Constructor: Peter A. Collins
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME:"For Mother"— black squares spell MOM. Three unchecked squares in NW (and again in SE) spell MOM. Eight clues read [Mother ___]:
Theme answers:
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Interesting and strange. Lots of thematic layers (well, three, which is a lot), but the part that involves putting actual letters in actual squares is pretty damned thin. I'm counting only 44 squares of theme material, 50 when you count those MOM squares. For a Sunday puzzle, that is not just low—I want to say it's the lowest I've ever seen. Lots of long, interesting answers, but they have nothing to do with the theme, which is OK, but if they whole point is MOM, it's weird to have your eight theme answers feel like they barely matter. OH, maybe you want to count DAY too? I don't, but let's throw that in. We're still light. Very light. This is the strange part. But as a kind of oversized themeless, with a dusting of "Mother" stuff, it was actually an entertaining challenge. Difficulty level was definitely amped up today—maybe it had something to do with the unchecked squares, but I think it was just the wide-open structure of the grid. Lots of white space + unchoppy grid = harder to get toeholds. It wasn't back-breaking, just slower going than normal. I appreciate that on a Sunday.
Some of the longer answers are quite colorful. I loved the super-80s "I'M SO SURE!" Did *not* see the "SO" part coming and was pleasantly surprised when I got it—in a nostalgic kind of way. DON'T START IN ON ME is an oddly specific phrase (48D: Words to one who's about to go off). The first three words I buy as a stand-alone phrase. The rest: arbitrary. Colorful and dramatic, but arbitrary. There is quite a bit of google attestation for the phrase, though the first page of results gets a crossword blog reviewing this puzzle, and then a bunch of random Google Books results and a Grand Theft Auto fan forum. I liked it fine, just took me a long time to figure out the IN ON ME part. There's some iffy / odd fill like OVOLO (???) (22A: Quarter-rounded molding) and POLE BARN (double ???) (55A: Simple storage unit on a farm). I liked all the full names, particular the part where JOE BIDEN met DREW BREES. No idea there was any famous Disraelis besides Benjamin, so that ISAAC guy came as a surprise. As for the two-letter words … eh, I didn't mind. They were easy to get, and they were necessary for the black-squares gimmick, so, fine.
Puzzle of the Week this week … and it's Lynn Lempel again, her second win of the year, both for fantastic NYT Monday puzzles. This one, you'll recall, was the puzzle about nothing. It's a testament to how good a puzzle it is that I'm giving it POTW honors despite the obvious, totally Not coincidental tie-in with adjacent paper content. That juxtaposition was surely not the reason the puzzle was accepted, but some editor somewhere knew exactly what s/he was doing. Aaaaanyway, the puzzle ruled, so I put my consternation aside. Glad Ms. Lempel is still turning out the occasional easy puzzle, if only so we can see by contrast how far off the mark so many others are. She's the bar. If you're not jumping her, you should at least be trying.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME:"For Mother"— black squares spell MOM. Three unchecked squares in NW (and again in SE) spell MOM. Eight clues read [Mother ___]:
Theme answers:
- 14A: JONES
- 49A: TERESA
- 68A: LODE
- 70A: SHIP
- 91A: TONGUE
- 124A: GOOSE
- 9D: HUBBARD
- 95D: COUNTRY
Bank Leumi (Hebrew: בנק לאומי, lit. National Bank) is an Israeli bank. It was founded in London as the Anglo Palestine Company on February 27, 1902, by members of the Zionist movement to promote the industry, construction, agriculture, and infrastructure of the land hoped to ultimately become Eretz Yisrael. Today Bank Leumi is Israel's largest bank (by total assets), with 13,500 employees and subsidiaries in 20 countries. (wikipedia)
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Some of the longer answers are quite colorful. I loved the super-80s "I'M SO SURE!" Did *not* see the "SO" part coming and was pleasantly surprised when I got it—in a nostalgic kind of way. DON'T START IN ON ME is an oddly specific phrase (48D: Words to one who's about to go off). The first three words I buy as a stand-alone phrase. The rest: arbitrary. Colorful and dramatic, but arbitrary. There is quite a bit of google attestation for the phrase, though the first page of results gets a crossword blog reviewing this puzzle, and then a bunch of random Google Books results and a Grand Theft Auto fan forum. I liked it fine, just took me a long time to figure out the IN ON ME part. There's some iffy / odd fill like OVOLO (???) (22A: Quarter-rounded molding) and POLE BARN (double ???) (55A: Simple storage unit on a farm). I liked all the full names, particular the part where JOE BIDEN met DREW BREES. No idea there was any famous Disraelis besides Benjamin, so that ISAAC guy came as a surprise. As for the two-letter words … eh, I didn't mind. They were easy to get, and they were necessary for the black-squares gimmick, so, fine.
Puzzle of the Week this week … and it's Lynn Lempel again, her second win of the year, both for fantastic NYT Monday puzzles. This one, you'll recall, was the puzzle about nothing. It's a testament to how good a puzzle it is that I'm giving it POTW honors despite the obvious, totally Not coincidental tie-in with adjacent paper content. That juxtaposition was surely not the reason the puzzle was accepted, but some editor somewhere knew exactly what s/he was doing. Aaaaanyway, the puzzle ruled, so I put my consternation aside. Glad Ms. Lempel is still turning out the occasional easy puzzle, if only so we can see by contrast how far off the mark so many others are. She's the bar. If you're not jumping her, you should at least be trying.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld