Hello, everyone! It’s Clare, back for the last Tuesday in November. We got our first real taste of winter here in D.C. last week when it briefly snowed; it was so chilly one day that I even decided to Metro instead of bike (which takes a lot). I’ve been enjoying my sports — yay, Liverpool at the top of the table by eight points; maybe yay on my Steelers, whose quality varies week to week; almost yay to the Washington Spirit, who made it to the NWSL championship but lost to the Orlando Pride last weekend; and big yay to the Warriors, who’ve had a great start to the season!
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty:Pretty easy for a Tuesday
Theme answers:
- OUT OF ORDER (16A: Not currently functioning)
- CONCRETE SLAB (22A: Section of a sidewalk)
- MARATHON DANCERS (35A: Participants in an endurance competition set to music)
- EGG MCMUFFINS (46A: Sandwiches that kick-started the fast-food breakfast industry)
McMuffin is a family of breakfast sandwiches sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. The Egg McMuffin is the signature sandwich, which was invented in 1972 by Herb Peterson to resemble eggs benedict, a traditional American breakfast dish with English muffins, ham, eggs and hollandaise sauce… One reason the sandwich was [at-first] served open-faced was that a small tub of strawberry preserves was provided, along with a knife. The sweet and savory approach did not catch on (at least in the US), although a packet of strawberry preserves will still be provided upon request. The first McDonald's corporate-authorized Egg McMuffin was served at the Belleville, New Jersey, McDonald's in 1972. (Wiki)
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Congrats to the constructor on a fun debut puzzle! This one had a clever theme and some nice long answers and left me little to complain about. All in all a good Tuesday. The AUTO FILLED(58A) theme is inventive, and topical, too, given how pervasive AUTO FILL is these days. I’m not usually a big shaded squares person, but it didn’t bother me much in this puzzle, and the car brands were all legit. The theme answers were a nice collection. I loved seeing EGG MCMUFFINS (46A) in the puzzle. I used to have so many sausage EGG MCMUFFINS when I was younger and traveling with my parents for one of my sporting events. MARATHON DANCERS (35A) seems slightly backward to me (like it could be “dance marathoners”), but it’s still a fun concept — apparently some of the original dance marathons went on for 1,000-plus hours, which is wild. CONCRETE SLAB (22A) was the most boring of the theme answers for me. OUT OF ORDER (16A) was also straightforward but has a nice ring to it.
Along with the theme answers, I loved the long downs. We’ve got FOOD COMA (4D: After-meal drowsiness known scientifically as postprandial somnolence), which is apparently an actually scientific thing and something we may all experience come Thanksgiving when we’re eating a lot of food. The clue for TUMBLEWEED (10D: Western roller) was just about perfect, and it’s a word I can’t say I’ve ever seen in a crossword puzzle before, which excited me. RARING TO GO (26D: Bursting with anticipation) is a fun expression, and CHISELED (28D: Like a bodybuilder's physique) is a vivid word. I keep hoping someone other than my family will tell me how CHISELED my back muscles look after all my rock climbing, but *sigh* I guess I'll just keep waiting.
My biggest hang-up with the puzzle was with a few of the clues. I got stuck with 44D: Good for skating, but bad for driving because I put “ice” instead of ICY. The clue seems to be calling for a noun but then instead gives you an adjective; ICYconditions are bad for driving and good for skating, but ICY isn’t bad for driving and good for skating. I don’t think 25A: High school events with elaborate proposals really works for PROMS because the events themselves don’t have elaborate proposals; it’s in the lead-up to the prom when you get “promposals” (but that might be nitpicking). For OMIT, I didn’t love the clue 23D: Replace with an ellipsis, maybe; the wording just seemed strange. As far as I’m aware, people don’t refer to a developer as a “dev,” so the clue for APP (6A: Dev's development) seemed like a long way to go to avoid a standard clue for some crosswordese. And if you’ll let me nitpick one final time, I don’t think 1A: They're artificial at half of all NFL stadiums really works for TURFS. You might say half the stadiums have artificial turf (singular), but it seems very strange to me to say that half the TURFS are artificial or that stadiums have artificial TURFS. Just another wording thing.
On the other hand, I absolutely loved 52A: ___-referential (like the clue for 52-Across) as SELF. Seriously, that one clue/answer made my day and put me in a great mood for the rest of the solve. That’s just so clever (or I’m easily impressed). To a lesser degree, I thought 9A: Feature of a movie, or a movie review as STAR was also great.
Although it didn’t feel like there were that many proper nouns in the puzzle, as I tried picking them out and typing them up, I see there were a pretty normal amount — LUNA; WEBMD, EGG MCMUFFINS, ANDOR, PEELE, KROC, EDYS, AMSTEL, GUIDO, ALDO, and Formula ONE. Maybe my feeling was because they seemed so familiar or easy, and I had a hard time trying to decide what could be a word of the day. I only struggled with AMSTEL(43D: Beer brand named for a Dutch river) (not a big beer drinker), though I imagine some people may not have seen or heard of ANDOR (6D: Disney+ series that's a prequel to "Rogue One"), given that it’s more recent.
I liked having both KROC (14D) and EGG MCMUFFINS (46A) in the puzzle to connect McDonald’s. I’ve been guilty of checking my symptoms on WEBMD(21A: Site with a Symptom Checker feature) and deciding that I definitely have a brain tumor (spoiler: I don’t). I love Key & PEELE(7D: Key's partner in sketch comedy) sketches, even if it’s been way too many years. And I’ll truly never get used to seeing the ice cream brand EDYS (56D: Brand whose logo has an apostrophe shaped like an ice cream cone) in stores, rather than the West Coast version — Dreyer’s — which also has an ice cream cone in its logo.
The puzzle wasn’t too bogged down by crosswordese. The only bits that really annoyed me were UH UH (2D: "Not a chance!"), AS AM I (28A: "Me too!," more formally), and I’M IN (18A: "Sounds like a plan!"). Those clues could have led to so many different, uninteresting answers, which I never like. I much prefer the form “slyest” rather than SLIEST (9D: Most cunning), which looks and feels very wrong. I also will never love the form of R AND B(12: Genre for D'Angelo or Daniel Caesar) in a crossword; my brain always wants to make it something like “Rand B” instead of reading it like it’s intended, as R&B.
But overall the puzzle was cute and straightforward with pretty clean fill and was just what I needed. Not to be too SELF-referential.
Misc.:
Misc.:
- 60A: Part of a ski that cuts into the snow as EDGE obviously made me think of Mikaela Shiffrin, who just got her 99th World Cup win last weekend and will get to go for 100 at her home mountain in Killington, Vermont, this weekend. Go, Miki!!
- GUIDO (47D: "Cars" character with an Italian accent) is seemingly used innocuously in this puzzle and references a car (or “auto,” which is on theme) from “Cars” that’s a small blue car that just dreams of being able to run pit stops in a race some day. But the word also apparently can be used as a slur against Italian-American men. So I would’ve left this one out of the puzzle.
- 19A: Require one's owner to vacuum, perhaps as SHED reminds me… I’m very likely getting a puppy in just a few weeks! I’ll definitely be preparing myself for chewed up shoes and vacuuming and being tired from chasing the pup around.
- I’ll never pass over a chance to share this Key & PEELE (7D) skit, where Keegan-Michael Key is a substitute teacher doing roll call; or this bit from the White House Correspondents Dinner, where Key does a bit he developed on the show and acts as President Obama’s “anger translator.”