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THEME: none
Phrase of the Day: EDSELS (41D: Group with the 1961 hit “Rama Lama Ding Dong,” with “the”) —
The Edsels had been an American doo-wop group energetic in the course of the late Nineteen Fifties and early Sixties. The title of the group was initially The Essos, after the oil firm (!!!), however was modified to match the brand new Ford vehicle, the Edsel. They recorded over 25 songs and had a number of performances on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
At present the group is understood virtually completely for “Rama Lama Ding Dong,” written by lead singer George “Wydell” Jones, Jr. The tune was recorded in 1957 and launched, beneath the inaccurate title “Lama Rama Ding Dong,” in 1958. It didn’t develop into in style till 1961, after a disc jockey in New York Metropolis started to play it as a segue from the Marcels’ doo-wop model of “Blue Moon.” (wikipedia)
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Hello hello, everybody. Amy Nelson right here, one other first-time Rexword contributor, and I am excited to be filling in right this moment.
Fixing this puzzle was an emphatically tremendous expertise. An okay time was had by all. All through, the grid largely contained what felt to me like contemporary fill, comparatively talking (if nothing else, LIESL acquired one other time without work, bless her coronary heart). There was additionally minimal crosswordese to tangle with. However, on the identical time, I would not a lot name this a very entertaining puzzle. And Byron Walden’s earlier NYT puzzles have, in my expertise, been usually pleasant fixing occasions (if at instances maddeningly difficult), so my expectations had been maybe unfairly excessive. That mentioned, I am going to go forward and name in a few of the onerous PASSes I needed to dole out on this one.
First off, DESK PERSON??? I simply… I can not with it. Nor do I wish to with it. DESK PERSON is the form of fill that appears to have been designed particularly to torpedo an in any other case doubtlessly vigorous puzzle. The cluing PRETTY straightforwardly signaled (in what for me did not learn in a really buzzy method) that the reply was going to be a job involving, properly, one thing aside from standing. (I initially simply wrote “sitting” however I suppose there are additionally jobs the place you are, like, mendacity down… rather a lot? Like… a mechanic? Is there such a factor as knowledgeable sleeper? That may be an incredible job. I wish to be that once I develop up please.) However actually, DESK PERSON? I may actually rant about this one reply for my complete put up, however y’all get it. I do not wish to develop into a one-note BORE straight out of the gate.
Different “nope” moments for me included THE NFL (get out of my crossword in case you’re already taking over this a lot actual property in my day by day information pls & thx), JUICE BAR (simply… blah), and BUBBA, or, extra particularly, the arguably stale (and rather a lot much less lighthearted within the #MeToo period) cluing for BUBBA [27A: Nickname for Bill Clinton]. Vanderpump Guidelines watchers, assemble! (IYKYK.)
It could additionally, I feel, offend precisely nobody if the NYT would simply give SSN and OLE a relaxation already, even when solely a brief one. I do know, I do know, pigs sooner flying, and so forth. I can at the very least respect the surprising cluing for OLE [44A: “Still the Same ___ Me” (George Jones album)] this time round. However E-TAIL can totally go forward and get laid out on a pyre and be set on hearth and pushed out to sea and possibly it’s going to finally be prefer it was by no means even right here.
Excessive factors, and there have been a couple of, included JUMP FOR JOY [5A: Jubilate] (clue-into-answer alliteration? and with J’s, no much less? *chef’s kiss*) and PÈRE [25A: ___ Noël], however the Christmas season is one among my favourite issues in life, so possibly I am biased. I additionally actually appreciated the intelligent cluing for MEDIUMS [7D: Dead ringers?] and FALL ISSUE [37A: It’s bound to run in the third quarter]. (Full disclosure: I 100% spent the majority of right this moment’s fixing time forgetting that baseball would not do “quarters” and consequently attempting to give you the title of no matter baseball place it could be that might, idk, be doing this operating at this a part of the baseball recreation?).
This specific Père Noël is decidedly *not* a excessive level.
Moreover, with IUD seemingly have been made to shoulder all the [26A: Form of birth control] cluing brunt for *checks watch* ever, VASECTOMY exhibits up right here as each flashier, extra fascinating fill in addition to an instance of topical fill that is not a) so blandly on the nostril, like THE NFL, or b) connotative of one thing particularly, as Rex put it on Thursday in reference to TASE, violently off-putting.
But even with the occasional amusements interspersed all through the grid, it felt just like the puzzle as an entire was kind of weighed down by a bigger proportion of insipid solutions and/or cluing. For my part, the down solutions suffered extra from this than the throughout ones did, as when the lineup of two-word down solutions within the NE nook (JUICE BAR OSCAR BID YES DEAR) spilled over into the SW nook (CHAT LINE LEFT ENDS) earlier than primarily really fizzling out into equally unremarkable shorter fill (TROOPED BATTENS FULLER). I imply, no matter whether or not or not it lands for you personally, at the very least BIDENOMICS has unfamiliarity/newness working for it.
However, ENDOWMENTS will possible by no means be the factor that efficiently elevates a puzzle, and PUTS ON HOLD is not bringing a lot to the [43A: Tables] both. Elsewhere, cases of extra compelling fill (SHE BOP SONORA, for instance) are, to some extent, diminished, whether or not or not it’s by irksome parallel solutions, like ULTRAS, or by crosses with a watering-down impact, like BORE ORAL PASS. These occurrences of, for lack of a greater method of describing it, canceling-out exacerbate this puzzle’s form of world “meh” high quality, ensuing within the shining bits of fill being too typically overshadowed.
- 29A: Make sound (REPAIR) — Not, in actual fact, as in: (transitive) “make” [an] “audible sound.” Yeah… idk, -PEAL ended up as guess fill early on for some motive after I inexplicably ran with this incorrect interpretation of the clue, and it took ages to establish it as the foundation of that downside space.
- 36A: An entire bunch (RAFTS) — I used to be right this moment years outdated once I first heard about this which means of this phrase. Is that simply by random likelihood? Or has each different particular person encountered this sense of “raft” earlier than? (In my protection, till final 12 months, I would spent the higher a part of the previous decade as a medieval lit grad scholar. And the OED clocks this which means of “raft” as coming into the language within the 1820s, i.e., principally at the very least 4 centuries too late for me to have been in a position to discover it. Yep. Sticking to that excuse.)
- 10D: Excited response at trivia night time (OH OH) — I am sorry, however two disembodied OHs don’t an excited response make. This reply appears to be popping up frequently-ish recently, clued in numerous iterations, although maybe mostly in a classroom, “name on me” sort context. Which, truly, at the very least is sensible, whereas I’ve by no means been to a trivia night time that entailed having to be known as on in an effort to reply.
Signed, Amy (writing from the resort room I moved into after the primary resort room was already occupied by ants, a SITCH that didn’t appear to faze the entrance DESK PERSON like, in any respect, which in fact is not worrisome within the least)
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