Measure of gold purity / TUES 4-28-20 / Number with all its letters in alphabetical order / Hodgepodge / Soundly defeats, colloquially

Hello! It's Clare today for the last Tuesday of April. At least, I think it's Tuesday? The shelter-in-place has been going on so long that all the days are starting to blur together. The only thing orienting me right now is that I have a final on May 1 — don't ask me what day of the week that is, though. I hope you all are staying healthy and safe! I've been back home in California for a bit, and I'm taking my law school finals online and trying to stay motivated. It's not easy! Especially because my love for BTS has only grown (for those who read my write-up last month, I was indeed talking about the K-pop group known for their amazing lyrics/music and dance routines). My YouTube recommendations are now just entirely their videos, which has kept me pretty distracted.

Yes, I might be going a little stir-crazy. So, on that note, let's get to the puzzle!

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium-Hard

THEME: Replacing the "TR" sound in the final word of each of the theme answers with "TW"

Theme answers:

• COMPANY RETWEET (19A: Endorsement from a brand's account?)
• OLD BAG OF TWIX (24A: Some Halloween candy discovered in February?)
• FAMILY TWEEZE (40A: When the whole clan gets their eyebrows done?)
• HIGH SPEED TWAIN (46A: CliffsNotes version of "Huckleberry Finn"?)

Word of the Day: SAM SPADE (35D: "The Maltese Falcon" detective) —

Sam Spade is a fictional character and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon. Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett. The Maltese Falcon, first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask, is the only full-length novel in which Spade appears. The character, however, is widely cited as a crystallizing figure in the development of hard-boiled private detective fiction—Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Spade. (Wiki)

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Maybe I've been staring at the walls (and textbooks) too long, but, for me, the puzzle today mostly fell flat. The theme didn't feel clever enough to take up so much space in the puzzle, and theme just sort of sat there — it was fine, but it didn't even get an ironic "hah" from me. I know there doesn't always need to be a revealer in a puzzle, but I do think this particular puzzle could have benefitted from something to tie the puzzle together — maybe a clue involving Elmer Fudd, as he is known for having a speech impediment that changes an r-sound to a w-sound (fact I learned from Google: This is known as rhotacism). The pun I found the funniest was HIGH SPEED TWAIN, but this also feels like the biggest reach — I'm not sure that this answer makes sense for the clue. Then, the rest of the puzzle didn't do much for me, either, with some very literal clues and answers and some truly odd words to see in a puzzle as fill. I mean, BLAMABLE? That's just an ugly word. And, TOENAILS? When the most interesting down in the puzzle is TOENAILS — and they always get an "ew" reaction from me — I think there's a problem.

In general, I felt like I wasn't on the same wavelength as the constructor for most of the puzzle and kept putting in wrong answers. I got off to a bad start in the puzzle pretty quickly with 1A: Honey bunch? It took me a while to figure out it was COMB rather than "bees" or "hive" or something like that. I also just generally disliked the clue for EMTS — 59A: Some volunteers at music festivals, for short. There are so many other ways to clue this that aren't bizarre, including making the puzzle more current and mentioning how awesome and integral and heroic EMTS are on the front line of the pandemic and how important their work is. And, why clue in relation to music festivals, which aren't even happening right now (I know because I'd been planning to see BTS in concert yesterday!).

I did like some of the good literature references we've got in the puzzle with WOOLF for "Mrs. Dalloway," DAISY from "The Great Gatsby," and SAM SPADE from "The Maltese Falcon." Those are some great book choices. Dashiell Hammett's Brigid O'Shaughnessy was the first femme-fatale character I read, and I'll never tire of reading anything F. Scott Fitzgerald writes. I mean, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," Like, come one!

Misc.:

• 21D: Complete fool as TWIT made me weirdly happy, because it reminded me of the book "The Twits" by Roald Dahl, which is one of his strangest books, but I loved it. According to Wikipedia, Dahl wrote this book because of his hatred of beards. The first line of the book is, "What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays!"
• The puzzle was a tad "current" today with DISS track (49D) and FACE SWAP (8D: Popular app feature that generates funny photos). Though the puzzle also had FWIW, and I can guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 actually uses this. 
• I went on a rant last time about UCLA in honor of my sister, who went to Cal, and the constructor today had the audacity to make me type out this school again!
• Anyone else being trendy right now and making a LOAF (or loaves) of bread? With the run on banana bread, do stores even have any bananas left? My sister won't stop talking about how we need to make a sourdough starter.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a twitchy twenty-something

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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