Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

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So how about this Karen M. Tracey puzzle? She is the master of the Saturday monsters, isn’t she? Good grief, this one killed me. I will admit right off — I did not no-Google this puzzle. There were some Gaping Chasms of Ignorance (I am going to start using GCI instead of Trivia Boxes to describe this problems spots) in three corners which blocked me from completing the puzzle. And to be honest with you, I feel no shame in the Googling, since none of the three spots turned out to be anything that a) I had heard of before, or b) seem to actually be words of any sort whatsoever

Tons of long fill in this wide-open grid — truly a marvelous construction. Not too Scrabbly, but still some great entries. The long stuff:

• 17A. Big name in bags : KATE SPADE. Over a decade ago, I worked for Absolut Vodka in the PR and marketing department. While I was there, I remember some sort of Absolut/Kate Spade promotional thing happening while I was there. I think it had to do with umbrellas. I might have met Kate Spade, too, but at the time, she wasn’t much of a name yet. Actually, I guess she was, since I remembered her enough to get this clue.
• 20A. Shakes : UNSETTLES
• 33A. They may call the shots : ANNOUNCERS
• 36A. Winner of four consecutive Emmys for his sitcom role as a prosecutor : JOHN LARROQUETTE. This is where we put the video clip from “Night Court,” right? Let’s also take the time to admire Markie Post’s hair, which was truly a perpetual act of defiance against physics, as well as Harry Anderson — what happened to him? And oh, how about Lt. Data in his earlier days? Looking sharp, Brent Spiner.

• 39A. Snorkeling spot near Honolulu : HANAUMA BAY
• 49A. Not too tight? : SEPARABLE. I don’t understand the question mark here. This seems to be a running trend for me, not understanding the question marks. But why here? Because “tight” is supposed to make us think about lids on jars or something? It just seems that “separable” is a normal answer to this clue, so why the question mark? Anyone?
• 55A. Like some questions : OPEN-ENDED. My brain has stopped working. Can someone give me an example of what makes a question open-ended?
• 4D. Peach variety : FREESTONE. The peach from Roald Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach” — was that a freestone or a clingstone?
• 5D. To whom Stubb and Flask answered, in literature : CAPTAIN AHAB. I should really read more.
• 8D. Takes a continental tour, e.g. : GOES ABROAD
• 11D. Response to a ding-dong? : WHO CAN IT BE? Okay, this is a little silly. Who says this? I can maybe imagine someone like… well, maybe if a grandmother has her grandkids over, and the doorbell rings, she might say to the kids, “Well now, who can it be?” — but that’s not an answer to the doorbell. That’s an aside to the children. This seems like a stretch, and I’m not ready to concede this one.
  
• 24D. Three Mile Island is in it : SUSQUEHANNA. This is another where phrasing bothers me. Wouldn’t you call the body of water “THE Susquehanna”? Or maybe “Susquehanna RIVER”? Who calls a river by just it’s name with a “the” or something?
• 27D. Jennifer Weiner best seller made into a 2005 film : IN HER SHOES. I asked my wife if this is what “The Devil Wears Prada” was based on. Apparently it is not.
• 28D. Removes, as paint : SCRAPES OFF
• 35D. Words followed by a wish list : DEAR SANTA

Now as for the GCIs. I had three different kind of GCIs here. The first kind is the kind where I have a bunch of crossings, but they leave me with one entry that looks like gobbledegook. This took place in the southwest.

• 54A. Zulu relative : XHOSA. Right. Like that’s a word. But all the crossings made sense: EXPO, THRU, IN HER SHOES, ONSET and GROANS. Well, the last one (41D. Sounds like an old floorboard) was not so easy to find. I was certain it was CREAKS, since that’s actually what floorboards do. So XHOSA it was.

The second type of GCI is your standard Trivia Box. This one was in the NE, where 10D. He recorded all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in the 1960s crossed 16A. Nirvana attainer. Two words that are non-standard, and they cross. Perfect. Unsolvable. Sad. Those words, for anyone keeping score at home, are ARRAU and ARHAT. See? Nonsense. In this picture, Claudio Arrau is trying to figure out the second letter in ARHAT.

And the final GCI was the entire northwest. Three words that aren’t words all crossed each other in goat rodeo of utter impossibility:

• 1D. Transcaucasian capital : BAKU. Of the three words in this clue/answer pair, two of them don’t mean anything to me.
• 2D. Half an Asian capital : ULAN. Which half? Which country? This continues to mean nothing. Is this a continuation of 1-Down, or is it unrelated? Is ULAN half of a word? A name? One of two words in a name?
• 14A. Trade name of daminozide : ALAR. Again, we have a combination of clue and answer, both of which mean nothing to me. With all of this in one corner, there was sadly no way to no-Google this puzzle.

And so the northwest frustrated me greatly. Even if I had randomly guessed ALAR (which I thought was either a pesticide or something to do with wings, maybe — and for all I know, daminozide means one of those two things), I wouldn’t have any sense of satisfaction from filling it in, because BAKU and ULAN mean nothing.

I think my personal preference for a difficult puzzle is one where the answers actually mean something to me. If the entires in the puzzle are obscure and unknown, there is no chance for satisfying completion to the puzzle. If the clues are tricky and the answers are real things, then when I get them, I feel like I’ve figured it out! And while I appreciate learning new things, a corner of three obscure (to me) things all in one clump just makes me feel stupid.

Oh well. I need to be more smarter, I suppose. Time to PREEN.