Constructor: Sam Buchbinder
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME:THE SOUND OF MUSIC (59A: Best Picture winner of 1965 ... or a description of the ends of 17-, 30- and 45-Across?) — musical instrument homophones:
Theme answers:
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Short write-up today, as it's the first day of my Fall semester and ... let's just say I am completely unprepared have a few details left to iron out in my syllabuses (that's right, syllabuses, none of this fake-Latin plural baloney). The main thing I felt while solving this was "wow this is easy" and "this fill feels ... of YORE" (19D: Days long ago). There's nothing particularly awful about it, it just felt stale, like 2014-normal instead of 2024-normal. The feeling started off with CAB IT, which, surprisingly (I found out just now), has only been appearing in the puzzle since 2015 (!?). Feels like a mid-century expression. Maybe I'm thinking of LEG IT, which feels related (and has occasionally been clued as [Walked, slangily] since at least 2001). Weird for CAB IT to flourish only in the Age of Uber, but then maybe not weird, since, as we know, the NYTXW is typically belated in all things. After CAB IT there was a flood of short mediocrity: OCTET EST OXO AHEM EEK CCCP CRO and FRIEDA, just to stay in the top part of the grid. I like Peanuts ... no, who am I kidding, I love Peanuts, but every time I see FRIEDA I think "man, that is a minor character" and "oh this is one of those deals where the constructor probably thought that was how Frida Kahlo spelled her name, and then, when the grid was finished and the cluing began, realized ... nope. Gotta resort to the tertiary Peanuts character” (26D: Curly-haired friend of Charlie Brown). The bottom half of the grid is equally dull (APSES, HAHA, HEE), if maybe a little less so. There's some Scrabble-f***ing in the SW that gets you a "Z," but it's hard to believe it was worth it—why would you deliberately put TMZ in your grid if you didn't have to? Bizarre. Anyway, I had no idea what the theme was, the puzzle was easy, the fill was tired: this was 90% of my experience today.
Lightning round:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- TRADEMARK SYMBOL (cymbal) (17A: Superscript by a brand name)
- AIR FORCE BASE (bass) (30A: Fighter jet's landing spot)
- GOLDMAN SACHS (sax) (45A: Investment banking giant)
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and most populous city. Tajikistan is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of approximately ten million. [...] The country has been led by Emomali Rahmon since 1994, who heads an authoritarian regime and whose human rights record has been criticised. // Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Tajiks form the ethnic majority in the country, and their national language is Tajik, a variety of Persian. Russian is used as the official inter-ethnic language. While the state is constitutionally secular, Islam is nominally adhered to by 97.5% of the population. (wikipedia)
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The theme is cuteish. Pretty straightforward. Those last words are all words that "sound" like "music"al instruments. The theme answers themselves are kind of bland, but the theme is consistent, it works, there's a bit of an "aha" on the back end, no real complaints. Like the fill, it's pretty straightforward, but unlike the fill, we get some playfulness at least. The hardest part of the puzzle for me BY FAR (please clap for my callback to yesterday's puzzle) was TAJIK because LOL central Asian geography is among my top Jeopardy! / trivia / test-taking nightmares. I could easily be conned into believing in a fake -stan, and the fact that any of them are right next to China (which my brain has in a completely other part of the world) is disorienting. Today, I invented a -stan: TAZIKSTAN. My Uzbek neighbor was a TAZIK. This (obviously) is because of ... Khazakhstan? [Looks it up] Damn! So close. Almost spelled that right on the first try: it's actually Kazakhstan, which is (comparatively) enormous but someone doesn't even abut Tajikistan!? So I invented a neighbor for the Uzbek: the TAZIK. Good alien name, incorrect earthling name. Luckily there are no such things as ZELLYBEANS (are there?).
[this'll get you going in the morning!]
Lightning round:
- 43D: Iconic outfit for a noted chairman (MAO SUIT) — I had RED SUIT, confusing it (I assume) with Mao's Little Red Book. This is a pretty (bygone) communist puzzle. The MAO SUIT. The member of a former Soviet republic (TAJIK), the Letters on old Soviet rockets (CCCP). This may be part of what's making the puzzle feel a little bit "of YORE."
- 21A: Losing line in tic-tac-toe (OXO)— as I've said before, not a fan of the "tic-tac-toe" line of cluing when actual things (here, a kitchenware brand) are readily available. [Losing line in tic-tac-toe] is bottom of the barrel stuff. Why go there if you don't have to go there. Reserve it for XXO or OOX or whatever. Better, yet, never use losing tic-tac-toe lines in your grid. Ever.
- 37A: Longtime Heat coach Spoelstra (ERIK) — just as the puzzle is heavy on the bygone Communism, it's also heavy on the basketball. ERIK Spoelstra here, and then the NBA (61D: Org. associated with the John Tesh instrumental "Roundball Rock"). and then the March Madness clue on UVA (63D: 2019 March Madness champs, for short). Not sure why you go to the basketball well that third time when you absolutely don't have to. I guess it makes UVA harder for a significant non-sports-loving subset of solvers. I think it's better to vary your frame of reference.
- 51D: "Wonderwall" group (OASIS) — anyway, here's "Wonderwall"
See you next time.