(Your School Has No Gymnastics Team) This Is A Last Resort

by Kelsey Dixon

• Play it ↗
• Difficulty: hard

I'm sure someone out there had a ton of fun with this crossword, but that someone was not me. This puzzle was packed full of FRINGE references, totally out of my league.

Let's just skip the title gore and dive straight into the grid. The bottom half stacks two Boomer references: MISTERTIBBS, a 1967 role for a movie I know nothing about, and PENORPENCIL, a supposed "Consideration for a crossword solver", if the last time you solved a crossword was before the advent of the internet. These lovely spanners cross no less than TOR, MURPH, VESTEE, ALASNO, and two normal words that are clued insanely: MERE ("Maman, formally") and CAMP ("2019 Met Gala theme"). I tried my best to solve this grid without hints but the fill did me no favors.

Lots of clues in this grid try to incorporate humor but only serve to misdirect. Take "Professional org. for punk-ass book jockeys", ALA. What makes the librarians "punk-ass"? Does the constructor mean punk? Looking up "punk-ass" in the dictionary, I get "obnoxious, stupid or otherwise unworthy of respect". What is the constructor trying to say here? ^[1]

I struggled with "Sweatband spots" for a hilariously long time because I wanted FOREARMS to fit so badly. Recognizing that "spots" refers to a plural and seeing that FOREARMS didn't fit, I thought "wait, where else on the human body are there more than one of a thing where you can place two sweatbands?" Turns out that the plural is referring to multiple people (FOREHEADS). Fair enough.

Despite my problems with the bottom half of the grid, the top half went fairly easily. THINGAMAJIG was a huge help, a very easy plonk compared to the rest of the puzzle. I'm also a big fan of SCREENAGERS, though maybe not so much the clue accompanying it. I think this is where the title comes in, with 30-somethings playing High Schoolers in the movie Bring It On. Yeesh, kind of a deep cut.

I did have some trouble with REGRAM, since I'm unfamiliar with the word (and the platform), but the clue gave me enough to puzzle it through. Puzzmo really wants me to buy into the whole Twitter/Instagram culture. I thought we've all agreed that social media is a bad thing?

The right side is a little rougher, with ONT, SGTS, CIGS, and VANE. Firstly, I don't think ONT is a real abbreviation. Is this meant to be "ointment"? VANE really should be weathervane, but for some reason it's OK to shorten it because crosswords.

Anyway, hope you folks had a better time with this puzzle than me.

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