but not something that really has standalone power. HOT TAKE, yes, NEW TAKE, not really.
- 77D: Starts of some cheers (HIPS)— possibly the most unnecessarily painful clue I've ever seen, emphasis on "unnecessary." You've got a perfectly good word and ... and ... you decided to make it a bizarrely plural (?!) partial cheer (in case you somehow don't know it, the "cheer" in question is "Hip Hip Hooray!"). Unfathomable editorial choice. “Some cheers”?! Name one other. (“Hip-Hop Hooray” doesn’t count)
- 90D: Country that had a nonviolent "singing revolution" in the late 1980s (ESTONIA) — I learn so much about ESTONIA from the crossword. ESTONIAmust be the most common seven-letter country, or maybe it just seems that way because This Is Our Third ESTONIA Of The Week!!! When you're pushing ESTONIA that hard, you gotta keep coming up with new, non-boring clues. This week's clues
WEDNESDAY: [What's opposite Finland on the Gulf of Finland]
SATURDAY: [First country to hold elections using internet voting]
TODAY: [Country that had a nonviolent "singing revolution" in the late 1980s]
Impress your friends with ESTONIA lore! Unless you like having friends, in which case don't do that. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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