Saturday, 2/10/2024, by Zhouqin Burnikel

Saturday, 2/10/2024, by Zhouqin Burnikel

Time: circa 13 minutes (website bugged out so I lost a lot of progress and had to restart from 0:00, driving the time down because I already knew the answers to a bunch before the clock even started)

Hello!

I created this blog a few years ago at the height of the pandemic, but never got around to writing anything. The idea was that I would just offer some commentary on the NYT daily crossword puzzle, Monday thru Saturday (and maybe Sundays, but I think they're kind of boring), royally ripping off Rex Parker's successful xword blog. While reading Rex's blog today, I happened to remember that I had the infrastructure in place to start a blog of my own, figured I'd actually try to take a crack at it. I've been kind of idle for a few weeks and need some sort of project to keep me sane, so here's an attempt. 

Today's puzzle was pretty straightforward. Slightly themed holiday puzzle without too many bad parts, but I just read Rex's review and I echo the critique that this puzzle toes the line between themed and themeless and it doesn't really do it for me. Only two, maybe three "themed" answers (if you count ORANGE), and the rest of the fill not being particularly sparkly or difficult makes me wish that this had maybe been published on a Wednesday. Furthermore, I've come to really enjoy themeless puzzles, so this weird sort of plausibly-deniable-but-not-really themeless wasn't my favorite. But, of course, it sort of had to be published today, otherwise it would've been confusing.

On the other hand, though, a more creative puzzle could have been offered up for Chinese New Year. It's not like the puzzle that comes out on or around Christmas, say, has themed answers as basic as "CHRISTMASTIME" and "MERRYCHRISTMAS" and that's it. The novelty for most solvers, myself included, comes with the Chinese phrase 51A "GONGXIFACAI", but alone, this is neither very interesting as a themed puzzle nor is it tight enough for a themeless. 

Answers I struggled with:

15D "SETTOS" — sounds like an expression I've vaguely heard, but no way I was getting that. Slightly outdated from my perspective, and the plural form looks weird. 

8D / 7A "KERRI" / "OKISEE" — stupid kealoa for me (stared with OH instead of OK) combined with a name I've never heard before (but, in retrospect, no human has ever been named Herri probably, so I could've figured it out if I had the patience). Had to look at the answer key to see where I went wrong. Of course, chronic irritation with the "AMSO" "AMTOO" "AMNOT" "ARESO" "AHH" "AAH" "AHA" etc., etc., now adding "OHISEE" and "OKISEE", but I get that this stuff is tricky to avoid. 

28D "BLACKHILLS" — I definitely read about this on Reddit or something a while ago, but in the context of its relationship and proximity to Mount Rushmore. The Crazy Horse Memorial has been under construction since 1948, and the plan has been to carve a massive statue of Crazy Horse into the side of a mountain in a manner akin to the better known carved mountains only 13 miles away. Interesting concept. I bet some postcolonial studies student could write more poetically about the appropriation of artistic values and techniques borrwed from the settler 

39A "MEGACON" — wrote "COMICON" at first, never heard of "MEGACON" but figured it out from the crosses. 

51A "GONGXIFACAI" — never heard this spoken or written, but that's a me problem. Cool answer, learned something new!

Until next time, if there is one!

Cardinal Crossy