batech
CA
Got through it, but never felt the satisfying "aha" from it. The missing back references or co-highlighting to show the corresponding artist fill when you highlighted one of the words with missing letters was a major editing mistake in my mind. Moreover, the fact that the "extra" letter in a couple of of the key fills was, itself, part of a tricky down fill (Model A or T? The C-What? Fems, Dems, THems, ...?? Wu-Tang??) and that you couldn't use the across fill to validate your guess, meant that decrypting the 10-letter "evidence" wasn't so much a punny reward for solving the puzzle as a necessary part of the punishment to finish it. This just seemed to be too clever by half. If it had been done without the extra letters for the "evidence," I think this would've been a solid puzzle. But one gimmick too many ruined this one for me.
I enjoy a good rebus, but thought the construction of this one was fairly weak. In particular, placing two rebus squares in a (dated) proper name (17A) which many solvers likely won't know should be a no-no. Moreover, crossing that name with two other words that require specific knowledge (1D in the clue, 3D in the fill) which, themselves, are crossed with another proper name (20A) and a foreign-language term (1A)... that's a bit of a mess. Then, again in the SE, one of the rebus squares is in a proper name (51D) which has, as it's immediate neighbor, a foreign language term (50D). Not knowing either of those would leave a sizeable hole in that corner. My feeling is that a good rebus puzzle lets the rebus be the star attraction, which I didn't find to be the case today. The fact that so much of the rebus-containing fill relied on trivia (either in the clue or fill), let me feeling pretty 29D about this puzzle.
What a mixed bag on this: I breezed thru much of it but then struggled in a couple of small areas. As is often the case, I don't have a gripe with most of the individual clues/fill (ICERAIN??) so much as the construction of the puzzle. Crossing a 4-letter Pixar film title with two foreign words, one of which crosses yet another foreign word leaves a whole bunch of guessing for many, I suspect. Similarly, the two vertical proper nouns in the NE corner leave a big hole if they're not familiar to the solver, especially being the first and last letters of three four-letter crosses (one of which is a movie reference). I really do wish I knew what criteria the editors use to evaluate the construction of a puzzle. In my mind, this one needed a bit more re-jiggering to be a top-notch puzzle.
@Jeb Jones Totally agree, Jeb -- and this is where I often am critical of the construction of a puzzle as opposed to the clues/fill itself. To me, despite this puzzle's fill and cluing seeming rather tortured in general (or, perhaps, especially because the fill/cluing seemed tortured), it was the placement of the fill in the puzzle that made me think that the editing process fell short.
I really enjoyed the trick of this puzzle -- thought it was clever and unique, even for a Thursday. The only negative to me was that it depended so much on proper nouns for the theme-related fill (both for the missing LIE or the rebus squares). Knowing those names was fairly a essential ingredient in discovering the "trick" and getting the "aha" that a good Thursday gives. Still, hats off to the creator, and hope to see more unique challenges in the future!
@Jim Any time you can figure out the gimmick and then use that knowledge to help fill in areas where you're otherwise stuck is a big plus for me. That was today's puzzle, as the NW corner was a mystery to me until I realized 1D had to be TEN. Really enjoyed this one!
Love a good rebus and completed this in average time, but took exception with the construction of this one. When you have a "gimmick" like a rebus that the solver needs to pick up on (and, on a Sunday, is a bit unexpected), embedding the rebus squares in proper nouns should be a no-no. Even worse, having one of the rebus squares (ELM) being crossed by TWO proper nouns is an editing fail to me.
I thought the theme was clever in theory, but lacking in practice. The fact that 3 of the 4 down solutions that were needed to "get" the gimmick were proper nouns (and the fourth was a hard-to-parse sports phrase) felt like weak construction to me. Perhaps the assumption was that MIC-KEY would clear this up to the solver, but I still felt this needed re-work.
@Xword Junkie My criticism of the puzzle is the same as yours: clever theme, but resorting to a 1950's song title as a theme answer which is both nonsensical (i.e. not readily inferred) and, in my mind, not a common cultural reference, turns what should be a fun "aha" into a not-so-fun "uh, maybe?" Then, cross that answer with another (BAL) that is likely only regionally known and also can't be inferred, and I think that's should have been flagged as a construction flaw that needed to be fixed.
@Amy We must be on the same wavelength as I had all of those on my initial pass as well, which seemed to fit with my other fill at that moment. Sadly, it all fell apart when I finally got ANSWER and had to re-think the whole NW corner.
@TH Absolutely! An "expression" is not an "equation" any more than a "prepositional phrase" is a "sentence." Although I understand why the editors didn't want the word "equation" to clue an answer with an "equals" sign in it, they could have perhaps clued it as a "mathematical formula" instead.
@Joshua Having four adjacent proper nouns is something I think should be a automatic no-go when editing a crossword (perhaps with some exceptions where one or more are so ubiquitous that they are part of our modern lexicon, e.g. "GOOGLE"). I would love to know what "rules/conventions" the editors use to judge the construction of a puzzle in this regard. For example, perhaps this is allowed if none of the crosses is a proper noun (which was not the case today). Learning new people/places is part of the fun of a crossword, but when the puzzle become oversaturated with trivia, the experience suffers significantly for me.
@Bruce Can you give an example when a byte isn't 8 bits? I've never encountered a time in 30 years of software engineering where a byte wasn't defined as 8 bits, but perhaps there are uses in other fields (or times) I'm not aware of.
@KK Yea, had to give up on NE corner since I didn't know Epsom or Reba (Gwen and Adam came to mind), and Slam Bang is a phrase I've never heard. So, even though I'd figured out the "bang" trick from the rest of the puzzle, there just wasn't enough of a toehold for me to finish out.
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