Amateur detective in 1967's Clue in Crossword Cipher / TUE 5-14-13 / 1983 Duran Duran hit / Abnormal part of Voldemort's visage
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Constructor: John Lieb
Relative difficulty: Very Easy
THEME: NAME-DROPPER (12D: Status-seeking sort ... or a solver of this puzzle, initially?) — three theme answers are names ("dropping" Down) with the initials N.D.
- 5D: With 41-Down, title teen in a 2004 indie hit (NAPOLEON / DYNAMITE)
- 24D: "Song Sung Blue" singer (NEIL DIAMOND)
- 20D: Amateur detective in 1967's "The Clue in the Crossword Cipher" (NANCY DREW)
The Nicene Creed (Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) is the creed or profession of faith (Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Πίστεως) that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene (pron.: //) because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea (İznik in what is now Turkey) by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325. (wikipedia)
• • •NAME DROPPER—but the phrasing is convoluted. It's the "initially" that's off. "Solver of this puzzle" = NAME DROPPER. That I get. But from "initially" I am supposed to get a. that the theme answers all have the same initials and b. that those initials are the same initials as NAME DROPPER? That's something I could only figure out in retrospect. The phrasing in the clue is just broken. I guess that's why the "?" is there—to excuse the cluing infelicities. Still, I liked this. Very little of the junk you often see in Tuesday puzzles, and even if the puzzle was thin and weird, theme-wise, at least it was interesting. It's going for something wacky and different, and (importantly) not torturing fill in order to do it. So, thumbs up (esp. when judged on a Tuesday scale).
Started off fast with CASINOS being a gimme, and virtually all the Down crosses dropping easily and immediately from there (1A: Locales for "Ocean's Eleven" and several Bond films). And then I just Tore through the grid. Under 3 minutes, which is Very fast for me on a Tuesday. Faster than yesterday's puzzle, for sure. Only place I even hesitated was with the theme answer NAME DROPPER, and (less so) with BASEMEN (wasn't sure it was a word, since the term I'm more familiar with is BASERUNNER) (18A: Who, What and I Don't Know, in Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine). I had no idea that a whistle gave a lifeguard anything that would legitimately qualify as a TANLINE, so that took some crosses, but all the surrounding answers were so easy that I can hardly say the whistle clue slowed me down (66A: A lifeguard's whistle might create one). I enjoyed remembering "Song Sung Blue" and "Rio." Never been a "NAPOLEON DYNAMITE" fan, but I like it here, symmetrically, in the grid. Nice touch to give NANCY DREW a crossword-related clue.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld