Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: NWES (64A: Compass points (seen spelled out in 20-, 26-, 43- and 53-Across))— EAST, WEST, SOUTH, and NORTH, respectively, are found embedded in four theme answers
Word of the Day: PHINEAS T. BARNUM (20A: He's famous for the words "There's a sucker born every minute") —
Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. (wikipedia)
• • •
Did not care for this one at all. How did I dislike it: let me count the ways:- NSEW is a wreck of a revealer, a nonsense letter combo that has no business posing as legitimate fill; further,
The directions don't even appear in that order in the grid! I mean maybe, Maybe if NSEW represented the order of appearance of the directions, I would tolerate it. But as you can see, the directions appear not in the order NORTH SOUTH EAST WEST, but EAST, WEST, SOUTH, NORTH; further,- Only one theme answer has the ideal structure for a theme of this nature, where the embedded word touches every element of the theme answer—GROSS-OUT HUMOR works, whereas the others leave words hung out in mid-air (BARNUM, UNITED, and FATHER don't have any part of the directions inside them)
- No one calls him PHINEAS T. BARNUM. He's P.T. BARNUM, or, I suppose, PHINEAS TAYLOR BARNUM. To write out the P. but not the T. feels arbitrary and preposterous.
but in an easy Monday puzzle, most of the following should be gone (not all—most): ADESTE, ILS, DIDST (ugh), BLEST (2x ugh), IMNO, CZAR, IAMA, ODER, ORIEL, ATARIS (plural), ERS, NAE, DTS, ORO, ETS. No one of those is very terrible, but it's a lot of unlovely and tired stuff for an easy puzzle. Strangely, this is a 74-worder (low for a Mon.), but it has a boatload of black squares (40), so it looks all chopped up and more like a 78-worder, and certainly. The higher the word count, the easier a puzzle grid is to fill smoothly. I'd have worked harder to fill this more cleanly. I guess with all the black squares, you couldn't really drop the word count on this one any more, though. Theme answers are of an "inconvenient" length (12+), which necessitated or at least encouraged the insertion of those chunks of black that wrap around and hug one end of each theme answer. Whatever—end result is a mess. And conceptually, as I say, I didn't think the mess was nearly worth it. I did like HEY, MAN! (46D: "Yo!"), BUS FARE (42D: Money for a trip across town, say), and especially UNDULANT (11D: Like a wave).Wife thinks it should have been CAB FARE and not BUS FARE, and my friend Donna doesn't like [Baby's headgear] as a clue for BONNET. "It's disturbing imagery. When I think of "headgear," I think of things that support the head or protect the head or adjust the teeth ... or things for people who fall a lot. Babies just don't do that." Her alternative clue: [Something nobody wears except Laura Ingalls Wilder].
Theme answers:
- 20A: He's famous for the words "There's a sucker born every minute" (PHINEAS T. BARNUM)
- 26A: Words of solidarity (UNITED WE STAND)
- 43A: Feature of many a Judd Apatow films (GROSS-OUT HUMOR)
- 53A: 1971 Gay Talese title derived from one of the Ten Commandmenets ("HONOR THY FATHER")
I think GROSS-OUT HUMOR is going to give people mild trouble today—it's not something that leaps to mind when I think of Apatow's movies, though it's perfectly accurate. Also, perhaps people aren't that familiar with the Talese title. I'm sure there are some who didn't know P.T. Barnum's first name was PHINEAS. Hence my rating it on the tough side of average for a Monday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
No comments:
Post a Comment