But no, it's the Social Security Administration ( SSA), that makes more sense. Then the NSA (maybe they're tracking them to find some kind of pattern, crack some kind of code, I dunno what these people do!). Had the TSA tracking baby names at first. I guess was supposed to be ambiguous in that clue, but when you've read and watched The Maltese Falcon as much as I have, Sam Spade is the expected Spade. Mysteries and westerns, that's the stuff! More, I say, more. ![]() But that whole section was at least partially redeemed by PRIVATE EYE (10D: Spade, for one), subject of much of my teaching and beautiful symmetrical counterpart to HORSE OPERA (26D: Movie with saloon fights, colloquially). I don't think I've hated an indefinite article in a clue this much in a long time. Tin-eared, grammatically clunky garbage, that clue. Are you trying to evoke the image of someone taking you to the airport? That would be "your flight?" FEARS drive you to flee, or maybe they drive you to flight (the way your awful in-laws might drive you to drink). *A* flight?! What's this absurd "a" business? It doesn't even make for good surface sense. They might drive you to a flight? ( 12D: They might drive you to a flight). You give dogs "commands," not "instructions," they aren't building a model airplane or making a cake, come on. I like the idea of shaking a dog's PAW, for sure, but "instruction" (!?!?). In an attempt at misdirection, both clues get some ridiculous phrasing. Super-awkward clues on PAW (18A: What's shaken after the instruction "Shake") and FEARS (12D: They might drive you to a flight). "See you in hell, kids!" DEMOLESSON, accomplished. DEMOLESSON sounds like what you do when you have absolutely had it as a teacher and decide to blow up your career on the last day by smoking and drinking and complaining about your bosses in a smoky, alcoholic, profanity-laden tirade. Instead, I had to scrape for it, and ended up with a Frankenstein's monster-looking answer. I dunno, I guess I just expected the teaching lingo to be a piece of cake. I teach (college), my wife taught (college, high school), and. There are teaching demonstrations (or demos, sure) and there are sample lessons, but DEMO LESSON just does not hit my ear right. I also balked hard at DEMO LESSON ( 11D: Part of a teacher's job interview). Also, redundant-don't all GURUs basically give "advice"? Recent examples from the web (at M-W.com) include a "fitness guru" and a "Democratic PR guru" (!), and I can name a few self-styled "financial gurus," but ADVICE GURU, uck and yuck. Had the GURU and thought "hmmm what kind?" and then I needed Many crosses to get. Here is where things started to clank a bit: ADVICE GURU? ( 52A: Expert with tips). I got past the two blockages by riding FRONT ROW SEAT down to the bottom to TANSY and BUSY and building back better :( from there. No idea what I put in it, but I'm pretty sure it would be horrifying / embarrassing and that most time capsules should, like the dead, be left in peace. I don't remember any BURIALS, and I don't know which reunion year got to open it. But I could not then, back when I was mid-solve. but an "event," no I couldn't imagine what that was supposed to be. EL NORTE was easy enough, but BURIALS, yeeeeeeesh, that was probably the hardest answer in the puzzle for me ( 22A: Time capsule events). But then my whoosh was also interrupted in a much more wide-open part of the grid, as I tried to get into the NE corner from the upper middle. ![]() Really hate when grids have such tiny passageways between sections. And since that "E" was a choke point-no SE access. Also, I wasn't *completely* sure that PRO RATE was PRO RATE and not PRO RATA. For some reason, after THIS SIDE UP, my brain was out of ideas. Could not get into the SE because I couldn't parse THIS END UP (29D: Instruction on some packages). There were two major flow issues for me today. And so it was with my puzzle: whooshing down, clawing my way back up. I think the Sibyl said something like that to Aeneas before he went into the Underworld. The second half of my solve (the SE / NE) was somewhat less thrilling. "Jump, you coward! Jump!" But no, instead of jumping, BUNGEE JUMP just pushed the SEAWEED SALAD over the edge instead. I liked that SMOG ALERTS was up in the air (with the smog?) though BUNGEE JUMP should probably have been plummeting rather than just sitting there up top. I especially enjoyed the SOUR GRAPES HORSE OPERA that sent me soaring down the west side of the grid. Some nice whooshing around the grid via vibrant longer answers.
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