them's crossing words

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Daddies

by Rebecca Goldstein

A cute apt pair with a couple of dad-imals. The two themers are PAPABEAR and OTTERPOP, words that include a synonym for father (POP/PAPA) and a kind of animal (BEAR/OTTER). The cuteness helps me forgive that PAPABEAR is just a bear that's a father, whereas OTTERPOP is a completely different kind of thing. Not a huge deal. It does strike me as funny that the terms papa and mama are uniquely tied to bears. A cultural echo of certain fairy tales, perhaps?

This grid flowed easily for me, save for the upper-left corner. Here's the deal: I've been a Rotten Tomatoes user for many years now and I have always thought that the green symbol was VOMIT. Like the "this movie was bleeeeeh" kind. So imagine my confusion when I slotted VOMIT instead of SPLAT. In retrospect maybe SPLAT fits nicely with the whole tomato, fruit-throwing theme, but a part of me still kind of prefers the straightforwardness of movie-induced barf.

Speaking of barf, I've got an axe to grind with the clue for ENE. "Half-wind across from WSW on a compass rose." Look, I get it. You've got a group of nonsense letters and your only option is to compare it to a compass direction. It happens to the best of us. But don't try to make your compass flipping special. "Half-wind across", what does that even mean? I just completely disregarded this clue knowing that 99% of the time there's a directional reference the goal is to flip it. Don't stick lipstick on a pig.

I had an inkling that "The 411" was going to be DEETS but I held off on slotting it until I had filled more of the crosses. I just couldn't trust that the constructor was actually going to do it. I love that they did. DEETS is up there on my list of favorite cheese, the kind of eyeroll-inducing terminology I can throw into a conversation and count the number of groans. Respect.

The constructor mentioned that Otter Pops have an endearing backstory in the post-solve notes so I found myself taking a look at the Otter Pops Wikipedia and stumbling into this fascinating note:

In 1995, National Pax had planned to replace the "Sir Isaac Lime" flavor with "Scarlett O'Cherry". A fourth-grade student in Costa Mesa, California learned of the change on the company's World Wide Web site, and organized a petition and picket with his cousins against it; a Stanford professor wrote in support, calling it "Otter-cide". Told the change was final, the protest continued as planned, in the rain. The CEO relented, keeping it, despite it being the least popular flavour.

Props to Sir Isaac Lime, I guess. I love that the editor calls the Otter Pops website a World Wide Web site. When was this article last updated?

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