It's too bad that there weren't more long entries in the grid in total - with just ten long slots, I feel like every one of them has to land with power. Overall, some great feature entries, but not enough for my taste, especially given the presence of liabilities like ELLS, SKED, ENSEAL. It does seem fair(ish) now that it's been in the NYT, but I'd personally try everything I could to excise it. MALE GAZE wasn't familiar to me, but it was interesting to read up on - I do like to learn one, maybe two things, from a single crossword.īut GALOP … what an oddball word. I think a clearer clue for LAIN would have made things better, perhaps a "Biblically" descriptor. On the other, there are so many crazily-named singers out there, that SAYD or SAYN seems plausible too. should educated solvers be expected to know ZAYN without needing every cross? On the one hand, he did have a #1 hit in 2016. Surely there couldn't be a one-name singer whose name starts with Z, right? Wrong! I have (sort of) heard of Zayn (Malik), formerly of One Direction, but I had already put LAID in where LAIN was supposed to go. I did struggle around LES MIZ though, as I've seen it written LES MIS, too. FAN DUEL is familiar to this fantasy basketball fan, and MINI ME (so tough to parse that French-looking MINIME string), CANAPE, LES MIZ are all nice. There aren't very many long entries - just ten that are eight letters or longer - but Paolo does include a few nice mid-length entries to spice things up. Those black squares to the left of I NEED A MOMENT already start fixing a grid pattern into place, rarely a good thing for constructors, needing maximum flexibility to move black squares around. So difficult to seed a themeless with 12-letter entries. I have to imagine that for non-rap fans, BIGGIE SMALLS is at least gettable without needing every crossing answer. I also like that Paolo chose a rapper whose stage name is made of real(ish) words, rather than two tough proper nouns, i.e. You know you've made it big(gie) when you get not one but two awesome monikers that stick (The Notorious B.I.G.
Love the featured I NEED A MOMENT and BIGGIE SMALLS - I'm not the most diehard of rap fans, but what a great name, BIGGIE SMALLS. Plus, I love the works referenced in 5D and 42D, and I'm always glad to sneak a Lady Gaga reference (39A) into the Gray Lady. I'm a fan of a lot of the debut entries- 59A, 7D, 21D, and especially 35D have been in my list of seed entries for a while. It's not perfect, but the grid definitely has my vibe.
Rant aside, I like the feel of this puzzle. As long as you feel you learned something.
If you're unfamiliar with his name, that's fine too. If you're a fan of BIGGIE SMALLS, I hope you got something out of seeing his name in the puzzle. My natural response was to make a puzzle seeded by a 12-letter rap artist. It doesn't even matter if the artist in question has sold millions of albums, or how many times their songs have been on the charts- rap references always attract ire from some part of the solving public.
It seems like it's always, without fail, the names of popular rappers. Not, like, the 1950's Olympians or bygone opera stars that show up in crosswords from time to time. Whenever people complain about trivia in crosswords, the first thing they attack is automatically rapper names. This crossword was born after I noticed something in crossword puzzle forums.
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