Constructor: Jason Flinn



Relative difficulty: Medium









THEME:

LOOPS

Theme answers:

P APER A IRPLANE (26A: Classroom projectile)

R OLLER CO ASTER (60A: Theme park part)

SHO ELACE (62A: It may be on the tip of the tongue)

Word of the Day:

OCTAVO

noun a size of book page that results from the folding of each printed sheet into eight leaves (sixteen pages). a book of octavo size. plural noun: octavos (google)

• • •

PAPER AIRPLANE

PAPER AIRPLANE

SHOELACE

SHOELACE

PAPER AIRPLANE

["Everything is doomed / And nothing will be spared / But I love you, Honey Bear…"]

LAE

WENT COLD, FIRE AWAY, DOTCOM, BITCOIN, GOES BAD, NAUSEATE, ATYPICAL

ANNA SUI

AMARNA

R. CRUMB

R. CRUMB

NAUSEATE

TAE BO

) — three answers go up in a loop (signified by circled squares) before returning to the answers' original plane of existence:) —This puzzle does what mosts actually do—kind of fly off weakly and then nosedive or hit the dog in the ass or something else similarly unceremonious and unimpressive. There's just three themers, first of all, so there's not a lot to admire, even if the concept itself were admirable—which, in a way, it is. It's kooky fun. It's just …s mostly don't loop, and ais not ever "on the tip of the tongue" [of the shoe]. Look at the tip of your shoe's tongue—go ahead, I'll wait.. OK, see? The tip is sticking up there all proud and-free. The laces are on the tongue, over the tongue, for sure, but not "on the tip." No sir. Then there's the biggest problem:—or, rather, PAIRPLANE, which is the answer you get in the Across. That … is nonsense. The other theme answers give you non-nonsense: a SHOE is a thing, a ROASTER is a thing. A PAIRPLANE is gibberish. So theme idea is cool, but execution is weak and wobbly. Add a loop answer, clean up the cluing, and then maybe. It's a hard theme to pull off because you have to depart from *and return to* a letter in the answer (i.e. the lowest answer in the 'loop' gets used twice). But if you can't do it right, then just don't do it.The fill here is average, maybe slightly better than average. Fewer wince-y moments than I've become used to, of late (, as always, is The Worst thing in whatever grid it's in; today, it's just below AWW).… I like all of those.I'm cool on (). In her full-name form, she's pretty fresh fill. But her name always makes me think "crutch fill." All the common letters and vowels … I don't know, I just can't get excited. It's like. Valid, but crutchy. I like, though (). Hell, I'm teachingnext week. Double hell, I ordered a collection of his comics just today (as a reward to myself for refraining from buying the $350 Complete Zap Comix Box Set , which I may still cave in and buy… someday). He's one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, even if his work has a real capacity to, at times.is not an [Exercise option] unless it's 1997.See you tomorrow.Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld