Constructor: Gary Larson and Amy Ensz
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (two toughish answers, else Easy)
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THEME: "Hitter miss" — "___ OR ___" phrases are reimagined as (wacky!) (wacky?) "___ER ___" phrases:
Theme answers:
No, not *that* Gary Larson. (Just wanted to get that out of the way)
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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (two toughish answers, else Easy)
Theme answers:
- BOOMER BUST (17A: Sting operation at a senior center?)
- FIGHTER FLIGHT (26A: Mission for an F-16?)
- FORMER FASHION (45A: Powdered wigs, petticoats, etc.?)
- PASSER FAIL (61A: Quarterback's interception?)
The Kara Sea is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all extensions of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. [...]The Kara Sea is roughly 1,450 km (900 mi) long and 970 km (600 mi) wide with an area of around 880,000 km2 (339,770 sq mi) and a mean depth of 110 metres (360 ft).
Its main ports are Novy Port and Dikson and it is important as a fishing ground although the sea is ice-bound for all but two months of the year. The Kara Sea contains the East-Prinovozemelsky field (an extension of the West Siberian Oil Basin), containing significant undeveloped petroleum and natural gas. In 2014, US government sanctions resulted in Exxon having until 26 September to discontinue its operations in the Kara Sea. (wikipedia)
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More bust than boom today, I think. The concept just doesn't have enough juice. Simple concepts *can* yield snappy results, but these are all pretty limp. BOOMER BUST is probably the best, since the imagined context is mildly amusing and more than sufficiently Wacky, but the rest of these just kinda lie there. "OR" to "ER," as a concept, just doesn't have that many interesting places to go. And there aren't enough *good* "___ OR ___" phrases to choose from. Some of the ones we get today feel slightly fudged. "Boom or bust" is real enough, but "Boom *and* bust" is possibly more common (describing economic cycles). Merriam-webster dot com has "Boom-and-bust" but not "Boom-or-bust," and the first def. at the top of a google search for "Boom-or-bust" gives you the definition for "Boom-*and*-bust," and lists "Boom-or-bust" as a variant. Further, "form or fashion" doesn't really stand on its own very well. "In some form or fashion" is the full phrase. As for "Pass or fail," I've been on university campuses ... well, too long ... and while that phrasing is absolutely recognizable and acceptable, the common expression is "Pass/fail," like it's one word. "I'm taking it pass/fail." So the themer set as a whole is acceptable, but only just, and, well, it's hard to get excited about "acceptable."
Overall the puzzle played very easy, but there were two answers that slowed me down considerably (on Tuesday, any amount of slowing down beyond 5 seconds or so = "considerably"). The first, and most annoying, was PROLIFIC (40D: Like Stephen King and Isaac Asimov). I say "annoying," but that's just my speed-solver frustration talking. The clue is fine. It's just far more enigmatic than every other clue in the grid, and that answer appears at a very crucial point in the grid: the (extremely narrow) passageway from east to southeast, so while I expected to get the first letter or two and go plunging right down into the southeast, I ... did not. For all I know, Stephen King and Isaac Asimov went to the same university, or are both Pisces, or left-handed, or ... PR-, PR- ... PROFITABLE? PRINTERS? PRUDENT? For whatever reason, PROLIFIC just wouldn't come. And I'm not sure I knew that about Asimov. King, yes, for sure, I was talking about his prolificness with my wife this past weekend as we wandered some bookstore or other. I don't know Asimov's work nearly as well, and certainly don't see his stuff on bookstore shelves in anything like the numbers that I see King's books. Again, not questioning the clue, the clue is fine. Just didn't click for me.
The bigger non-click today, however, was KARA SEA (!?!?!?). Thank god all the crosses in KARA are fair because the very existence of this sea is News To Me. As near-polar seas go, I know the Antarctic ROSS SEA (a crossword "favorite" of old), but if I've ever seen KARA SEA in crosswords before, I've plum forgotten about it. Looks like its last appearance in the NYTXW was 25 years ago (May 6, 1999). And that was a Thursday. Doubt I saw KARA SEA then, as I was probably preoccupied that week with my job interview (for the English Dept. job I still have). Not sure why they flew me back for an interview so late in the annual interview process ... (actually I do know—they wanted someone else, but that person had put her foot in her mouth somehow, or otherwise made a "bad" impression, and so I got the call) (that other person was almost certainly the better candidate; she probably "offended" someone without knowing how or why; stepped on a toe, name-dropped an unfavorable name, who knows?; faculty can be, let's say, touchy. And capricious. And cruel.). Anyway, KARA SEA, yikes, infinitely more obscure than anything else in the grid. But easily gettable from crosses, so I learn something new without shedding too much blood, hurrah.
Notes:
- 14A: Thrice-repeated words in one of Gertrude Stein's truisms ("AROSE") — when I search [Gertrude Stein's truisms] the first hit I get is for a crossword answer site. Referring to this crossword specifically. I had no idea Stein was famous for a set of "truisms," though I do know the phrase "A ROSE is A ROSE is A ROSE..."* (how many "A ROSE"s do we ultimately get? With Stein, it seems like the answer might possibly be "infinite"). We had to read Stein's Tender Buttons in my senior seminar at college. It was a good lesson—some writing doesn't *want* to be "interpreted." From wikipedia:
Tender Buttons has provoked divided critical responses since its publication. It is renowned for its Modernist approach to portraying the everyday object and has been lauded as a "masterpiece of verbal Cubism". Its first poem, "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass", is arguably its most famous, and is often cited as one of the quintessential works of Cubist literature. The book has also been, however, criticized as "a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax".
- 35A: What the first call to a receptionist might come in on (LINE ONE)— there's something quaint about this that I love. Receptionist / telephone line humor was a staple of old comedies, and by "old" I mean "from the time before email." I know telephones still exist, but for some reason LINE ONE gives off beautiful last-century vibes.
- 19A: English playwright Coward (NOEL) — NO "EL"being a delightfully ironic answer for a puzzle that has ELF and ELK and ELL.
- 56A: SEP and Roth, for two (IRAS)— "SEP" = Simplified Employee Pension. LOL I thought it stood for "Self-Employed Person" (because that's who they're for).
*the actual phrase is "Rose is A ROSE is A ROSE is A ROSE” and it's from the poem "Sacred Emily," from Stein's 1922 collection Geography and Plays. Whereas "A ROSE by any other name would smell as sweet," is, of course, from Danielle Steel's Daddy (1989).