Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Evel Knievel jumping over a line of buses — this feat is literally depicted in the grid, i.e. EVEL KNIEVEL appears in circles that form a bell-curve arc, and that arc goes over a line of three BUSes, each entered in a single square (63A: Group that’s cleared by this puzzle’s subject, depicted literally). 

The BUS squares:

• COLUM(BUS) (41D: State capital with the nickname “Arch City”)
• RE(BUS) (57D: “T_RN,” for “No U-Turn,” e.g.)
• SYLLA(BUS) (42D: Paper handed out as a matter of course?)

Other theme material:

• GET OVER IT (3D: Punny advice to this puzzle’s subject)
• DAREDEVIL (9D: Description of this puzzle’s subject)
• LIVING ON THE EDGE (23A: Acting dangerously, like this puzzle’s subject)

Word of the Day: URL hijacking (56A: ___ hijacking, another term for “typosquatting”) —

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, a sting site, a cousin domain, or a fake URL, is a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typos made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to any URL (including an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter).

The typosquatter’s URL will usually be one of five kinds, all similar to the victim site address:

• A common misspelling, or foreign language spelling, of the intended site
• A misspelling based on a typographical error
• A plural of a singular domain name
• A different top-level domain: (e.g. .com instead of .org)
• An abuse of the Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) (.cm, .co, or .om instead of .com)

Similar abuses:

• Combosquatting – no misspelling, but appending an arbitrary word that appears legitimate, but that anyone could register.
• Doppelganger domain – omitting a period or inserting an extra period
• Appending terms such as sucks or –suckes to a domain name

Once in the typosquatter’s site, the user may also be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site, through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts, or content. Spam emails sometimes make use of typosquatting URLs to trick users into visiting malicious sites that look like a given bank’s site, for instance. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is ridiculous. The good kind of ridiculous. I mean, it’s absurd, fantastical even, that any DAREDEVIL, even Evel, could get that kind of lift. He’s ten buses high at his apogee! Or maybe he’s jumping Matchbox buses. Also, if you build ramps that are three buses high, I’m pretty sure lots of folks, even non-DAREDEVILs, could jump a line of three buses (and only 3? seems like Evel would jump more). It’s proportionally preposterous, but as a visual evocation of the act, mwah, it’s perfect. Wheeeeee, there he goes through the air. Perfect landing! The only question is: what, exactly, is he jumping. I thought maybe a shark, but that’s Fonzie. And it didn’t fit. The trickiest thing about the puzzle was probably that BUS line, in that it’s tucked down there, very cut off from the rest of the grid, and every pathway in (i.e. all three Down answers that reach down there) is a rebus-containing answer, which means the lengths are all wrong. I spent a good deal of time refusing to go forward until I could remember the six-letter state capital that started COL-. I thought I knew all the state capitals! No, I do know all of them! Ugh, what am I forgetting? Only by crawling down into that empty section can you find the revealer (I typically follow crosses and do not jump into any empty section unless I have to). Once you do see the revealer, OK, great, it’s BUS. But BUS … fits in the three letters, so probably some of you are going to be like stupid me and just write in BUS. I figured COLUM-, RE-, and SYLLA- all just shared the one BUS. But no, of course, there’s a *line* of BUSes. Once I rebusified those three squares, boom, Happy Completed Puzzle Message! It wasn’t graceful, but I landed unscathed.

What I liked most about the puzzle, though, was how stupidly punny and playfully self-referential it was. It taunts you right off the bat with the corny GET OVER IT pun (before you even know what the puzzle is about), and then backs that up with a literal dad-joke STEAK pun (36A: “___ puns are a rare medium well done” (dad joke)—get it? rare? … medium? … well done? … STEAK? … it’s pretty subtle). But the really, truly great pun are the buses themselves. A REBUS puzzle that uses REBUS as a REBUS answer!? A REBUS puzzle that is about buses—that is RE: BUSes!?! That … is bold. That is the extra layer that takes this theme from good to great. From great to art. Now I know why EVEL seems to enter lower orbit there at the peak of his jump—it’s a visual representation of the puzzle’s own thematic ambition … just leaving the earth’s gravitational pull for a bit (“actually, if he left the earth’s gravitational pull he wouldn’t come back down” “you don’t say, fascinating”). There’s also something oddly pleasing, even soothing, about the fact that both ramps have EVEL’s name on them. And that EVEL is a prime piece of crosswordese in his own right. This theme just keeps on giving.

What I didn’t care for too much was the Heavy reliance on proper nouns, particularly contemporary pop culture proper nouns. The pop culture lane feels a little narrow, and it’s definitely gonna prove exclusionary for a huge chunk of the solving population. I count three hip-hop/R&B answers, at least three TV shows, and a Super Mario Bros Movie —and that’s on top of your usual array of proper nouns. Got to feeling like a trivia test at times, and though I knew some of the trivia … I dunno, it just felt like it was leaning into pop culture so heavily that it was bound to wreck some solvers, and that is the worst way to get wrecked. I don’t think there are any bad crosses. Everything seemed ultimately gettable, which is what counts. Still, the pop culture stuff felt mildly excessive today. But then I look up LIL MAMA (53A: Rapper with the 2007 hit “Lip Gloss”) and find that she actually played Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes in the TV movie CrazySexyCool: The TLC [!] Story (see 43A: R&B trio with the album “CrazySexyCool”), and I’m right back to admiring the puzzle’s winking playfulness. Whatever the puzzle’s doing, it knows it’s doing it, and it’s doing it with confidence and purpose. And humor. And good will, I assume.