SATURDAY PUZZLE -- Just a few tricky word usages in the clues are often all it takes to elevate the difficulty of a grid. I think that's the case with today's themeless puzzle, Blake Slonecker's third Saturday crossword for The New York Times. None of the slightly skewed verbiage misdirected me, but I did draw a blank several times before getting enough letters from crossing entries to make deductions, and those letters built fairly slowly.
Mr. Slonecker mentions all of the sports references in his notes below, and I don't think I knew a single one at first glance. I definitely appreciated the musical trivia and the broad humor, though, especially when they harmoniously converged.
Tricky Clues
1A. [Early electric lights] are ARC LAMPS, which were used to illuminate streets a surprisingly long time ago, as far back as the early 19th century.
32A. There are six spans in this puzzle, nearly all debuts, and they are well concealed by their placement -- the same number of maximum-length entries is immediately imposing when stacked in threes. I like this term and its deadpan clue, [They're not afraid to take charge]. Deadpan? I've only ever heard FEARLESS LEADERS used sardonically -- as a title for the fellow who runs Pottsylvania, for example (if you want a blast from the past).
42A. This is an odd little entry -- I couldn't mentally reconcile it once I had filled it in, even though it's a straightforward meaning for its clue, and I still find it weirdly off-putting. [The case, so to speak] solves to TRUE, as in, "Is it the case that English is my first language? Yes, but ..."
7D. This clue appears nonsensical at first -- [P, B, D, T, K and G] -- but solves to a linguistic term that describes a sound made by stopping the passage of air and then suddenly releasing it: PLOSIVE.
13D. [Outspoken parenting critic, maybe] could be almost anyone, but in this puzzle the disparagement is coming from inside the house (or car, or vacation rental, or public venue): It's coming from a TEENAGER (and, fortunately, it's just a phase).
40D. Excellent, intriguing geographical trivia: The [Home to England's Jurassic Coast] is DORSET County, which is in the south, bordering the English Channel. The Jurassic Coast, you say? Indeed, this area is so rich in fossils that it was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 2001, and people are still making important discoveries there.
Constructor Notes
This puzzle has a sports undercurrent, and my formative moments as a sports fan came in the months after August 1988, when I turned 7. The SEOUL Olympics were the first that I followed, and I think I remember watching the Greg Louganis accident live on NBC (but I suspect it's more like Ben Lerner's "memory" of watching the Challenger disaster that he describes in "10:04."). Two days after the closing ceremonies, the METS and Dodgers played the National League Championship Series OPENER in Los Angeles. The Mets won the game but then FALTERED and lost the series in seven, setting up a Dodgers-A's World Series. Now, like most baseball-minded 7-year-olds that I knew on the West Coast, the Oakland A's were my team. Pre-steroids Jose Canseco and, well, pre-'roids Mark McGwire had everything -- speed and power, sex appeal and a great nickname (the Bash Brothers!).
But my dad always rooted for the underdog (the Dodgers were the underdog back then), so we were on opposite sides. We bet $1 on the World Series (the amount of my weekly allowance), and I lost. I responded to this defeat as many kids would respond -- I switched sides. Orel Hershiser became my favorite player, and the Dodgers became my favorite team (as they have remained ever since), which is how I've found myself rooting against New York not once but twice during the past few weeks!
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