Constructor: David Woolf
Relative difficulty: Medium
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THEME: THEME— DESCRIPTION
Word of the Day: LEHR (55A: Glassmaker's oven) —
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Overall quality of the grid is not bad but I do not understand, and I mean do Not understand, how you do this pseudo-theme thing where you link two long answers in the NW … and the SE … and the SW … and … that's it. You just leave the NE hanging? What the hell is that? Are you doing the Thing or are you not doing the Thing? What a weird, oddly maimed concept. I also don't understand how you go to press with -EOUS in your grid. That is quite possibly the single worst suffix in the history of crossword answers. Look at it. Go on. Jeez louise. Wow. It hurts. It makes ADES look like ZYZZYVA, that answer. Horrific. Most of the other terrible fill is neatly contained and harmless. SNEE and OLIOS cause very little discomfort. ETAGE is mostly BENI(g)N. And I had a pretty good (toughish) time puzzling out the double-stacked answers in the NW and SE. I'd say that overall I actually enjoyed this. It's just flawed in slightly maddening ways. Between BIG-BREASTED (1A: Buxom) and the Bond girl (ANYA), the puzzle feels slightly leering . . . and I'm almost 100% certain the original clue on 13D was different. In a way that relates to the leeringness I'm talking about. But it's certainly not offensive so I'll try to ACT NORMAL.
I like APPLEID (45A: Need for an iTunes Store account) even though it looks like a typo of "applied." I forgot LEHR was a thing, so that was awkward. Four-letter ovens … let's see, I've got KILN, and … OAST and … I'm out. My giggles sound more HEEHEE or TEEHEE than HEHE (?), but I think that's some kind of industry-accepted variation. Considered TEHE but LETR seemed pretty wrong. I had Steve Jobs at YALE and BARD before I placed him correctly at REED. I also had [HuffPo's parent] as NYT (?) before AOL. I am having a hard time accepting SAME-AGE as an adjective (that is, as it is clued) (40A: Like George W. Bush vis-à-vis Sylvester Stallone). But they really are the same age—exactly, not just roughly (7/6/46). It's weird to me how confident I was in IDAHO as the answer to 51D: Home to Shoshone Falls. My mom grew up in IDAHO, and my grandma still lives there, so maybe the name just sunk in somewhere along the line—I can't tell you where it is, or what it's near, or anything. But at five letters, I plunked IDAHO down immediately. If you don't know the word PELOTA you should learn the word PELOTA because that thing will come back at you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: THEME— DESCRIPTION
Word of the Day: LEHR (55A: Glassmaker's oven) —
A lehr is a temperature-controlled kiln for annealing objects made of glass. The name derives from the German verb lehren meaning to teach and is cognate with the English lere also meaning to learn or acquire knowledge of (something).Rapid cooling of molten glass generates an uneven temperature distribution in the body of the glass which results in mechanical stress sufficient to cause cracking before the object has reached ambient temperature, or to result in susceptibility to cracking in later use, often resulting from thermal shock. To prevent this, objects manufactured from molten glass are annealed by cooling gradually in a lehr from a temperature just below the solidification point of the glass. Anneal cooling rate depends on the thickness of the glass, and can range from several tens of degrees Celsius per hour for thin sections to a fraction of a degree Celsius per hour for thick slabs or castings.In glass manufacture, a lehr is typically a long kiln with a temperature gradient from end to end, through which newly made glass objects such as glasses or vases are transported on a conveyor belt. However, the same effect can be obtained in a small kiln by controlling the cooling rate with an electronic temperature controller. (wikipedia)
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I like APPLEID (45A: Need for an iTunes Store account) even though it looks like a typo of "applied." I forgot LEHR was a thing, so that was awkward. Four-letter ovens … let's see, I've got KILN, and … OAST and … I'm out. My giggles sound more HEEHEE or TEEHEE than HEHE (?), but I think that's some kind of industry-accepted variation. Considered TEHE but LETR seemed pretty wrong. I had Steve Jobs at YALE and BARD before I placed him correctly at REED. I also had [HuffPo's parent] as NYT (?) before AOL. I am having a hard time accepting SAME-AGE as an adjective (that is, as it is clued) (40A: Like George W. Bush vis-à-vis Sylvester Stallone). But they really are the same age—exactly, not just roughly (7/6/46). It's weird to me how confident I was in IDAHO as the answer to 51D: Home to Shoshone Falls. My mom grew up in IDAHO, and my grandma still lives there, so maybe the name just sunk in somewhere along the line—I can't tell you where it is, or what it's near, or anything. But at five letters, I plunked IDAHO down immediately. If you don't know the word PELOTA you should learn the word PELOTA because that thing will come back at you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.