Constructor: Rich Katz and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Way Too Easy
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THEME:"What's It All About?" — two-word phrases where second word starts with the prefix "RE-," clued as if the prefix were actually the abbreviation "RE:," i.e. "Regarding" (or, in the words of the puzzle's title, "About"):
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Not much that needs explaining, but ...:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Way Too Easy
Theme answers:
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What was that? I solved that (just now) in about 6 or 7 minutes, *without* speeding. There were answers here and there that I didn't know straight away, I guess, but not many. The main problem, though, isn't that the puzzle's overly easy—it's that it's supremely boring. Zero laughs. OK, so you reimagine the "RE-"s as "RE:"s ... and? There should be some kind of Payoff for your gimmick, but instead, there's just a mirthless "yeah, I guess that works" vibe to every single one of the themers. Worse, the puzzle thinks it's being cute and building to some grand climax by having the final themer be all meta and self-reflexive and cutesy and winky (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?). This felt like the one-notiest of one-note puzzles (that note being RE ... the note between DO and MI ... a SOUR NOTE, indeed) (look, I gotta find some way to amuse myself, and the puzzle is giving me very little to work with, so dumb jokes about "notes" is what you get). One-note puzzles are OK on a weekday, in a regular 15x15 grid, if that one note is a good one, but for a Sunday, you gotta do better than this. Even if the puzzle is simple, those themers have to bring a lot more heat, a lot more chuckle fuel than this. It's not bad so much as dull, and definitely insufficiently tough. It seems that no one involved in the making of this puzzle ever thought, "yes, we *can* do this theme ... but SHOULD WE?" (75A: "So is this our plan or not?").
- SPECIAL RE: QUEST (23A: TV's "Search for the Titanic," for one?)
- MANUAL RE: COUNT (35A: Instructions for slaying Dracula?)
- SHOW RE: MORSE (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?)
- SPEECH RE: COGNITION (70A: TED Talk about neuropsychology?)
- SPOT RE: MOVER (86A: U-Haul ad?)
- CHAIN RE: ACTION (101A: Email thread with a "Donate now!" message?)
- HIGH RE: SOLUTION (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?)
"Like That" is a song by American rapper Future and record producer Metro Boomin with fellow American rapper Kendrick Lamar. It was sent to US rhythmic radio through Freebandz, Boominati Worldwide, Epic Records, and Republic as the third and final single from Future and Metro's collaborative studio album, We Don't Trust You, on March 26, 2024.[...]A trap and hardcore hip hop song that is predominantly composed of lively percussions, "Like That" received acclaim from music critics, who primarily praised Lamar's performance and Metro's production. His verse, which attracted significant media coverage, is a diss aimed at fellow rappers Drake and J. Cole in response to their 2023 collaboration, "First Person Shooter.""Like That" was quickly met with commercial success, debuting atop the Billboard Hot 100, where it would spend three weeks, as well as topping the Global 200 and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts simultaneously. It was both Future and Lamar's third number-one single on the former chart, and Metro's first as a credited artist. The song also topped the Canadian Hot 100 and peaked within the top ten of several countries in Europe and Oceania. [...]
Lyrically, Lamar uses his surprise appearance to directly respond to "First Person Shooter", rapping: "Yeah, get up with me, fuck sneak dissing / "First Person Shooter", I hope they came with three switches". He also rejected J. Cole's idea of the three rappers representing hip hop as its "big three" and claims that he alone takes the top spot: "Motherfuck the big three, nigga it's just big me". Throughout his verse, Lamar compares his rivalry with Drake to Prince's reported feud with Michael Jackson ("What? I'm really like that / And your best work is a light pack / Nigga, Prince outlived Mike Jack"). Drake has notably compared himself to Michael Jackson on numerous occasions, including during the final verse of "First Person Shooter", and Lamar has similarly compared himself to Prince. (wikipedia)
• • •
One feature of the theme that deserves some recognition is that the changing of "RE-" to "RE:" brings with it a change of the meaning of both words on either side of "RE:," every time. So "RE-" changes meaning (to "RE:" / "About"), but so does SPECIAL and QUEST, MANUAL and COUNT, etc. That's a nice feature. And yet, the RE: phrases were so awkward most of the time that solving them felt like a tedious mechanical exercise. CHAIN RE: ACTION was particularly clunky. Can't think of the last time I thought of an "email thread" as a CHAIN (it's a "thread," as the clue rightly says), and why would a CHAIN contain a single message ("Donate now!")? You'd think one email would've done the trick there. Not a very efficient way to get the word out. Further, if the show is about Morse (SHOW RE: MORSE), why is it "titled" with "dots and dashes?" (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?) It's the "titled" part I don't get. Why would the "title" of your show about Morse be in Morse (code)? The whole thing just didn't resonate with me. Maybe if the puzzle had slowed me down At All, if I'd been forced to really work out the themers, I would (somehow) have had greater appreciation of them. I dunno. I just know that this was fun-free for me. It's not even enjoyably bad. There are no howlers or inanities that I can take pleasure digging into. The puzzle is just ... there. Taking up Sunday-sized space until the next Sunday rolls around.
[Sidenote of little relevance to the overall enjoyability of this puzzle, but ... why in the world are there cheater squares* in this thing!? The black squares after DAB and after SPY (and their symmetrical equivalents), why? You usually bring in cheaters when there's just too much strain on the grid, when it's hard to fill cleanly and you need to release some pressure. But ... It's not like things are particularly dense up there (or down below). Were things really so taxing that you had to add these superfluous black squares? Whoa, there's another one (under BRATT, above CHAIR). How is making short answers even shorter going to improve the overall appeal of your grid? I have to assume that without those extra black squares, the fill got real ugly ... so maybe I should be grateful those squares are there. Also, if the theme had been fabulous, I probably wouldn't even be noticing them; I certainly wouldn't be caring]
Though the puzzle was very easy, there were a few times where I had to stop and think today, outside the first couple themers. Like 96A: Bud after Jack, perhaps? (CHASER). That is (I realized eventually), Budweiser after Jack Daniels. Good one (no, really, I liked it). I had ---N for 77D: Adam's apple locale and was very very briefly mad that the answer was going to be CHIN ("what the!?"), then noticed that the "a" in "apple" wasn't capitalized ... which I'm now realizing doesn't mean a damn thing (that's how you spell "Adam's apple"), but somehow when I was solving, I thought "oh, that lowercase "a" means it's a regular apple, not the anatomical apple." Bizarre how being totally wrong (about the capitalization of "apple" in "Adam's apple") can lead to the right conclusion (in this case, EDEN). I had AWAKE and maybe even ALERT before AHEAD at 3D: Up. I briefly cast Mark HAMILL (!?!?!) in "NCIS," and then when I recast Mark HARM-N, I recast him like that (without the final vowel—totally unsure). Needed several crosses to remember ALOO GOBI, which is delicious, but the technical name of which I blanked on. But otherwise, there was almost no resistance today. Not only that, there was really no interesting or original fill to ooh and/or aah over. It was all pretty dreary. Not even dreary. Just ... plain. Unless I'm supposed to be excited about ERNO RUBIK (I'm not).
How long did it take you to figure out the theme? I needed two themers. When I got SPECIAL RE: QUEST, I thought that the first "quest' was the Titanic voyage itself, and then the "Search for the Titanic" was a separate, follow-up quest—a RE-QUEST. "Well, that first quest didn't quite work out the way we'd planned. Let's try another!" It was only when trying to make sense of the clue on MANUAL RE: COUNT that I had the "aha" moment of noticing that the "RE-" was supposed to be read as "RE:" It's not that the basic idea isn't clever, in its way, but ... there's just not a lot you can do with it. All the "humor" is in the clues, and there's just not that much juice to be squozen out of the core concept. When the grid fails to pick up the slack in terms of either interest or difficulty level, well, you get [waves hands at grid] this.
Not much that needs explaining, but ...:
- 11A: Place in a pyramid, say (ENTOMB)— Yesterday, I listened to the latest episode of Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This... podcast, which is about late-career Howard Hawks. Extremely coincidentally, this ended up helping me get this answer faster than I might have otherwise, as much of the episode was about Hawks's Land of the Pharaohs (1955), which is about a Pharaoh who has a robber-proof pyramid built (over the course of many, many years) so he can be ENTOMBed with all this treasure without fear of grave-robbers taking all his stuff. William Faulkner (who did not like movies and did not watch them) is one of the credited screenwriters. He didn't know how Pharaohs talked. No one involved in the production did. Does anyone? Anyway, the movie ... did not do well.
- 48A: Bit of Rasta headwear (TAM) — can you really have a "bit of headwear?" Why isn't this just [Rasta headwear]? "Bit" is bizarre.
- 84A: Scout's container (CANTEEN) — first thought: "Why is Scout (from To Kill A Mockingbird) in a container?" Nobody puts Scout in a container!
- 78D: Spanish muralist whose "American Progress" is in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center (SERT) — if you solved crosswords in the 20th century, you definitely know SERT, and if not ... probably not, I'm guessing. (This is only the third appearance of SERT in the 2020s, whereas SERT appeared eight times in 1992 alone)
I hope you enjoyed this much more than I did, or, if not, that you finished quickly, maybe even broke your personal Sunday record. Someone must have broken their record. I can't be alone in thinking this was supremely easy. Or maybe I can be alone. It's been a weird week / month / year, and a long cold lonely winter. Discovering that I'm an outlier (in puzzles, and in general) surprises me less and less these days. I'm getting used to it. Hopefully next Sunday I love a puzzle you all hate. :) Remember the "Art Heist" puzzle? Good times ... See you next time.
*"Cheater squares" are black squares that do not add to the overall word count, usually added to the grid solely to make filling the grid easier for the constructor(s).