Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Medium (oversized 16x15 grid, 4:46)

THEME: OBLIQUE REFERENCE (60A: Indirect comment ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters)— reference books run "obliquely" (diagonally) through the grid: ATLAS ALMANAC DICTIONARY and THESAURUS

Theme answers:

There are none besides the revealer ... :/

Word of the Day: AURIGA (10D: The Charioteer constellation) —

Auriga is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. Located north of the celestial equator, its name is the Latin word for “the charioteer”, associating it with various mythological beings, including Erichthonius and Myrtilus. Auriga is most prominent during winter evenings in the northern Hemisphere, along with the five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism. Because of its northern declination, Auriga is only visible in its entirety as far as 34° south; for observers farther south it lies partially or fully below the horizon. A large constellation, with an area of 657 square degrees, it is half the size of the largest constellation, Hydra. (wikipedia)

• • •

Today and tomorrow's write-ups are gonna be pretty short, as I have horrible time crunches in this week leading up to my Spring Break (Spring Break!). Today's puzzle is a good example of a concept that works perfectly but a puzzle that is not all that interesting or pleasant to solve. Actually, as my friend Matt pointed out on Twitter last night, the bottom half of the grid is far more enjoyable than the top half, where all of the theme constraint lies. That is, all those circled reference book squares are *dense* toward the top and relatively sparse through the bottom. This allows the grid to breathe, which (magic!) better fill. The grid up top is also horribly segmented. It is never ever going to be fun to solve a little 6x6 or 4x4 or 6x6 section that has no real connection to the rest of the grid (see the top three sections of this puzzle). Even the middle section has no real connectivity—though he got that part to work out OK (too bad he had to rely on a celebrity accused of "unwanted sexual aggression," but I guess the court of public opinion hasn't turned on that guy yet). The real problem, though, from a solving angle, is that this is a giant grid with only one theme answers. I can't count those circled squares, since they don't have clues. They might have helped you work out some of the thornier parts of the grid, but for me they were just words to look at once I was done. Never felt like there was a proper theme. So kudos to the execution of the theme, but the solving experience was pretty mediocre.

Last thing: really? ASSAD *and* ALEPPO, the most notable site of his many war crimes?? (10A: Longtime Syrian leader + 56D: City under siege from 2012 to '16). And ALEPPO is crossed by PELT? And your ALEPPO clue emphasizes the brutality without naming ASSAD. The *one* time I would have actually *appreciated* a (finger-pointing) cross-reference! I'd rather never see ASSAD, but if I have to, maybe don't emphasize the war crimes content so much. Not like the NE corner is so great (I mean, AURIGA? IBEAM? SSS?). You could probably refill it all kinds of ways. All kinds of ASSAD-less ways. ALEPPO is great. Ditch ASSAD, and the puzzle all of a sudden becomes *far* less of a downer. OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Will Nediger and Nancy Stark

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:BLACKHAT(66A: Western villain ... or a hint to four answers in this puzzle)— the center black square contains the word HAT, which completes the four answers that intersect with it.

Theme answers:

CHEW ON THAT (37A: "Here's something for you to think about, you ingrate!)
HATE MONGER (39A: One who spreads discord)
YOU DID WHAT (8D: Incredulous question)
HATCHET JOB (43D: Takedown piece)

Word of the Day: DESOTO (50A: Onetime division of the Chrysler Corporation)—

DeSoto (sometimes De Soto) is an American automobile marque that was manufactured and marketed by the DeSoto Division of the Chrysler Corporation from 1928 to the 1961 model year. The DeSoto marque was officially dropped November 30, 1960, with over two million vehicles built since 1928.

• • •

Happy pi day! My name is Brian Herrick, and I'm your guest blogger for the day. You may know me from my 105th place, Local Track finish at Lollapuzzoola 2018, my crossword-focused Twitter account, or from my puzzles, which are starting to pop up in publications. It's a pleasure to be Rex for a day.

This was a fun one! It's fitting that my first review is of a puzzle co-written by Will Nediger, because the first constructing resource I ever consulted was a video of a panel he did with a few other constructors at the Ann Arbor Public Library. It's not embeddedable (not a word), but you can check it out here.

Back to the puzzle!

This is exactly what I imagine when I think of a Thursday NYT puzzle. The solve is going well, something doesn't add up, then I scout the puzzle for clues as to what is amiss.

I started with the downs in the NW, and then the first theme answer made no sense. YOUDID_is not a pattern my brain recognized. So I headed over the NE, worked my way down, and was again halted by what turned out to be a second theme answer. I stared at my LAPTOP (27A: Portable workstation), took a moment to EXHALE (16A: Advice for relaxing), and headed west, where I immediately ran into a familiar name that I 0% knew how to spell: ACHEBE (32A: Chinua who wrote "Things Fall Apart"). I've read the book, but that first name was not gonna happen. I kept solving, and once I worked my way down to the revealer, it all clicked, and I was able to finish up the rest. All in all, a typical Thursday (in a good way!)

Solid theme set here--especially HATCHET JOB and CHEW ON THAT. (I solved the puzzle! Chew on that, Shortz!) I also liked that there were no shared words in the theme set. Tip of the hat to you both.

Two minor quibbles: it is easy to get stranded in this grid. The corners are pretty segmented, and if you aren't able to JAR LOOSE (59A: Manage to detach by hitting) some answers, you're pretty stuck. The cluing was straightforward enough for me to work my way out, but your mileage may vary. I also could have done with some more western-y stuff, either in the fill or through the cluing, but that's a personal preference. More omelets, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, mesas, and cowboys, please.

Kudos on your debut, Nancy, and solid work as always, Will. Looking forward seeing more Stark bylines in the future.

Bullets:

YEW (41A: Shade provider in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) — A three-letter shady tree that is not an elm. Well I never.
OLD LATIN (64A: Language of the pre-Roman Empire) — 5 years of Latin and I've never heard of OLD LATIN. I can tell you a lot about Catullus poems, though.
HOBO BAG (24A: Kind of purse that sags) — This is a thing I have only heard of through suggested fill while constructing, but the internet tells me it is very real.
TOADY (38D: Overdo the flattery) — Hopefully not what I'm doing in my appreciation for this puzzle.

Signed, Brian Herrick, 104th Runner Up, Local Track, Lollapuzzoola 2018

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Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Challenging-ish? (solved on clipboard, so no clear idea, but it felt hard)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MATSU Islands (26D: ___ Islands, archipelago in the East China Sea) —

The Matsu Islands (Chinese: 馬祖列島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Lièdǎo; Fuzhou dialect: Mā-cū liĕk-dō̤ or less frequently, Chinese: 馬祖群島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Qúndǎo; Fuzhou dialect: 馬祖島 Mā-cū dō̤) are a minor archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea administered as Lienchiang County (Chinese: 連江縣; pinyin: Liánjiāng Xiàn; Fuzhou dialect: Lièng-gŏng gâing) under streamlined Fujian Province, Republic of China (Taiwan). It is the smallest county in the ROC free area.
Only a small area of what is historically Lienchiang County is under the control of the ROC. The People's Republic of China (PRC) administers the part of the historical county on mainland Chinaas Lianjiang County, which claims the entire archipelago to be its Mazu Township (馬祖鄉; Mǎzǔ Xiāng; Mā-cū hiŏng). The ROC also controls two other archipelagos along the coast of Fujian, namely the Kinmen Islands and the Wuqiu Islands, which together make up Kinmen County. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle be trash. Seriously. What the actual hell is the phrase "Be trash" supposed to mean? Is that your answer to #BeBest? Ebay ashtray, e.g. = PIG LATIN (very last answer I got), but ... how? Fire everyone. Please. Please. This was torture. Not the constructor's fault. Editors should've passed, hard. Are there really not enough Friday submissions out there? Leaving Ebay ashtray aside (PIG LATIN is a fine answer), this grid is choked with, well, trash. Partials and alt-spellings and MERRIE olde beers and OME? and ERE ('ERE?") and weird plurals (EAUX is correct, but BASSOS ...?!?!). I was in stunned disbelief as I penciled most of these answers in. It started rough and it never got better. There's not a single longer answer in this thing that seems worth even a quarter of the garbage fill. ELD! ANAL! UIE! ADAS!? And then just tired stuff like NOSIREE or name parts like CLEEF or whatever MATSU is. The clue on TENSES makes no sense (Will *will* change a verb's tense; there's no "might" to it). EMO POP remains a total non-thing. TNN!? If I could eliminate one TV channel of yore, that would be it. The Marley lyric is bizarre. 'ERE is supposed to be an h-less "here" now? Dear lord. The idea that you would take your cruddy crosswordese and try to convince me that it was some cool musical reference ... nah. No, man, sorry. Do you know how hard it is for me to out-and-out hate a Friday? My quiet early-morning ME TIME, ruined.

Everyone who's ever had a themeless puzzle rejected (especially women) have to be sitting at home going "... really?" Best Puzzle In The World! I feel bad for the people who live in this elite puzzle monopoly and just assume that whatever the NYT does is good. Get into indie puzzles, people. They're So Often better than this. That's it, goodbye. Be trash, everyone!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. all my love to Christchurch this morning...

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:36) (on an oversized grid!)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TREF (24A: Like shellfish) —

adjective
Judaism . unfit to be eaten or used, according to religious laws; not kosher. (dictionary.com)

• • •

Weirdly, the part of this puzzle that took me the longest to work out was the MUSIC part of PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC. I wanted DRUGS, but that wasn't working, and since I could not for the life of me figure out how to make anything but SURE out of S--E (31D: Certain), which couldn't be right because it was already in the grid (29D), I just ... went elsewhere. Polished off the rest of the grid and finally just closed in on MUSIC (and SOME). Don't really think PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC is worth a 16-wide grid. Maybe that's because I just don't like that music that much. It's the kind of white-guy music that never did anything for me. I'd much rather listen to the soundtrack to "Risky Business," which I don't even remember except for that "Old Time Rock N Roll" bit with Tom Cruise in his underwear, which clearly isn't TANGERINE DREAM at all, but Bob Seger ... wait, where was I? Oh, who cares? What I did dig were all the D.D. answers. The DON DELILLO DINNER DATE followed by the DATA DUMP. Made me slightly worried there was some kind of theme going on that I just couldn't make out.

I could do without CSA generally, but if you gotta use it, I'd much rather see it clued via the Much More Common Modern Usage: Community-Supported Agriculture. Just google CSA if you don't believe me. CSAs are Farmers Market fixtures. Common way to eat and support the growing of local produce. So, yeah, I'd like that instead of the slavery-loving traitorous dipshits, please (52A: Grp. with the motto "Deo vindice"). ENTRAIN is another thing I would ditch forever if I ruled the world. Nothing else about this puzzle bugs me much. Whoops, spoke too soon. I forgot about the clue on E.S.P. (13D: Inexplicable skill). Yeah, it's "inexplicable" because It's Not A Skill At All. It Doesn't Exist. If your clue doesn't indicate in some way that E.S.P. is bullshit, then your clue sucks, and is making all of us dumber and more susceptible to con artists and conspiracy theorists and Dr. Ozzes etc. Here is the way you should always clue E.S.P., imho:

Got totally fooled by the boxer (or rather, Boxer) clue. Even when I had BARBARA I thought it was some dude's last name, or maybe a stage name (think "barbarous" or "barbarian"). Only other thing that gave me real trouble was OTTO, because I got the "O" first and put in ODIE. [Comics canine] is succcch a dull clue. Something OTTO-specific would've been much more pleasant and entertaining. I feel bad for the non-baseball fans because CHET Lemon is a pretty tough clue, but I don't feel too bad because I'm a Tigers fan and CHET Lemon was cool as hell.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sophia Maymudes and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:50)

THEME:"That's Another Story" — fiction titles clued as if they were biographies:

Theme answers:

GONE GIRL (31A: Biography of Amelia Earhart?)
A GAME OF THRONES (4D: Biography of Thomas Crapper?)
MARLEY AND ME (23A: Biography of Ebenezer Scrooge?)
LIFE OF PI (34A: Biography of Archimedes?)
OF MICE / AND MEN (43D: with 44-Down, biography of Walt Disney?)
LORD OF THE FLIES (13D: Biography of Willie Mays?)
A FAREWELL TO ARMS (110A: With 112-Across, biography of Elvis?)
THE ONCE AND / FUTURE KING (112A: See 110-Across)

Word of the Day: Johnny OLSON (18A: Old-time "The Price is Right" announcer Johnny) —

John Leonard Olson (May 22, 1910 – October 12, 1985) was an American radio personality and television announcer. Olson is perhaps best known for his work as an announcer for game shows, particularly the work he did for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. Olson was the longtime announcer for the original To Tell the Truth and What's My Line? early in his career and spent over a decade as the announcer for both Match Game and The Price Is Right, and he had been working on the latter series at the time of his death. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme is an arbitrary jumble of book titles. The end. Why "Willie Mays" for LORD OF THE FLIES? That could be [Biography of [any famous outfielder]?). And why aren't these just funnier, or at least more audacious? [Biography of Conan O'Brien?] => THE GINGER MAN. [Biography of Rip Van Winkle?] => THE BIG SLEEP. [Biography of the president?] => WHITE NOISE ... or HEART OF DARKNESS ... you've got options here. My point is you can do this with lots of book titles, and the examples in this puzzle aren't that funny. A FAREWELL TO ARMS is a groaner (literally a dad joke)—so tired that the biography subject (Venus de Milo) is obvious w/o even seeing the clue. Same with THE ONCE AND / FUTURE KING. King, Elvis, yup, not exactly surprise there. The clues are transparent, not trying hard enough. Plus the grid is choppy as heck so there's too much short stuff / not enough interesting stuff. Too segmented. Too many black squares. And then there's the obvious "word list" stuff like ICE CORES and SILENT E'S, stuff that no one would think of and that actually aren't that interesting.

I thought I was going to die in the SE corner. I had FUTURE and couldn't think of any title with that word in it (hilarious side note: I've taught Arthurian literature for two decades). But I could not get LUNGE or ELF or FREES or SAGES (??) or TINGE (thought maybe TINCT?), but worst of all was SHAKUR. I can't stop laughing at the idea of anyone's just referring to him as SHAKUR. In case you don't know, the person in question is legendary rapper TUPAC SHAKUR, whom (almost) literally everyone calls TUPAC (or just 'PAC). So I had SHA--- for 95D: Artist with seven posthumous platinum albums and just ... nothing. Ravi SHANKAR wouldn't fit. SHAKIRA also wouldn't fit, and is still alive (to the best of my knowledge). "The artist is ... SHAKUR." Nope, can't hear it. I had to exit that corner, get THE ONCE AND, then come back, put in KING, and even then it was dicey. Also, ELF is not not not not not not a [Giant's opposite]. What the hell? Are we talking size? Then it's dwarf. I mean, if we're staying in the realm of fantasy literature. Halfling, maybe, if we're going the D&D route. ELF??? Elves aren't (necessarily) small! Did no one see "Lord of the Rings"!? Which, by the way, was *absolutely* the thing I had in the grid before amending it to LORD OF THE FLIES. Further, SCARY is a pretty weak answer for [Lovecraftian], which suggests EERIE and unCANNY for more than mere SCARY. Here you go. Read up. Oh, I did very much like one thing about this puzzle, and here it is:

[12D: Elvis Costello hit that starts "I've been on tenterhooks / Ending in dirty looks"]

Congratulations to Jesse Lansner on winning the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition for the second year in a row. I had a great time there as judge and introductory speaker. It's a nice local charity tournament to benefit Tompkins County Learning Partners, an adult literacy organization. If you live anywhere near the central NY area, you should consider coming next year (roughly same time). OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday) (3:25)

THEME: YES (61D: "That's correct" ... or a hint to the ends of 17-, 28-, 45- and 59-Across) — final words in themers are all homphones of foreign words for "YES"

Theme answers:

PLAIN TO SEE (si!) (17A: Clearly visible)
LAH-DI-DAH (da!) (28A: Hoity-toity)
AIMS HIGH (hai!) (45A: Sets lofty goals)
THE ROYAL WE (oui!) (59A: What egotists use instead of "I")

Word of the Day: GO BAGS (34A: Holders for emergency supplies) —

plural noun: go-bags
a bag packed with essential items, kept ready for use in the event of an emergency evacuation of one's home. (google)

• • •

OK, let's get one thing out of the way immediately: the clue on MARA is criminal. It's deliberately evoking the leader of a global white supremacist movement. MARA doesn't have to be there at all, and if it *does* have to be there, then there are other MARAs in the world. There well and truly are. And the clue! "Presidential retreat"?!?!? I'll let my friend Austin explain:

I probably didn't need to post his "Congratulations" and solving time, but it's just prettier that way. Anyway, look, there is no other way to clue IVANKA except via the Trump route (please, constructors, delete her). But there are other ways to clue MARA besides MARA-Lago, which is a rat hole for rich racists, those who aspire to be rich racists, and corrupt entities seeking to purchase access to the president. Every single crossword clue that casually implies that this president* is just another president helps to normalize him. No. Nuh uh. Nah. Screw that. This is an editorial decision, and an editorial fuck-up. Please forgive me: I am still in a fury about the massacre in my wife's home country of New Zealand, so I'm not feeling at alllll charitable toward the white right (or their promoters) at this moment. Not at all.

I love this theme. I really do. I really wish I hadn't run into *&%^ing MARA because it really soured the whole experience. Nice to get to a revealer that gives you that moment where you look back over the puzzle and go "Oh yeah ... cool." The one area I had trouble today ... well, there were two. First, I had PLAIN and wrote in PLAIN AS DAY for 17A: Clearly visible. Brutal misstep, especially for a Monday. Probably added 10-20 seconds to my time all on its own. Ooh, KTOWN was also tough somehow. Don't know what I was looking for, but it wasn't that (6D: Neighborhood to get kimchi and bibimbap, informally). I stupidly wrote in AMORE at 18D: Sentiment from a Latino lover (TE AMO), so as you can see, that whole area was just a clusterf***. D'OH! (55A: "That was stupid of me!"). But the one that really baffled me was RA-E / -OBAGS (25D: Rant and rave / 34A: Holders for emergency supplies). I know GO BAG as something you can grab when you need to disappear quickly and possibly for a long time. I think of it as including cash, as well as other things you will need if you are on the run. The clue made it sound like some kind of first aid kit, so even with -OBAGS in place I thought maybe the first two letters were initials. Not sure why RAGE troubled me, but the only answer I wanted was RAVE, which was in the clue, so ... :( ... I figured it out, obviously, and it probably took me only a matter of five seconds, but on a Monday, at the end ... it felt like forever. Fill on this one was tight and interesting. Really good work, except for the clue on MARA, which is entirely the editor's fault, in the end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Daniel Larsen

Relative difficulty: Medium ? (oversized 16x15) (3:45)

THEME: alphabet — theme answers contain consecutive letters of the alphabet from A to Z

Theme answers:

EASY AS ABC (18A: Simple, simple, simple [1,2,3])
MOS DEF (19A: Half of the rap duo Black Star [4,5,6])
WEIGH-IN (27A: Prefight ritual [7,8,9])
DJ KHALED (29A: Singer with the 2010 3x platinum single "All I Do Is Win" [10,11])
FILM NOIR (42A: Dark movie genre [12,12,14,15])
BACK-UP QB (53A: Substitute for Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, informally [16,17])
PR STUNT (55A: Silly marketing ploy designed to get attention [18,19,20])
UV WAVE (66A: Tiny bit of sunlight, for short [21,22,23])
XYZ AFFAIR (68A: Diplomatic controversy of the 1790s [24,25,26])

Word of the Day: DJ KHALED —

Khaled Mohamed Khaled (born November 26, 1975), better known by his stage name DJ Khaled, is an American DJ, songwriter, record producer, media personality, and record executive. [...] In 2015 and early 2016, Khaled gained worldwide attention as a media personality, and subsequently attained a large following on social media. This foresaw the release of his ninth studio album Major Key in 2016. The album attained wholesale critical and commercial success; it debuted atop the Billboard 200, it was certified gold, and received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album. He released his tenth studio album, Grateful, in 2017, which contained the singles "I'm the One" and "Wild Thoughts", which charted at number one and number two on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and was also certified platinum. His eleventh album, Father of Asahd, is due to be released in 2019.
Outside of music, Khaled has also gained success as a writer, with his book The Keys featuring on the New York Times Best Seller list. He has also featured as an actor, starring in Spies in Disguise (2019), and is due to appear in Bad Boys for Life (2020). (wikipedia)

• • •

So we can start with the good. Some of these themers, as stand-alone answers, regardless of theme, are just good. Whatever gets you to put DJ KHALED in a grid is good. Pretty sure that's the only "DJKH" letter string available right now. BACK-UP QB, also nice. And I'm all for FILM NOIR, whenever you wanna give it to me. But the theme itself, just ... walking through the alphabet? ... that didn't do much for me. WEIGH-IN? Not really showy enough. And what is with that extra damn "U"—the one shared by PR STUNT and UV WAVE? It's bizarre. Because UV WAVE is already not great (I know UV better as "rays," not "waves"), and you could've made that answer VW GOLF or VW BUGS and kept your damn alphabet streak perfectly intact, because there's *already* an alphabetical "U" in the answer PR STUNT. This is obvious, right? I don't know how people (any of them ... any of the people) don't see this and fix it. It's fixable. It just means a new SW corner. No big whoop. I mean, I still wouldn't have loved this theme, but at least it would've worked. With a dull routine, you *really* have to stick the landing.

The real problem with this puzzle is the fill. That's an evergreen sentence if there ever was one. Yet again, I don't know why polishing the grid is not (apparently) anyone's priority. We're falling back on ODA now? ODA? And SEISMO!? Hey kids, it's SEISMO, the Shaky Clown. No, he's supposed to be like that, kids! Oh, kids, don't cry! Why are you running away!? Come back, kids! SEISMO loves you! Seriously, though, prefixes should never ever be that long. SEISMO is the dumbest thing I've seen in a while. ASDOI? Please find your brother SODOI and then both of you go away forever. ALTI, yuck. ONAT, same. ATTWO? Now you're just throwing random phrases out there. This is not the worst puzzle I ever DIDST do, but it had me wincing a lot. More negative than positive today, I'm afraid, though, again, DJ KHALED is making the grid real hard to hate.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard, Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:08)

THEME: DISAPPEARING INK (56A: Liquid evidenced by the answers to this puzzle's starred clues?) — letter string "INK" disappears one letter at a time, with each successive themer:

Theme answers:

I CAN'T SLEEP A WINK (16A: *Insomniac's complaint)
KITCHEN SIN (23A: *Leaving dirty dishes on the counter, say)
HOT P.I. (36A: *Sexy detective)
MAKES YOUTH (46A: *Works like an anti-aging serum) (from "makes you think...")

Word of the Day:"THE CHAMP" (8D: 1931 boxing movie for which Wallace Beery won a Best Actor Oscar) —

The Champ is a 1931 American pre-Code film starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper and directed by King Vidorfrom a screenplay by Frances Marion, Leonard Praskins and Wanda Tuchock. The picture tells the story of a washed-up alcoholic boxer (Beery) attempting to put his life back together for the sake of his young son (Cooper).
Beery won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance (sharing the prize with Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Frances Marion won the Academy Award for Best Story, and the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. (wikipedia)

• • •

Unsurprisingly, DISAPPEARING INK has been a theme revealer a whole bunch of times over the years, but it's never been a executed in quite this way, as far as I can tell. There's one where "INK" is missing a bunch of times, and another where the clues actually proceed INK, IN, I, -, but none where the INK fades one letter at a time. Now, I don't really know how DISAPPEARING INK works, and I doubt it fades one letter at a time, but still, I like the idea of its literally disappearing as the themers progress. MAKES YOUTH is kind of rocky: you really have to screw with the base phrase to get a new phrase (dropping the INK and fusing two words together), and also MAKES YOUTH ... just isn't a meaningful phrase. "Here, this ... MAKES YOUTH!" I mean, maybe if you're not a native speaker and you are selling snake oil, this is how you would say it, but the other answers crackle just by breaking off letters, their wackiness simple and punchy. MAKES YOUTH definitely makes you think, but not really in a good way. Still, overall, theme approved.

The grid is very clean, fill-wise, but kind of unpleasant to navigate, since it's riddled with a ridiculous number of black squares (40), making the middle into a swiss cheese. This results in a ton of 3- and 4-letter answers, and a very fussy grid to navigate overall. Kudos to the constructing team for having so much short fill and very little gunk. Looks like they dropped a bunch of Downs through three themers, which really locks you in as a constructor, and the offset* 2nd and 5th themers are also unusual, and probably have something to do with the weirdly pock-marked look of the grid (*I mean "offset" here in the sense of neither centered nor flush right/left). It's structurally bizarre, which is weirdly visually distracting to me, but you do what you gotta do to get a clean grid, I guess. Overall it felt pretty easy, with all the difficulty coming in figuring out the wacky themers. Had SLIP before TRIP at 1A: What you might do if you skip a step, and that was probably the hardes thing in the grid, for me. Oh, that and "OKAY, DEAR," which is truly nonsense. It's YES, DEAR or gtfo.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. the clue on 1D: Group making a reservation? (TRIBE) did not sit right with me. It's true enough, but using forced relocation of Native Americans to achieve your cutesy restaurant wordplay clue felt tone-deaf. I don't feel super-strongly about this. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

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Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:03 just out of bed, which is like a normal 4:00, I think)

THEME: SLASHER FILM (25D: Movie with graphic violence.... or what 17-Across, 22-Down or 39-Down each is?) — DESCRIPTION

Theme answers:

VICTOR / VICTORIA(17A: 1982 movie starring Julie Andrews)
FROST / NIXON (22D: 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella)
FACE / OFF (39D: 1997 movie starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage)

Word of the Day: Ian THORPE (32A: Swimmer Ian who won three gold medals in the 2000 Olympics) —

Ian James Thorpe, AM (born 13 October 1982) is a retired Australian swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gotta be quick as I fell asleep before 10pm last night and have a 7am appointment this morning, wheeee! This puzzle was great. It's always easy to love an easy puzzle, true, but the revealer on this one works mwah, perfectly. "SLASHER" is repurposed, literalized, resulting in what you would otherwise Never refer to as SLASHER FILMs. And the grid has been shaped (and the revealer designed) in such a way that the three films of disparate lengths can still come together in a symmetrical arrangment. The stuff I don't like is small and infrequent and sort of in the "who cares?" category. I'm not spending my time complaining about plural ALOES, is what I'm saying. Damn, I just did! ANYway ... I spelled SAOIRSE correctly, first try, and I think I lost like five valuable seconds doing a little chair-dance of victory! Didn't recognize the actors in FROST/NIXON, so that was the themer that took the longest to come to me (didn't take long, tbh). Totally forgot who Ian THORPE was, and hadn't watched "E.R." since the '90s and didn't recognize the name Paul McCrane and so struggled to come up with DR. ROMANO. "Struggled" is hyperbolic. But I struggled comparatively. Compared to what I did with most other answers. Also, I couldn't get into the SW corner easily, mostly because I didn't look immediately at the clue that finally cracked it all open: 53D: Annual Austin festival, for short (SXSW) (which stands for South By Southwest). Nice to run this puzzle so close to the event (though that's surely a coincidence) (it was last week), and also nice to put SXSW in the actual southwest of the grid.

The only thing that troubles me about this puzzle is why "each" is in the revealer clue. Pretty sure it's grammatically unnecessary. Other trouble spots? Well, MAD DASH was probably the answer that took me the longest, but it was also in the first section I solved. I had UTE for MAV (1D: Western Conference player, informally). I guess butterscotch is ORANGE, but I actually had to go into the SE corner and get some 4s before I could see that OR---- was ORANGE. I solved in AcrossLite, which doesn't do slashes, so that was awkward. But the overall experience was enjoyable. This puzzle had the perfect revealer, which gave me the perfect revealer reaction: "Nice. Good one." That Is All I Want From My Themed Puzzles!!! Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Challenging (not for me ... for you, though, probably, if initial Twitter reaction is any indication ... for me, maybe just north of Medium) (6:19)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Brian SIPE (19A: Brian who was the 1980 N.F.L. M.V.P.) —

Brian Winfield Sipe (born August 8, 1949) is a former professional American football quarterback who played for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1974 to 1983. He then played in the United States Football League for two seasons.
Although mostly sidelined for the first several years of his NFL career, Sipe was eventually recognized as one of the better quarterbacks in Browns history, winning the league's MVP Award in 1980. He was a college football star under head coach Don Coryell at San Diego State University, where he studied architecture and became the team's quarterbacks coach in 2009, remaining in that role for five years, through 2014. (wikipedia)

• • •

I mostly liked this. But then I collected football cards the one year Brian SIPE happened to be a somebody, so ... yeah. Lots of you were probably like "........ uh, four random letters, then, I guess." That corner is definitely the ugliest part of the grid, in that it also has BAILORS :( and ESSE :( and not much of real worth. I sort of like CIVETS, but I recognize that that is probably an idiosyncratic take (22D: Old World animals sometimes called toddy cats). I did not remember SKALDS, though. Or THIEU (until I got it all from crosses—then it looked vaguely familiar). CARLO PONTI ... I mean ... it's a name I've heard (40A: Producer of 1965's "Doctor Zhivago"). I might've been able to tell you it had something to do with the movies, but I could just as easily guessed something to do with wine. managed to put PONTI together and guessed the CARLO part, so he must be somebody. But not a very identifiable somebody, to me. Cultural critic BELL HOOKS is far more familiar to me than CARLO PONTI (how's that for an apparent non sequitur!).

[from a NYT interview with constructor Finn Vigeland, here]

I also managed to piece together BALINESE without exactly knowing how (32D: Long-haired cat with sapphire-blue eyes). If I'd had to name all the cat breeds I know, I would not have remembered that I knew that particular one. And hoo boy, MOAI!? (42A: Easter Island statues) I'm stunned I don't know this. I wrote in TIKI (thanks, terminal "I"!). Oof. But I knew JUVENTUS (47A: Record-holding* Italian soccer club whose name means "youth") which really really helped, since before I saw that clue, I had 47D: Figure in some hymns (JESU) as THOU (thanks, terminal "U"!). So ... sports and obscure names, but roughly on my wavelength (like a radio station that comes in patchily but good enough to not change the channel).

[STAYS MAD]

I want, nay, demand that someone release a rap song about early English history under the name CARDI BEDE (40D: First woman to win a Grammy for Best Rap Album as a solo artist / 55A: Sainted English historian) I want, nay demand, that both OH ME and his brother AH ME take a flying leap. ONE SOCK is pretty weak. You know what would be great: ODD SOCK. Because that's what you mean. You've gone and shoved "ODD" right into SOCK (in the phrase AT ODDS), when it should be where ONE is. Weird. What was your first answer into the grid. Mine: WIIITIS (2D: Joint pain from playing too may video games). No joke. WIIITIS and JUVENTUS and SIPE were all gimmes and lifesavers, and got me through this puzzle relatively smoothly and in a relatively normal time. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"record-holding" is a weird, largely meaningless descriptor for a soccer club. What Record???

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (for me, maybe Easy for you, gauging early Twitter reaction)

THEME: none ... well, I hope not ... — that grid looks like a cylon bunny rabbit, so I'm half-expecting a theme to hop out at me any second, but so far ... yeah, I think there's no theme

Word of the Day: HORACE GREELEY (35A: Loser in the 1872 presidential election) —

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American author and statesman who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, among the great newspapers of its time. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant.
Greeley was born to a poor family in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in Vermont and went to New York City in 1831 to seek his fortune. He wrote for or edited several publications and involved himself in Whig Party politics, taking a significant part in William Henry Harrison's successful 1840 presidential campaign. The following year, he founded the Tribune, which became the highest-circulating newspaper in the country through weekly editions sent by mail. Among many other issues, he urged the settlement of the American West, which he saw as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. He popularized the slogan "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." He endlessly promoted utopian reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance, while hiring the best talent he could find.
Greeley's alliance with William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to him serving three months in the House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper. In 1854, he helped found and may have named the Republican Party. Republican newspapers across the nation regularly reprinted his editorials. During the Civil War, he mostly supported Lincoln, though he urged the president to commit to the end of slavery before he was willing to do so. After Lincoln's assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with Republican President Ulysses Grant because of corruption and Greeley's sense that Reconstruction policies were no longer needed.
Greeley was the new Liberal Republican Party's presidential nominee in 1872. He lost in a landslide despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party. He was devastated by the death of his wife, who died five days before the election, and died himself three weeks later, before the Electoral College had met. (wikipedia)

• • •

Felt easier than yesterday's puzzle but took me a little longer. The universe has a way of evening things out; yesterday I was fast when everyone was slow, and today I'm mostly medium when lots of people are setting personal records. I just took too long coming out of the gate. Got LEFT JAB (tentatively) right away, but could only get JOAD and ALT to work in the Downs. That TRUES clues is really awful—when would anyone line up a bunch of T's like that? I've seen clues like that for Greek letters, e.g. [H H H] for ETAS, but that's a fairly literal clue. This one, ugh. But I digress. I had LETS ON for 1D: Intimates (LOVERS), and that was pretty much that. I mean, that put a dagger in any ultra-fast solving time that might have been in the offing. Eventually got FANBOY from the "F" (3D: Fellow who might go "Squee!") and the rest of the corner went down. Had some trouble getting out of there because BLUSH WINES is not a phrase I hear. Or, maybe, just not a wine type I drink. Even when I guessed BLUSH I wasn't sure what came next. "Can it just be ... WINES?" It was in fact that simple. I also had trouble with DISTRESSED DENIM, partly because I had LOBAL (?) instead of LOBAR for 28D: Relating to part of the lung, but mostly because I know the phrase DISTRESSED JEANS, not DISTRESSED DENIM, and lastly, "trendy"? Really? Still? But these answers aside, the fill seemed remarkably solid to me, especially when you consider the magnitude of that middle stack, good grief! That's a 3 / 5 / 7 / 9 / 11 / 13 / 15 stack with hardly a wobble in it. Really impressive. If for no reasons other than the insane grid shape and the solidity of that central stack, I really like this puzzle.

Here is my difficulty map:

It should probably say VERY EASY down below, because I came at it from the west, and once I threw SLEEP ON across, I got every short Down, in order, in quick succession, which made the long Acrosses instant gimmes. I was going Monday fast down there. Was a little worried I wasn't gonna get into the NE, when ---EBEFORE wasn't doing anything for me, but then I got COME and both ODWALLA (16A: Juice brand owned by Minute Maid) and MAITAIS (18A: Tiki bar orders) were gimmes from there, and the rest of the corner went down easily. This is the fourth puzzle in a row that I have mostly or totally enjoyed, which feels like something that hasn't happened in ages, so that's nice. Enjoy your Saturday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium (11:18)

THEME:"Code Switching"— familiar words with letter homonyms in them have those homonyms switched to the NATO PHONETIC ALPHABET equivalents for those homonyms, creating wackiness etc.

Theme answers:

BOSTON TANGO (i.e. "T", i.e. "tea") PARTY (22A: *Ballroom dancing event for Beantown residents?)
YANKEE (i.e. "Y", i.e. "why") BOTHER (33A: *Annoying member of a New York baseball team?)
UNIFORM (i.e. "U", i.e. "you") BET (47A: *Wager in which the winner gets the loser's pants and jersey?)
THE PRINCESS AND THE PAPA (i.e. "P", i.e. "pea") (67A: *Duo ruling a kingdom on Take Your Daughter To Work Day?)
BRAVO (i.e. "B", i.e. "bee"), STING (85A: *Exclamation after a performance of "Every Breath You Take"?)
CHARLIE (i.e. "C", i.e. "sea") WORLD (100A: *Amusement park named after a "Peanuts" boy?)

Word of the Day: HORAE (12D: Greek goddesses of the seasons) —

In Greek mythology the Horae (/ˈhɔːriː/) or Horai (/ˈhɔːraɪ/) or Hours (Greek: Ὧραι, Hōrai, pronounced [hɔ̂ːraj], "Seasons") were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. [...] The number of Horae varied according to different sources, but was most commonly three: either the trio of Thallo, Auxo and Carpo (goddesses of the order of nature) or Eunomia (goddess of good order and lawful conduct) and her sisters Dike (goddess of Justice) and Eirene (goddess of Peace). (wikipedia)

• • •

Well the glorious four-day streak of enjoyable puzzles comes to a crashing end with this one. The theme answers and (especially) theme clues on this one are so tortured, so unfunny, that this felt much more like a chore than a treat. I honestly didn't fully "get" the theme until I was done, even with the revealer completely filled in. I don't think there's a single answer in this grid that made me smile or think "ooh, nice." Not one. The 7+ non-theme stuff is scant and dull. TOP-LINE? What the heck is that? (57D: Five-star) Also, who knows or cares about the NATO / PHONETIC ALPHABET? At all? The only reason I know anything about it, the only place I ever see it mentioned, ever, is ... [drum roll] ... in crosswords. TEE DEE US. What is an ANYA? (99D: Reformed demon on"Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). What are HAT TREES? Are those like hat racks? ETHENE? UPTREND? Honestly, these are the *high*lights. BEAR PIT!?!?!?! What kind of messed up person uses that (whatever that is) for a quote unquote metaphor. I don't even know what a BEAR PIT is, non-metaphorically, and I've never heard anyone use it as a metaphor for politics. Bear-baiting (cruel), I've heard of. BEAR PIT? Snakes go in pits. Bears go in the woods. Or so I'm told. Save the bears. Hug a bear. Shred this puzzle.

I think I should just cut out now, because the more I look at this, the less I like it. I struggled over dumb stuff like, uh, OLAF or OLAV, and CRT or LCD, and IRA / ARI or ARI / IRA. To me, LODI is a wine region in California. Or a CCR song. I had no idea about this supposed [Site of a 1796 Napoleon victory]. Wow. ANYA shmanya, what was that? And here's the thing that really irks me. No one who knows / loves "Peanuts" would clue CHARLIE (all on its own) as a "'Peanuts' boy." He's Chuck, or he's full-name Charlie Brown. I had ___ WORLD and despite being an avid "Peanuts" fan had no idea what boy could fit there. LINUS, no? SCHROEDER, no? PIGPEN, no? CHARLIE!?!?!?! Yeah, they're always calling him "Charlie," that totally checks out (/sarcasm). The cluing here and all over is just ugly. What does the THE PRINCESS AND THE PAPA clue even mean? If you take your daughter to work, she doesn't actually have a job title. She doesn't actually work. You don't let her fly the damn plane. I realize that particular themer was probably a bear (rawr!!!) to clue, but [Duo ruling a kingdom on Take Your Daughter To Work Day] is particularly clunky. Better to make PAPA refer to the Goldilocks bear (rawrrrr!!!). Gah. Make Sundays Better!!!!! Better than ALIENEEEEEEEEE argh. I mean, BEAR PIT, really. Dear lord.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday) (because of the center) (3:24)

THEME: LPS (62D: Old records ... or a hint for this puzzle's seven longest answers)— two-word phrases, first word starts with "L," second word starts with "P":

Theme answers:

LATIN PERCUSSION (17A: Tito Puente's specialty)
LEOPARD PRINT (23A: Material that's spotted at a fashion show?)
LOW POST (41A: Area of a basketball court near the basket)
LAUNCHING PAD (51A: Rocket's takeoff point)
LEGAL PROCEEDING (61A: Court case, e.g.)
LOTTO PRIZE (3D: Mega Millions jackpot)
LATEX PAINT (31D: Wall covering that's washable with soap and water)

Word of the Day: LOW POST (41A) —

A term referring to the area on a basketball court at the bottom of the key, typically on either side of the basket. The key is the rectangular area that encompasses the middle of the floor underneath the basket. It is often shaded and always has a semi-circle attached on the short side opposite the basket. The low post is named in contrast/opposition to the high post, which is at the top of the rectangle away from the basket. (sportingcharts.com)

• • •

Note: don't try to mask your weak theme with a surfeit of theme answers. If it's no good from the jump, more is definitely not better. "Hey, how about another LP phrase!?" No thanks, I'm full. "Seven themers! That's impressive, right?" Not really. LPS is simply not a good basis for a theme, any more than *any* random two-letter abbreviation is a good basis for a theme. Please, if you are a novice constructor (or any constructor), I beg you, don't start in on your DAS puzzle, or your PIS puzzle, or your MCS puzzle ... just don't. And a couple of these themers are kind of weak. LAUNCHING PAD? When I google that in quotation marks, the first thing that comes up in a definition for ... LAUNCH PAD, which is what normals call it. LOTTO PRIZE? "Lotto jackpot" googles 10x better. LOW POST is probably my favorite of them all, but it's pretty damn hard for a Monday puzzle. That whole middle of the grid was a nightmare for me. Cluing RAMON as a San Francisco suburb is ridiculous. I get it, you live in SF, but the rest of the world doesn't, so give RAMON a real clue, please. MAMMAS is an absurd spelling. ASDOI!? You know my feelings about this answer and all his relatives (ASAMI, SODOI, etc.). Yuck. I had _OW--T for 41A: Area of a basketball court near the basket, and I honestly wrote in DOWN NET. Ugh, and that section is all horribly cut off from the rest of the grid, with just those little inroads. Conceptually overly simple, with fill that's at best adequate. No joy solving this one today.

The more I look at the fill, the worse this one gets. I guess we're supposed to look at All Those Themers and just ignore the rest. All the stale, short rest. Aside from DOWN NET (!), I didn't have any initial errors except for LAP AT instead of LAP UP (23D: Drink, like a cat or dog). I blanked on GADOT at first, and couldn't think of a word that could follow LOTTO (which tells you something about the word that follows LOTTO). I'm just looking at the whole north section (PESO PAP ERE) and thinking how easy it would be to make it better. MISO MAP IRE is better. ALSO APP LIE is much better. PAP and ERE just rub me the wrong way. Seems like most corners of this grid could be improved with a tiny bit of elbow grease. You can't do better than ONEA over TTOP? ALGA and AGAR in the same small corner? ANNO x/w ITSO in the NE? AER over TRA? The self-styled Best Puzzle in the World should be cleaner than this.

Congrats to Dan Feyer on winning his record 8th (!!!) American Crossword Puzzle Tournament championship yesterday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 149 people know what's up:

P.P.S. important AFROS news

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hello! It's Clare again — back for another Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a great start to their week! I just turned in maybe my biggest law school assignment yet, and I am SO relieved, so the start of my week has been great. That, plus the fact that March Madness is going on, and baseball's OPENING DAY is Thursday (Go, Giants!), and I feel like this week will be a good one.

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: OPENING DAY(62A: Start of the baseball season... or what the start of each starred clue is)— Seven answers in the puzzle begin with the abbreviations of the days of the week, in order.

Theme answers:

SUNG (1A: Like carols and cantatas)
MONTECARLO (16A: Grand Prix locale)
TUESBELLE (24A: "You're beautiful," in Paris)
WEDIDIT (37A: "Yay for us!")
THURMAN (39A: Uma of "Kill Bill")
FRIARTUCK (50A: Friend of Robin Hood)
SATE (70A: Fill to excess)

Word of the Day: KINTE (52D: Kunta of 51-Down — "Roots")

Kunta Kinte is a character in the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Haley claimed that Kunta Kinte was based on one of his ancestors: a Gambian man who was born in 1750, enslaved and taken to America and who died in 1822. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I thought the theme overall was clever. Having seven clues correspond to the theme is ambitious, and it was done well. I appreciate the effort that must have gone into constructing a puzzle like this. And, the theme definitely helped me with the solve this week, which is doesn't always do.

I did have a few nits with the theme, though. One is how the clue for the theme answer was phrased (62A: Start of the baseball season... or what the start of each starred clue is). Shouldn't the clue for 62A send you to look at each starred answer and not the clue? Also, OPENING DAY is Thursday, not Tuesday, so it's strange to have this theme in today's puzzle. Lastly, by having this theme take up so much of the puzzle, the other clues/answers were constricted, and there just wasn't much else about this puzzle that I found particularly clever.

The fill also confused me in places. I didn't know PLIES (14A) could be tissue layers. LEANTO (46A: Rustic shelter) is more poverty-based than "rustic." I like seeing a word like BLITZES in a puzzle (32D: Intense promotional campaigns), but AD BLITZES seemed kind of made up to me. 9D: That: Sp. could also be "ese" or "esa" and not ESO, so that threw me a bit. I had "rad" instead of FAB for 42A: "Groovy!" I'm not sure that a MOON STARER is a thing. Having an anagram can be clever, so I could almost get behind that answer, but I find it kind of weird. Also, enough with the guns in the puzzle!! It's first of all odd to have "pellets" in both the clue for 7D: Pellet projectors and 21D: Small pellets. Then, the clue for VEST (53A: Bulletproof garment) also related to guns, even though there are so many other ways one could clue to VEST.

Apparently, I didn't like the puzzle as much as I thought I did when I started writing this. Maybe the theme is the only saving grace. I did like the classic misdirection from 6D: Nursery buy (I was convinced that was a nursery for the baby and not one for plants). My favorite clue/answer combo of the puzzle was probably 64D: Chatty travel companion as GPS. I also thought having FRIAR TUCK (50A: Friend of Robin Hood) in a puzzle was unusual and fun.

Misc.:

Whoa. Is that why the saying goes "a bushel and a PECK"?? Mind = blown.
I drink so much tea, and the only thing I could think of for a while for a brewed drink at 31D was "ale."
Working as a waitress last summer, I definitely made my fair share of cappuccinos and LATTEs.
Just gonna put it out there that the Warriors knocked the Houston ROCKETS out of the playoffs last year. Crossing my fingers that happens again in this playoffs. *Knocks on wood.*

With that, have a great week!!

Signed, Clare Carroll, a happy law student

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:38, rolling out of bed...)

THEME: FINANCIAL MYTHS (49A: Misconceptions about money ... or a loose hint to 20-, 24- and 44-Across?) — phrases from the world of "finance" that contain "mythical" creatures:

Theme answers:

UNICORN START-UP (20A: Success story like Uber or Airbnb)
ZOMBIE BANKS (24A: Institutions propped up with government support)
PATENT TROLL (44A: One profiting through litigation, not innovation)

Word of the Day: PATENT TROLL (44A) —

noun
INFORMAL•DEROGATORY
a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services. (google)

• • •

Hello from 5am! It's nice and quiet here, but solving is always a little slower at this hour. This one felt easy *except* for the themers, two of which I've barely heard of (UNICORN START-UP, ZOMBIE BANKS), and the revealer, which seems like a not-exactly stand-alone phrase. "Green paint," as they say. Two words that make a phrase that one might say, but not a phrase that feels strong enough to stand on its own. For comparison, ["health myths"] googles 10x better, and I don't think that's a great stand-alone phrase either. I'm not mad at the revealer. Just seems a little weak, and it clearly kept you from putting the word "financial" in the clue for ZOMBIE BANKS, which, I submit, that clue really needed (24A: Institutions propped up with government support). "Institutions"??? Could you narrow that downs? Seriously, all my difficulty in this one came in trying to figure out a. UNICORN ___ and b. ZOMBIE ___. Well, almost all. I love the themers as phrases—just wish I knew them! If you enjoy the world of finance (I decidedly don't) then this likely entertained you, which seems a totally valid response. It wasn't for me, but it wasn't bad. I did like HOTTAKES and OVERSHARE, something I know something about. The theme was just a tad beyond my ken. (Is that a phrase? Did I make that up? Did I mention it's early...?)

ATTYGEN, which I keep mentally pronouncing as it is spelled, and it sounds like some compound name like Sally Mae or Billy Ray (42D: Chief law officer: Abbr.). It's sooooo long for an abbr. And you have to abbr. two words? The term "AG" already exists. I have no doubt that this abbr. has been used in writing, but it looks so awful in the grid. Abbrs. shouldn't be this long. I have "YIKES" written into the margin of the grid next to the end of this answer. It's the only "YIKES." Beyond the themers and ATTYGEN (ugh), my only struggle was self-induced. I got MINI at 4D: 1" version of a 15-Across and promptly wrote in IPOD at 15-Across, without (obviously) ever looking at the clue (15A: Black-and-white item you can consume whole = OREO). So that sucked. I also couldn't get through the HAT / EAT portion of the grid at all until I came back at it from underneath. Also, the role in hide-and-seek is called a (wait for it) SEEKER, not SEARCHER, dear lord. It's not called *&$%ing "hide-and-search." Finished up with the "C" in FOCI / CAIN, the latter of which had a toughish clue (60A: Something a complainer might raise).

One last bit of personal news. If you read this blog then you probably know that I have dogs. Well, today I have just the one. Yesterday, we said goodbye to our beautiful 16yo husky/shepherd mix, Dutchess, yesterday. She was part of our family for almost as long as we've owned this home, for almost as long as we've been married. For my daughter's entire living memory. We went to the shelter in Montrose, PA looking for an entirely different dog but when my wife stopped in front of Dutchess's cage, and especially once we took her out of the cage, it was all over. She was obviously ours. And the best dog anyone could ever have. Easy to train. Laid back. Rugged. Durable. Calm. Sweet. She's been a part of our everyday life for so long. This morning is so weird, without her. She has left a huge hole in our lives, but she has also made our lives better and richer and happier than they would've been otherwise. Caring for her, especially as she got older and frailer, was a great privilege. I miss her soft ears. OK, go kiss your pups or kitties or, I don't know, children if you got 'em. Have a beautiful day. Dutchess Forever!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (would've been Easy if I'd figured out the theme some time before the 80%-done mark...) (6:10) (3:45 am solve, good morning!)

THEME: GIVE ME SOME SPACE (64A: Request needed to understand four clues in this puzzle)— you need to put a space somewhere in the one-word themer clues to make sense of them:

Theme answers:

FROM WHERE I STAND (17A: Tome) (i.e. To me)
DECIMAL (30A: Often) (i.e. Of ten)
POWERLESS (37A: Notable) (i.e. Not able)
PERSIST (49A: Goon) (i.e. Go on)

Word of the Day: CORRIDA (2D: Subject of Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon") —

noun
a bullfight. (google)

• • •

Fell asleep early, woke up Very early (3:30am! Hello!) and then solved this puzzle. If it weren't for the theme answers, I would've killed this puzzle. The only thing that got in the way was the theme, which I didn't understand for waaaaaaay too long, and even after I pieced together the revealer, I still didn't get it, because it says GIVE ME SOME SPACE and there is the letter string "me" in the first theme clue, so I got distracted trying to make that meaningful for a little bit. Went looking at the other theme clues, saw there were no more "me"s, then made a face, then got it (yes, that's a plausible sequence of events). I've definitely seen variations on this theme before, or this kind of wordplay, so my reaction to the revealer was more collapsed shoulders + oof than widened eyes + Oh! Mainly I'm just mad at myself for not figuring out the rather simple theme concept much earlier. Again, really don't like the "ME" in GIVE ME SOME SPACE because it feels superfluous and distractive, from a theme expression point of view. As a stand-alone phrase, GIVE ME SOME SPACE is great, and of course the whole point is that you are repurposing a stand-alone phrase. I get it. It's just weird that nothing happens with "ME," and also weird to imagine that I would "request" something like this. "INNERSPACE" ... now there's a revealer!

Hardest parts for me where the ones that formed the connective tissue in the middle third of the grid. Not understanding the clue on DECIMAL, I really needed the short Downs but couldn't remember which horrific crossword initialism was called for at 25D: Banned pollutants (PCBS) and couldn't decide on which [Childish retort] to use (it was IS SO) (again, I say: worst genre of clue Ever). Also, the clue on B-SIDE was tough (36A: It's generally not played so much) (and people play B-SIDEs all the time, wtf).

[OTIS] [B-SIDE]

Had STIFF for SHAFT, so that caused a real snarl (41A: Give a raw deal). And then there was the ADA / DEW cross, which was my last letter in the grid, and which I just stared at for a few seconds wondering how any letter could make a [Frost relative] (DEW). Ugh. I was like "... NEW ..." Not a fan of the ADA clue (28A: Palindromic girls' name). There are famous ADAs, you know? Come on.

Oh, and then I finished up with a stupid ERROR because of the stupidest reason, i.e. the olde "Which Plural Is It, Latin or English?" dilemma. That is, I had PUPAS at 59D: Cocoon dwellers (PUPAE). Always check your crosses, kids! [Popular bait for catching striped bass] is not SELS, it turns out. Ugh. Anyway, the theme is fine, the puzzle is fine, but there were issues that made my feelings run to tepid. Oh well. Happy Opening Day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty:Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day:GLISSANDI (50A: Dramatic musical effects)—

Per Wikipedia, this is a GLISSAND[O]
In music, a glissando (Italian: [ɡlisˈsando]; plural: glissandi, abbreviated gliss.) is a glide from one pitch to another (Play (help·info)). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the continuous portamento.

• • •

Hi all, Rachel Fabi filling in for Rex tonight.

Oh man, this puzzle was so not my speed (which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it!). Between the comedians I was only passingly familiar with (MEARA, BRENNAN), the weirdly Louisiana-specific trivia through the middle (DIXIELANDJAZZ, MOBILEALABAMA), the retro office equipment (DOTMATRIX, apparently a kind of printer?), and the 20th century athletes (DIZ, EDBERG), I really struggled with this one. I also have some serious gripes with the fill.

The puzzle definitely skewed older; in addition to the DOTMATRIX printer, we had a 1929 Gershwin title girl (LIZA), a play from an obscure card game that is related to another obscure card game that is maybe related to Pinochle? (MELD - 23A: Combination in the card game bezique), and plenty of other things that were just so far beyond my own cultural universe that I really struggled to unravel them. Which is fine! Possibly even the point of crossword puzzles! I do not begrudge the constructor his less-than-current fill, any more than other solvers in whose wheelhouse this puzzle comfortably fit might resent a puzzle filled with the neologisms characteristic of younger constructors. Speaking for myself, I do crossword puzzles to learn new (or old) things, so I am definitely not irritated by the things I didn't know. What I cannot forgive, however, is sticking those things together with the fill we have here.

Moe does not approve of your fill

The most egregious of the fill is DERE (38A: In dat place). Absolutely. Not. If you get to a place where you are making up words to put in the clue for a made up word, you need to reevaluate your grid and tear some things out. There will just never be a time when you should be filling your puzzle with non-words (and/or potentially offensive riffs on accents). Also terrible: RIS, an obscure partial from the name of a French dish that really does not google in English; MOE, as in eeny-meeny-miny-moe; LAE (32D: Ka ___ (southernmost point of Hawaii)); the aforementioned DIZ; and DAH, which is a morse code noise.

I appreciated the challenge of this puzzle, and I think the stair-step grid design is funky and interesting with those little YES/MOE cutouts. While the content often escaped me, I don't think anything in the puzzle was unfair; everything I struggled with had reasonable crosses, and I was able to finish only slightly above my average Friday time. Overall, despite my gripes with the fill, I enjoyed it.

Bullets:

OATEN (42D: Like some straw)— It seems that OATEN is the adjective form of oat, so OATEN straw is straw from oats? Learning new things about agriculture!
DIXIELANDJAZZ (31A: New Orleans entertainment) — Have to admire the constructor for really going for it with the X, J, and double Z here.

Thanks to Rex for letting me stop by!

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Greg Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:41)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NAME DAY (8D: Catholic celebration) —

noun
the feast day of a saint after whom a person is named. (google)

• • •

This one lost me from the jump. GHOST GUNS? This is certainly fresh and original fill, but it puts gun violence right in the lead-off position, and thus totally killed (!) the vibe for me. I actually don't mind names of weapons in my puzzles, but ones specifically associated with getting around background checks and regulation? Yeah, no, you can take that **** out of here. Take it to BOISE! (actually I hear BOISE is very nice and my mom grew up in Idaho and my grandma still lives there, so no offense!). Sincerely, though, it was a mood killer. And the vibe of this puzzle just stayed very ... conservative man. I.T. *GUY*. VIAGRA. Using "Animal House" instead of "Alice in Wonderland" for EAT ME? There are no women in this grid at all, and the only woman to be seen in all of the clues is used to clue her husband (VINCENTE). I guess ELLE is mostly a woman's magazine. That hardly counts. Anyway, even beyond the aggressive dude-ness of it all, the fill just left me cold. ORGANIC MATERIAL?! (17A: It was discovered on Mars in 2018) It's hard to think of a duller 15 than that. And isn't the more common term "matter"? Not that that would've made it more interesting. The puzzle seems sturdy and well enough made, but not for me.

Found this mostly quite easy, though PEEK IN was PEEKED (wrong verb tense!) and PEEK AT at first (20A: Take a furtive look), and PILFER was BUFFET (!) (32A: Lift). Can't airborne things be "buffeted" by the wind? Did I make that up? Ugh, it looks like maybe I was thinking of "buoyed" or "borne" or some other "B" word. Also had MESSIER before MANGIER (38D: More shabby), which caused some minor grief, but only minor. Otherwise, no problems. I've barely heard of NAME DAY, but crosses weren't too hard to come by. The clue on MISADD is very clever (28D: Totally screw up?) (get it, because when you MISADD you "screw up" while "total"-ing... eh? eh? please clap). It doesn't make me like MISADD as fill, but it's clever.

Today we've got a four-day solo male constructor streak going. Gotta go back seven years to find an equivalent streak for women. Oh, and here's a little thread I wrote about how the NYTXW's partner site, xwordinfo, uses deceptive charts to visually misrepresent the data on women constructors. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:55)

NOTE:

THEME:"Take One For The Team" — themers contain the names of Major League Baseball teams + 1 extra letter. The the extra letters end up spelling (when taken in order from top themer to bottom themer) SACRIFICE, which you then enter at 76-Down, which is clued only [See note]. Get it, because "SACRIFICE" is a baseball play and you have to metaphorically "SACRIFICE" a letter to get the actual baseball team name ... yeah, you get it ...

Theme answers:

ASPIRATES (25A: Pronounces breathily)
MEAT SAUCE (27A: Hearty pasta topping)
CASTRO STREET (39A: Historic San Francsico thoroughfare)
SCRUB SUITS (44A: Outfits in the operating room)
TELEVANGELISM (66A: Some Sunday broadcasting)
FRED SAVAGE (84A: "The Wonder Years" star)
PAID RESPECTS (90A: Visited out of deference (to))
GRAYSCALE (105A: Colorless mode at a copy shop)
PORTWINES (107A: Strong servings with dessert)

Word of the Day: Jacky ROSEN (18D: Nevada senator Jacky) —

Jacklyn Sheryl Rosen (née Spektor; August 2, 1957) is an American politician serving as the juniorU.S. Senator from Nevada. Prior to serving in the Senate, Rosen served one term as the U.S. Representative for Nevada's 3rd congressional district. She was elected to the United States Senatein the 2018 election, defeating Republican incumbent Dean Heller.^[1] She is the only freshman in the U.S. House of Representatives who won a seat in the U.S. Senate during the 2018 midterm electionsand the only challenger to defeat a Republican incumbent Senator in the 2018 cycle. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm at the peak of this stupid head cold, so I don't know how much gas I've got in the tank this evening. Let's see. So I've been doing two things a lot for the past 48 Hours (while hydrating, resting, and moaning like a poor baby): solving crosswords and watching baseball. These are two of my favorite things, and I've just been stuffing myself with both. I'm a Tigers fan, so it's largely been a miserable experience. We didn't score at all in Game 1 until Christian Stewart crushed a two-run homer in the 10th to win it. Great. But then we didn't score at all the next game. Or The Next Game. That's 28 total innings worth of plate appearances so far this year, and a grand total of two (2) runs, both of which came in a single inning, on a single swing of the bat. I'm not saying it's going to be a long season. I'm saying it's not a season at all, but some anteroom in hell, and it will never, ever end, and I'm condemned to watch it for eternity with my eyelids propper open. Or so it has felt like. So, solving this puzzle ... didn't feel as bad as watching this so-called "baseball" over the past few days, but it did not feel good. It just doesn't know what it wants to do, what it wants to be when it grows up. It kinda wishes it were a true metapuzzle, where solvers would be given a hint to the final answer and then have to figure it out themselves based on the evidence in the grid. But ... it's not that, because the actual answer is In The Grid (why!?!?!), and while it's unclued, it's not exactly hiding. It was super-easy to uncover SACRIFICE without ever once looking at the Note or trying to figure out what was going on with the theme. Who has the time. I was done in under 10 without even trying to grok the theme. It's such an awkward execution of an idea. No thought seems to have been given to how satisfying this thing will be from the solver's perspective. Puzzle-makers just got all lost in the gimmick, I guess. The execution is lousy. I didn't even have to look at the note to get the theme. The baseball names are pretty obvious (well, at least to me, though admittedly I've been soaking in baseball, so maybe it wasn't so obvious to others). From my solving perspective, this thing was a giant themeless with an unclued answer. Circled squares, unclued answer, none of it did anything for me. Swing and a miss.

The fill didn't exactly sizzle either. ARB, ONLAY (I only know INLAY), ELHI ESO and my all-time non-favorite answer, ALIENEE. Theme density => highly segmented grid (to keep the fill cleanish) => mostly short and dull stuff. Longer stuff doesn't exactly shine either. UTAHNS PERI ADLAI UTNE CHE ISEE. WAF!?!? I liked CASTRO STREET as an answer. GRAYSCALE is Ok too. SCRUB SUITS is redundant. FRED SAVAGE is a cool throwback. Or a throwback, anyway. PORT WINES is redundant. I had BLOB before GLOB (105D: Shapeless mass), and SPY NOVEL before SPY STORY, which is more accurate, but wrong today, I guess (68D: John le Carré specialty). I think I'm gonna go now. I did a really beautiful 17x17 puzzle by Paolo Pasco today (from the American Values Club Crossword), and I'm just gonna count that as my Sunday solving experience. It was everything I wish NYT Sundays could be. Simple and original and delightful.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. almost forgot—loved "MAUDE"; more Bea Arthur, please (1A: Top 10-rated sitcom each season from 1972 to 1976)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME: APRIL FOOLS— Theme answers are just strings of letters.

Theme answers:

TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT (20A: Tea set?)
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG (36A: G-string?)
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB(50A: Beeline?)

Word of the Day: EBBETS (45D: ___ Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) —

Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It is known mainly as the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the National League, from 1913 to 1957, but was also home to three National Football League teams in the 1920s. Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960 and replaced by apartment buildings.

• • •

Hi everyone, it's me, Rex, and I thought this puzzle was poorly constructed. Always unfortunate when I don't have a lot to say about a puzzle, and that's the case here. The theme answers fell flat; the answers didn't even form an acronym. I would have loved to see more diversity in cluing as well; too many baseball clues, overused clue-word connections, etc. This one just did nothing for me.

Wait, it's the first Monday of the month! It's been me, Annabel, this whole time! April Fools! That being said, I think the puzzle's trick worked; I totally slapped myself in the forehead when I entered my fourth T. I actually do wish the answers had formed an acronym. In fact, it seems like it would have been easy to do without changing too many of the clues--G, B, and T were all there, and with the LGBTFLAG clue it seems like a natural progression to add LLLLLLL or something. But other than that, having words that aren't actually words is a good April Fool's prank in my book!

Anyway, the rest of the puzzle. Not to linger on LGBTFLAG too long but I don't know anyone who doesn't just say "Rainbow flag" or "pride flag," making that terminology feel a little forced. I didn't have a ton of difficulty with this one, which IMO makes it a good Monday overall! My one other major gripe with the puzzle was that the cluing tended towards straightforward, which would normally be fine but doesn't feel right for an April Fools' Day puzzle. Play around with some words a little! I mean, getting BUSS right away did validate my English major, but give me something else to work with too!

Bullets:

BLAH (50D: When tripled, "and so on and so forth")— I'm feeling the opposite of this right now! I just got back on campus after my last spring break ever (until graduate school but that's different), and I've been applying to a bajillion jobs. I'm like, super nervous, guys, but also super excited. So yeah, anything but blah.
AEIOU (59A: "...and sometimes Y" preceder)— Oh man, talk about a blast from the past.
OUIS (40A: French assents)— I think the constructor was just being a ouise guy with this one. [Loud groans]
EARWORM (25A: Tune you just can't get out of your head)— It was too hard to pick just one, so I'll leave you with this comedy bit about an earworm instead.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Eponymous physicist Ernst / WED 3-13-19 / Mythical figure known for ribaldry / Legendary Manhattan music club / Lineage-based women's grp

Article 0

Ebay ashtray / FRI 3-15-19 / Success story out of Sunnyvale Calif / Youngest French president before Macron / Onetime sister channel of CMT / Cooper's output / Players of Fiorello Dr Bartolo in Barber of Seville

Boxer who retired in 2017 / 1980s spinoff of Dukes of Hazard / 1947 Hope Crosby film / Rural husband in 1940s-50s film series

adjective

Old-time Price Is Right announcer Johnny / SUN 3-17-19 / Quad glute exercise / Stereotypical High Times reader

Holders for emergency supplies / MON 3-18-19 / Latin motto for go-getter / Popular rodent control brand / Country completely surrounded by Italy

Half of rap duo Black Star / TUE 3-19-19 / Diplomatic controversy of 1790s

Japanese lunch box / WED 3-20-19 / 1931 boxing movie for which Wallace Beery won Best Actor Oscar / actress Joan whose last name consists of two different conveyances

ER role for Paul McCrane / THU 3-21-19 / Soothing succulents / 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen Frank Langella / Swimmer Ian who won three godl medals in 2000 olympics

Loser in 1872 presidential election / FRI 3-23-19 / Pacific land west of Fiji / Fellow who might go squee / Rosé relatives

Reformed demon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer / SUN 3-24-19 / Site of 1796 Napoleon victory / Exclamation after performance of Every Breath You Take / Slapstick actor Jacques / Metaphor for aggressive political arena / Dundee dissent

Area of basketball court near basket / MON 3-25-19 / Roman moon goddess / Bit of pond growth

"Yay for us!" / TUES 3-26-19 / Fraction of a bushel / Nursery buy / Dawn's direction

Institutions propped up with government support / WED 3-27-19 / Alternative to Venmo / One profiting through litigation not innovation / Toyota debut of 1982 / Provocative comments on current events

Nickname for Cleveland Browns fans / THU 3-28-19 / Subject of Hemingway's Death in Afternoon / Carla 1960s R&B duo

Combination in the card game bezique / FRI 3-29-19 / Comic Brennan / City that was the first capital of French Louisiana

Political commentator Pfeiffer / SAT 3-30-19 / Firearms without serial numbers / Ancient supercontinent / deck bodybuilder's machine

Physician Franz who coined term animal magnetism / SUN 3-31-19 / Roc band with 1994 4x platinum album Downward Spiral for short

Thumb drive port, for short / MON 4-1-2019 / Gymnast Korbut / Old Venetian rulers / Peter Fonda title role of 1997