Constructor: Ricky J. Sirois

Relative difficulty: Pretty hard, solving Downs-only 

THEME: “TO BE FAIR…” (60A: “Admittedly …,” or , when said aloud, a punny description of 18-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across) — theme answers are all “2B Fare,” i.e. two-word food items where both words start with “B”:

Theme answers:

• BEER BRAT (18A: Ale-simmered German sausage, informally)
• BEAN BURRITO (24A: Vegetarian dish on a Mexican menu)
• BEEF BOURGUIGNON (39A: French meat stew for which Julia Child penned a popular recipe)
• BANANA BREAD (49A: Loaf often made with walnuts)

Word of the Day: CAREEN (6D: Threaten to tip, as a wildly driven car) —

v.intr. 

1.

a. To lurch or swerve while in motion: “The Tasmanian boat was a wreck… the stove had broken free of its mounting and was careening about with every wave” (Bryan Burrough).

b. To move forward rapidly, especially with a swaying motion or with minimal control; career: “I saw my life as a car with no brakes careening down a dangerous mountain road” (Tom Perotta). (thefreedictionary.com) (my emph.)

• • •

Well, I did not fare too well. Also, this didn’t taste that great. The punniness made my teeth hurt, and the grid really has nothing interesting to offer besides a BARFIGHT (admittedly, pretty exciting). It’s just a list of food and then a below-average, rickety grid. The pun … yeah, it’s a pun, alright. I don’t know. Just doesn’t seem worth the effort. Or the (relative) boredom. Again, it’s just a plain old list of food. I guess BEEF BOURGUIGNON is kind of an interesting answer in its own right—a flashy grid-spanner, in its way—but it’s not enough to lift the fill on this thing above the ho-hum. Plural NISSANS, plural TSETSES. I kept waiting for something, anything interesting to happen, and it never did. ERG AGATES OLGA IBET SHEA OGRE STAT ADE ANNS ICED ADO STL NEO EMIL and on and on and on, like it was trying hard to win the BEIGEst puzzle award. The 6s in the NW are OK, and those in the SE aren’t terrible either, but overall there wasn’t much fun to be had here. The theme boils down to a one-answer corny pun, and the grid is largely a snooze. Compare last week’s Monday, which at least had real inventive wackiness going on, and a grid that was at least trying. 

Downs-only solving was enormously challenging today, for a variety of reasons. The first very bad trap I fell in was MEDLEY for 22D: Song created from multiple songs (MASH-UP). That’s … pretty much the definition of a MEDLEY: “a song created from multiple songs.” And the “M” was right, and the “E” in the second position gave me a BEEF BURRITO! The problem then was figuring out what the hell kind of [Woodsy home] I was dealing with at 7D. I was like “NEST? DEN? LAIR” As you can see, I thought I was looking for an animal’s home. Oh, and earlier, I had another wrong answer, right alongside (missing) CABIN: POUND. I had POUND for 8D: Equivalent of 16 oz. (ugh, ONELB). Which, again, is technically correct. Perfect for the clue. Just … not perfect for this puzzle. Sigh. Between POUND and MEDLEY and BEEF BURRITO, I was gummed up there for a while. But not nearly as gummed as I was in the SW, all around the revealer, which I didn’t know was a revealer (this is what happens when you don’t read the Acrosses), and which I couldn’t make into anything. The problem of parsing “TO BE FAIR…” was seriously exacerbated by three (3) different crosses. First, and worst, was AHOOT. Oof. Just … the worst fill in the whole grid. Couldn’t do anything with it. Thought it was ARIOT for a bit. Also had the cross at 54A as AGORA for a while, figuring “no other letters but ‘G’ work there” (wrong!). So I kept looking at AG— and wondering how to get to 50D: Something hilarious. It was not … hilarious. Then there was IN A FEW (46D: “Soon”), pfft, which I had as IN A SEC, and but thought might be IN A BIT (Wrong and wrong!). IN A FEW … did not cross my mind for ages. Then there’s the worst of the problematic revealer crosses: RARES (53D: Some hard-to-find collectibles). Plural. RARES … RARES … Did I say AHOOT was the worst thing in the grid? I take it back.