Rainbow Anthems
by taylormade
- Play it ↗
- Difficulty: medium
The difficulty curve of this grid is just right for a medium, although that may
be helped by the predictability of a PHOEBE Bridgers reference in a
music-centered Puzzmo grid. The top half is a smooth solve thanks to an obvious
Shakira reference, even with the tricky corner of AZALEA crossing KAZAN. The
rest is a pleasure to puzzle through thanks to RECYCLEDAIR, a fantastic bit of
fill even if The Postal Service nears the top in my list of least favorite
bands.
As far as fill-in-the-blank clues go, RECYCLEDAIR is one of the better ones.
The lyrics rhyme, the number of syllables is guessable, the word itself is
interesting, and there are a ton of crosses to help the solve. Much better than
the Puzzmo usual of "take a boring word and find a song that includes it"
approach. If most lyric clues were this quality I wouldn't need a
TXW Rule dedicated to it.
I'm impressed by how few three-letter words there are in this grid. Normally three-letter words are the natural by-product of dotting a grid with black squares in pursuit of solvability, the three-letter words themselves unwanted since they're full of crosswordese and abbreviations. Today's constructor did a great job keeping the number down and maintaining a consistent level of interesting words. Impressive!
That said, a few crosswordese still managed to peak through, with YENS as one
particularly egregious example (and one I can never remember). I'm convinced
that word is never seen outside of a crossword puzzle.
"Knot again!" (RETIE) might be my favorite clue in this grid. A perfect,
groan-inducing dad joke.
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