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All-powerful avatar in “Read Player One” / WED 5-27-26 / Style magnate Gucci / Pitch-altering clamps on guitars / Numbers that aren’t entered on bowling scorecards / Low-lying landform / Engineering competition with two “battling” devices / He’s always hard to find
Constructor: Dario Salvucci
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: PART OF SPEECH (53A: Noun or verb … or a description of 20-, 30-, or 46-Across) — fragments (“parts”) of famous lines from famous speeches:
Theme answers:
- FOUR SCORE AND (“___ seven years ago…”) (ABE) (20A: November 19, 1863)
- ASK NOT WHAT (“___ your country can do for you…”) (JFK) (30A: January 20, 1961)
- HAVE A DREAM (“I ___…”) (MLK Jr.) (46A: August 28, 1963)
Word of the Day: RONDO (36A: Musical piece with repeated themes) —
[the ’70s were full of wonders] The rondo or rondeau is a musical form that contains a principal theme (sometimes called the “refrain”) which alternates with one or more contrasting themes (generally called “episodes”, but also referred to as “digressions” or “couplets”). Some possible patterns include: ABACA, ABACAB, ABACBA, or ABACABA (with the letter ‘A’ representing the refrain).
The rondo form emerged in the Baroque period and became increasingly popular during the Classical period. The earliest examples of compositions employing rondo form are found within Italian operatic arias and choruses from the first years of the 17th century. These examples use a multi-couplet rondo or “chain rondo” (ABACAD) known as the Italian rondo. Rondo form, also known in English by its French spelling rondeau, should not be confused with the unrelated but similarly-named forme fixe rondeau, a 14th- and 15th-century French poetic and chanson form. (wikipedia)
• • •
This one really lost me in the fill. Right from the beginning, WALDO crossed with ALDO made me wince, and then there was the awful ONLSD right on top of that. A really rough start. Not IDEAL. And then somehow the puzzle closed worse than it opened. ABORC!? You want people to end your puzzle on ABORC!? A discarded Tolkien creature? A clumsily aborted attempt to write ABORT? We haven’t seen that clunker in ten years, and for good reason. There’s no reason to ABORC your puzzle like this. The theme is not particularly demanding, so the fill should be, at worst, dull. Ordinary. ABORC is somewhere far, far beneath dull and ordinary. And crossing weak stuff like OBI and BON?? How do you not tear this corner out and start again? ABORC is burn-it-down territory. Are you that wed to ROBOT SUMO!?! (whatever that is) (58A: Engineering competition with two “battling” devices). Make better choices.
Where was the difficulty today? Nowhere, really. I read Ready Player One once a decade or so ago, I guess. It was fine. Are we supposed to know the lore now? Isn’t it enough to ask me to know all the LOTR and GOT characters, now you want me to remember (checks notes) ANORAK? The (checks notes) “all-powerful avatar” from a minor franchise, the second installment of which was widely panned? Extreme eyeroll for that one (28D: All-powerful avatar in “Read Player One”). ANORAK is a perfectly good word, just clue it as the word. Anyway, I needed all the crosses there. Otherwise, the only dilemma I had was CAREEN vs. CAREER (which also somehow means (essentially) “careen”)—it’s really very confusing) (25D: Veer this way and that). So I left the last letter blank and TENS took care of it (48A: Numbers that aren’t entered on bowling scorecards). Not seeing any other potential trouble spots. I did get slowed down / mystified by 34A: Low-lying landform (GLEN). When I see a four-letter “landform,” my Pavlovian response is MESA. When that didn’t work, my brain just shut down. Also, without good reason, I don’t think of GLENs as “landforms.” They’re depressions in the earth, so they seem like … the inverse of “landforms.” Just … empty space between “landforms” (i.e. mountains or hills). This is a personal brain malfunction. The clue is fine as is.
[This song, and this performance in particular, always makes me stop and listen all the way through]
Bullets:
- 1A: He’s always hard to find (WALDO) — is he, though? “Always”? Not loving this presumptuous clue.
- 35A: Filming location for the archaeological dig in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (SAHARA) — this is undoubtedly true, but … SAHARA???? That’s … a pretty big place. 9.2 million sq km, to be semi-precise. May as well say the filming location was AFRICA or EARTH.
- 18A: Red flag for a mortgage applicant (BAD CREDIT) — isn’t this a red flag for the potential lender, not the applicant? Like, the lender sees a “red flag” and decides not to lend. I don’t really enjoy whatever “for” is doing here. I also just don’t like thinking about the very concept of BAD CREDIT or the credit industry in general. Grim. The opposite of fun. ABORC! ABORC!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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