Constructor: Joe Krozel
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: SEASONS (35A: Noted quartet) — circled letters spell out seasons …
Word of the Day: LADINO (44D: Judeo-Spanish) —
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Wow. A decorative non-theme (seriously, there are no theme clues … just some circled words … so, as I say, decorative; insubstantial; no there there). And the fill was laughable in many parts. Not just iffy, but hilariously subpar. It's all Es and Ss in the middle and then ANNA LEE (?!) ALUMINA (lol) LADINO (…) in the corners. IIIIIIIIIIIII can't believe it's not b(e)tter. Whoo boy. Yeesh. The arbitrariness of TEN TONS, the ISH-ness of EEEE, the minimal HAIs, the abundant PLO(w)s, the IN SHAPE of IN ALL IN ESSENCE GET IN ON! IT'S IN like NIN! This is headshakingly amateurish. You can see how poorly planned and sloppy the execution is just by looking at LADINO. That is obscure fill. It is. It really is. And it's totally unnecessary. I *guarantee* you, if you are somehow a LADINO-lover, that that word was not not not not planned. That's accident fill. How do I know? Because the obvious "fix" is LATINO, but There Is A Reason LATINO can't go there, namely that would put TIE at 53A, and TIE is already in the grid at 10D: Reason for extra play (TIE GAME) (not sure why a duped TIE should bother someone who puts "IN" in the puzzle 5 (!!!!) times, but there you go). So LADINO is a sad attempt at salvage. Now, in corner already burdened with ATRIP and HAI and TAI and the weirdly iffy NOTATES, LADINO should've set off the "intolerable" alarm. Corner should've been redone. But it was Band-aided. IIII! EEEE! this was TEN TONS of baloney.
Honestly, the end. Since there's no theme to comment on, the end. I got nothing to work with here. See you tomorrow.
No, one more thing: a moment of silence, please, so we may reflect upon the fact that this grid has both EEEE and IIII in it. Surely that is some kind of record in Repeated Vowel Achievement. We are all witness.
[Follow Rex Parker on Facebook and Twitter]
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: SEASONS (35A: Noted quartet) — circled letters spell out seasons …
Word of the Day: LADINO (44D: Judeo-Spanish) —
nounnoun: Ladino; plural noun: Ladinos
• • •
["I, I, I, I…"]
Honestly, the end. Since there's no theme to comment on, the end. I got nothing to work with here. See you tomorrow.
No, one more thing: a moment of silence, please, so we may reflect upon the fact that this grid has both EEEE and IIII in it. Surely that is some kind of record in Repeated Vowel Achievement. We are all witness.
[Follow Rex Parker on Facebook and Twitter]