Constructor: John Kugelman
Relative difficulty: Easy
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THEME:"Is There an Echo in Here?"— clues are repeated sounds, words, or numbers, and answers are punny descriptions of those repetitions:
Theme answers:
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These puns are hit-and-miss, though I will admit that I grudgingly stopped and admired THIS BEARS REPEATING. You gotta mentally insert an apostrophe for the pun to work, but that's fine. Better than fine. Really imaginative. The pun is (for once) good. The bear (Pooh) is indeed repeating. There's a lot of cleverness on display here, and occasionally some welcome lunacy. ALL "OW"S! ONE AFTER THE OTHER! When I say wackiness needs to go big or go home, that's what I mean. But the themers kind of peter out there at the bottom. BACK-UP COPY and PAIR OF PANTS are the only ones I actively don't like. First of all, I get that "OK" means "copy" (in RADIOSPEAK?), but only one of the "OK"s can be the BACK-UP COPY. The other one is just a "COPY," so the answer does not make sense for the clue. I think this critique extends to SECOND MATE, where only one of the "buddies" is actually "second." The first "buddy" is ... first, so again, the answer simply doesn't work for the clue. Compare those two answers to DOUBLE-CLICK, which refers to both "clicks" i.e. both "tut"s, not just the second one, or THIS BEARS REPEATING or THE MUMMY RETURNS, where the repetition itself is the subject. No, BACK-UP COPY and SECOND MATE just don't work, since those answers directly refer only to the *second*, repeated part of the clue, and not the original, first part as well. And as for PAIR OF PANTS, er, I would not describe a "hubba" as ... well, as an anything, but certainly not a "pant." I get that "hubba-hubba!" is what you say when you are panting (libidinously), but the hubba-pant equation feels awful. But in the main, this punny puzzle does better than most punny puzzles, and there's enough zany variety to cover a Sunday-sized grid without leaving me feeling exhausted by a beaten-into-the-ground concept. It's a mild thumbs-up from me, which is a pretty big accomplishment considering that it's a Sunday (so so often a no-funday).
What else?:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- DOUBLE-CLICK (21A: "Tsk, tsk"?)
- SECOND MATE (23A: Buddy-buddy?)
- RAP DUO (44A: [Knock, knock]?)
- ONE AFTER ANOTHER (45A: 11?)
- THIS BEARS REPEATING (64A: Pooh-pooh?)
- THE MUMMY RETURNS (88A: Tut-tut?)
- ALLOWS (93A: "Ow! Ow!"?)
- BACK-UP COPY (110A: "OK, OK"?)
- PAIR OF PANTS (114A: "Hubba, hubba!"?)
Paris is a city and county seat of Lamar County, Texas, United States. Located in Northeast Texas at the western edge of the Piney Woods, the population of the city was 24,171 in 2020. [...] Following a tradition of American cities named "Paris" (named after France's capital), the city commissioned a 65-foot-tall (20 m) replica of the Eiffel Tower in 1993 and installed it on site of the Love Civic Center, southeast of the town square. In 1998, presumably as a response to the 1993 construction of a 60-foot-tall (18 m) tower in Paris, Tennessee, the city placed a giant red cowboy hat atop its tower. The current Eiffel Tower replica is at least the second one; an earlier replica constructed of wood was destroyed by a tornado. [...] In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several lynchings were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds as public spectacles, with crowds of white spectators cheering as the African-American victims were tortured and murdered. A Black teenager named Henry Smith was lynched in 1893. His murder was the first lynching in US history that was captured in photographs sold as postcards and other trinkets commemorating the killing. Journalist Ida B. Wells said of the incident "Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas." (wikipedia)
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The fill was pretty decent overall, but there were more than a few answers that grated. A lot of the longer answers felt overly nichey, or like things that were barely things. RADIOSPEAK seemed off (25A: What "Ten-four" and "Over" are used in). Doesn't seem like a very real word. When I google it, I get "radio lingo" and "radio terminology" sites. E-BILL is up there with the worst E-things I've seen in a grid (38A: Paper-saving invoice). It's just a bill, or an invoice. The norm is electronic now, so to specify E-BILL feels E-BAD. "EGADS! Have you seen this E-BILL! It's E-GREGIOUS!" Boo. The STARKILLER thing is just annoying (102A: George Lucas's original surname for Luke Skywalker). If Lucas didn't use it, then it's not a thing. How in the world should I know that dumb bit of trivia? Completely stupid to think that it's an acceptable answer. My god fandom can addle some people's brains. Or else overstuffed wordlists are doing the addling, I don't know, but STARKILLER—hard boo. I got it easily enough, by inference, but still, it's bad enough to have to remember so much damn "Star Wars" universe trivia from the *actual* movies. Asking me to know things that didn't even make it in = bridge too far. For reference:
Luke's original surname was "Starkiller", and it remained in the script until a few months into filming. It was dropped due to what Lucas called "unpleasant connotations" with Charles Manson, who became a "star killer" in 1969 when he murdered the well-known actress Sharon Tate. Lucas replaced the problematic name "Starkiller" with "Skywalker". (wikipedia)
I don't go to enough carnivals, it seems, because SPACE SHOT was a ???? to me (15D: Carnival attraction that propels its riders sky-high). MOON SHOT is really a much nicer answer, why aren't they called that? Also not familiar to me, as a term: NIGHT BIRD (58A: Owl or whippoorwill). I know that many birds are nocturnal, and I've heard of NIGHT OWL, and NIGHTHAWKS, of course, but just ... NIGHT BIRD? Meh. I'm sure some people say this, but do people who know anything about birds say this? Feels too vague, too general. I guess a BRAIN DUMP is a thing I've heard of, but it's so ugly as a term that I can't pretend I'm happy to see it (117A: Outpouring of ideas). Some "originality" = unwelcome. And RAGE ROOMS, lol, whatever (71A: Places to let out anger by smashing objects). I've seen this before, but *only* in crosswords (once, also in the plural, last year). It's hard to believe these rooms exist. How bad are you at feeling your feelings that you need a room to smash? Bizarre. It's too weird a thing to use in a grid, especially once it's already been used. Ten-year moratorium on RAGE ROOMS starting now, OK? OK. Copy? Copy.
There are also some patches of regular-old short fill that are really, really dire. Well, one in particular. It goes from SRTA in the far east and then sorta trickles down to form a sludge puddle right around the AERO / ARO crossing (crossing two homophones that are only one letter apart—not great). So SRTA OUTTA "UH, NO""OHH" OTRO ARO AERO EGADS ... that is one unpleasant short-answer slurry. But much of the rest of the grid is solid to strong: PARIS, TEXAS, TIME-LAPSE, FOUL TIP, EYE MASKS ... there's a wide variety of interesting fill, and not too much garbage. I loved STEADICAM, esp. the way it was clued (75D: Filming innovation used in "The Shining"), but I'm a *little* concerned that people will spell it STEADYCAM (as I did at first pass) and leave the "Y" in, believing that that is how ELY Manning spells his name. If you are not into sports, this seems like a very plausible error. But then maybe you've all been doing crosswords for so long that even if you couldn't tell ELI Manning from ELI Wallach, you know for sure that it's ELI with an "I." Let's hope so.
What else?:
- 28A: Honnold who was the first to free-solo climb El Capitan (ALEX)— shrug. The only Honnold I know was the namesake of the college library at my alma mater (Pomona). At least I think that's how it was spelled, Honnold. Hmm, looks like it's the Honnold/Mudd Library but we just called it "Honnold" in the olden days. Speaking of my college, there's an article on their English department that is ... well, it's a ride. It's called "When a Department Self-Destructs," if that gives you any idea. (It's been over 30 years since I was an English major there, so I don't know any of the parties involved.)
- 31A: Sight at Sydney's yearly Festival of the Winds (KITE) — four letters so I *kinda* wanted OBOE. Then I had the "K" and I *kinda* wanted KOALA (sadly, not four letters).
- 79A: Queer identity, for short (ARO) — short for "aromantic." Soon, this answer will have become as common as Brian ENO and I will stop feeling the need to explain it to people.
- 31D: Nine credited roles in "Barbie" (KENS) — normally plural names are suboptimal, as fill goes, but Barbie has made KENS an exception. So many KENS ...
- 56D: State with a five-sided flag (OHIO) — I see "five-sided flag," I think NEPAL, so this is interesting. If I knew this about OHIO's flag, I forgot it, but luckily there are only so many four-letter states.
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| [Nepal] |
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| [OHIO] |
- 99D: Haggard fellow? (MERLE)— first thought: "... the Horrible? Mr. The Horrible?" But that's Hägar (the comic strip Viking), not Haggard (the country legend). Happy to see Haggard instead of HUNTER HAYES today (Saturday solvers know what I mean...). Haggard is the best of the "H" country stars. Here's some more "H"s in his honor.
See you next time.
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