Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME: "I'M WALKIN' HERE" (52A: Memorable ad-lib in "Midnight Cowboy" ... or what the starred clues would say about their answers) — clues are names of famous people, and answers are places where they famously walked:
Notes:![]()
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Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
OK so the only way I can imagine *not* liking this one is if you'd never heard of Midnight Cowboy or never heard the famous line in question. Weird that the clue says it's an "ad-lib"—I honestly didn't know that. So much of what appears to be ad-libs in movies is actually meticulously scripted and rehearsed, so I just assume everything in a movie was planned unless I hear otherwise. And now I'm hearing otherwise, I guess. Cool ... nope, wait. Maybe not cool. According to wikipedia, Dustin Hoffman says "it was an ad-lib," but producer says "nope":
- SEA OF GALILEE (20A: *Jesus)
- YELLOW BRICK ROAD (24A: *Dorothy Gale)
- TRANQUILITY BASE (45A: *Neil Armstrong)
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted by Waldo Salt from the 1965 novel of the same title by James Leo Herlihy. The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with supporting roles played by Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt and Barnard Hughes. Set in New York City, Midnight Cowboy depicts the unlikely friendship between two hustlers: naïve prostitute Joe Buck (Voight) and ailing con man Rico Rizzo (Hoffman), referred to as "Ratso".At the 42nd Academy Awards, the film won three awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film (equivalent of the current NC-17 rating) to win Best Picture. It placed 36th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 43rd on its 2007 updated version.
In 1994, Midnight Cowboy was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. (wikipedia)
• • •
The line, "I'm walkin' here!", which reached number 27 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, is often said to have been improvised, but producer Jerome Hellman disputes this account on the two-disc DVD set of Midnight Cowboy. The scene, which originally had Ratso pretend to be hit by a taxi to feign an injury, is written into the first draft of the original script. Hoffman explained it differently on an installment of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio. He stated that there were many takes to hit the traffic light just right so they would not have to pause while walking. In that take, the timing was perfect, but a cab nearly hit them. Hoffman wanted to say, "We're filming a movie here!", but stayed in character, allowing the take to be used. (wikipedia)
These don't actually sound like contradictory accounts. Anyway, still weird to use "ad-lib" here and not just "line." Also weird (very weird) not to have a question mark at the end of the revealer clue, and for that same clue to use "would" instead of "might" ("... or what the starred clues would say about their answers"). You're being playful, fanciful, absurd in imagining these characters saying this line. To just say flatly that these characters "would" say the line is ... well it's preposterous on its face. You need some indication in the clue that you are being wacky. You need a "?" Or you at least need a "might" instead of a "would."
But back to the actual puzzle. Thematically, it's close to perfect. A 10. Simple and elegant, with three genuinely iconic walkers (no forced examples here), and a revealer that genuinely surprises and entertains. "How are these going to hang together, exactly?" I'm thinking as I descend the grid, and then bam, I get that iconic line—"I'M WALKIN' HERE!"—which would be a ton of fun to encounter under any circumstances, but is particularly fun here as the answer that makes it all make sense. Plus there's the added bonus of getting to imagine Jesus, Dorothy, and Neil actually saying this line. I just imagine Dorothy angrily shoving a Munchkin out of the way...
What was nice about this puzzle was that while I was making my way to the revealer, I didn't feel like I was just ho-humming along, waiting to get to the punchline. The trip, the journey, the walk itself was a great pleasure, with many highlights along the way. The theme answers themselves are solid to vibrant, but I particularly appreciated that the puzzle had other high-quality answers to offer, starting with "OK, YOU WIN" (my first indication that this wasn't just going to be a phoned-in grid), and then continuing on with the spooky juxtaposition of SHRIEK and CAULDRON (loved that modern clue on CAULDRON) (10D: Emotionally volatile situation, metaphorically). You also get the wild WENT WILD along with the quainter and more tame (but for me, no less enjoyable) SET SHOTS (39D: Old-fashioned basketball attempts) before BARHOPping your way to a SMOOSHING finale. There's a lot of ordinary, perhaps less-than-lovely short stuff along the way (AVI LIC ONME ISTO USB NSA) and some crosswordesey names (EIRE, LEONA, RIRI), but the longer, more colorful stuff makes me forget any of that. I also appreciate the low-key way that the puzzle populates the grid with women and (outside of the themers) only women. Plus BRA, and HERS. A subtle way of saying "see, it's really not that hard." When a puzzle effortlessly centers women like this, it reminds me of my years and years (and years) of solving puzzles where the default POV was male—male passing as neutral. Rebecca makes puzzles that feel like they're for everyone. It helps that those puzzles are also, typically, excellent.
Notes:
- 1D: "That's rough" ("OOF") — One of my favorite words, as you know. It comes in so handy when mere words won't do. I did not have much occasion to say "OOF" today, which was nice.
- 35A: Jay relative (CROW) — had the "R" and started to write in WREN (?!). Because they look so different, I forgot (briefly) that CROWs and jays are both corvids. CROWs and jays are also both assholes. I mean, I love them for it, but yeesh. I watched a CROW do horrifying things to a fledgling of another bird species the other day and then fly off with said fledgling in its beak while the fledgling's family took off after it. Just a horror show. And jays are notorious jerks. They are always fighting with robins (the eternal neighborhood war) and that SHRIEK of theirs, yikes. Other birds are like "listen to my pretty song" whereas jays are like "I'M SQUAWKIN' HERE!" Whatever, I love them both. Team Corvid, for sure.
- 57A: Bygone carrier whose first hub was in Pittsburgh (US AIR) — when I first moved here in 1999, I used to fly US AIR, Binghamton to Pittsburgh to ... wherever I was going back west (where my family lived / lives). Now I can't fly out of here at all—the airport has shriveled to a state of near uselessness and we do all our flying out of Syracuse (an hour+ away). The carrier's full name was US AIRWAYS, so I'm not sure what the story is behind the shorter US AIR. Don't know if it was just a "familiarly" situation or if US AIR had some more official name status at some point.
- 43D: Prefix with -gon (NONA-) — LOL unlikely. When's the last time you encountered a NONAgon? Whoa, here's a factoid for you: "Temples of the Baháʼí Faith, called Baháʼí Houses of Worship, are required to be nonagonal." (wikipedia). My feelings about the NONA clue: missed opportunity to include yet another woman's name in the grid:
- 38D: What may be left of center? (EPI-) — LOL yes that is one way to indicate a "prefix"—say that it's "left of" whatever word it's prefixing. In that sense, EPI- may indeed be "left of center"—specifically in the word "epicenter."
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