La-di-da / WED 5-01-24 / Soprano ___ Te Kanawa / Covers with a glossy black varnish

Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:16, while, um, inebriated)

THEME: WALLFLOWERS — Shy sorts, with a hint to the answers on this puzzle's perimeter

Theme answers: (all are against the "edge" of the puzzle)

• [Disney princess who sings "A Whole New World"] for JASMINE
• [Basic yoga position] for LOTUS
• ["The Black ___" (1987 crime fiction best seller)] for DAHLIA
• [East Egg resident in "The Great Gatsby"] for DAISY
• [Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos] for FREESIA
• [One of Indiana's state symbols] for PEONY
• [Rainbow's end] for VIOLET
• [Subject of an annual festival in the Netherlands] for TULIP

Word of the Day: KIRI (Soprano ___ Te Kanawa) —

Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa, born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron, is a New Zealand opera singer. She had a full lyric soprano voice, which has been described as "mellow yet vibrant, warm, ample and unforced." On 1 December 1971 she was recognised internationally when she appeared as the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London.

• • •

Good evening, friends! It's Malaika, subbing for our fearless leader! Despite everything, I loved this puzzle, which is one of my favorite types to critique! When I love (or even just like) a puzzle that I think is without major flaws, it's tough to write anything at all. And when I hated a puzzle, I feel mean criticizing the author, who is surely a lovely person who is very proud of what they created. But puzzles like today are fun in that I get to unpack the "bad" things about them as well as why I didn't care. (Unrelated: I wrote this while listening to the bonus tracks on "GUTS (spilled)" if you'd like to join in.)

For the most part, I breezed through this puzzle which can mean a variety of things. For instance, it could mean that I am a Puzzle Solving Genius. (I am not.) In this case, I just vibed with a lot of the trivia / phrasing that our constructor and editors were using. It feels good to drop in 1-Across without even thinking about it, and it feels even better when 1-Across is a substantial length. Many entries in this grid were complete no-brainers to me, and it's only upon going back through that I wonder how others fared. If you can't easily input SERENA as [Wimbledon-winning Williams] I feel you are living under a rock... But was TAMORA (fantasy author Pierce) hard for others? To me she is incredibly famous. HEIDI (classic children's novel set in the Swiss Alps) and DAISY (theme answer) were other literary gimmes that I genuinely don't know how will fare with others.

Then (welcome to the Critique Part of this review) there were a series of Crossword Words that, personally, I could enter without thinking but New Wednesday Solvers may have found incredibly unforgiving. (Looking at them now... "series" perhaps does not do justice to the amount... I'm seeing a lot: ARTY, NIH, ELS, SOL, PSST, SRA, ATT, ANA, LTS, ILK, ESTA, ITE.) I think this didn't bother me that much because I knew them (well... I knew the ones that I listed... I didn't know INT or KIRI or MIR) and, as a constructor, I understand that placing your theme answers along the edges of the puzzle (plus an 11-letter central entry!!) is very tough! But I'm wondering if any of you commenters felt alienated by the quantity of what some (but not I!!!) might call "crosswordese."

Something else that didn't bother me (Critique Part 2) is the "double meanings" of the theme answers. I think the "correct" thing to do for themes like this is to use words that are the names of flowers, and then write a clue that has nothing to do with flowers in order to mask the theme. (JASMINE, DAISY, and VIOLET do this the best, in my opinion. DAHLIA and LOTUS are solid efforts. PEONY and TULIP fail at this but at least are specific, and FREESIA is the worst offender since the answer could be basically anything.) I understand that concept, I understand its elegance, I understand why people care about it and yet... I just really didn't care! The entries were all cute! The flowers all made me think of spring and golden sunlight pouring across NYC and illuminating the botanical gardens and my budding tomato plants! The first two entries that I encountered were masked well enough, and (very important!) when I reached the revealer at 36-Across, it did not highlight (and thus immediately give away) all of the other entries. So.... what about it???

Bullets:

• DAISY — "The Great Gatsby" is an incredibly polarizing book, and Broadway shows are an incredibly polarizing genre, and adaptations are an incredibly polarizing category and yet-- I will say that I saw Broadway's adaption and adored it. It is trite and frivolous and obvious and sparkling and luscious and the tech is gorgeous and Eva Noblezada is perfect. 
• JASMINE — Oh, did you think we were done with musicals? Ha! Sorry, pals. I've been to Mexico City many times on vacation, and many of my friends (going on vacation there for the first time) ask me what my favorite thing I've done there is. The answer is quite unhelpful, which is that I saw a now-closed production of Aladdin (in Spanish) that was hysterical, affordable, and dazzling. Cannot recommend enough... I literally wept at during the magic carpet scene and feel zero shame because honestly if you don't weep, that's on you.
• [Rule of ___ (comedic principle)] for THREE — What's your favorite examplee of this? I always think of Pulp Fiction, where he grabs the hammer, then baseball bat, then chainsaw.... and then wrecks the rule and grabs a fourth, even better object (katana)... But this is also hard to beat.
• This is the part of the review (hidden at the very, very end, like where you'd put the poison in an ingredients list if you were someone selling a snack that had poison in it) where I reveal that I couldn't finish this puzzle-- the crossing of JAPANS / INT plus KARMA / KIRI led me to guess on (what was ultimately) the N and the K. And yet! I still had fun :) 

xoxo Malaika

P.S. The second word of the day today, is Mimouna-- a Jewish festival that is held at the end of Passover, when (at sundown), Jewish people can return to eating leavened breads. I know that many of my friends were gorging on mofletta and dates tonight-- maybe some of you commenters were as well! Happy Mimouna to all of you <3 

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Fragrant neckwear / TUES 4-30-24 / Pixar film set in Mexico / Three-word Last Supper question / Why Pinocchio's nose grows

Hi, everyone! It’s Clare for the last Tuesday — and last day — of April. Hope everyone stays cool as the heat ratchets up. We already had a high of 90 degrees here in D.C. today. I tried to enjoy the fair weather over the weekend and went for a nice long bike ride. But I had to contend with the fact that, well, everyone else also decided that being outside was a great idea. In other news, I’ve been crying over the Premier League and my Reds. But I’ve been celebrating how the Steelers did in the draft this year! It seems like quite the good class, led by Troy Fautanu, an offensive tackle we took in the first round, who seems to be just about the loveliest (and most talented) person around. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Michèle Govier

Relative difficulty: Easy-medium

THEME: WIGGLE ROOM (62A: Space to maneuver, or a hint to five sets of circled letters in this puzzle) — The circled letters zig zag going down and form five names of rooms one might find in a home

Theme answers:

• PARLOR 
• PANTRY 
• LOUNGE 
• STUDY 
• ATTIC

Word of the Day: BREADFRUIT (16A: Crop named for its doughy texture when cooked) —

Breadfruit is a species of flowering tree in the mulberry and jackfruit family believed to be a domesticated descendant of the breadnut originating in New Guinea, the Maluku Islands, and the Philippines. It was initially spread to Oceania via the Austronesian expansion. Its name is derived from the texture of the moderately ripe fruit when cooked, similar to freshly baked bread and having a potato-like flavor.The trees have been widely planted in tropical regions, including lowland Central America, northern South America, and the Caribbean. In addition to the fruit serving as a staple food in many cultures, the light, sturdy timber of breadfruit has been used for outriggers, ships, and houses in the tropics. (Wiki)

• • •

Well, that was a cute theme. I initially saw LOUNGE and STUDY and thought we were in for a Clue-themed puzzle. But WIGGLE ROOM (62A) is clever, and it’s an impressive bit of constructing to get five theme answers to work like that in the puzzle. I was initially quite confused about where the circles started and stopped for whatever they were going to spell out, so I mostly just focused on the fill rather than the theme. But looking back, I appreciated the theme’s ingenuity. The only thing is that LOUNGE there in the top-middle of the puzzle looked a bit lonely without another room at the bottom, but that would’ve been very tricky for the constructor. 

The thing about a clever, complicated theme, though, is that it often leads to a lot of crosswordese and meh fill. And this puzzle, I’m sad to say, was no exception. SPRIER (19A: More agile) and APER (3D: One doing impersonations) are just ugly. IRR (6D: Nonstandard: Abbr.) and HGT (38D: Fig. on a driver's license) and YTD (31A: Since Jan. 1, on pay stubs) are abbreviations that aren’t particularly exciting. Then you’ve got ERA (45A), EONS (54D), ESAU (10D), LEI (44D), TRE (47A), ENYA (65A), and ESS (68A) (among others), which you’ve seen a million times in crosswords. Side note: ESS (68A: This + vertical line = dollar sign) was clued in maybe the weirdest way I’ve ever seen. 

I got stuck in a couple spots in the puzzle, which slowed me down. I unfortunately didn’t know DEY (17A: Susan of "L.A. Law"), and I struggled with SPRIER (19A) and BREADFRUIT (16A) (not something I’ve ever eaten). That speed bump was compounded by the fact that I knew the Romanian currency began with “le” but took a while to come up with LEU (7D). And in the SW corner, KETOSIS (53A: Metabolic state on a low-carb, high-fat diet) threw me. 

Then there were some oddities in the puzzle. I think it’s generally sophomores who are taking the PSAT (15A) (while juniors start taking the SAT). A sourdough starter begins with flour and water exposed to the air, where there’s natural yeast, but it seems off to refer to YEAST (31D) as an ingredient. My biggest issue in the puzzle was with TEASES (21D: "Still ahead ..." and "Coming up next ...," in broadcasting lingo)! Those phrases are teasers, not TEASES, in TV terminology. 

But then there was NATTER (23D: Talk idly), which is objectively a fun word. Some others I liked were NO FRILLS (5D: Without bells and whistles), GIBRALTAR (34A: British territory visible from Africa), OREGANO (40A: Contents of a pizzeria shaker), and ELDEST SON (43A: Usual heir in patrilineal systems), none of which you usually see in a crossword. I liked NILLA (5A: Nabisco wafer brand) on top of OREOS (14: Ingredients in some black-and-white cheesecakes). My favorite clue was for LEI (44D: Fragrant neckwear). Having COCO (58D: Pixar film set in Mexico) (which is a fantastic movie) in the puzzle was fun. And I really liked STREET (46A: Auto setting), even though the constructor definitely tricked me on that one.

Misc.:

• I have this very distinct memory of NILLA (5A) wafers, where I was at a dance recital in Lake Tahoe when I was maybe seven years old. I was a grasshopper in a ballet performance (complete with a head-to-toe green outfit and a green hat with antennae). When I was backstage watching all these older, cooler people get ready, I saw a box of Nilla wafers. I didn’t know who they were meant for, but I tried a couple and thought they were the best things ever. And since then… I’ve barely ever eaten any. 
• With YTD (31A), I’m reminded of work and the number of paystubs, W-2s, 1099s, and tax returns I look at for my clients. I often have to calculate yearly income or create financial charts detailing the financial hardship they face. At this point, I probably know more about my clients’ financial situation than my own. 
• I read historical romance books, and they talk about ELDEST SONs (43A) a lot. 
• My dad, like everyone else, began a sourdough starter (31D) during the pandemic, and his is still going strong! He’s become a pro at making whole wheat bread. I only wish I could enjoy it, but, sadly, I’m intolerant to gluten:( 
• I hope the basic list of theme answers worked for everybody at the top. I wasn’t sure how to clue them or otherwise describe them…. If I’d written out each answer that had a circled letter in it, I’d have basically been rewriting the whole puzzle.

And that’s all from me! See you in May. 

Signed, Clare Carroll, writing this from the F 

                                                                A 

                                                             M 

                                                                  I 

                                                                L 

                                                                   Y 

                                                                      room

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