Here’s a great example of a modest theme elevated by exceptionally good execution. Actually, it’s similar to Patrick Blindauer’s offering for last week’s Thursday NYT-I wonder if it’ll engender the same sort of reactions and/or controversy.Īlice Long’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Faltered States” - pannonica’s write-upĬlap on an F at the beginning of a phrase, see what happens.
I do, however, really appreciate the title, as the acrosses and downs are wrestling eternally with no apparent resolution. Impressive, but I’m not convinced this is the best format for the gimmick.
So how do I feel after spending more time writing about this crossword? About the same, I’d say. Relatively little frass in the grid, solid cluing throughout. Down answers for which both rebus letters create plausible entries: 10d APR / APU 32d NIVEA / RIVER 38d TSPS / TSPS (what?).3d URSA MINOR: that’s Latin! Kind of see also 48a CASSIO, because it’s reminiscent of Cassiopeia, a constellation named for a mythological Greek queen. I can see why it was recommended to solve on paper! However, it was easier to solve the shorter down clues ( i.e., the Roman names, which gibberishify the acrosses), so when I was nearly done with the puzzle, I had to slog through the circled squares to confirm the godly equivalents and make sure I had the letters in the proper order. Technical note: I solved the crossword in AcrossLite, which typically gives primacy to the across component in a rebus square. It’s enough of a feat to find pairs and seed (half of) them into longer theme entries. Okay, not going to engage in a nitpicky discussion of male-to-female ratio, or Olympians vs Titans, and what-have-you. By my reckoning, the squares aren’t triple-, let alone double-checked-more like sesquialterally checked, considering the coeval nature of the deities. The acrosses are gibberish with the “Roman” letters and the downs are likewise gibberish with the “Greek”. The twist here is that the circled squares in the long across theme answers spell the Greek names, while the intersecting downs possess letters spelling the Roman ones. Solvers have probably experienced this phenomenon, wondering whether that bellicose deity is going to be ARE S or MAR S, if that divine love broker will be ER OS or AM OR. See, it’s born of the observation that some of the equivalent GODS in the Greek and Roman pantheons have the same letter lengths. Nicely placed revealer in the bottom right, intersecting the final theme answer: 59d GODS. My initial reaction while solving was that it’s quite clever, but is a crossword the best venue for it? Let’s see if it’s settled by the time I finish writing about it.
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