Constructor: Evans Clinchy
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: None
Word of the Day: ANI (57D: Glossy black cuckoo) —
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: ANI (57D: Glossy black cuckoo) —
The anis are the three species of birds in the genus Crotophaga of the cuckoo family. They are essentially tropical New World birds, although the range of two species just reaches the United States.[1][2]
Unlike some cuckoos, the anis are not brood parasites, but nest communally, the cup nest being built by several pairs from 2–6 m high in a tree. A number of females lay their eggs in the nest and then share incubation and feeding.
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Hi friends! It's Rafa again as promised yesterday. Hope the last 24 hours treated you well. I went up to Marin County today and had a beautiful and peaceful beach day. Gorgeous county, that one. Highly recommend a visit if you've never been.Another fun themeless today. Not quite as easy and whooshy as yesterday, but I enjoyed the balance of vocabulary in this one. ARE WE OKAY is a fun in-the-language expression, DEPRAVITY is a cool word (with a non-cool meaning), WEIMAR ERA brings some history, DON DRAPER brings some pop culture. There's something for everyone!
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| Dolly PARTON's Dollywood |
I love how as a society we have decided that we will continue to call it Twitter. I've never seen someone unironically refer to that website as "X" and I love that the clue for RETWEETED doesn't have some weird ", formerly" descriptor. I guess they are technically called "reposts" now but ... we don't care! They will always be retweets in my heart.
Then there's COW TIPPER. Is cow tipping a thing that actually happens. The Google AI overview when searching "cow tipping" says "Some say it could take up to six people to overcome the force of a cow's standing position" ... who is "some"? Why did cow tipping become some sort of urban legend? Did nobody question this? I don't think I could tip over a cow if my life depended on it. They are large and sturdy! It's a fine answer to have in a crossword since it is a real urban legend, but I had never really thought much about it until 5 minutes ago.
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| Some tipped (and fake-looking?) cows |
What else? I got semi-Naticked by the FRANZEN / ZETAS crossing. I had a B instead of a Z at first. The down could plausibly be BETAS, and the name was new to me, so I had to come back and try the Z. Generally I'm a fan of the silly "apt name for ..." type clues for names (unpopular opinion, I think!) but this one for ERIN didn't quite land for me. I had no idea ANI was a bird, but ANI DiFranco is probably tired of appearing in crosswords so why not change it up.
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| This is an ANI apparently |
Similar to yesterday, the grid felt a bit more on the closed-off side. It's hard to keep things connected with the five stacked answers in the middle, but I was pretty stuck in the top right for a while until PAYWALL (great answer!) came to me and unlocked the corner.
Bullets:
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Bullets:
- UTAHANS [Pioneer Day celebrants] — Pioneer Day was new to me. Also, apparently Utahn is more common / preferred over UTAHAN, but maybe someone from Utah in the comments can let me know!
- GRANTED ["I will admit ..."] — Fun way to elevate a potentially-boring one-word answer by cluing it as an expression
- RILEY [N.B.A. coach Pat who trademarked the term "three-peat"] — I just watched Inside Out 2 this weekend and it would have been incredible timing if the clue for RILEY referenced the character in that movie
- EASY FIXES [Simple solutions] — I like this entry a lot!
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