Constructor: Barry C. Silk
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: "Bob" IGER (
56A: Eisner's successor at Disney) —
Robert Allen "Bob" Iger (born February 10, 1951) is an American businessman and the current chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. He was named president of Disney in 2000, and later succeeded Michael Eisner as chief executive in 2005, after a successful effort by Roy E. Disney to shake-up the management of the company. Iger oversaw the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios in 2006, following a period of strained relations with the animation studio. He also led the company to acquire Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012, further broadening Disney's intellectual property franchises. (wikipedia)
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Trying to figure out why this one seemed so joyless compared to most Barry Silks. I think it's largely the swing-and-miss cluing. Or, rather, all the "?" cluing that was more forced than clever. (
Binder?) for
PACT … I get it, but yuck. Is the "joke" that we're supposed to think of a three-ring binder? Not sure what the joke is on
41D:
Goes with the flow? (STREAMS), as that clue is either too literal to need a "?" or relates to streaming video, in which case … the clue doesn't make any kind of joke at all. How in the world is
QUARK (
A tiny bit strange?). What is "strange" about it? Oh, I see that
"strange" is a "flavor" of QUARK (… (crickets) …). OK then. But (
Up-coming world phenomenon?) annoyed me the most, though there I was more annoyed by the answer. Call me terra-centric, but I don't think a phenomenon that no human being experiences should have a name. You experience this on the moon, right? When I finally got
EARTH RISE (I needed every cross) I honestly didn't know what it was. That whole NW corner was just a (shrug) to me. Don't play golf, don't know what
EARTH RISE is, never heard of Spender, etc.