Sarah who hosted the podcast "Serial"

September 14, 2018, 4:15 am

≫ Next: Scanned smartphone graphics / SAT 9-15-18 / Early major-league game setting / Literary character likened to mute maned sea-lion / Fricassee relative / Cousins of garters

≪ Previous: Fermented milk drink / THU 9-13-18 / Pre-snap signal / Tatooine has two of them / Three barleycorns as defined by Edward II / Start of some hybrid music styles

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (or maybe a bit harder depending on one's familiarity with proper names)

THEME: None

Word of the Day: DAX (45A: Shepard of "Parenthood") —

Daximus ‘Dax’ Randall Shepard (born January 2, 1975) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and director. He is best known for his work in the feature films Without a Paddle (2004), Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005), Employee of the Month (2006), Idiocracy (2006), Let's Go to Prison (2006), Hit and Run (2012), and CHiPs (2017), the last pair of which he also wrote and directed, and the MTV practical joke reality series Punk'd (2003). He portrayed Crosby Braverman in the NBC comedy-drama series Parenthood from 2010 to 2015. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi, CrossWorld. This is Evan Birnholz. It's been a while since I last subbed here but I write the Sunday crossword for the Washington Post Magazine these days. Most of the time my puzzles there are standard crosswords, but this weekend's puzzle will be .... not standard. That's all I'll say about it for now.

I enjoyed today's puzzle for the most part. I solved it on paper and it seemed pretty easy for a Friday, and then I saw multiple people on Crossword Twitter posting screenshots of blazing fast electronic-solve times, so it appears I'm not alone in that assessment. I had a couple of hiccups here and there, like writing CABS instead of VANS at 3D: Circlers at airports, and failing to see the correct month in 35A: Natl. Library Card Sign-Up Month despite having ??P in place -- I think my brain started cycling through the months and then, after going through JAN/FEB/MAR in one second, threw in the towel and said "Nope, other clues will be easier than this." They were, in fact, not easier than that; I would have benefited from spending a few extra seconds to come up with SEP., the only three-letter abbr. for a month that ends with P. Stupid Impatient Solving Brain.

My only major difficulty was in the southeast corner; it took a while to dredge up THAT'S GENIUS and there are some tougher-than-normal proper names down there like DEIRDRE, KOENIG (though I got her name quickly from remembering "Serial"), and (especially for me) DAX. I've never heard of him, I've never watched "Parenthood," and ..... well, Dax is probably somewhere between the 2,475th and 7,984th three-letter names I would have guessed if you just asked me to guess his name straight-up, though I unironically love that it's short for Daximus. A friend pointed out to me that he's married to Kristen Bell, and I know her from "The Good Place," so that's interesting. I'm a bit leery about the DAX/XKES crossing, though. I'm not much of a car buff, so I only know XKES from doing crosswords (47D: Classic Jaguars). If the XKE and DAX Shepard aren't in your wheelhouse, something like DAN/NKES could look pretty tempting. It's probably a fair crossing for a Friday, but still, that could be a trouble spot for some solvers. FILA (23A: Reebok rival) crossing FETT (23D: Boba ___, "Star Wars" bounty hunter) could be a tough crossing for some, too, although I'd argue that "Star Wars" is *so* famous as a franchise that I wouldn't call it unfair.

Putting on my Crossword Constructor Hat™ for a minute: Whenever there are stacks of three long answers in a themeless, my general rule is that at least two of them need to be winners and the crossing fill needs to stay relatively clean for it to be a successful stack (ideally all three answers will be fun and fresh phrases, but that can be quite tough to pull off and still keep the fill smooth). Or, if the stack features only one really sparkly phrase while the other two are just serviceable, having a really fun clue or two can liven things up. So maybe it's helpful to look at each stack one by one:

Northwest corner: WAVELENGTHS (1A: Differences between colors), IMAGINE THAT, (15A: "Well, what do you know?!"), DANGER MOUSE. (17A: Six-time Grammy winner who is half of the group Gnarls Barkley). The latter two are really nice answers; not everyone will be familiar with DANGER MOUSE, but both he and CEE-LO GREEN are very accomplished musicians in their own right. I have to admit my mind went a slightly different music route in that I started humming the tune to the British cartoon show "Danger Mouse" when I got that one ("He's the greatest / He's fantastic / Wherever there is danger he'll be there ...").

Anyway, I'd say at least two of those long answers are fun, and WAVELENGTHS is solid if not super-exciting. The crossing fill is fairly good too, marred a tad by small stuff like -ESS and THU. But thumbs-up for that corner overall.
Northeast corner: ABOVE IT ALL (12D: Supercilious), ROTISSERIE (13D: Spit spot), PASS THE BAR (14D: Become legally certified). All of them are good, and ROTISSERIE has a nice near-rhyming clue. The worst crossing stuff is probably OTS (I don't like it as a plural abbreviation), but all else seems okay to me. Thumbs-up for that corner.
Southwest corner: SWISS CHARD (25D: Leafy vegetable related to a beet), HONEY HONEY (26D: 1974 Abba hit), TRIPLE TIME (27D: Mazurka meter). This corner didn't do as much for me as the others, but that's probably just personal preference. I'd never heard of the Abba song (it only hit No. 27 on the Billboard Hot. 100) and I feel like SWISS CHARD is more commonly just called CHARD. These aren't bad answers at all; they just felt more workmanlike than the others. Still, I can understand if others dug those entries more than I did. For the crossing fill, I didn't love SEP., and I always dread IN IT even though it's bailed me out of several jams, but all else looks fine to me. Let's call this corner a push.
Southeast corner: HUNT AND PECK (49A: Type unprofessionally), IT'S A MIRACLE (53A: "Hallelujah!"), THAT'S GENIUS (55A: "Brilliant!"). I wasn't really convinced while solving that THAT'S GENIUS is really in-the-language; I suppose I could imagine someone saying it, though it felt a little arbitrary in the same way as THAT'S SMART or THAT'S CLEVER. Even so, the other two phrases are great and it's neat how the two one-word praising clues for IT'S A MIRACLE and THAT'S GENIUS stack on top of each other. I didn't like DECI- or the DAX/XKES crossing in that little 4x3 area, but LATE HIT and BABE RUTH are interesting answers if you're into sports. I'll call this corner a win, though I liked the NW and NE corners a bit better.

So to recap, that's at least three out of four stacks featuring two good-to-great long marquee answers, and maybe all four if you got a kick out of SWISS CHARD and HONEY HONEY. The small stuff like -ESS and OTS and DECI- did start to add up, but they were reasonably spread out and they held up some fun longer entries and so I didn't mind them too much. So on the whole, good puzzle.

Bullets:

BARB (34A: Offensive line) — Neat re-purposing of a football term.
SYLLABUS (38A: Course outline) — Shout-out to all my friends in academia who will be forced to tell at least one student who can't be bothered to look up what they're supposed to read for next week that "It's on the syllabus."
CHEATER (41A: School copier, maybe) — I had C?EATER in place and I thought it was going to be CREATER, which isn't spelled correctly, but it still made sense in my head; a Xerox machine would create copies, right? The correct answer is much better (and it has a very nice clue, to boot).
HOTTER (43A: Like Mercury vis-à-vis Mars) — Hey whoa whoa whoa, New York Times. Way to insert your own opinion into the eternal "Who was hotter: Freddie Mercury or Bruno Mars" debate. (I'm kidding, y'all. This clue's about the planets. Although if we are going to take sides in this debate I just made up, I'd probably be on Team Freddie as well though it'd be a tough call.)
HAS-BEENS (10D: Distant stars?) — Nice. The NYT ran this clue ten years ago, but that's more than enough time for a clue to pass from most solvers' memories and it's still a good clue besides.
PAN (51D: It might receive zero stars) — It's worth noting that the "zero stars" clue is what appears in the puzzle's electronic version. In print, the clue looks like this:
The electronic clue feels a tad off because of the word "receive." The film receives zero stars. A critic might pan the film by giving it zero stars in the review, but the clue makes it sound like the review itself is what gets zero stars rather than the film itself (if that makes sense).

Signed, Evan Birnholz, Postmaster General of CrossWorld

[Follow Evan on Twitter (@evanbirnholz) and Facebook]

↧

Scanned smartphone graphics / SAT 9-15-18 / Early major-league game setting / Literary character likened to mute maned sea-lion / Fricassee relative / Cousins of garters

September 14, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Flower said to cover plains of Hades / SUN 9-16-18 / Large mobile devices to use modern portmanteau / Ontario city across river from Buffalo for short / Gig for aspiring electronic musician / Popular Belgian brews informally

≪ Previous: Duchamp contemporary / FRI 9-14-18 / Six-time Grammy winner who is half of the group Gnarls Barkley / Novelist Ephron / Reddit Q&A sessions, briefly / "My baby at my breast," to Shakespeare's Cleopatra / 1974 Abba hit / Member of the 1920s Murderers' Row / Sarah who hosted the podcast "Serial"

Constructor: David Liben-Nowell

Relative difficulty: Easy, leaning Easy-Medium (6:14)

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"onboarding" (46A: Those needing onboarding => HIREES) —

noun
the action or process of integrating a new employee into an organization or familiarizing a new customer or client with one's products or services.

"after the initial onboarding is complete, continue to offer new hires relevant training and development opportunities"(google)

• • •

This is a solid grid, though it had a weirdly football-techbro-bizspeak vibe that I did not entirely groove on. Three (!) college football (-related) answers? (OHIO STATE, SCH. AGGIE). SELF-DRIVING CARS and QR CODES, the CEO and his HIREES ... these aren't bad things (well, not bad, crossword-wise), they just aren't things I'm particularly interested in. I do think QRCODES is a pretty great-looking answer, and SAME-SEX MARRIAGE is nice (though not as bold now as it would've been, say, a decade ago) (sidenote: it was the revealer of a Wednesday puzzle back in 2012). I think my favorite thing in this grid is PIPSQUEAK (39A: Squirt). I just like the way the word sounds and looks, and I like that both the clue and answer have a "Q" in them. The puzzle feels very current, with ERIK Spoelstra instead of Satie, POE Dameron instead of Edgar Allan, and a nice "Crazy Rich Asians" (2018) clue for Michelle YEOH (28A: Actress Michelle of "Crazy Rich Asians"). I'm more of a Satie and Edgar Allan man, myself, but I appreciate the whole living-in-the-present thing. Not so much a fan of ININK, OFFIT, SCH (one of my most hated abbrs.) and COSA, which was the first clue I looked at, and the main reason (I think) that I didn't have a much faster time (1D: Thing: Sp.). Didn't know it, and so the NW was a mess for a bit. Didn't help that I had REY where POE was supposed to go. I also got hung up at 13D: Senate coverage? because I had --G- and I thought the answer was ... [drum roll] ... PAGE. I feel like I could defend my answer in a crossword court of law, but I can accept that TOGA is apter.

Since when are [Howls at night] OMENS? I think you could've used something like "full moon" instead of a wolf howl if you absolutely positively *had* to link successive Down clues there. I don't really like when a month is referred to as a "setting," e.g. 33A: Early major-league game setting (APRIL). I was like "Where did they used to play baseball in the olden days?" Symmetrically replicated my initial trouble in the NW at the very end, in the SE, where none of the short answers in that far corner were making any sense. Totally forgot EWR was the Newark airport code. Looked like initials of British royalty to me. Edward William ... maybe Randolph or something, I don't know. [Purchase] for GRIP is apt but brutal, and the deception continued right next door with 55D: Cousins of garters for ASPS. So garter *snakes*. "D'oh"! I'M A FOOL! But the far NW and far SE were really the only problem spots for me. Only place I've got serious ink on this printed-out, annotated grid in front of me. Oof, I just saw TAE, which is at least as bad as SCH. ISMS is rough too. But great clue on MEOW (49D: "Got milk?"). Did you know Edison invented TAE Bo? Well, he didn't, but that would've been cool. OK, goodnight.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Flower said to cover plains of Hades / SUN 9-16-18 / Large mobile devices to use modern portmanteau / Ontario city across river from Buffalo for short / Gig for aspiring electronic musician / Popular Belgian brews informally

September 15, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Eco-conscious Dfr. Seuss character / MON 9-17-18 / Apple tablet with attachable keyboard

≪ Previous: Scanned smartphone graphics / SAT 9-15-18 / Early major-league game setting / Literary character likened to mute maned sea-lion / Fricassee relative / Cousins of garters

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:43)

THEME:"Uh, What?"— "Uh" sound added to words in familiar phrases, creating new, wacky words / phrases, clued "?"-style:

Theme answers:

OREGON TRANSPLANT (as opposed to "organ transplant") (23A: One who's just moved from Portland?)
TURN THE CORONER (35A: Convert a morgue worker into a spy?)
KING JAMES BUYABLE (48A: LeBron basketball sneaker, e.g.?) (not sure how I feel about "buyable" as a noun, but ok)
RIOTING ON THE WALL (69A: Intense blowback against a signature Trump policy proposal?)
PROJECT RUNAWAY (82A: Bad person to get paired with for a class assignment?)
SENATOR OF GRAVITY (99A: Nickname for a superserious congressman?)

Word of the Day: FT. ERIE (104A: Ontario city across the river from Buffalo, for short) —

Fort Erie is a town on the Niagara River in the Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. It is directly across the river from Buffalo, New York and is the site of Old Fort Erie which played a prominent role in the War of 1812. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, so I'm liking this modest, scaled-back, super-polished theme puzzle trend I'm seeing, or believe I'm seeing (if I'm wrong, please do not break the spell that I am under). The concept here is super-basic, but executed (mostly) creatively and unpainfully, and with just six (!) themers in the grid, there is plenty of room for the fill to breathe and therefore not, you know, suck. You get a moist delicious grid cake with a light layer of theme icing, as opposed to dry some cakelike gunk troweled with heaps of cloying, granular frosting. The latter probably looks more impressive, or at least more garish, but try eating it. This one, however—OK, not earth-shatteringly great, but delightful. A pleasant 10-minute diversion during which I groaned only, like, three times (I can tell you that is Quite a low number of groans for a Sunday). And the cluing on this one felt elevated. Crisper and cleaner than usual. Clever without being that obnoxious kind of clever where someone has to explain it to you and you're like "Oh ... heh ... great." The other kind of clever. The good kind. I mean, [Workers who are always retiring?] for PIT CREW!? That is good. I don't think art is better when it's fine, though. I get the "fine art" wordplay thing you're trying to do there, but better than what? Street art? Pop art? Gonna say no (or not necessarily) on both counts. And many other counts. Also, PHABLETS is a word that makes me want to phomit (72A: Large mobile devices, to use.a modern portmanteau). But it's original, I'll give it that.

Not many sticking points today. Had trouble dropping CONAGRA (9D: U.S. food giant) and YES MAN (10D: Suck-up) down up top because I had OREGON TRA- and I decided, in a fit of foolhardiness, to fill in the next two letters: "-IL." I think CONAGRA and YES MAN were gonna be tricky *anyway*, but with wrong letters in the way, they were especially so. Also totally stymied by ARES, of whom I have no memory from "Wonder Woman," which is odd, as I teach (Golden Age) Wonder Woman in another couple of weeks. To me, a four-letter foe of Wonder Woman is always, and I mean always, gonna be NAZI. Most significant error today was getting the initial "T" at 63D: Music genre at a rave (TRANCE) and dropping in TECHNO. Luckily, nothing worked after that. I say "luckily" because if *anything* had worked, I would've stuck with my understandable-but-stupid wrong answer a lot longer.

[TRANCE]

Five Things:

74A: Hair net (SNOOD)— Me: "Oh, it's that horrible-sounding word, the one that sounds like a disease or a vestigial appendage or something ... oh, yeah: SCROD!"
38D: Uncool (LAME)— I would not use this word. Also, even if you *would* use this word, it's so easy, so so easy, to avoid here. NAME / NORA. DAME / DORA. Even if you don't believe LAME is ableist, you know there are disabled people who do, so why go with LAME? So you can get the scintillating LIRA!?
45D: What "..." may represent (TYPING) — so good. Would be better if the ellipsis did that little bubble dance that the actual TYPING dots do when the person you're texting is, you know, TYPING, but ... maybe someday: animated clues!
77D: Words from a T.S.A. agent before a pat-down ("ARMS OUT") — again, so good, so fresh, so current.
65A: Flower said to cover the plains of Hades (ASPHODEL) — Yeow! I am currently reading about Hades (actually, Dante's "Inferno," but ... close) and I did not know this. This answer could easily have been the death of me, as I don't think I've ever seen it. Looks vaguely like a bunch of words I know, like "espadrille" and "Astrophil," but ... it's just lucky for me that the crosses were all solid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Eco-conscious Dfr. Seuss character / MON 9-17-18 / Apple tablet with attachable keyboard

September 16, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Of the cheek / TUE 9-18-18 / Clothing brand with horse head logo / Dance in days of doo-wop / 1990s BP acquisition

≪ Previous: Flower said to cover plains of Hades / SUN 9-16-18 / Large mobile devices to use modern portmanteau / Ontario city across river from Buffalo for short / Gig for aspiring electronic musician / Popular Belgian brews informally

Constructor: Caitlin Reid

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:21)

THEME: FISH (71A: Use the items found at the ends of the answers to 20-, 31-, 47- and 56-Across)— last words are fishing-related stuff

Theme answers:

TELEPHONE POLE (20A: Holder of wires along a street)
SLIDE TACKLE (31A: Aggressive defensive soccer maneuver)
BLOOPER REEL (47A: Series of funny outtakes)
FIDGET SPINNER (56A: Toy in a 2017 craze)

Word of the Day: ENOS (60D: Grandson of Adam and Eve) —

Enos or Enosh (Hebrew: אֱנוֹשׁ‬ ʼEnōš; "mortal man"; Arabic: أَنُوش/يَانِش‎, translit. Yāniš/’Anūš; Ge'ez: ሄኖስ Henos), in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, is the first son of Seth who figures in the Generations of Adam, and consequently referred to within the genealogies of 1 Chronicles.
According to Christianity, he is part of the Genealogy of Jesus as mentioned in Luke 3:38. Additionally, Enos is also mentioned in Islam in the various collections of tales of the pre-Islamic prophets, which honor him in an identical manner. Furthermore, early Islamic historians like Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham always included his name in the genealogy of the Prophet Muhammad, (Arabic: ’Anūsh أَنُوش or [commonly]: Yānishيَانِش). (wikipedia)

• • •

Slow today, for me, because ... well, several reasons. First, 1A: Part of a bed's base (SLAT) made No sense to me. I had SLA- and thought "they don't mean SLAT, do they?" I just couldn't process it, largely because I haven't seen or slept on a SLATted bed in a long time. I think my futon in grad school was on a slatted frame of some kind. Ugh. Also wrote in ANGRY for 16A: Livid, which is total amateur hour; of course it's IRATE, it's always IRATE. Then is it COLA or SODA at 40D: Fizzy, sugarless beverage (DIET SODA)? And is it IONE or IONA at 65A: College in New Rochelle, N.Y? Worst wound was totally self-inflicted, though. I wrote in OUTTAKE REEL at 47A: Series of funny outtakes (BLOOPER REEL). Yeah, that was wrong. It's called a GAG REEL. When that wouldn't fit, my brain (apparently forgetting the exact wording of the clue) just toggled to the next plausible answer that fit.

But let's leave my floundering aside for a moment and talk about the theme, which just doesn't work. On many levels. There's a decent, albeit dated and time-worn, concept here, right? Last words are all part of X group. Today, fishing. So first, FISH is a terrible revealer. I mean ... a boringish theme like this needs a zazzy revealer, and FISH is about the least zazzy imaginable. Then there's the set of last words. They are motley, at best. Having REEL but not ROD felt odd, but the bigger problem was SPINNER, which is not nearly as solidly iconic as the other fishing words (it's a kind of ... lure?). I mean, why not BAIT. CLICKBAIT, JAILBAIT, I don't know, be creative. Did you just want to get the pseudo-current but actually dated FIDGET SPINNER in there? But I haven't yet mentioned the biggest problem, and that's TACKLE. It's not a separate item, it is All The Other Items. They are all a subset of TACKLE. You can't list POLE *alongside* TACKLE when It Is TACKLE. Here's the definition of TACKLE:

Fishing tackle is the equipment used by anglers when fishing. Almost any equipment or gear used for fishing can be called fishing tackle. Some examples are hooks, lines, sinkers, floats, rods, reels, baits, lures, spears, nets, gaffs, traps, waders and tackle boxes. (wikipedia)

How do you let that one go, editors? You could've encouraged this constructor and shepherded this theme along into some kind of polished shape, but no. You just run with this broken theme. This is the kind of theme that someone like Lynn Lempel or Liz Gorski woulda *nailed* in the not-so-olden days. Don't submit unless you know you stuck the landing. That is the rule.

Five things:

1A: Shoot out, as 14-Across (SPEW)— Cross-referenced 1-Acrosses: Not a fan
49D: Like clarinets and oboes (REEDED) — If you want to get your name (kinda) in the grid, do it with an actual good answer. ;) This adjectivization of reed is awk.
44D: Apple tablet with an attachable keyboard (IPAD PRO) — yeah, this one hurt. I had IPAD AIR. Pffft. I mean, I'm all for being "current," but I hate how much "current" has come to mean "some brand name tech stuff."
63D: The laugh of someone who's up to no good (HEH) — really glad I never saw this clue because man [laugh syllable] is the worst clue genre
9A: Demanding that people do this and that (BOSSY) — only just now realizing that I totally misread this clue as [Demanding people do this and that]. I was like, "Wait, what? Is it the this or the that that you want?" Thought some "___ & ___" expression was involved. Again, self-inflicted pain.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Of the cheek / TUE 9-18-18 / Clothing brand with horse head logo / Dance in days of doo-wop / 1990s BP acquisition

September 18, 2018, 2:43 am

≫ Next: Locale of Tuvalu and Nauru / WED 9-19-18 / Frank Sammy ultimate event 1989 documentary / Naively optimistic muppet

≪ Previous: Eco-conscious Dfr. Seuss character / MON 9-17-18 / Apple tablet with attachable keyboard

Constructor: Greg Johnson

Relative difficulty: By the clock, Medium-Challenging, but I solved at 4:45am, so ... adjusting for brain fog, probably more Medium (3:37)

THEME: gases— letters form molecule annotations for three gases at three different points in the grid:

Theme answers:

METHANE (20A: Flammable gas represented in 18-Across and 9-Down)
CARBON DIOXIDE (38A: Respiratory gas represented in 36-Across)
AMMONIA (55A: Pungent-smelling gas represented in 57-Across and 49-Down)

Word of the Day: MALAR (34D: Of the cheek) —

adjective
ANATOMYMEDICINE
1.
relating to the cheek.

"a slight malar flush"(google)

• • •

It is what it says it is. There's the gas, there's the molecule. Ping, pong, ping, pong, ping, pong. Not a lot going on. Maybe there aren't that many "HNH" or "HCH" answers in the world, and somehow getting the molecule thing to work out is supposed to elicit an ooh and/or aah, but this felt pretty dull and pointless to me. Further, the grid was choked with crosswordese (in a way that the NYT has, to its credit, increasingly avoided, of late). All IMACs and IPADS and DON HO's OBI and OHO UHUH! extra-H AHCHOO! ECONO-OWIE! EMT ETO ESTOP! You could say the grid was AWASH in such answers. Brutal. I got held up in a number of places for the dumbest of crossword reasons, to wit: is it SCAT or SHOO!? (1A: Shout to a pest). Is it HEWN or SAWN!? (5D: Cut, as logs). Is it AHA or OHO!? (58D: "Well, what have we here?!"). You see how fun this is! In the end, molecules are written out as adjacent letters and crosswords have adjacent letters and that is apparently good enough for a random three-gas theme with no wordplay or "play" of any kind. Tuesday!

Five things:

19D: Means of hair removal (HOT WAX) — another point of slowage. Had the "H" but needed many crosses to get it. Not surprisingly, I think it was the "X" that gave it to me.
42A: Part of da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM (IAMB) — I'm literally going to be teaching the concept of IAMB later today and *I* had no idea what this clue was doing. But, yes, one "da-DUM" is, technically, an IAMB (a poetic foot that goes unstressed-STRESSED)
11D: Word after fire ... or a synonym of fire (AXE) — too much information for a Tuesday. Didn't appreciate what was going on here (i.e. that the post-ellipsis part of the clue had a different meaning of "fire") until, well, a few seconds ago.
34D: Of the cheek (MALAR)— well you don't see that one that often. Probably for reasons. (Seriously, it's been E L E V E N Y E A R S since this word last appeared in the NYTX)
50A: Devices that may serve as cash registers (IPADS) — the answer that took me the longest. Just couldn't process it, despite having people process my purchases with IPADS literally every week at the farmers market. I think ... yeah, I don't think of them as "cash registers" because, well, there is no "cash" in them. We'll be calling IPADS"cash registers" thousands of years, when "cash" is some archaic word that exists only in dictionaries and crosswords.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Locale of Tuvalu and Nauru / WED 9-19-18 / Frank Sammy ultimate event 1989 documentary / Naively optimistic muppet

September 18, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Six-time MLB all-star Rusty / THU 9-20-18 / Opening between vocal cords / One from Land of Cakes / Fantasy creature spawned from mud / Longtime parent of Parlophone

≪ Previous: Of the cheek / TUE 9-18-18 / Clothing brand with horse head logo / Dance in days of doo-wop / 1990s BP acquisition

Constructor: Scot Ober and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:40)

THEME: YIDDISH (38A: Source of the six longest Across answers in this puzzle) —

Theme answers:

TCHOTCHKE (16A: Knickknack)
SCHMALTZ (20A: Excessive sentimentality)
CHUTZPAH (24A: Shameless audacity)
OY, GEVALT! (47A: "Jeez!")
MEGILLAH (53A: Long, involved account)
VERKLEMPT (58A: Choked up with emotion)

Word of the Day: MEGILLAH (53A) —

slang

1: a long involved story or account [so clue is just lifted from dictionary (nearly) verbatim, boo] Shaffer has Salieri declaring war on Heaven … and determined to ruin Mozart because God's voice is speaking through him. Shaffer turns Pushkin's metaphor into a whole megillah.—Paulene [sic!] Kael

2a: an elaborate, complicated production or sequence of events Today's affair is a luncheon … . In fact, the whole megillah has a furtive vibe to it, half shameful …—Jeff MacGregor… a simple matter of identifying the dead man … turns into a big political megillah.—Marilyn Stasio
b: everything involved in what is under consideration : BALL OF WAX"The only thing that could interest me is if I could win. I'm not talking about the nomination, I'm talking about the whole megillah."—Donald TrumpThat's $18 million between the whole group. Throwing in Miller makes $22 million. Say they decided to donate the whole megillah last year.—Jason Rhode (m-w) (my emph)

• • •

Is this a Yom Kippur puzzle? Is that what this is supposed to be? There are two weird things about that. One, it's Just A Bunch Of Yiddish Words. No twist, no wordplay, no nothin'. There must be something you could do, themewise, with, say, ATONE, or something, but all we get is a word list. So, yeah, there's Jewish content, but nothing very interesting or Yom Kippur-specific. It's a boring dumb list, UGH. Also, it is my (new) understanding that very observant Jews do not write, at all, on Yom Kippur, which means, uh, no crossword (I assume). For instance:

So the whole concept, and execution, and timing—it's all mildly bizarre to me. From a strictly puzzle standpoint, though, I can't say this strongly enough: a bunch of YIDDISH words isn't a theme. It's a list. Yes, there are Yiddish words that have entered English. There are lots of words that have entered English via lots of languages. Unless you're gonna do something interesting with that fact, you don't have a theme. You don't. It's not. Also, DR. OZ is a quack and his very presence ruins everything I hope you're happy.

Five things:

44A: Rose Bowl, e.g. (OVAL)— *that's* your iconic OVAL? Ugh. Tracks are ovals, The Rose Bowl is an arena, or a game, or etc. Boo.
62A: Naively optimistic Muppet (ERNIE) — I had -IE and wrote in ROSIE (thinking ... that the "optimistic" part was some kind of hint). Is there a ROSIE? O M G ROSIE is the name of ERNIE's bathtub!?!?!?!?!?! Also that answer is right on top of SOAP, so my mistake has unlocked a whole weird world of Muppet coincidence...
56D: Major N.Y.S.E. events (IPOS) — bricked it and wrote ISPS. Stupid common crossword initialisms!
53D: Org. advocating highway safety (MADD)— very, very generic clue for the *specifically against DRUNK (and possibly now DISTRACTED?) driving* org. that is MADD. I was looking for some kind of government initialism concerned with overall safety.
35D: Alternative to Israir Airlines (EL AL) — OK first of all, ISRAIR!? If that's a known thing, how has it never been in the crossword!? And second, please don't give this answer credit for being "bonus Jewish content." Same with SINAI. Those damned words are always hanging around the grid. They get no credit for showing up today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. since when is a MINIBAR"Fancy"??? (42D: Fancy hotel room amenity)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Six-time MLB all-star Rusty / THU 9-20-18 / Opening between vocal cords / One from Land of Cakes / Fantasy creature spawned from mud / Longtime parent of Parlophone

September 20, 2018, 3:14 am

≫ Next: Article 0

≪ Previous: Locale of Tuvalu and Nauru / WED 9-19-18 / Frank Sammy ultimate event 1989 documentary / Naively optimistic muppet

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Challenging (by the clock—though the grid is odd-sized, and I solved upon rolling out of bed, and my software kept moving my cursor around in weird ways because of those damned unchecked squares ... it actually felt pretty Medium) (8:28)

THEME: String Trio— three themers contain letter strings that form STRING and two words synonymous with STRING; those strings sort of weave their way through the grid by going up and down, through a series of unchecked squares (i.e. squares with no crosses):

Theme answers:

MESSAGE THREAD (17A: Series of exchanges in a chat window)
INTERLACED WITH (35A: Woven into)
STRING SECTION (53A: Group that bows on state)

Word of the Day: Rusty STAUB (13A: Six-time M.L.B. All-Star Rusty) —

Daniel Joseph "Rusty" Staub (April 1, 1944 – March 29, 2018) was an American professional baseball right fielder, designated hitter, and first baseman. He played in Major League Baseballfor 23 years with five teams. He was an original member of the Montreal Expos and the team's first star; though the Expos traded him after only three years, his enduring popularity led them to retire his number in 1993. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well LOL on me, I only just now bothered to read the note in my Across Lite software, which tells me:

Yes, I was just about to say "What the hell is up with putting the clue at 53-Across when the answer actually starts in that unnumbered square way over on the left side of the grid?!" Very disconcerting to have the Across answer start materializing *behind* the clue number. I like Across Lite, I am used to Across Lite, I downloaded it because it was free and the NYT promoted it (many years ago?), but now I guess they want me using the dumb app. It's like they're punishing Across Lite users. Anyway, my difficulty level was Challenging and *now* you know why—I had to deal with **** most of you didn't. So just go with Medium.

This is a nice theme. My one grump is that center answer, which A. doesn't have LACE as a freestanding word (the way the other theme words are freestanding: THREAD and STRING), and B. I could not figure out which Across was the jumper, i.e. I thought 32A: Hosp. procedure with a readout (ECG) was the long, thready answer, ending in -DWITH (bandwith??). I was basically following the pattern of the first themer, and wanting to drop down for the first thread letter, not jumping up. So problems in that region of the puzzle, esp. in the western part of the center, really slowed me down Didn't help that I had ETH for 19D: Series finale?—made sense to me—and HNBC for whatever the stupid Jay Leno channel was ("Siri, show me the show, of all the shows in the universe, that I am least likely to watch!"). Maybe NBC has a home channel now, I reasoned. Further, "I GET IDEAS"? (46A: 1950s title lyric after "When we are dancing and you're dangerously near me ..."). What year is it? Oh, right, it's 1950. Yikes. Pardon me while I go get my SAL soda (which I assume is from the '50s, as I have never seen it outside crosswords). I had I GET and .... tumbleweeds. And the tumbleweeds part crossed COAGENT, which, again, what? What is that? 38D: Associate in finance, say. Between Jay Leno's stupid cars and this inscrutable "finance" answer, the puzzle was not exactly welcoming me. But I hacked through it in the end. Theme was pretty easy to pick up, and the fill was strange and surprising and only rarely yuck.

Five things:

8D: Fantasy creature spawned from mud (ORC)— I had ENT. Because trees come from ... mud ... kinda.
58A: In a frenzy (AMUCK)— not the spelling. I really demand a "quaintly" or (Var.) marking here. Here is the only time that spelling has ever been acceptable:

55D: Tour division (GIG) / 56D: Barnyard male (TOM)— first word I had in that section was GYM SOCK, and off of that I write in LEG for [Tour division] and RAM for [Barnyard male]. Sigh.
27D: Half a laugh (HEE)— laugh halves are always much, much less than half a laugh. I'll say it again, Worst Clue Genre Ever.
1D: Venue near Penn Station, for short (MSG) — not hard unless you read it as [Avenue near Penn Station, for short], as I did. Tried ... a bunch of stuff, including LEX. Is that even near Penn Station? I've been coming into Grand Central pretty exclusively. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because I simply read the clue wrong. I also though 1A: African menace was EBOLA. So, yeah, that was a rough start. But good old Rusty STAUB got me through. Thank you, baseball, for leading me out of the darkness, yet again.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Article 0

September 20, 2018, 9:05 pm

≫ Next: Counterpart of iamb / SAT 9-22-18 / Program that analyzes structure of input / Dance in which you bring your knees in tight / O'Hara Martian's host on old TVs my favorite martian / Jon who wrote illustrated smart feller fart smeller

≪ Previous: Six-time MLB all-star Rusty / THU 9-20-18 / Opening between vocal cords / One from Land of Cakes / Fantasy creature spawned from mud / Longtime parent of Parlophone

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-ish for a Friday)

THEME: None

Word of the Day: TATAMI MAT (55A: Sight in many a Japanese restaurant) —

A tatami (畳) is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Traditionally made using rice straw to form the core, the cores of contemporary tatami are sometimes composed of compressed wood chip boards or polystyrene foam. With a covering of woven soft rush (igusa 藺草) straw, tatami are made in standard sizes, with the length exactly twice the width, an aspect ratio of 2:1. Usually, on the long sides, they have edging (heri縁) of brocade or plain cloth, although some tatami have no edging. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hi ho! Keri Gagnon here filling in for Rex today and already checking "Muppet reference" off the list in my first line. I have to admit that I normally print the crossword out because I really enjoy hand-writing it in pen (we type everything these days!), but a photo of my printed out (and scribbled on) crossword seemed sad, so here we are.

Sometimes I love a good themeless puzzle because of the random long form answers the constructor is able to cram in there (hellooo STALINERA and EMPTYWORDS). This one I found pretty enjoyable, and with NATALE, NOEL, and ICEPALACE, we almost have a pseudo-winter/Christmas theme going on.

I'll admit I got good and stuck in the SW for a while ... I had BAA instead of MAA (56D: Goat's cry) because apparently I can't keep my ovine and caprine sounds straight. TEE I filled in easily (58D: One of 18 on a golf course) as well as CMAS, helping me get to ICEPALACE. But I can't say I've ever had PASTIS in my life and I had SCALIA instead of SOUTER (45D: Colleague of 23-Down for 15 years) so I floundered for a bit. With OCONNOR (23D: Retired justice who wrote "Out of Order: Stories from the History of the Supreme Court") as the linked clue I was loving the timely SCOTUS references because well, have you read/watched the news at all lately? I always appreciate when the NYTX feels current because so often it just... doesn't.

Well, that's it for me tonight -- thanks for joining me in one of my favorite corners of the interwebs. I'll leave you with some highlights of mine and a song that never gets old.

Bullets:

2D: Unwanted messages (HATEMAIL) — This one tripped me up for a bit because I kept reading it as ---EMAIL and could only think of SPAM. Once STUBS fell into place (also great cluing) it dawned on me the answer was mail of the snail variety.
19A: Instagram filter shade (SEPIA) — The cluing on this one was clever because SEPIA isn't a filter name on Instagram but it is technically a shade of a filter. Show me a puzzle with INKWELL in it and then we're talking. And yes, I know I am showing my millennialism here and I'm sorry.
32A: Fruits that ripen after being picked (AVOCADOS) — Despite the fact that living in California we put avocados on just about every thing here, this answer didn't immediately occur to me due to the lack of GUAC/GUACAMOLE reference. I liked it. And yes, I will take avocado on my puzzle, please.
62A: Took courses under pressure (STRESSATE)— Oh, how I loved this one. Clever, modern, and who doesn't do this sometimes?!?

Signed, Keri Gagnon, Enthusiastic Citizen of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Counterpart of iamb / SAT 9-22-18 / Program that analyzes structure of input / Dance in which you bring your knees in tight / O'Hara Martian's host on old TVs my favorite martian / Jon who wrote illustrated smart feller fart smeller

September 21, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: MI6 R&D division in 007 novels / SUN 9-23-18 / Three of wheel of dharma buddhist concept / 1929 work that is theme of this puzzle / Place for works that are in works / Scores after deuces informally / German city with Pennsylvania namesake / Bit of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

≪ Previous: Article 0

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Medium (7:18)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: IOLA, Ks. (?) (6D: City SW of Kansas City) —

Iola (pronounced /aɪˈoʊlə/) is a city situated along the Neosho River in the northwestern part of Allen County, located in Southeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 5,704. Iola is the county seat of Allen County. It is named in honor of Iola Colborn. (Emphasis Mine) (What The Hell?) (wikipedia)

• • •

[Plaque in front of my daughter's high school]

Well, let's deal with the elephant in the middle of the puzzle first, I guess. Considering the NYT solving base, I don't think that guy should be in any crossword puzzle. I have no idea when this puzzle was constructed—poor NYT constructors sometimes wait many years before seeing their work in print. But that doesn't really matter. The editor has to make decisions about what to run and when to run it, and it's semi-unfathomable that you run This puzzle with This answer in it This week, when a nominee to the Supreme Court stands credibly accused of sexual assault and the accuser is being badgered, harassed, maligned, demeaned and undermined by cretins in both the legitimate and illegitimate press, and in the Senate, where the hearings are being conducted by the party whose leader is himself a 17-time sexual assailant. To say this is bad timing would be a significant understatement. And then you had to throw Les Moonves's wife into the bargain!? There are other CHENs, man. Why run this puzzle? I mean, you know—know!—that you're gonna hear about that center answer. The social media chatter has already begun, and the puzzle hasn't even been out an hour.

The Constructor Himself Acknowledges The Problem:

Decision to go ahead with this puzzle in this climate is at least a little baffling.

But #MeToo issues aside, I found this one delightful in some parts, painful in others. There were just too many obscure (to me) short names (esp. in the Downs, both up top and below). Running IOLAZOEY and RENI on me so close together like that, yeesh. And then I have no idea who this non-James AGEE is (though I think I've seen him in crosswords before, maybe). TERI and PEEDEE I know only because of crosswords. And I'm not even sure what the clue on TIM is asking for (53D: ___ O'Hara, Martian's host on old TV's "My Favorite Martian"). What does "Martian's host" mean? Like, the Martian lives in his house? I mean, of alllllllll the possible TIM clues in the world, dear lord. So yeah, the names today were a little rough, as was PARSER (?!) and ECT. Longer Acrosses, however (central answer notwithstanding), were generally entertaining. Really enjoyed remembering "THE TIME WARP" and can't believe it took me so long to parse "THE TWILIGHT ZONE" (52A: TV series whose first episode was titled "Where Is Everybody?")—I stupidly had VIN for ZIN (54D: Wine shop offering, informally) and then ENNA for ETTA (50D: Italian diminutive suffix), so parsing those long Acrosses in the south was tough.

Five things:

28A: Garment originally fashionable in the late 1950s (SACK DRESS) — really? Had DRESS and then was like "er.... uh ..."
26A: Shot contents (SERUM) — had the SE- and, well, let's just say nothing came to mind that was right or good
40D: Least in question (SUREST)— tried SAFEST, but, for the first time ever, KIR helped me out (51A: Wine aperitif)
35D: Counterpart of an iamb (TROCHEE)— finally, Finally, my day job pays off. A TROCHEE is just an inverted iamb: a poetic foot that goes STRESSED-unstressed. Pasta. Demon. Parlor. Baby. All one-word TROCHEEs. John Donne uses them strategically at the opening of OK I'll stop.
32A: Childhood home of Grant Wood and Elijah Wood (CEDAR RAPIDS) — had the RAPIDS and went with .... GRAND! Luckily the crosses made no kind of sense with GRAND, and I arrived in CEDAR RAPIDS without too much delay.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. happy 18th birthday to my wonderful daughter, who doesn't read my blog, god bless her

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

MI6 R&D division in 007 novels / SUN 9-23-18 / Three of wheel of dharma buddhist concept / 1929 work that is theme of this puzzle / Place for works that are in works / Scores after deuces informally / German city with Pennsylvania namesake / Bit of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

September 22, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Country below Hungary / MON 9-24-18 / Vegas hot spot / Alcohol that's transparent / Unattractive fruit

≪ Previous: Counterpart of iamb / SAT 9-22-18 / Program that analyzes structure of input / Dance in which you bring your knees in tight / O'Hara Martian's host on old TVs my favorite martian / Jon who wrote illustrated smart feller fart smeller

Constructor: Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty: Challenging (laughably so—just hit "check squares" at the 15 minute mark because I didn't care anymore ... had four errors ... just the stupidest puzzle ... for reference, I haven't had a single error on a Sunday ... well, ever? ... I mean ...)

THEME:"The Art of Puzzle-Making" — a puzzle about René MAGRITTE's "TREACHERY OF IMAGES," a famous SURREALIST painting of a pipe with TEXT underneath reading "CECI N'EST PAS UN PIPE" ("this is not a pipe"). In this puzzle, you are supposed connect a bunch of circled letters that spell out the French phrase from the painting and also form the shape of a pipe, so the TEXT makes a kind of PIPE LINE ... and ... oh yeah, also there's a quote from MAGRITTE about the painting, a highly non-famous quote: "IT'S JUST / A REPRESENTATION / IS IT NOT?" Oh, and there's a stray theme answer, LOS ANGELES ... where the painting (apparently!?) is "permanently housed"; ugh there's a note:

Word of the Day: OLIVET (16D: Michigan college or its town) —

Olivet is a city in Eaton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,605 at the 2010 census. Olivet College is located in the city. (1,605!? This makes IOLA, KS look like a megalopolis) (wikipedia)

• • •

Not gonna write a ton about this one because I have almost nothing nice to say. It was just unpleasant all over the place. My god this puzzle tries too hard. Here's what you need: beautiful concept, elegant execution. What we have here is a nightmare of competing concepts trying to shout over each other and colliding with each other. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings. You can't have Every Single Theme Thing You Can Imagine. But this one ... no judiciousness. No elegance. Just stupid, stupid chaos. A germ of an idea that dies. An "bonus" thing that has none of the joy that "bonus" implies. Connect-the-dots. And then, leaving the theme aside, just clunky weird clues / answers everywhere. Art-based Sunday puzzle can now be imagined on a scale from THIS to Liz Gorski's Guggenheim puzzle. That is the scale. First, puzzle came with a "Note"—sorry, not reading that. Never do. Be good without a note or go home. Second, random circles. Oh, how I do not care. I didn't stop to see what shape they (sorta) made. Probably should've, but am not convinced it would've helped. Third, the actual revealer—what the? Here's the thing: I've seen this painting. It's used as an illustration in Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," which I teach regularly. But the title, I totally forgot. Also, calling it a "work" means that I had no idea even what genre of thing we were dealing with. Even after I got TREACHERY OF IMAGES, I didn't know what painting it was. I thought it was the Dali one with the clocks. Which one was that? [googles] Ah, "The Persistence of Memory." Well no those don't Sound Alike At All @#$&#$#R@#RH@#DFQWE!!!

Oh, back to the list—Fourth! That quotation. That dumb, random, no one has heard it before piece of junk that you only used because, what, it fits symmetrically. It's a terrible quotation, IS IT NOT? Finally, you shove a gratuitous final themer in the bottom (TEXT) and cross it with some "petroleum giant" (!?!?!) that, again, I have never heard of in a quarter century+ of solving (OXY). OXY is a west coast college. OXY is a zit medication. OXY is a moron. What the hell is this stupid "petroleum" (again, ?!) OXY? Fifth, PIPE LINE might've made a nice revealer but because it's shoehorned into this atrocity of a puzzle that already has like a million other theme elements, it's just slop poured on top.

I had four errors. Now, I should've known that the clue was not plural so ART SALES couldn't be right (53D: Cultural gathering). But I went ART SALES and then AT BEST and so finished with QBR-SCH and B-NNHEIM. Two crossing proper nouns, one of which is fictional and completely and utterly never-before-heard-of by me. I knew the Q-answer had to be the wrong one, but it's not like the right version (Q BRANCH) is so all-fire obviously correct (95A: MI6 R&D division in 007 novels). OK, this is already way more than I wanted to write on this thing. How the *&$^ is the title "The Art of Puzzle-Making" appropriate for this thing? Honestly, this puzzle got Nothing right.

Five things:

93D: Dangerous job (SPY) — what a useless clue for SPY. Had the "S" and wasn't sure if DRIER was that or DRYER ... and SPY was not helping resolve anything
37D: How to get the permit, say (PAY A FEE)— lol no. So bad. "The" permit? ___ A ___? My god, it's like no one cares.
22A: N.F.L.'s Kaepernick (COLIN) — who's what now? I mean ... is this seriously a clue? I mean, he literally, famously is not in the N.F.L. at the moment. How bad at cluing do you have to be ...? Here's the full text of an email I just got from someone who used to be an editor at a major publication—subject line: "Will Shortz should be fired":

"Saturday's Charlie Rose outrage is followed by Sunday's clue for "Colin": "NFL's Kaepernick."That is clueless to the point of negligence. How can you reference CK without mentioning the newsy Nike ad, or the whole kneeling thing? Plus there's the pertinent fact that CP is NOT currently in the NFL because of NFL/USA racism. Of all the sloppy nyt cword editing, which you chronicle so well, this pisses me off the most. The editors are either not even looking at the puzzles they print, or just don't give a shit. It's lazy and insulting to those who do."

52A: Dogie catcher (REATA)— I had RIATA, which gave me DIMOED for 47D: Showed, informally (DEMOED), which I *thought* was my error. But no.
48A: Time for pampering oneself (ME DAY) — a. not a thing, b. I have to go pamper myself now. This puzzle was self-harm.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS apparently this painting was the theme of a Diagramless puzzle in the NYT not too long ago

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Country below Hungary / MON 9-24-18 / Vegas hot spot / Alcohol that's transparent / Unattractive fruit

September 23, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Hit a four-bagger / TUES 9-25-18 / Casino game / Go a mile a minute / Goat's call

≪ Previous: MI6 R&D division in 007 novels / SUN 9-23-18 / Three of wheel of dharma buddhist concept / 1929 work that is theme of this puzzle / Place for works that are in works / Scores after deuces informally / German city with Pennsylvania namesake / Bit of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

Constructor: Michael Black

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:44)

THEME: JEOPARDY (18-Across) and WHEEL / OF FORTUNE (34-Across) — each is a "Popular program shown back to back with" the other

Theme answers:

ALEX TREBEK (23A: Host of 18-Across)
VANNA WHITE (49A: Co-host of 34-/36-Across)
PAT SAJAK (54A: Co-host of 34-/36-Across)

Word of the Day: VIJAY Singh (49D: Golfer Singh who won the 2000 Masters) —

Vijay Singh, CF (Hindi: विजय सिंह), IPA: [ˈʋɪdʒəj sɪ̃ɦ]; born 22 February 1963), nicknamed "The Big Fijian", is an Indo-Fijian professional golfer who was Number 1 in the Official World Golf Rankingfor 32 weeks in 2004 and 2005. Vijay was the 12th man to reach the world No. 1-ranking and was the only new world No. 1 in the 2000s decade. He has won three major championships (The Masters in 2000 and the PGA Championship in 1998 and 2004) and was the leading PGA Tour money winner in 2003, 2004 and 2008. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2005 (but deferred his induction until 2006). He won the FedEx Cup in 2008.
An Indo-Fijian practicing Hinduism,Singh was born in Lautoka, Fiji and grew up in Nadi. A resident of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, he is known for his meticulous preparation, often staying at the range hours before and after his tournament rounds, working on his game. (wikipedia)

• • •

What is this? I'm not blogging this. This is not a theme. There's nothing here. Seriously, this concept is so rudimentary, so boringly straighforward, I sincerely cannot believe the puzzle was accepted. The grid as a whole is OK, but this theme is astonishingly substandard. Nothing in the execution of the theme causes it to rise above the most boring TV Guide trivia quiz. Sub-TV Guide, in fact. Actually, I apologize to TV Guide, even though I'm not sure it still exists—their puzzles are unpleasant and trivia-heavy, but they expect you to know much tougher answers. Why does this puzzle exist? Is there an anniversary? Did the TV shows offer financial consideration for this? If so, can they get their money back, because this is bad. Objectively.

Five things:

49D: Golfer Singh who won the 2000 Masters (VIJAY) — knew it instantly, but spelling ... I think I got the MTV VEEJAY (?) spelling in there, and then I went with VEJAY, which is like a typo'd VE DAY ... this was the one moment during the solve where I felt like the wheels were gonna come off. For no good reason
1A: Just one year, for Venus and Serena Williams (AGE GAP)— nice clue/answer to open. SERENA WILLIAMS was a long answer in a puzzle I solve immediately prior to solving this one, so she was on my mind, as she often is.
43D: Ditch for cutting timber (SAWPIT)— this is the one WTF answer in the grid? I have never seen this term, ever. Why are you cutting timber in a ditch? Nevermind, I don't really care. I just know that this is a pretty technical / obscure term for a Monday. Not that it slowed me down much.
9D: Onetime Apple product (iBOOK)— discontinued 12 years ago ... coincidentally (?), this blog turns 12 tomorrow (9/25/18)
35D: Does one's taxes online (E-FILES) — it's how all the E-SPIES do their taxes

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Hit a four-bagger / TUES 9-25-18 / Casino game / Go a mile a minute / Goat's call

September 24, 2018, 9:01 pm

≫ Next: Horse with evenly mixed black white hairs / WED 9-26-18 / Ghost psychic Oda Brown / Gang pistol in old slang / Quahog geoduck / Island group in Aegean sea / liberal arts school in st petersburg fla

≪ Previous: Country below Hungary / MON 9-24-18 / Vegas hot spot / Alcohol that's transparent / Unattractive fruit

Hi, all! Happy end-ish of September. Hope yours has been better than my super rainy one in DC! The way it somehow manages to be hot, humid, and raining all at the same time is something. I'm currently watching my Pittsburgh Steelers winning the game, so I'm happy — though I will say it is kind of hard doing a crossword while also trying to watch your team play. Maybe that's why I found this puzzle harder than normal...

Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty:Pretty challenging

THEME: MAN SPREADS (30D: Crowds one's seatmates, in a way... or a hint to the circled letters) — "MAN" spreads from the top to the bottom of the puzzle.

Theme answers:

SUBWAY (2D: With 12-Down, places where a thoughtless person 30-Down)
TRAINS (12D: See 2-Down)
MOVE (36A: With 40-Across, comment to someone who 30-Down)
OVER (40A: See 36-Across)

Word of the Day: ROE DEER
The European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), also known as the western roe deer, chevreuil, or simply roe deer or roe, is a species of deer. The male of the species is sometimes referred to as a roebuck. The roe deer is relatively small, reddish and grey-brown, and well-adapted to cold environments. The species is widespread in Europe, from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, from Ireland to the Caucasus, and east to northern Iran and Iraq. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I didn't like this puzzle. I found it harder than normal, and I never had any sort of "aha" moment. I thought it was uninspiring fill mixed with weird answers that don't work, surrounded by a strange theme.

I had problems with several parts of the puzzle. Come on, ROEDEER (64A: Eurasian animals with antlers)? Who's ever heard of those before? And, crossing with ELBERT (49D: Mount __, highest peak in the Rockies) and LOA (60D: Hawaii's Mauna __) made it that much harder. LOA could have been any one of: kea, koa, lea, or loa. 38D could easily have been "vertices" instead of VERTEXES (which isn't even a word). I kept trying to make "vertices" work. Also, HEP (57A: Cool, to a jive talker) is a very strange word. And I haven't even gotten to my biggest nit, which was MAXWELL ANDERSON (59A: Pulitzer-winning playwright for "Both Your Houses"). First, who is that? Second, that's such a big answer in the puzzle; how can that be a relatively obscure guy? I think the puzzle creator just did a Google search to find someone whose name starts with "M" and ends with "N," and is 15 letters long.

Meh.

Misc:

I kept trying to make nsfw work for 14A instead of NUDE (14A: Like photos that violate one of Instagram's community guidelines).
CALVIN (11D: Comics boy who says "Reality continues to ruin my life") and Hobbes is my absolute favorite comic. I so vividly remember having and reading those books as a kid; they were such a big part of my childhood.
I'm a Warriors, not Spurs, fan, but MANU (36D: Four-time N.B.A. champ Ginobili) Ginobili is one of my favorite players. I'm just sad he finally retired.
I'm lucky I knew how to spell AMY POEHLER (29D: "Parks and Recreation" star), but that definitely could have tripped me up.
I'm not sure I've eve used (or even heard) the word VAMOOSED (41D: Skedaddled) before, but I've decided it's fun.

That's it... Hope everyone has a great week!

Signed, Clare Carroll, a very tired law student

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Horse with evenly mixed black white hairs / WED 9-26-18 / Ghost psychic Oda Brown / Gang pistol in old slang / Quahog geoduck / Island group in Aegean sea / liberal arts school in st petersburg fla

September 25, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Early-blooming ornamental / THU 9-27-18 / Dr Foreman player on House / Brand name derived from phrase service games / Word that sounds like state when accented on second syllable rather than first

≪ Previous: Hit a four-bagger / TUES 9-25-18 / Casino game / Go a mile a minute / Goat's call

Constructor: Melinda Gates and Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:00)

THEME: doubling of first letters — familiar phrases that start with a single letter have that letter doubled ... and then the whole thing is wackily clued:

Theme answers:

XX FACTOR (17A: Part played by women and girls?)
CC SECTION (29A: Area below To:" in an email?)
JJ CREW (37A: Ones on set with 2009's "Star Trek" director?)
AA LINE (40A: Any one of the 12 steps?)
BB COMPLEX (46A: Group of buildings housing a King?)
EE READER (64A: Lover of Cummings's poetry?)

Word of the Day: BLUE ROAN (12D: Horse with evenly mixed black-and-white hairs) —

adjective
1.
denoting an animal's coat consisting of black-and-white hairs evenly mixed, giving it a blue-gray hue.
noun
1.
an animal with blue roan coat. (google)

• • •

Oh, we're still doing the whole "celebrity" co-constructor thing? Really thought that fad was finished, but I should've known better. This is the kind of theme that could've been good if there had been some Reason for the doubled letters. Seems like the potential basis for an interesting meta-puzzle, if you could get the letters to spell something or otherwise work in concert, and the puzzle had a snappy revealer or something. Here, it's just a bunch of double letters. Now, to be fair, most letters of the alphabet don't provide very good answer options when doubled up at the front. Not a lot of TTs out there, for instance. So maybe the list of viable letters for a theme like this is too restricted to do anything Extra. But there was still something slightly unsatisfying about the arbitrariness of the letter choices and answers. Why not AA TEAM or AA LIST—AA LINE is just bizarre. I mean, calling "any one of the 12 steps" a "line" is bizarre. Also, I really wish the NYTX would avoid chromosome clues altogether, largely because they are oversimplistic and essentialist and blargh.

Mainly I just thought the theme clues were far more boring than they ought to have been. [Area below "To:" in an email?]?? Snore. If you ditched the XX answer and replaced it with some initials (LL COOL J? HH MUNRO? WW NORTON?) and then changed the CC one to a clue about pitcher C.C. Sabathia and the AA one to something about Milne, then they would all be about people ... so there'd be some consistency. And maybe there's a phrase out there that would make a nice revealer, I don't know. But there has to be something Extra that could be done to make this pop.

Longer weird answers made this slightly tough in parts. The CYCLADES aren't exactly a household island group name, and I've never heard of either ECKERD College (?) or a BLUE ROAN. The latter created the toughest part of the puzzle by far. I needed almost every cross, especially considering that even black-and-whiteness does not suggest BLUE to me. Yeesh. But most of the rest of the fill was OK. Weakest in the whole ONME / OXO / ECOLI / ECKERD region, but much more solid elsewhere. I probably would've tried to avoid all double letters altogether in a puzzle like this, especially in the Acrosses, just so the theme can, you know, pop. But this puzzle did what it did, and except for that XX clue, the results were largely unobjectionable.

Five things:

7D: Irony? (FERRIC)— OK, FINE, that's cute.
42A: Grant with the 1991 #1 hit "Baby Baby" (AMY) — this is such a weird, weird place to go for your AMY. I mean, I knew this because I had a secret affection for this song when I was in my early 20s. But still, of all the AMY clues in the world, you're going with a Christian crossover singer who had a hit 27 years ago?
1D: Freight train part (BOX CAR)— Had this as MOXCAR at first, for obvious reasons
18A: Have hot cocoa on a winter day, say (WARM UP) — before or after you BONE UP? (51D: Study, informally)
24D: Obsolescent TV attachment (VCR) — "attachment" threw me. I was thinking something like "rabbit EARs"—but yeah, I guess you did have to "attach" the VCR to the TV, so, fine.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Early-blooming ornamental / THU 9-27-18 / Dr Foreman player on House / Brand name derived from phrase service games / Word that sounds like state when accented on second syllable rather than first

September 26, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Six-time all-stary Ron / FRI 9-28-18 / Spy who trades sex secrets informally / Assassin Sparafucile in Rigoletto / User of popular social news site

≪ Previous: Horse with evenly mixed black white hairs / WED 9-26-18 / Ghost psychic Oda Brown / Gang pistol in old slang / Quahog geoduck / Island group in Aegean sea / liberal arts school in st petersburg fla

Constructor: Daniel Kantor

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:16, and that's with every theme answer essentially unclued; see below)

THEME: dunno ... some visual clues, I guess; here's what the grid looked like on the app:

So I guess the answers are a literal description of either ... what you do or ... where the answer ... is? None of this meant anything to me, as I had a regular grid and all my theme clues said SEE NOTEPAD (I did not, in fact, SEE NOTEPAD, which turned out to be a stupid warning that my software couldn't handle the blah blah blah don't care)

Theme answers:

FILL IN THE BLANKS
SHADES OF GRAY
INSIDE THE BOX
BETWEEN THE LINES

Word of the Day: SEA LEGS (49A: Good standing in the Navy?) —

noun
a person's ability to keep their balance and not feel seasick when on board a moving ship. (google)

• • •

Once again, the puzzle tries to get fancy with some gimmick that my software won't accommodate. Once again, I don't think the gimmick is worth it at all. This is a Monday puzzle playing dress-up. All non-theme answers are short and boring, and the themers aren't much to look at either. The fact that I could finish this in just over five minutes, having absolutely no information about the theme answers (my theme clues all read SEE NOTEPAD), tells me it was way too weak for Thursday. Further, now that I look at the intended grid, the one with all the visual cues, it's weird-looking, and the difference between the "box" and the "lines" is barely perceptible. You'd think you'd want to do something more visually dramatic, something that would clearly differentiate one theme line from the next. Only the SHADES OF GRAY one is at all interesting, and even then, well, the themers are all inconsistent, parts-of-speech-wise. First one is a command, the second describes the boxes in the answer, and then the third and fourth are prepositional phrases indicating where you write the answer. It's a train wreck. An easy train wreck. Welcome to my midnight metaphoring.

[50D]

Five things:

9A: Zombie's domain (SCI-FI) — that's more horror than SCI-FI, come on
21A: Word that sounds like a state when accented on the second syllable rather than the first (MISERY)— I mean, it's true, but I did not spend any time trying to work it out. I need a term for a clever clue that is somehow also way too long and involved and therefore nothing I'm going to bother with.
9D: Card letters (STL) — embarrassed it took me five seconds to grok this one, instead of the one second it ought to have taken (STL are the letters on the baseball cap of any given Card, i.e. St. Louis Cardinal)
25D: Org. whose first-ever presidential endorsement was Ronald Reagan (NRA) — f*** this white supremacist terrorist org. A decent editor woulda changed this answer to KIA.
49A: Good standing in the Navy? (SEA LEGS) — probably the best thing about this puzzle. Certainly the thing that gave me the most trouble (I had SEAL and thought there was some other term for Navy Seals ... which you would have to be in "good standing" ... to belong to? )

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy 15th anniversary to my [Lambchop] wife, who is the best

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Six-time all-stary Ron / FRI 9-28-18 / Spy who trades sex secrets informally / Assassin Sparafucile in Rigoletto / User of popular social news site

September 28, 2018, 2:14 am

≫ Next: Bahn Vietnamese cake / SAT 9-29-18 / Classic film with screaming boy on its poster / Locale of America's deepest gorge / Algae touted as superfood

≪ Previous: Early-blooming ornamental / THU 9-27-18 / Dr Foreman player on House / Brand name derived from phrase service games / Word that sounds like state when accented on second syllable rather than first

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:36)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MT DANA (38A: Peak that marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite Natl. park) —

Mount Dana is a mountain in the U.S. state of California. Its summit marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and the western boundary of the Ansel Adams Wilderness. At an elevation of 13,061 feet (3,981 m), it is the second highest mountain in Yosemite (after Mount Lyell), and the northernmost summit in the Sierra Nevada which is over 13000 feet in elevation. Mount Dana is the highest peak in Yosemite that is a simple hike to the summit. The mountain is named in honor of James Dwight Dana, who was a professor of natural history and geology at Yale. (wikipedia)

• • •

First things first. That PUGS clue is not a dog clue. It's a boxing clue (11D: Boxers). OK then, moving on: this thing must be Super easy, because I solved it upon waking (at 4:15am, don't ask!), which is not, historically, the most auspicious time for me to solve crosswords, but I came very close to my (recent) record, time-wise. KAC's puzzles can be very hard, but this one was right over the plate, for me. Long answers opened right up, and struggles, where they existed, were minimal. The NE and SW are potentially dangerous, in that the ways in and out of them are Very narrow. This caused me a little trouble at the end, in the SW, where I didn't know MT. DANA (38A) at all, and I had not POWER but PAUSE at first for 44D: Remote button, leaving me to fight my way through that corner starting from the inside. Luckily, BRIT-to-SCEPTER-etc. wasn't too tough a fight. I feel like this puzzle will be easy for anyone who knows the song "BOOTYLICIOUS" (so ... for a lot of people) (30A: 2001 Destiny's Child #1 hit with the lyric "I don't think you ready for this jelly"). I had the BOO- already by the time I saw that clue, but I wouldn't have needed it. Gigantic gimme. But why not? Fridays can be fun and easy(ish) from time to time. Give people a lifeline, throw them a long BOOTYLICIOUS rope. Seems a fine, fair thing to do on occasion. Gives tyros a shot at getting into a themeless. It's welcoming, really.

I have only ever seen HOE CAKEs in Robert Townsend's "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987), but it was memorable enough that that answer posed no problem (15A: Cornmeal treat). I like that it comes right after ARAPAHO, so you reading the Across answeres sequentially you get ARAPOHOHOECAKES. I feel like there's a crossword theme here. ARAPOHOHOHOS. BOGOTATATAS. NOSFERATUTUTUS. COLORADODODOS. Etc. OK, it's not great, forget I said anything. The hardest part of this puzzle for me was actually remembering how to spell SADA (!) Thompson's name (5D: Actress Thompson of "Family"). I wrote in SADE, thinking it was an alternate spelling of Sadie, which gave me MEDIEN at 19A: Highway divider, which, honestly, looked possible. Certainly a better answer than AMBIEN, which was my first guess. Me: "Do they spell MEDIEN like that? I guess it's possible?" But then I sort of remembered that her name was maybe possibly SADA, and I went with that. No idea how I remembered BEHR paint, but it was very helpful in the SE. Only part of the center area that gave me pause was NORSE ___ (36A: Figures in the Edda). I was prepared for virtually any word to go in that blank space, but it turned out just to be a synonym of "gods." I've never seen the word LUNULAR (16A: Crescent-shaped), so I needed every cross there, but luckily those crosses were easy to come by *and* LUNULAR clearly makes sense once you've got it in there—shaped like a (crescent) moon! OK, off to my 6am (!) appointment. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Bahn Vietnamese cake / SAT 9-29-18 / Classic film with screaming boy on its poster / Locale of America's deepest gorge / Algae touted as superfood

September 28, 2018, 10:10 pm

≫ Next: Leather-clad TV warrior / SUN 9-30-18 / Where Karl Benz debuted world's first auto / 16-ounce beers slangily / Feature of probability distribution where extreme events are more likely / Fictional creature whose name is Old English for giant / Builder of Israel's first temple / Collapsed red giant / Canoodles in Britain

≪ Previous: Six-time all-stary Ron / FRI 9-28-18 / Spy who trades sex secrets informally / Assassin Sparafucile in Rigoletto / User of popular social news site

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging by the clock, but ... once I finally got traction it felt Easy-Medium, so ... dunno (9:23)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TROY OUNCE (27D: Gold standard) —

Troy weight is a system of units of mass customarily used for precious metals and gemstones. One troy ounce (abbreviated "t oz" or "oz t") is equal to 31.1034768 grams, (or about 1.0971 oz. avoirdupois, the "avoirdupois" ounce being the most common definition of an "ounce" in the US)^] There are only 12 troy ounces per troy pound, rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system. However, the avoirdupois pound has 7000 grains whereas the troy pound has only 5760 grains (i.e. 12 × 480 grains). Both systems use the same grain defined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959 as 0.06479891 grams. Therefore, the troy ounce is 480 grains or 31.10 grams, compared with the avoirdupois ounce, which is 437.5 grains or 28.35 grams. The troy ounce, then, is about 10% heavier (ratio 192/175) than the avoirdupois ounce. Although troy ounces are still used to weigh gold, silver, and gemstones, troy weight is no longer used in most other applications. One troy ounce of gold is denoted with the ISO 4217 currency codeXAU, while one troy ounce of silver is denoted as XAG. (wikipedia)

• • •

Apparently worst-time-to-solve time is not upon waking in the *morning*, but upon waking after having unexpectedly fallen asleep on the couch for three hours. Long week. Annnnyway, I couldn't do anything with this puzzle to start. I have no idea how long I was floundering, but it felt like forever. Enough time passed that I thought, "UGH, this is just gonna be one of those tough outliers, why would you make 5x7 sections, no good can come of that..." But once I got momentum going ... well, actually, it threatened to peter right out because the sections are so isolated from one another that it's hard to get any real flow, but somehow once I finally put a corner together *and* found a way out of the corner, everything began to click and the puzzle felt like a normal Saturday. I think the puzzle is trying a little too hard to be "hip" and "now" and "hello, fellow young persons!" but looking it over, it seem very solid. I really hate the grid shape (isolated corners = blargh), but that's just a matter of taste.

It went like this: HOLA / SHY / TOE / YELL / nothing. I mean, it just stopped, right there. Actually, thought SHY was AFT at first, but then I got HOLA because (thank god) I had ADIOS already in place (one of only two right answers I'd gotten in the NW, the other being ENTER IN, and the wrong answer I had up there being TEETH (1D: Places for braces (KNEES)). So the tiny west section was useless and, after completely failing to get any of the answers in the middle (was [Turn] GEE or HAW or ...? was [Daring way to go] ALL IN? (No and no)), I wandered (lonely as a cloud) down to the SE where I was pretty sure APRIL was right, and then OPTS OUT seemed OK, and then STALK seemed plausible, and then ELK, really??? OK. And then I was getting somewhere. Could not get out of that section via ___ OUNCE because I had No idea (I had TR-Y OUNCE and still had no idea, tbh), so I got out via THE EMERALD ISLE. I made up for the TROY OUNCE fail with a spectacular SPINNAKER play (I know squat about all things nautical and just pulled that word out of god-knows-where). No idea about Wiz Khalifa or 2 Chainz "hits" at all, but "HOME ALONE," I got that, and so both the NE and the SE were a jillion times easier than the west had been. Finished up in the NE, where I had a hiccup, as (yet again) I didn't know if it was IPAD PRO or AIR, annnnnnd I misspelled SNORKLE.

Five things:

59A: ___ Prize (onetime annual $1 million award) (TED) — UGH. I somehow never want to hear again about anything TED. No TED Talks, not TED Prizes. All things TED feel tiresome to me now. Those talks feel like glorified infomercials or sermons or carnival huckster spiels. The only TED I want to hear about is Danson.
21A: Algae touted as a superfood (SEA MOSS) — I have not seen said touting. The "natural foods" section of my Wegmans is full of All Kinds of Bogus half-science claims, but nothing that I've noticed there contains SEA MOSS. Is there a SEA MOSS ODWALLA?
31A: Commercial name that becomes a Native American tribe if you move its first letter to the end (IHOP) — man, "commercial name" is some deliberately irksome cluing. IHOP is a restaurant. A restaurant chain. In fact, simply "Chain" would've been a million times better than stupidly ambiguous, borderline meaningless "Commercial name."
33D: Monthly travelers? (OVA) — men's cutesy clues about female anatomy continue to not go over great with me for some reason.
5D: Where models are assembled? (CAR LOTS) — really wanted this to be CATWALK

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Leather-clad TV warrior / SUN 9-30-18 / Where Karl Benz debuted world's first auto / 16-ounce beers slangily / Feature of probability distribution where extreme events are more likely / Fictional creature whose name is Old English for giant / Builder of Israel's first temple / Collapsed red giant / Canoodles in Britain

September 29, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Monarch renowned for his wealth / MON 10-1-2018 / Going off script / Yom Kippur War clash / Architect Frank

≪ Previous: Bahn Vietnamese cake / SAT 9-29-18 / Classic film with screaming boy on its poster / Locale of America's deepest gorge / Algae touted as superfood

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Challenging (12:35) (I had two drinks beforehand, though, so ... I'm not very confident in this rating)

THEME:"Sleep On It"— PRINCESSes (82D: Any of the four people disturbed in this puzzle) on MATTRESSes (14D: Item lain upon four times in this puzzle) on [PEA]s (where [PEA] is a rebus square) (123A: Item that disturbs sleep four times in this puzzle)

Theme answers:

BELLE (27A) on QUEEN OF MEAN (31A) on S[PEA]R (36A)
LEIA (53A) on FULL-BODIED (61A) on AP[PEA]LS (67A)
XENA (69A) on TWIN SISTER (73A) on S[PEA]K (80A)
ANNE (95A) on KING SOLOMON (101A) on [PEA]HEN (110A)

Word of the Day: EPHESUS (63D: Home of the ancient Temple of Artemis) —

Ephesus (/ˈɛfəsəs/; Greek: Ἔφεσος Ephesos; Turkish: Efes; may ultimately derive from HittiteApasa) was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.
The city was famed for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Among many other monumental buildings are the Library of Celsus, and a theatre capable of holding 25,000 spectators. [...]
The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263, and although rebuilt, the city's importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. It was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is pretty great. I mean, if you wanted to get the whole fairy tale thing precise, then you'd pile the mattresses high and put a single PEA underneath. A single mattress is somewhat wide of the mark, visually speaking. But as a plausible, viable representation of four different PRINCESS-and-the-pea scenarios, this works. I like how wacky the PRINCESS assortment is. Animated princess, warrior princess, space princess, actual princess. Nice. Solving this wasn't entirely fun, though, partly because I had had a little to drink and so (probably) just couldn't get things to click as easily as usual, partly because I was not looking for the PEA and there are so few PEAs that you could, as I did, get very far into the grid before you ever realized there was a rebus going on. 80% of my trouble in this one was in and around those rebus squares, first because I didn't know the rebus existed, and then because I kept forgetting the rebus existed. I had almost the entire top half of the grid before finally stumbling on my first PEA thanks to NEIL PEART (42D: Rock star known for his 360-degree drum set). Because I got stuck at ASIAN--- at 52D: Certain Far Eastern fruits before I knew there was a rebus, it somehow didn't really register to me that it might be a theme answer Even After I'd Discovered the Rebus. Plus I wanted the dog command to be SIT or SIC. Briefly considered SIK (!) before realizing, "Oh, dang, the rebus! It's ASIAN PEARS! And SPEAK! Aargh." Found the SW very hard despite / because of its lack of theme material (besides PRINCESS). HIT COUNTER and IN REAL TIME and ROUST and SHIRT and EMTS and OATS were all not not not coming to me. Also, I was thinking LAO TZU instead of SUN TZU, which really made me mad re: the ABBA song. Me: "I Know All Their Songs, None Are Three Letters Beginning With 'L', Come On!"

BSCHOOL, ugh (62D: Future plan for many an econ major). On multiple levels. Unpleasant. But it is a thing that people call that type of school, so fair, I guess. Just gross. I'm just imagining dudes going there and calling it that and then becoming useless techbro CEOs or something, ugh. Also, FATTAIL is [me making a face]. I mean, congrats on the "probability distribution" terminology, but that should've been RATTAIL, which has the virtue of being both a more vivid and more widely known thing.

Speaking of hairstyles, or rather no-hair styles, I could not process what the clue was looking for at 44D: Parts of Mr. Clean and Lex Luthor costumes (BALD CAPS). It's the "costumes" part that is terrible and confusing. I thought it was part of *their* costumes, i.e. the costumes or outfits that Mr. Clean and Lex Luthor wear, not what some human *might* wear if they were dressing up as Mr. Clean or Lex Luthor. The only thing I could really visualize was an earring. Don't they both have some kind of earring / pirate look going on? Let's see.

OK, so not Lex. Anyway, if you are bald, or shave your head, then you absolutely do not need a ridiculous BALD CAP(S) as part of your "costume." As a mostly hairless human, I could not relate to this clue at all.

Five things:

113A: Western gas brand (TESORO)— I spent my first 21 years in the "west" and I have literally never heard of this "brand." ARCO is the only "western" gas brand I know of.
28D: Jazz's McCann (LES) — oy, this made the PEA area in the NW that much harder. No idea. Stunned I've been doing crosswords going on 30 years and have seen jazz name after jazz name and yet somehow, not this one.

87A: Paroxysm (THROE) — always gonna look dumb in the singular. Always.
87D: Grammy winner Meghan (TRAINOR) — young enough to know who she is, old enough to botch the spelling of her name (I had a "Y" in there).
84D: Where Karl Benz debuted the world's first auto (MANNHEIM) — one week later, an answer that I completely mangled returns to give me a boost! I was like, "Can it be ... is it ... the return of ...?" And it was.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

↧

Monarch renowned for his wealth / MON 10-1-2018 / Going off script / Yom Kippur War clash / Architect Frank

September 30, 2018, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Office-inappropriate in web shorthand / TUE 10-2-18 / Folksy restroom sign / Carte that comes before the course, ugh

≪ Previous: Leather-clad TV warrior / SUN 9-30-18 / Where Karl Benz debuted world's first auto / 16-ounce beers slangily / Feature of probability distribution where extreme events are more likely / Fictional creature whose name is Old English for giant / Builder of Israel's first temple / Collapsed red giant / Canoodles in Britain

Constructor: Chuck Deodene

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: THE END IS NIGH— Theme answers end in homophones for "nigh." (I'm not sure if it's called a homophone when it's just a syllable but bear with me. I've spent my English major focusing on analyzing poetry, not on the finer points of grammar.)

Theme answers:

THE END (38A: With 39-Across, doomsayer's assertion...or a phonetic hint to 18-, 24-, 51- and 61-Across)
IS NIGH (39A: See 38-Across)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (18A: Characters in a play, formally)
SULTAN OF BRUNEI (24A: Monarch renowned for his wealth)
FIGHTING ILLINI (51A: College team from the land of Lincoln)
BATTLE OF THE SINAI (61A: Yom Kippur War clash)

Word of the Day: ARRAU (2D: Pianist Claudio) —

Claudio Arrau León (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈklau̯ðjo aˈrau̯]; February 6, 1903 – June 9, 1991) was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.^[1] Arrau was a pupil of Martin Krause, who was a student of Franz Liszt.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

So Rex apparently hated this one (he even called it a "clunker" on Twitter!) but I don't really get it? I think he said there were a lot of duplicates but I'm not sure what that means exactly. Were any of the words duplicated? I swear, I've been doing this for years but I still don't get all the lingo. I was admittedly a little disappointed by such pedestrian fill as NYSE, IRT and LAPD. But I thought it was cool how GENE XER ended up (sounds like the punchline to an extremely dorky joke), and some of the fill was okay; LADES is a neat word, for instance, and...okay maybe that's it. Listen, it's a Monday, let it live!

I literally* did not understand the theme until after I finished the puzzle, but I think that's more of a testament to how I should probably go to bed than it is a reflection on the puzzle. It was actually one of the more interesting Monday themes I've done in a while, even though I have no idea how anyone should be expected to have heard of the "Fighting Illini." What in the heck is an Illini? Illinus? I can't really say anything, though, Wellesley's mascot is "the Blue." Like, literally just the color blue. It would have killed them to make us the Bluebirds or something? We play pretty well, though! "...for a bunch of stinkin' girls," the antagonist in a '90s movie with lovable child stars might say.

Bullets:

GORP (47A: Trail mix)— Here's my recipe for Gorp:

1/2 cup M&M's
That's it
Seriously who likes raisins anyway? Not me, that's for sure

IX-NAY (54D: No in pig latin) — OMG. According to the laws of pig latin, "no" would be "oh-nay." Just saying.
HANG TEN (45D: Do a surfing manuever)— I actually learned how to surf when I was a kid. I did a lot of crashing into the beach, not a lot of hanging ten, though. But my sister is a pro at it! I forget how old she was when she learned but right now she's thirteen and could kick my butt in a surfing contest any day.
FUN (63D: When said three times, Beach Boys hit)— This is one of the nicest Monday earworms I've posted yet. So upbeat!

*speaking of grammar, please don't rules-lawyer me over the use of the word literally, that's my pet peeve and I will literally dissolve into dust

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Office-inappropriate in web shorthand / TUE 10-2-18 / Folksy restroom sign / Carte that comes before the course, ugh

October 2, 2018, 2:17 am

≫ Next: Vain queen who boasted she was more powerful than / WED 10-3-18 / Presidential perk until 1977 / Where river meets sea / She responds to voice commands / Where Cassiopeia rules prior to her banishment / Rank for Jay Landsman on The Wire

≪ Previous: Monarch renowned for his wealth / MON 10-1-2018 / Going off script / Yom Kippur War clash / Architect Frank

Constructor: Paul Coulter

Relative difficulty: Challenging (4:20, 20 seconds over my slowest Tuesday time)

THEME: two Broadway shows ... that make a phrase ... that gets a wacky clue? —

Theme answers:

BIG COMPANY (17A: Megacorporation? [1996, 1970])
HAIR GREASE 926A: Pomade? [1968, 1972])
WICKED NINE (45A: Supreme Court that's corrupt? [2003, 1982])
FROZEN ONCE (61A: Melted? [2018, 2012])

Word of the Day: DOBBS Ferry, N.Y. (1D: ___ Ferry, N.Y.) —

Dobbs Ferry is a village in Westchester County, New York. The population was 11,093 according to the 2016 census.^[2] The Village of Dobbs Ferry is located in, and is a part of, the town of Greenburgh. The village ZIP code is 10522. Most of the Village falls into the boundaries of the Dobbs Ferry Union Free School District.

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Without a revealer, this puzzle is ridiculous. You don't even see Broadway shows as double bills, so nothing about this theme makes any kind of sense. The dates outside of the theme clues are worse than useless. At least one of these shows is infinitely more famous as a movie, and I've barely heard of "Once," but again, that doesn't matter. What matters is that people will be looking for the *revealer*, the thing that makes sense of this theme, and it will never, ever come. Also, the puzzle is very poorly filled. But again, the BIG, bigger, much bigger problem is that the puzzle is conceptually rotten. It's also much tougher than the average Tuesday, so, you know, we get the worst of both worlds (dumb *and* tough), which is always nice. I am genuinely stunned that this puzzle was a. written and b. accepted for publication without a revealer. Oh, and it's annoying provincial, in the sense that it's all about Broadway (painfully so—the puzzle doesn't even let non-Broadway fans in on the theme) and then DOBBS Ferry, wtf. Some village suburb? I guess I should be grateful it wasn't the more viable DOBBS clue, since that guy is disgusting, but still. Something awful is AFOOT and ARIOT (I told you the fill was bad—ISMS!).

Let's return to how bad this is. EARED! It's bad. And tough. Why? Why would you ...? I'm told this theme has also Been Done Before (presumably better, Presumably With Some Kind Of Revealer That Makes Sense Of It All. Oh, wait, I thought of yet another way this theme is terrible. HAIR GREASE is an actual thing. BIG COMPANY is almost an actual thing. The others are manifestly made-up things. If they had all been Real Things, that would've at least given the theme ... something. But to put real and fake things together. It's a joke. This puzzle is AJOKE with badness. NUS! STERE! ORSO! LOL the sewing meaning of BASTE (35A: Stitch loosely), when presumably the sewing mafia already got their sop with DARNS (1A: Mends with stitches). Ugh. This puzzle made literally no right moves.

Five Things:

33D: ___ na tigela (fruity Brazilian dish) (AÇAI) — how is that a Tuesday clue? Don't try to dress your crosswordese up like culinary trivia. It's still a dumb "superfood" or whatever. Again, you've just made your bad puzzle harder.
39A: Worthless amount (FIG) — prithee, what year is it, m'lord!?!?!
35D: Ne'er-do-well (BAD EGG)— dated fill just keep comin'
20A: Sorrowful sound (BOO HOO)— BOO HOO is only ever a mock-sorrowful sound
59A: Render harmless (DEFUSE)— I had DEFANG, which is a thousand times better, give me Something, you ridiculous puzzle

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Vain queen who boasted she was more powerful than / WED 10-3-18 / Presidential perk until 1977 / Where river meets sea / She responds to voice commands / Where Cassiopeia rules prior to her banishment / Rank for Jay Landsman on The Wire

October 3, 2018, 2:54 am

≫ Next: Actress Dobrev of Vampire Diaries / THU 10-4-18 / Eponymous regatta-winning yacht of 1851 / 1930s vice president John Garner / Soccer striker's jersey number traditionally / This is probably dumb but I'm doing it anyway hashtag

≪ Previous: Office-inappropriate in web shorthand / TUE 10-2-18 / Folksy restroom sign / Carte that comes before the course, ugh

Constructor: Jennifer Nutt

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (maybe easy, but I just woke up...) (4:10)

THEME: POSEIDON (41D: God who banished 63-Across to the sky, as depicted by the constellation formed by the X's in this puzzle's finished grid) — theme answers are basic mythology trivia, and then there are five Xs that I guess look like the constellation POSEIDON—since it's completely non-iconic, I googled it, and yeah, it checks out:

Theme answers:

CASSIOPEIA (63A: Vain queen who boasted that she was more beautiful than 18-Across)
THE NEREIDS (18A: Sea nymphs, in Greek mythology)
ETHIOPIA (3D: Where 63-Across ruled prior to her banishment)

Word of the Day: BRYCE (48A: Utah's ___ Canyon) —

Bryce Canyon National Park (/braɪs/) is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller, and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m). (wikipedia)

• • •

I have never heard of the constellation POSEIDON. Never thought out it. I mean, why not, there are scads of constellations, but it's not like the guy comes up as a constellation in regular conversation or (before today) crosswords or anything. I vaguely knew the story of CASSIOPEIA but honestly I mostly relied on the fact that I've been soaking in the world of literature and mythology for decades and all the names (like THE NEREIDS) are super-familiar to me, even when I can't exactly remember why. ETHIOPIA is a new bit of trivia to me. I clearly must not have paid much attention to the CASSIOPEIA myth before. When I finished this puzzle, I thought it was just an assortment of mythical answers, ho-hum. Then I connected the Xs. Still ho-hum, as that constellation pattern means nothing to me. Do other people really know off the top of their heads what the constellation POSEIDON looks like. Good for you, I guess. But it's less than satisfying to finish with what looks like an arbitrary shape drawn on your grid. Google image search confirms the shape's accuracy. But it's just five Xs. Kind of a shrug. But puzzle-wise, this one's still light years better than yesterday's monstrosity. This grid is much cleaner, and at least this grid *has* a revealer. Yesterday's not only lacked one, but couldn't have found one if it tried because the concept was meaningless. Sorry, still not over it. Go ahead and love Broadway all you want, but as a *puzzle*, that was junk. This one, tolerable.

I flew through this one, with hardly any answers slowing me down (weird moment where I wanted Snowden (20A: EXILED) to be EX-PAT and then ran into that same answer later in the grid) (40A: An American abroad). But it wasn't til I tried to get to the SW that I had any trouble, and then I had a bunch of it. It was all concentrated around BRYCE, which I completely forgot. I kept thinking of AYERS Rock, for some reason (better known now as ULURU), and then even after getting BRY- I was thinking BRYER, which is absurd. Didn't help that AUSTERE was very slow to fill in (44A: Like Brutalist architecture)—needed half the crosses easy before I could see it. And then I had an opposite-of-fortuitous mistake that really caused things to seize up: had -EM at 58A: Nonhumanities subjects, for short and wrote in CHEM. Stupid brain processed the clue wrong—it's "subjects," plural!!! Ugh. Anyway, CHEM messed me up good, especially because it added a seemingly plausible "C" to the already impossible-to-spell FUCHSIAS (38D: Purplish-red flowers). Rounding out the trouble was 45D: Handle (SEE TO), which could've been a verb or a noun and could've had a million meanings, so pfft. Changing CHEM to STEM was my final move.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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