Constructor: Garrett Chalfin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: “Right on the Money” — Down theme answers are double-clued; one clues is for the regular old Down answer (not really themed), but the other clue is for the answer that turns “right” and then descends again; the parts where the answers jog “right” (i.e. the horizontal/Across part) are all units of currency (or “money”):

Theme answers:

• DOES WELL BY / DOES WONDERS (3D: Treats favorably / Has a very good effect)
• MEMORABLE / MEMORANDUM (12D: Like a momentous occasion / Office communiqué)
• EXPERTS / EXPOUNDED (52D: Masters / Elaborated)
• FIRING / FIRE ALARMS (88D: Part of a potter’s process / Parts of a building’s safety system)
• “HAPPY NOW? / HAPPY ENDING (81D: “Are you satisfied?” / Common fairy tale conclusion)

Word of the Day: SAL BANDO (78D: Captain of M.L.B.’s Swingin’ A’s of the 1970s) —

Salvatore Leonard Bando (February 13, 1944 – January 20, 2023) was an American former professional baseball player and general manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a third baseman from 1966 to 1981, most prominently as the team captain for the Oakland Athletics dynasty known as the “Swingin’ A’s” that won three consecutive World Series championships between 1972 and 1974. // Bando was runner-up for the 1971 American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award, won by teammate Vida Blue, after helping lead the team to the first of five straight division titles. // A four-time All-Star, Bando averaged 23 home runs and 90 runs batted in (RBI) in his last eight years in Oakland. Although he was often overshadowed by his contemporary, Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, Bando remained a strong MVP candidate through Oakland’s championship run, finishing third and fourth in the voting in 1973 and 1974. In 1973 he led the AL with 32 doubles and 295 total bases. (wikipedia)

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I went to see Anatomy of a Fall (great) in Ithaca tonight, which means I got back home later than usual, which means I’m blogging later than usual, which means I’m tired, which means which means etc. Which is all to say that this may be a short affair, both because I want to cut things short so I can go to bed, but also because … I don’t know what there is to say about this. It’s pretty self-explanatory. I think that if you wanted to you could probably have guessed the theme idea from the title (+ circles) alone. It’s a one-note concept, a bit of wordplay that probably seemed inspired at first blush, but … building an entire Sunday-sized puzzle around that wordplay, that’s a tall, tall order, and the puzzle just isn’t up to it. Yes, you go “right” on “the money”; and then you do it again; and you keep doing it; and once you know that’s what you’re doing, it gets very easy to do it, and sadly the theme answers themselves never really give you anything. It’s all very workmanlike, adequate, fine. The theme answers are dull, and since there are technically two of them each time, they’re doubly dull. I mean, MEMORANDUM? EXPOUNDED? How am I supposed to get excited about these, to say nothing of their even less exciting counterparts (MEMORABLE / EXPERTS). There’s one semi-interesting thing about this gimmick, and that’s that every one of the currency units is cluable in a non-currency way. That narrows the currency field, and maybe raises the construction difficulty a little. But sadly that has nothing to do with whether this puzzle was exciting to solve or not (it was not). You get the gimmick probably early, and then it’s just a whole lot of methodical filling in of squares, with almost no wordplay payoff. Since the theme has this double / forked element to it, there’s not a lot of room for additional, interesting, longer fill. HAD A GOOD TIME just sits up there, promising something the puzzle never manages to deliver.