Constructor: David P. Williams
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: CERTS (27A: Classic candy brand discontinued in 2018) —
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Pretty average Saturday stuff. I think this is the constructor who's in the process of publishing like 13 (?) identically shaped themelesses and then whenever he's done ... something will happen? It has something to do with "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. I do not care about any of this, I just want my Saturday puzzles to be good, but now that someone told me about it, I can't unknow it, and now you know it. When I opened the grid, I was like "Oh, right, this guy, this grid again." I mean, it's fine. The puzzle is not bad, like I said—pretty average. But the whole shtick better be worth it (if it is, I'll say so, I promise). Ignoring all that, though, what do we have today? Where to start? Well, as usual, it's the names that created the most resistance. Extremely mad at myself for not remembering BENNY (24A: Musician/composer Andersson of Abba). Actually, I probably did remember it but immediately discarded it as "not his real name," figuring his "real" name would be something less slangy, more ... Swedish? BENGT? BJORN? Actually, if you wrote in GÖRAN, you have the right to be mad, because that *is* his actual (five-letter) first name: Göran Bror Benny Andersson. I got BENNY late in the solve and went "D'oh!" Sucks to finally get something you were struggling with but actually knew all along. Then there was the name underneath BENNY—couldn't remember the "classic candy" because—and I cannot stress this enough—CERTS is Not A 'Candy'! (27A: Classic candy brand discontinued in 2018). OK, yes, they were "two mints in one," a "candy mint" (?) and a "breath mint," but you cannot leave out the "breath mint" part, that's definitive. CERTS are (uh, were) breath mints. They had Retsyn, the magical proprietary breath-freshening agent that (it turns out) contained partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, which (it turns out) was the tragically ironic cause of CERTS' eventual discontinuation (see Word of the Day, above). Live by the Retsyn, die by the Retsyn. Anyway, CERTS were about Retsyn and Retsyn was about fresh breath. That was their whole deal—breath-freshening. Call things what they are for ****'s sake! So mad at that clue. Boo, clue!
Bullet points:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: CERTS (27A: Classic candy brand discontinued in 2018) —
Certs was a brand of breath mint that was noted for the frequent use of "two mints in one" in its marketing. The original "classic mints" were disc-shaped without a hole and sold in roll packaging similar to Life Savers and Polo. Certs was one of the first mints to be nationally marketed in the United States and had been a fixture at American drug stores and convenience stores since its debut on the market in 1956. It was discontinued in 2018, possibly due to its containing partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, an ingredient which has not been allowed in food sold in the United States since then. (wikipedia) (my emphasis)
• • •
And then CERTS went through CONTE, another name, another No Idea (27D: Giuseppe ___, 2010s-'20s Italian P.M.). Needed every single cross for him (the last of which was the "C" from CERTS, bah!). ZAC football guy was the other name I didn't know (22A: ___ Taylor, head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals starting in 2019). Shrug. You get names you don't know, it happens. ZAC was the least obstructive, largely because he didn't come in a name clump like the others. Besides names, the one thing that held me up more than anything else was INSULATIONS, oy, plural???? (21D: They cover top stories). I immediately thought that the "stories" in that clue were going to be "top levels of buildings" and still ... no idea. None. I honestly needed almost every letter (of a very long answer) to see INSULATIONS (because I got the back end first and it was doing nothing for me). The worst of those long middle answers for sure. Otherwise, the center is smooth. A nice accomplishment. Nothing flashy, but you rarely get "flashy" in such a huge amount of white space. You just pray for "clean" and if you get it, you're satisfied. Or should be.
Since the grid is highly segmented, it plays five different ways (like five different puzzles), but all the corners were essentially the same level of difficulty for me—fairly easy. The NE *felt* harder, but I'm not sure why. Possibly because of ZAC and the weird clue on CAMO (25A: Threads that are hard to find?) and the odd standalone answer NO-SPIN (really hard to parse, somehow) (7A: Straight-shooting). Even with the "Z" I had some trouble with BLAZER (18A: Bit of attire supposedly named for its original bright red cloth). But as I say, while it *felt* harder than the other corners, I never got honest-to-god stuck, so it was probably about as hard as the others. The high point of the puzzle was probably "DON'T RUB IT IN." I might've liked BET THE RANCH ... if it had been BET THE FARM, which is the expression that I know. Looks like people use BET THE RANCH to mean exactly the same thing ... just about one-sixth as often (per google search result numbers). I also like NONCHALANCE, esp. with its slippery clue (31A: Disregard) (looks like a verb ... isn't!), and PIZZA PIE, which allowed me to sing along with Dean Martin in my head (10D: Comestible mentioned in "That's Amore"). My initial problem there was that I was reading "comestible" as "combustible," and even as I was typing in PIZZA PIE I was thinking "wait, does it really explode? I mean, the moon hits your eye like a big PIZZA PIE ... but ... it's a metaphor ..." So now I'm imagining PIZZA PIEs just slamming into people's faces and detonating upon impact ... until I realize "oh, comestible ... something you eat ... yeah, that makes more sense."
Bullet points:
- 1A: Weaving technique named after a city in the Levant (DAMASK) — "the Levant" is a funny term. I thought it was old-fashioned. I learned it from The Maltese Falcon, where the character Cairo is referred to throughout as "the Levantine." It's basically what we call "the Middle East"—everything between Turkey and the Sinai Peninsula. DAMASK (from "Damascus"), I learned from Shakespeare:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare. (Sonnet 130)
- 16A: Pirate's lack, stereotypically (VITAMIN C) — this should've been easy, but I confused rickets and scurvy and wrote in VITAMIN D. I would say the "stereotype" relates to sailors, specifically—LIMEYS is slang for Brits because the British navy added lime juice to the daily ration of watered-down rum (grog) in order to prevent scurvy. They switched from lemons to limes ... which ended up being a bad idea, as lemons have 4x the VITAMIN C.
- 33A: Solid red ball (THREE) — in billiards, the THREE ball is solid red
- 4D: Order from an impassioned drill instructor ("AGAIN!") — bizarre clue. Also, "impassioned" is weird. That makes him sound like he's just a drill enthusiast, as opposed to a sadist. It doesn't really evoke ... drill instructorness.
- 5D: Sylvia ___, so-called "Grand Dame of British Cinema" (SYMS) — got this right away, but I think of Sylvia SYMS as a singer ... what am I screwing up? Nothing! Sylvia SYMS is an American jazz singer. She just happens to share a name with the British actress in question. Wow.
- 25D: Whaler's haul (CATCH) — ew, why would you steer this clue into whaling??? Any fishing involves a CATCH. Save the whales, man.
- 47D: Stereotypical tattoo on a poker player's arm (ACE) — here, and with the pirate clue, I really think the puzzle has lost the thread on what "stereotypical" means. I've never once thought of VITAMIN C in relation to pirates, or imagined that a poker player might have a tattoo of any sort, any more than anyone else might. I got ACE easy, but ... "stereotypical"?? I challenge.
- 31D: What solving a Saturday Times crossword might earn you, informally (NERD CRED) — man I hate this. I absolutely hate this self-referential, smarmy, self-congratulatory garbage. If you believe there's such a thing as NERD CRED, you're a creep. And you are definitely not a nerd. Real nerds were outsiders. Before the rise of the internet and the rise of everyone *pretending* they're "nerds," or that they were "nerds" in high school, there were actual nerds. They were outcasts. There was no cred. Trust me. No cred at all. And now it's all this cutesy "look at me, I'm a big nerd, we're all nerds, right?" No. Wrong. You're a normal person who wants "cred" for being "smart." You're extremely normal. Beautiful famous people do the Saturday crossword. Please stop. And go watch Revenge of the Nerds, which is a documentary.
- 39D: It may go across the board (QUEEN) — ah, chess. Now we're in nerdville (jk, you guys are very cool!). I had multiple wrong QU- guesses here at first, including QUILT (the "board" is ... a table? bed?) and QUEST (the "board" is ... some kind of RPG game board).
See you next time.
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