Hey gang! It's that time of the month again - the time where I get cranky and insist on making very poor decisions - that's right, it's monthly roundup time! After doing another 250 puzzles, I've separated the wheat from the chaff, and I'm proud to announce that I have the objectively correct takes on all of crosswords.
My favorite puzzle of February 2022 was... "Throw Some D's" by Kelsey Dixon and Erik Agard! Everyone loves Erik Agard; everyone loves Kelsey Dixon [citation needed]; everyone loves Rich Boy's ringtone rap classic "Throw Some D's" [citation sorely needed]; what could go wrong with a grid like this!?!? (Nothing, that's what.) Give yourself a minute to solve the puzzle, then report back to me...
...ok, you did it? Awesome. What I like about this puzzle, on the most obvious level, is that it's a very interesting fusion of two distinct but synchronized varieties of "you don't see that every day" cluing and entries. Erik's doing his thang here, as evidenced by the one-two punch of the consecutive across entries [daequan smith org. for workers' rights] and [___/xer pronouns] (cluing UAW and XIE, of course), but you also have some extremely Kelsey clues like [painting, cinema, minions fanfic, etc.] for ART. The unabashed voiciness here means that clues that would be the highlight of any other puzzle - e.g. [south american city where you may have a come to jesus moment] for RIO - barely even register when deluged with such cool stuff.
But all this talk about cluing voice is surface level - one of the secretly most brilliant things about this puzzle is it how it handles its theme. "Add a letter" themes are, of course, a dime a dozen, but I don't think I've ever seen a puzzle which lays out the added letters in the same way this puzzle does. There are ten Ds sprinkled across five theme entries, but instead of putting 2 Ds in each themer, the Ds are put in in quantities of 1/2/4/2/1 - a very mathematically appealing way to do it, which allows for greater theme density in that you can get both HAND SOLO and the marquee DRANK AND FIDDLED to fit. It's a very satisfying themeset, done very elegantly. I give this... a D+!!! Get it, because... oh, never mind. Anyway, Erik edits a lot of puzzles, duh, so you'll see his name... um, literally everywhere, and Kelsey you will start seeing monthly as part of Lil AVC X, the midi branch of the AVCXpansion! Please sign up for that if you haven't already, because I get more money if we get enough subscriptions.
More highlights and lowlights under the cut...
