Just Do It!
Constructor: Tara V
This last week of puzzles has been a struggle for me, with three out of the seven requiring hints. Today in particular was an absolute hint-fest. I chalk it up to some missing trivia and a completely misaligned plonk compass[1].
Just about everything that I could've plonked I plonked incorrectly. I filled
SOAK instead of BASK, WRONG instead of AMISS, EDITORS instead of
TESTERS, and POUR instead of BREW. Why did I even bother trusting my gut
in this grid? Every plonk came back to bite me, hard.
As for the fill, BAHAI and PEKOE feel like particularly deep cuts. PETE
and BROOKE are a total toss-up, just wait for the crosses to fill and guess a
name. The usual fare of foreign-language clues were also unwelcome, with AMIE,
SER, and DOLCE.
Going back to PETE, what the heck is this referencing?[2] "People seem very
concerned for this guy's sake", is this a Kanye West thing? My Google searches
are bringing up publications that I would rather not grant pageviews to.
Actually, maybe I'm better off not knowing.
As for the theme, there isn't one. At least, not in terms of wordplay. It's just
two words having to do with trying something new, with TRYEVERYTHING and
BEGINNERSLUCK. Cute, but boring.
"Unlikely to stand the test of time" as TRENDY has my mind going. The clue
feels like a philosophical question, are trendiness and historical longevity two
related concepts? As a counterpoint, often things that have stood the test of
time are TRENDY, like Stoicism and bell bottom jeans. On second thought, maybe
not that last one.
As a side note, I feel like the whole META/CLUE pairing is a bit played out
at this point, though I can't really critique an Open Submission crossword for
the oversight.
Send your comments to yo@txwords.com.