them's crossing words

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Changing it up on y'all

by brooke

Lots to like in this crossword, though it does make me feel like an idiot for my time and hint usage. I didn't catch on to the theme until I hinted one of the answers, where I immediately realized I should've taken my advice from yesterday to pay attention to the title of the puzzle.[1] Classic mistake.

The theme is the hilarious combination of EEVEELUTION and EVEOLUTION, two words that mirror one another in sound and spelling. There is a tendency in crosswords to avoid common substrings (e.g. both words contain identical endings with LUTION) but for themers it's totally acceptable to throw that rule out for the effect. It definitely works here.

I like EEVEELUTION quite a bit more than the other themer, mostly thanks to that palindromic beginning. I've also played some Pokemon in my day, even if I never participated in the gigabrain macroeconomics that is Eevee IV breeding. EVEOLUTION, on the other hand, is a little before my time. I did enjoy reading the review from Wikipedia though:

[...] instead of the record coming off like a pu-pu platter -- a little R&B from column A, a little pop from column B -- it maintains its focus, making it a wholly satisfying experience.

What's more crossword than a PUPU platter?

I like that this crossword basically has two themes for the price of one. Both 3D and 18D are clued as "6/19" with answers related to today's holiday, JUNETEENTH. It's a nice touch.

Lots of talk about today's theme in this review because I think it's the standout feature of the grid. The cluing and difficulty is solid (I did get hung up on MUSICVIDEO for a long time, thinking about music visualization instead), but I don't have a lot of highlights.

I do have a few bugbears though, particularly in the lower-left corner. INSTA on 28A strikes me as crazy hard, MATHY is a bit meh, and STAND for "Firm position" doesn't seem to fit as well as "stance". If you didn't guess already this corner was my last one filled.

  1. I blame my meta knowledge, I assumed "Changing it up" referred to Puzzmo's editor submitting her own crossword instead of editing someone else's. ↩︎

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