Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Victor Barocas

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:12)

THEME:"Measure for Measure"— things measured by different scales appear in the Across themers, while the names of those scales appear in NW-to-SE diagonal circled squares, with all of it coming together in the revealer, ON A SLIDING SCALE (112A: Adjusted to some index — or how 23-, 35-, 66- and 93-Across are measured per this puzzle?)

Theme answers:

MINERAL HARDNESS (23A: What's measured by [Circled letters])
TEMPERATURE (35A: What's measured by [Circled letters])
WIND SPEED (66A: What's measured by [Circled letters])
EARTHQUAKES (93A: What's measured by [Circled letters])

Word of the Day: TELIC (35D: Tending toward an outcome) —

Directed or tending toward a goal or purpose; purposeful.
Greek telikos from telos end ; see kwel-1 in Indo-European roots. (yourdictionary.com)

• • •

This was mostly a boring trivia test (theme-wise) with the only real interest involving waiting around to see what the big Revealer would be. Revealer was fine, but not exactly worth the dutiful entering of factual information for the scales and the things that they measure. Having every clue be the same bland phrase didn't help matters. It's a perfectly serviceable theme that has none of the zing that your marquee puzzle should have. "C" for the theme execution, "B" for the revealer, "C-" for the fill. I've disliked Sunday puzzles much more than I disliked this, but this still just isn't good enough. The fill in the NW is particularly egregious, with TELESTO and (especially!) TELIC (!?) teaming up for some painful obscurity, and then NRA showing up (yet again) and helping normalize a terrorist organization with Zany Wordplay! (7D: Packers' org.?). Puzzle would have to be a looooooooooot better than it is to recover from such an ugly start.

The funny (not LOL funny, curious funny) thing about TELIC is I talk about teleology and use the term "teleological" all the time in my literature classes when discussing narrative (particularly the Aeneid, which is so obsessed with the importance of the story's ultimate telos: Augustan Rome ... is "ultimate telos" redundant? ... can you have more than one telos? ... I'm not even gonna try to pluralize that ... ANYway). ANYway, until just now I did not know the adjective TELIC existed. So that's weird. Had TELESTA before TELESTO because ??? Got a little scared when I couldn't come up with the author at 9A: Early 20th-century author who foresaw TV and wireless telephones (BAUM), and had S.O.S. at 11D: Letters at sea (U.S.S.) and had absolutely no idea what the first word was at 12D: Crustaceans that carry their own camouflage (MOSS CRABS). Eventually remembered L. Frank BAUM (of "Wizard of Oz" fame), so I survived, but MOSS CRABS??? Sid(l)e-eye.

I don't think Henry VIII gave much of an actual damn about religion. The only reason he defied the Pope was his desire for a divorce. So yeah, he made himself the head of the Church of England and got excommunicated, dissolved the monasteries, etc., but calling him ANTI-PAPAL, and claiming he held that position "religiously," seems a stretch. "Henry maintained a strong preference for traditional Catholic practices and, during his reign, Protestant reformers were unable to make many changes to the practices of the Church of England. Indeed, this part of Henry's reign saw trials for heresy of Protestants as well as Roman Catholics." (wikipedia).

QUAL RSTU ENOL PAESE EPOS ISM INGE ENERO RETHREW (!?!?!?!). Too much of this kind of stuff. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get some EYE REST (72D: Break from screen viewing). Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Gary Larson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Baseball I guess? — The first word of each theme name is connected in some way to baseball, as in baseball diamond, as in "Diamond" Jim Brady. ...Yeah I know.

Theme answers:

D.H. LAWRENCE (17A: "Lady Chatterly's Lover" novelist)
HOMER SIMPSON (23A: Bart and Lisa's dad)
DIAMOND JIM BRADY (39A: Early railroad tycoon whose nickname is a hint to the starts of 17-, 23-, 51- and 62-Across)
BAT MASTERSON (51A: Real-life lawman who lent his name to a 1950s-'60s TV western)
MITT ROMNEY (62A: Utah senator who once ran for president)

Word of the Day: OLEO (24D: Bread spread) —

Oleo is a term for oils. It is commonly used to refer to a variety of things, [including being a] colloquial term for margarine, a.k.a. oleomargarine not just vegetable fats but can be tallow.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Boom it's a surprise Annabel Monday! So as a comics geek, my first reaction to the constructor was "oh my god, Gary Larson? Like, the Gary Larson, the guy who does 'The Far Side', makes puzzles now?" I would like to apologize to Mr. Larson for that assumption because this was literally on the first page of Google results for his name + "crossword":

| Two things I would like to mention: 1) I am not the Far Side cartoonist, and 2) no animals were harmed during the construction of this puzzle.

Sorry, man. Anyway, on to the puzzle itself. I hate to be so Rex-y on this one, but I was really kinda disappointed by this fill. It felt like the puzzle had so many names that barely any room was left for interesting words! To the point that there's almost not a whole lot to talk about here. I will admit there are some good English-major words in here though--MORN, ALIT. Weirdly enough, I haven't read much D.H. LAWRENCE in the course of my college career. I think of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century canon I prefer Virginia Woolf. I'm working on a paper about Orlando right now...what a cool weird book.

The theme was...okay I guess? It feels like the last few Mondays I've done have been pretty sports-oriented, which I'm getting kind of tired of. And while I guess I understand the connection between the beginnings of all the clues and "baseball diamond," it just feels kinda tenuous. I mean, they could have based that connection on any of the answers, not necessarily ol' Diamond. Bat Masterson is a great name though. It's even got that sweet sweet assonance.

Bullets:

AGE (45A: 18 or so, for a typical first-year college student) — AAAAAA MY FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE WAS FOUR YEARS AGO. Aaaaaaaaaa it has been so long since I was 18. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
MAMMA MIA (40D: Abba song or musical) — Okay, if you haven't seen the sequel that came out last summer you're really cheating yourself. Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again is exactly as corny and unnecessary as you think it would be...but that's exactly the point. Plus, I'm low-key in love with Lily James, who plays young Donna. That scene where she dances through the orange grove...sigh. That being said I feel obligated to share the campiest scene in the movie instead, because, come on, that's what the series is all about.

DICES (8D: Cuts into small cubes) — Speaking, sort of, of DICE, the Dungeons and Dragons session I'm in is wrapping itself up for the school year (and all our graduations). I play a seven-foot-tall lizard woman with a giant sword, who I definitely plan to use in future campaigns, and last session we defeated a tyrannical dictator and celebrated by attending a concert by an all-skeleton-bard band named Bone Time Rush. If that's not the coolest thing then IDK what is.
ETTA (43A: James of jazz) — This song always makes me homesick for Miss Shirley's, which is a breakfast place in Maryland. I don't know why. I think it was playing the first time I ate there and the pancakes were so good that it instantly provoked a Pavlovian response. Anyway, fitting song for a Sunday night.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

Next time I write one of these blogs, I'll have graduated! This has been such a journey. I can't believe how much I've changed since my first July entry. I've thought a lot about starting my own projects, now that I don't have classes to exhaust me anymore, but tbh no matter what I do I can't imagine leaving Rex's blog. (Unless he's done with me now that I'm no longer a bright-eyed bushy-tailed young whippersnapper, which honestly would be totally valid, and don't worry, I'll have plenty of other stuff around to tire me out.) I dunno...Annabel Mondays are fun. Thanks for sticking with College Annabel after High School Annabel grew up. I'm excited to see what the future brings!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:50 on oversized 16x15)

THEME: THEME (42A: < — What this is for this puzzle) — the theme is "42" (the clue number for that clue):

Theme answers:

THE MEANING OF LIFE (18A: What the computer Deep Thought was programmed to figure out in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
JACKIE ROBINSON (37A: Hall-of-Fame player whose number has been retired by every team in Major League Baseball)
PRESIDENT CLINTON (56A: He served between Bush 41 and Bush 43)

Word of the Day: STAN (54D: Obsessive fan, in modern slang) —

noun
noun: stan; plural noun: stans
1.
an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.

"he has millions of stans who are obsessed with him and call him a rap god"
verb
verb: stan; 3rd person present: stans; past tense: stanned; past participle: stanned; gerund or present participle: stanning
1.
be an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.

"y'all know I stan for Katy Perry, so I was excited to see the artwork for her upcoming album"
Origin early 21st century: probably with allusion to the 2000 song ‘Stan’ by the American rapper Eminem, about an obsessed fan. (emph mine) (google)

• • •

I should've had more fun solving this than I did. In retrospect, it's a pretty solidly built Tuesday. The theme is simple but well executed—just three themers, but those were all iconic, no stretches, and the reduced THEME pressure gave the grid room to breathe, which meant (for the most part) the fill was clean, and occasionally even interesting. I think my brain just wasn't fully awake and working at capacity when I solved this, so I didn't really get the theme until very late, even thought the *first* thing I thought of when I got THE MEANING OF LIFE was, of course, "42." Somehow, in continuing to solve, that little moment of thought drifted out of my head. I got JACKIE ROBINSON instantly, off the first word in the clue ("Hall-of-Famer..."), and got PRESIDENT CLINTON off of just the [He served...] part (thank you, crosses!), and so I never had occasion to think specifically about "42" again. This made the clue for THEME read like something ridiculous. That little left-pointing arrow ... I thought was somehow referring to the concept of a "clue" ... I don't know. I got it eventually, but it just didn't snap in. I was annoyed while solving at the grid shape, which seemed excessively fussy (with lots of crannies, ergo lots of short stuff) for a puzzle with just the three themers. And some of the fill I encountered early on was off-putting in a way that stayed with me. And then I got to NOE very late and honestly couldn't remember what the last letter was: NOA, NOH ... NOE is super duper crosswordese. Half mad at the answer itself (for adding to my crosswordese gripes), half mad at myself for not getting it instantly. I knew it. I just forgot it. So it's a good puzzle. But I found it frustrating more than I found it enjoyable.

Here are some bad answers I never want to see again. First, ECOCIDE. I have seen this often in crosswords, and literally no place else. Why in the world does it appear in crosswords with such frequency? Well, it's the alternating vowel-consonant pattern, and the beginning and ending in vowels, that makes it so grid-friendly. But like most ECO-things (see ECOCAR), I don't believe it really truly exists. "Environmental destruction" certainly exists, 24/7/365, all over the world, but ECOCIDE is just a no from me, dawg. Another no: TEHEE. "Laugh syllables" in general are The Worst (you know, your HEEs HAHs HARs etc.), but this lopsided weirdo answer has no place in the puzzle or on this earthly plane of existence. And yet people Love to put it in their grids. Whyheee? It's obviously "TEE HEE" when you say it, so why are you writing it like the first syllable is some short-voweled unstressed accidental sound. It's like you meant to say "TEE" but maybe coughed or choked on something? Anyway, here's the kind of confusion that can result when you use this stupid non-laugh:

I don't think HONED is nearly as good as TONED for 35A: In good shape), but I gotta say you are forgiven for believing HEHEE over TEHEE (despite the former's being also absurd). Then there's OBLADI. It's half a Beatles song. It's always terrible. Not as bad as OBLA (which I've seen a whole bunch!), but still, this is some rough fill. Easy to get, but ugly. Again, the alternating vowel-consonant patter proves too seductive for constructors to resist. But resist you should! JOHN was gross (please don't toilet an answer that does not need toileting) (and the clue should say [Place to solve a crossword, *slangily*]—you can't treat JOHN like it's just a normal word, boo!) (and you see how the visual is terrible, right? Keep your toilet-solving habits to yourself). And ONRUSHES just flummoxed me. Another word I never hear / say. But that's honestly not the puzzle's fault.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'm gonna get very pedantic here and question THE MEANING OF LIFE. What Deep Thought is "programmed" to figure out?? If I search [Deep Thought programmed] the first hits I get are ... crossword answer sites, i.e. references to the clue for this puzzle. If you actually look at the book, "42" is not offered as THE MEANING OF LIFE. Rather, it's the Answer to the Great Question ... well, here. Just read it. Here's the quote from "Hitchhiker's...":

"All right," said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable."You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought."Tell us!""All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question...""Yes..!""Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought."Yes...!""Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused."Yes...!""Is...""Yes...!!!...?""Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”

So ... "The Answer to the Great Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything. Not THE MEANING OF LIFE. OK bye.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (4:26)

THEME: CROSS-DRESSING (14D: "Mrs. Doubtfire" plot device — or what the letters in this clue's answer do five times?) — this answer runs through five kinds of "dressing":

Theme answers:

JAILHOUSE ROCK (18A: Elvis Presley hit inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame)
"HAIL, CAESAR" (24A: Forum greeting)
DUDE RANCH (34A: Vacation spot for city slickers)
RUSSIAN MOB (44A: Gangster group in "Eastern Promises")
"THE ITALIAN JOB" (51A: 2003 film starring Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron)

Word of the Day: FTC (7A: National Do Not Call Registry org.) —

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act. Its principal mission is the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anticompetitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. It is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, D.C.
The Federal Trade Commission Act was one of President Woodrow Wilson's major acts against trusts. Trusts and trust-busting were significant political concerns during the Progressive Era. Since its inception, the FTC has enforced the provisions of the Clayton Act, a key antitrust statute, as well as the provisions of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 41 et seq. Over time, the FTC has been delegated with the enforcement of additional business regulation statutes and has promulgated a number of regulations (codified in Title 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations). (wikipedia)

• • •

Found the top half of this rough and annoying, but the bottom half very easy. When I finished, I didn't feel like I'd had a very good time. Then I saw what the theme did, and was very impressed. But there's one major issue for me. If it's not a fatal flaw, it's certainly a giant wart. All of the dressings are specific dressings you might find in most any restaurant, or in bottles in the store, *except* "HOUSE" dressing, which ... isn't that just whatever any specific restaurant says it is??? "Our house dressing is a raspberry vinaigrette." There's no such thing as just "house dressing." All the other dressings are specific things; house dressing is contingent—not the same from restaurant to restaurant. So "HOUSE" dressing simply doesn't belong in the same category as the others. Merriam-Webster dot com defines "house dressing" as "the regular salad dressing in a U.S. restaurant"; I'm told it's *usually* a vinaigrette, but so is ITALIAN, isn't it? Anyway, if you saw the dressings listed on the menu, you'd know what all the others are, but You'd Have To Ask What the "House" Dressing Was. Because it's not actually a dressing. Broken. The theme is broken. Which is a shame, as the concept is so lovely. Also, "THE ITALIAN JOB" starred Michael Caine, what is this 2003 remake crap!?

How is [Trial separation?] RECESS? What is being separated in a recess? Are you breaking the trial into parts? Separating parts ... of the trial? Did not get / like that. Had CONNECT before CONJOIN (3D: Link). No clue on SONAR (30A: Sub system). Honest-to-god just stared at F_C / _ENS because I forgot what oldetymey slang "sawbucks" was and couldn't remember the stupid gov. initialism. Definitely considered that "sawbucks" were hundreds and maybe CENS was some kind of slang for those. You know, 'cause "cen." is short of "century," which is 100 years... so maybe that's slang for 100 dollars? Ugh. Anyway, FTC, [raspberry]. Thought CRUD was CRAP (26D: "Phooey!"). I've heard of REDKEN, sort of, barely, but that's OK (12D: L'Oréal hair care brand). Lots of product names are apt to get by me. I'm just explaining why the top half killed me, while the bottom half ... the only thing I've even bothered marking on the bottom half of my printed-out grid is the "P" is APIA, which I had as an "S" at first (53D: Where Samoa Airways is based). That's it. Hard up top, easy down under, very cool theme with super major flaw. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (5:36)

THEME: RAMP UP (45D: Increase rapidly ... or a hint to connecting four pairs of answers in this puzzle) —in four themers, the letters "UP" are represented in the grid by a "RAMP" of three black squares. So answer starts on one plane and finishes two rows higher, three columns over:

Theme answers:

MACHUPICCHU (26A: South American landmark whose name means "old peak")
"KUNGFUPANDA" (29A: 2008 animated film set in ancient China)
"IFYOUPLEASE" (47A: Start of a polite request)
D'ANJOUPEARS (51A: Fruit named for a region of France)

Word of the Day: D'ANJOU PEARS (51A) —

The D'Anjou pear, sometimes referred to as the Beurré d'Anjou or simply Anjou, is a short-necked cultivar of European pear. The variety was originally named 'Nec Plus Meuris' in Europe and the name 'Anjou' or 'd'Anjou' was erroneously applied to the variety when introduced to America and England. It is thought to have originated in the mid-19th century, in Belgium or France. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yikes, that D-apostrophe at the front of the anjou pears answer was dire. Didn't really register that that answer was a themer at first, and when I finished with DANJO all I could think of was how my fruit knowledge had failed me. That was probably the toughest part of the puzzle for me, aside from the typical Thursday challenge of figuring out just what the hell the gimmick is. I got MACH and knew that the rest of the answer had gone ... somewhere, but I had no idea where. This pattern continued. The rest of the answer reappeared nowhere in direct proximity to where it got lopped off, so eventually, when I hit the "-" clues, I just looked back at / tried to remember the answers with their latter halves missing, and filled in those squares that way. My brain does not like the fact that "UP" is two letters and the "RAMP" is three squares long. That non-correspondence is real nails/chalkboard stuff for me. Buuuuut I can appreciate how the RAMP is just an entity that is going UP, and that if you don't have an obsessive brain that needs letters and boxes to agree in number, that is enough. I do like the Chutes & Ladders quality of the grid, with answers just whack-a-mole'ing / wormholing up in completely unexpected places.

[EMO?]

I had:

RATS for NUTS (5D: "Dagnabbit!")
CON for FOR (11D: One side of a debate)
KRONER for KRONOR because Swedish monetary plurals lord have mercy (43D: Money in Malmö)
LOAFS for LOLLS (42A: Wears pajamas all day, e.g.) — this clue is dumb and judgey. I've definitely word pajamas all day while actually working so take that, you smarmy button-down Madison Avenue go-getter of a clue

Other issues:

I misspelled POLLACK, of course (POLLOCK!?)
I feel bad for all the people who are encountering TREF for the first time today (53D: Not kosher, in Jewish law). Crashing and burning on this answer is a rite of passage for many. Welcome to the club.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Adam Fromm

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME: Themeless (?)

Word of the Day:UNGULATE (18A: Having hooves) —

Ungulates (pronounced /ˈʌŋɡjəleɪts/) are any members of a diverse group of primarily large mammals that includes odd-toed ungulates such as horses and rhinoceroses, and even-toed ungulates such as cattle, pigs, giraffes, camels, deer, and hippopotamuses. Most terrestrial ungulates use the tips of their toes, usually hoofed, to sustain their whole body weight while moving.
The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal". As a descriptive term, "ungulate" normally excludes cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises), as they do not possess most of the typical morphologicalcharacteristics of ungulates, but recent discoveries indicate that they are descended from early artiodactyls.^[4]

• • •

Hello! Rachel Fabi in for Rex today.

Fridays tend to be my favorite puzzles of the week. The themelessness usually means that you can expect new and exciting entries or an interesting grid design (or both!). This particular Friday was a bit of a disappointment, for a not particularly good reason, which will be revealed AFTER the rest of the write-up.

First: the good news. Maybe an unpopular take, but I love triple stacks. When I open a puzzle and see that wide open space, the anticipation of finding out how the constructor filled it always kicks off the solve on a high note.

Not suitable for a general audience

The bad news: This triple stack is kind of dull! MAJOR LEAGUE GAME, PRIVATE PRACTICE, andGENERAL AUDIENCE are all pretty bland, and the clues are also a let down. Yes, ESPN airs MAJOR LEAGUE GAMEs in the summer. Sure, some doctors and lawyers work in PRIVATE PRACTICE. I'm not totally clear on how a GENERAL AUDIENCE is "sanctioned" by a G-rating; it's not like a GENERAL AUDIENCE needs official permission to attend, but I guess that's a plausible clue.

The dryness of the entries was not limited to the triple stack, although I enjoyed the long downs. I like JINGOISTS (as an answer, not IRL) and its clue (32D: Country superfans), and I added DEAD AGAIN to my mental Netflix queue (but not my actual one, because it's not on there. I checked.).

I ended up with a pretty average Friday time, but my solve was verrrry patchy. I particularly struggled in the Northeast, as evidenced by the "pencil" squares in the screenshot above. I may have heard the term UNGULATE before, but if I did, the brain cells that previously stored that information have long since been appropriated for other purposes, like maintaining my mental Netflix queue. I had never heard of bubble and squeak, and now that I've googled it, I can't say I'm particularly excited to try it any time soon, despite my love of SPUDs. I was also unfamiliar with the HARP SEAL, but I am so glad I know what they are now, because:

!!!

My lack of jazz knowledge really slowed me down on this solve. I had no idea that TRANE was a nickname for John ColTRANE, and I am unfamiliar with Jimmy Dorsey's SO RARE. Fortunately, the clue on that one (25D: Jimmy Dorsey standard with the line "You're like the fragrance of blossoms fair") hinted that the answer rhymed with "fair," so I got there eventually. I know this wasn't a universal experience, and that more cultured solvers probably flew through these clues without pause, but jazz is just not my thing.

Overall, this was a decent but kind of boring Friday puzzle that was not my speed. Thanks to Rex for letting me review at you! See you next time.

Bullets:

OHARA (45D: John who wrote "Appointment in Samarra")— I loved this for two reasons: (1) I'm happy to see OHARA clued as something other than Scarlett, and (2) This story featured heavily in an excellent episode of Sherlock, which I love. I didn't know the author of the story, and I'm glad to have learned it!
MCC (35D: Three CDs?) — If you must use Roman numerals, this is the way to do it! It took me some longggg seconds to work out that CD = 400 so Three CDs = 1200 = MCC. Into it.

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

[Follow Rachel Fabi on Twitter]

Oh you thought the write up was over? SO DID I. And then I saw that I had twitter notifications from Rex, and now we all have to keep going, because:

LOL this bad puzzle is bad at least in part because IT HAS A THEME good luck finding it. My god themed Fridays are the worst. #Friday #NYTXW
— Rex Parker🏹🏹🏹 (@rexparker) May 17, 2019

Ok, so, for those of you sticking around for the coda: I wrote that entire write up ^^^ twice. Because when I went to edit it to include some points about the FRIGGING MINI-THEME, my entire post was deleted. It's been a long night, and it made me EVEN CRANKIER about the "mini theme" than I otherwise would have been.

So. The triple stack has military ranks in it. MAJOR, PRIVATE, GENERAL. The end.

Theme answers:

MAJOR LEAGUE GAME (30A: Summer broadcast for ESPN)
PRIVATE PRACTICE (37A: What many doctors and lawyers work in)
GENERAL AUDIENCE (38A: It's sanctioned by a "G")

Signed (again), Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day-and-an-extra-hour of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Andy Kravis and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:04)

THEME: none (I hope ... I don't think I missed anything ...)

Word of the Day: Richard ADLER (4D: Richard who composed the music for "Damn Yankees" and "The Pajama Game") —

After establishing their partnership, Adler and Ross quickly became protégés of composer, lyricist and publisher Frank Loesser. Their first notable composition was the song "Rags to Riches",^[5] which was recorded by Tony Bennett and reached number 1 on the charts in late 1953.
Richard Adler (August 3, 1921 – June 21, 2012) was an American lyricist, writer, composer and producer of several Broadway shows.
At the same time Bennett's recording was topping the charts, Adler and Ross began their career in Broadway theater with John Murray Anderson's Almanac, a revue for which they provided most of the songs.
Adler and Ross's second Broadway effort, The Pajama Game, opened in May 1954 and was a popular as well as a critical success, winning Tony Awards as well as the Donaldson Award and the Variety Drama Critics Award. Three songs from the show were covered by popular artists and made the upper reaches of the US Hit Parade: Patti Page's version of "Steam Heat" reached #9; Archie Bleyer took "Hernando's Hideaway" to #2; and Rosemary Clooney's recording of "Hey There" made it to #1.
Opening almost exactly a year later, their next vehicle, Damn Yankees replicated the awards and success of the earlier show. Cross-over hits from the show were "Heart", recorded by Eddie Fisher and "Whatever Lola Wants", by Sarah Vaughan.
The duo had authored the music and lyrics for three great Broadway successes in three years, and had seen over a half-dozen of their songs reach the US top ten, two of them peaking at #1. However, their partnership was cut short when Ross died of a lung ailment^[4] in November 1955, aged 29. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very nice work. Kind of reserved for these two. Only a couple showy answers, not much that's ultra-contemporary. But overall smooth and entertaining, if much easier than a Saturday normally is or should be. Predictably, my main troubles involved unknown-to-me proper nouns—ADLER and ELIAS specifically, though now that I think about it, I must have read or otherwise "known," at some point, that ELIAS was Disney's middle name. I know at least one ADLER (Irene) and at least one ELIAS (Sports Bureau), but not these ADLER/ELIASes. But no matter. I was able to move right through them anyway because of very gettable crosses. The biggest hold-up (again, predictably) was an unforced error on my part. Over and over, time and again, the biggest time loss I experience while solving involves leaving a wrong answer in place for too long. Today, it was a stupid ticky-tack coulda-gone-either-way foreign language error: UNE instead of UNO (27D: One overseas). "Overseas," :( Give me a crack at the damn country, you stupid clue. Anyway, Faced with UN-, I chose the French over the Spanish. That vowel was vital, as I could not parse TIGER-PROOFING at all until I changed it (I was coming at it entirely from the back end) (33A: Measures taken to make golf courses tougher in the early 2000s). Later, I also botched CAPOS (I was like "Ooh I know this!" ... and wrote in COPAS). That made the SE probably the diciest section. But again, the confusion didn't take long to clear up. Had SIN for MIN (confusing trig and calc, I guess) (54D: Calculus calculation, for short). But otherwise, not much resistance to be found in this one. Just a smooth good time.

["That's OK, SEE IF I CARE!"]

I just saw another VR- answer recently (maybe it was actually in the NYT...) and so I'm super-on-the-lookout for them. Got today's (VR HEADSET) off just the "V" (30D: Modern game equipment). Saw right through 1A: Jets are found in it, though did have to work crosses to see if it was NFL or AFC. Grateful for easy crosses because both E STREET and G CHORDS would've been total guesses for me at their first letters. "SEE IF I CARE" is a nice answer, but the one answer that really made me sit up and say "dang!" was "SOME PEOPLE..." which was the perfect Saturday combination of hard and clever (53A: "What a jerk!")—brutal to parse, but then boom, a wonderful revelation.

Thanks to Rachel for subbing for me yesterday. I'll be on every write-up from now through the very end of the month, at which point I will be at the Indie 500 Crossword tournament in Washington, D.C. and yeah, you'll probably get a sub or two. I'm lucky to have so many able and willing back-ups. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:25)

THEME:"Hook-Ups"— themers are all Downs containing a letter string that is also a fish; this fish name has been "hooked" and pulled "up" to the top of the answer

Theme answers:

TROUT WORKOU / INE (workout routine) (1D: Gym rat's development)
COD MOLLY / DLE (mollycoddle) (4D: Act overprotectively toward)
BASS LA / ISTANT (lab assistant) (12D: Role for a biology grad student, perhaps)
CARP MAGIC / ET RIDE (magic carpet ride) (26D: The "Aladdin" song "A Whole New World" takes place on one)
TUNA CAUGH / WARES (caught unawares) (48D: Surprised)
PERCH SU / ARGED (supercharged) (56D: Gave extra juice)
PIKE S / D PUNCH (spiked punch) (63D: What might get you a "ladle" drunk?)

Word of the Day: MOIRA (43A: Fate, in Greek myth) —

The name Moira is a given name of Greek origin, deriving from μοῖρα, meaning "destiny, share, fate". In Greek mythology, the Moirai (Greek: Μοῖραι, plural for μοῖρα), often known in English as the Fates, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny. (wikipedia)

• • •

Normally I hate Sundays and normally I am opposed to answers that come out as nonsense in the grid, but today is Sunday and the resulting theme answers are nonsense and yet I really, TRULY liked this puzzle. I had to hack at the grid quite a bit to get TROUTWORKOUINE (!?!?) to fall into place, and my first reaction was "Ugh, what?" but as the solve went on, I found myself kinda looking forward to the next themer, seeing if I could infer the fish up front and then mentally plug it into a phrase that might make sense as the overall answer. It was fun. That was enough. Actually, the relatively smooth quality of the fill helped as well. Really lit up at STEAMPUNK and STORM SURGE, and though the grid was pretty choppy, and there's def some chunks of crosswordese in here, once I got my theme footing, I really sank into this one and enjoyed it.

Sailing was not smooth for me at first, though. Severe flailing all over the NW corner, as the first themer made no sense to me (yet) and I got increasingly furious that I couldn't drop the damn Steve Perry song in instantly. How could there be a 1984 (my sweet spot!) Steve Perry "hit" that I did not know well enough to just plunk in. Steve Perry is the former lead singer of Journey, just FYI, and I've never been more pop-music alert than I was in 1984, probably. But my brain was like "OH, SHERRIE?" and when I said "no" my brain was like "FAITHFULLY?" and I was like "That's Journey! You're useless, brain!" Honestly, I could hum precisely no bars of "SHE'S MINE" right now if I had to. I'm going to look it up, and I am 97% certain it will be very familiar to me when I hear it, but on its own, the title "SHE'S MINE" is meaningless to me. "The Girl Is Mine" (McCartney/Jackson) is familiar to me. "The Boy Is Mine" (Brandy/Monica) is familiar to me. "She's Gone" (Hall/Oates), familiar to me. But "SHE'S MINE," no, nope, and nah. OK, here goes, Look-up, commencing ...

The charts are so weird, man. Like, this only went to #21, and though I've definitely heard it, I probably haven't heard it (or thought about it, clearly) since 1984. But then something like "Foolish Heart" (another Steve Perry "hit" off this same album, "Street Talk"), which only went to #18, is very very familiar to me. Why? Three positions on the chart shouldn't make That much of a difference, but it's night/day with these two songs. "Oh, Sherrie" (the uber hit off this album) went to #3 and was a radio / MTV juggernaut. And this has been my Steve Talk (suck it, Ted Talks!).

Hardest part of puzzle for me was DESI over MOIRA (!?!!??!!), especially since CLUB worked very well for 40D: Clobber (DRUB). I have heard of DESI (40A: Member of a South Asian diaspora). I have never ever heard of MOIRA in this context (43A: Fate, in Greek myth). That is, I've never heard of MOIRA except as a woman's name. So much for my "education." Also ugh to [Bygone Apple laptop] let's never speak of IBOOK again. I wrote in EBOOK in defiance (actually, just instinctively, as EBOOK is a real, if not exciting, thing). Not that thrilled with MOOK, either, as it feels borderline ethnic slur, even if it only rhymes with ethnic slur. [1930s uncertain origin] says the google dictionary. So it's fine. Just skeezes me out a little. I knew ARGOSY because it was a popular pulp magazine in the early 20th century. I always want SIOUAN to have an "X" in it. No idea who this ELISE is (61A: The miser's daughter in Molière's "The Miser")—and I'm damn sure I've read "The Miser" (in French, in fact, where it's "L'Avare"). But that was bloody yesterday (i.e. 33 years ago), so no hope. Felt like I plodded through much of this puzzle, but my time was quite normal, and, as I say, the time I had was delightful.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Gary Cee

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"HIT IT!" (39A: "Start the music!" ... or what one could do to the finish of the answer to each starred clue) — last words in themers can complete the phrase "hit the ___"

Theme answers:

DEBT CEILING (17A: *Government's credit limit)
HACKY SACK (28A: *Beanbag juggled with the feet)
CHECK MARK (46A: *Symbol for "O.K.")
WESTERN WALL (61A: *Much-visited site in Jerusalem)
CLAM SAUCE (11D: *Seafood topping that may be red or white)
LOWER DECK (34D: *Part of a ship just above the hold)

Word of the Day: ROLF (32A: Massage intensely)—

verb
treat (a person) using Rolfing, a proprietary term for a massage technique aimed at the release and realignment of the body.

"I had the negative emotions Rolfed out of me"(LOL) (google)

• • •

Too old-fashioned and too rough, fill-wise, for my tastes. It's a pretty mundane "last words"-type puzzle, with many many many other possible last words that weren't used (I always find it really distracting when very colorful possibilities are left out of a theme like this: ROAD BRICKS HAY LIGHTS BOOKS CLUB DANCEFLOOR GROUND ICE JACKPOT etc. LOWER DECK is also pretty weak, as DECK-ending answers go. UPPER DECK is actually Much Much Better (it has baseball cred). This is one of those themes that confuses being dense with being good. The choice to include so many themers undoubtedly has something to do with the mediocre-to-poor overall quality of the fill. That NENE / INURN (!?!?!) / TRI area down below is quite hard to look at, as is TEC over EEK crossing OGEE, as is the whole western section. OTOE / OTOH looks like the stuff of parody, and ROTC / ROLF isn't helping matters. TAR crossing TARTARE is absurd (I'd've preferred CAR there, and CHEM in the cross,\—one of the few times you're going to find me advocating for the abbr.). I like the image of DEBS smoking E-CIGS, but on their own, as fill, I'm not as big a fan. I tore through this, but it was a largely TEPID and EMPTY experience.

Five things:

10D: Motorized two-wheelers (SEGWAYS) — lost time trying to spell this SEGUES (like the actual word). I can't believe self-respecting people actually ... drive? ride? ... these.
65A: Bury, as ashes (INURN) — this answer bothers me on so many levels. It's an ugly, rare word, so I just don't like it, but also shouldn't it refer to the act of putting the ashes *in* the urn, and not the act of putting the urn *in* the ground? Bah!
20A: Like many infield grounders (ONE-HOP)— "ONE-HOP grounder" is actually not that common a phrase on the internets (~3,000 hits). "ONE-HOP groundball" is even rarer. It's totally intelligible, but you're gonna call that a "one-hopper" most of the time (~17x more often, if my ["one-hopper" baseball] search is at all meaningful). Or you'll say the infielder fielded it *on* ONE HOP. I don't really think ONE HOP stand well on its own, is the upshot of this comment. It's a minor nit, I know, but I'm tired of the puzzle mucking up or otherwise only half-nailing clues and answers from baseball, a game I love.
55A: Like a gift from above (GOD-SENT)— another clunker for me. "Heaven-sent" makes sense to me. A "god senD" is certainly something I've heard of. But I've never heard anything described as GOD-SENT. Remember: "Dictionarily defensible" and "good" are not the same thing.
18D: Org. concerned with ecosystems (EPA) — can we stop pretending the EPA cares about anything any more besides abetting polluters and destroying as many species as possible?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Evan Kalish

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:52)

THEME: CHANGES THE WORLD (35A: Has a huge impact ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — two-word phrases contain letter strings (circled squares) that are anagrams of planets, which I guess we're calling "worlds" now. Anyway, "CHANGES" = anagram, "THE WORLD" = one of the planets:

Theme answers:

"IGNORE THAT!" (Earth) (17A: "Oh, it's nothing to concern yourself with")
LEAVES UNSAID (Venus) (23A: Omits mention of)
ARMY RECRUITS (Mercury) (47A: Ones with private ambitions?)
BONUS TRACK ((Saturn) 57A: Extra song on an album)

Word of the Day: GRIEG (14A: "Peer Gynt" composer) —

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɛdvɑɖ ˈhɑːɡərʉp ˈɡrɪɡː]; 15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to international consciousness, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius and Bedřich Smetana did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively.
Grieg is the most celebrated person from the city of Bergen, with numerous statues depicting his image, and many cultural entities named after him: the city's largest concert building (Grieg Hall), its most advanced music school (Grieg Academy) and its professional choir (Edvard Grieg Kor). The Edvard Grieg Museum at Grieg's former home, Troldhaugen, is dedicated to his legacy. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was an unpleasant solve. There was simply no joy anywhere. The theme answers were blah, the theme was a let-down ("WORLD" as a synonym for "planet" = disappointing / off). And the fill, yeesh. A 78-worder where 65 (!?) of the answers are five letters long Or Shorter!?!?! That's 65 of 73 non-themers! So choppy, so relentlessly crosswordy. And with no real interest in the actual themers, or even in the few "longer" non-theme answers, this one was just a slog. People seem to be finding it easy (perhaps *because* of all the short stuff), but it was a grind for me. Choppy grids really slow me down, and I wasn't only this puzzle's wavelength At All with regard to Anything. From 3D: Let secrets out (SING), and over and over again, I just couldn't lock on to the cluer's sense of cluing. Had ANTS for MICE (26D: Little scurriers), couldn't get DYE at all (41A: Red 40 or Yellow 6), and so I couldn't get SYNC at all either until I got that terminal "C" (37D: Match up). Struggled to make sense of most of the themers. Really wanted CHANGES THE GAME for the revealer but it wouldn't fit. Had to make up the phrase "IGNORE THAT!", which seems about as strong as "IGNORE THIS!" (i.e. not strong). LEAVES UNSAID is not exactly sparkling. The whole SW was a nightmare for me because I had no idea what kind of RECRUITS these were, and my first pass at the answers in that section yielded almost nothing. It's trying to be repeatedly colloquial, in a very tiny area, which made things dicey. "WHO ME?" crossing "AW, MAN" crossing a "?"-clued GYM RAT? I mean, we're not talking Saturday-level difficulty here, but for a Tuesday, I was very very slow through here. In the end, it's a weakish theme with an incredibly tepid grid. I felt run down by the EEK ATIT URSA UAE IDA ERIE onslaught—no one answer particularly terrible, but en masse, ouch.

Not sure why GYM RAT even had a "?" clue, given that its clue was pretty literal (43D: One doing heavy lifting, informally?). I get that "doing heavy lifting" is a metaphorical phrase that is being used literally here, but ... literal is literal is literal. "?" clues should really yank you off of the expected path. This one did not. TDPASS was hard for me to parse, but it's clear I didn't really read the clue while solving (10D: Six-point accomplishment for a QB). I just kept expecting those letters to arrange themselves into something familiar, but because they looked insane (starts "T" ends "-ASS"??), I had to keep filling in crosses. The answer that most irked me though, both because it cost me time and because the clue was just wrong (actually, it cost me time because the clue was wrong), was MALL (53D: Development that might compete with a downtown). Have you been to a town with a MALL lately?? Hoo boy, no. All over the country, MALLs are falling apart, losing anchor stores as people increasingly shop online, etc. Our MALL is quickly turning into an abandoned building. Next stop: actual ruin. Actually, they're trying to figure out what its future is, because it will not continue on as a MALL, that's for sure. This clue was very true for 1989, but in 2019, nonononono. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:32)

THEME:"one for the money etc."— I guess this is a counting rhyme? I know it only as the opening to "Blue Suede Shoes"; anyway, the theme clues are "One for the money""Two for the show""Three to get ready" and "Four to go" (not "Go cat go," sadly):

Theme answers:

LEATHER WALLET (19A: One for the money)
BROADWAY TICKETS (24A: Two for the show)
STOP DROP AND ROLL (43A: Three to get ready)
ALL-WHEEL DRIVE (50: Four to go)

Word of the Day: WAVESKI (9D: Surfboard/kayak hybrid) —

Noun
Short water craft seating one rider, propelled by a two-ended paddle, designed for surfing waves. (yourdictionary.com) (I wanted to use wikipedia, but the entry was "written like an advertisement")

• • •

This is an "F" right out of the gate. Well, not right out ... but once you get to that third themer, yeah, fail. How did STOP DROP AND ROLL get by the constructor himself, the editor, proofreaders, etc. Already a bunch of solvers are remarking publicly on how it doesn't work. We saw it instantly—how do the people making these things not see it? The *&$^ing complacency of this old boys' network, I swear to *&$^! Hey, fellas, you have confused STOP DROP AND ROLL (which you do after you are already on fire) with DUCK AND COVER, which is what you do "to get ready" for, let's say, a nuclear attack.

So the theme is DOA. There's not much reason to go on about it, but I will say it's not that interesting to begin with, in that it puts all the theme "interest" in the clue, and the answers just end up being pretty tortured examples. The LEATHER in LEATHER WALLET is a million percent arbitrary. And then the grid today, again, is just chop chop choppy, with lots of unfortunate short stuff, and almost nothing of note in the longer answers. The one answer that actually *tries* to be of note is WAVESKI, which is ... I don't know. Not interesting to me at all. Not even known to me. If you want to be original, why not do it ... in some more satisfying way. "Oh, some arcane 'sport' ... how fun!" Bleh.

IN IT, CAB IT, RAP AT, OCTANT ... where is the good here? The NYT's themed puzzles really, really should not be this miserably mediocre. LAI BAHAI KAUAI goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:35)

THEME: Belaboring the point— actually FOURTEEN POINTS (59A: With 61-Across, what President Wilson proposed for a lasting peace ... or what's missing from the starred clues): well there are literally fourteen answers here for which you have to mentally supply "point" as the second word in order for them to make sense:

Theme answers:

PIN
NEEDLE
PLOT
PRESSURE
TIPPING
BALL
STAND
EXTRA
POWER
GRADE
BROWNIE
DATA
WEST
SET

Word of the Day: Sarah ORNE Jewett (40D: Author Sarah ___ Jewett) —

Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) was an American novelist, short storywriter and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism.

• • •

This was easy and the theme was incredibly dense, so people will be aglow from personal success and perhaps impressed by the technical achievement. These are wrong and bad feelings and you should throw them out the window because this puzzle was tedious and "theme density" is not not not, in and of itself, a good quality. It is often, as it was today, a punishing quality, as it compromises the quality of the overall fill and, if the theme is relentlessly the Same, just pummels you with its repetitiveness over and over and over. I will say that, given the theme density, the fill could've been much worse. But there I go, making excuses for CLU and ORNE etc. I should not have to do that. You wanna go dense, that grid better hold. Full stop. End of sentence. There are a few nice answers here, like CHEAT DAY (a phrase I despise, personally, but an original phrase nonetheless) and GUT PUNCH, but overall the grid is (again) choppy and the short stuff is (again) stultifying. Once I got the "point" I just went on a "point" scavenger hunt, which, let me tell you, is the saddest scavenger hunt that ever was. Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point Point. Uncle! A lot of something is not a good something.

I knew ORNE and CLU and ASTA (sorry for those of you not well versed in the pantheon of crosswordese) but O'GRADY, hoo boy, what? I do not have a clue who this [Sweet Rosie of old song] is. I'm guessing we're talking very, very old song. Wow, yeah, looks like late 19th century. There are barbershop quartet versions. Here's a Bing version.

Gail O'GRADY was great on "NYPD Blue" and is still working. Just FYI. I have no idea what the clue on SWAGS means. Swag curtains? And they're called SWAGS? This "word" has appeared just once in The Entire Time I've Been Blogging (i.e. since Sep. '06). In 2010 it was clued as [Festoons], so clearly even in Crossworld there's no agreement about what the hell this thing means, so let's banish it to wherever it came from for another nine years at least. I thought the GORES might be the DOLES, which share 3/5 of the GORES' letters, so that was odd. I had the "C" and put [Homer's home] down as ITHACA, for reasons (not good ones, but sorta kinda understandable ones). Seth ROGEN appears a number of times in the new Wu Tang Clan documentary on Showtime, which I'm very much enjoying. (WUTANGCLAN has appeared once in the NYTXW, WU-TANG no times; since they are frequently colloquially referred to as just WU-TANG, please add WU-TANG to your word lists and unleash it at will, thanks).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Stanley Newman

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (6:43)

THEME: QUEEN VICTORIA (35A: So-called "Grandmother of Europe," born 5/24/1819)— actually it's a themeless with this commemorative answers just plunked in the center

Word of the Day: LANDAU (2D: Horse-drawn four-wheeled carriage) —

A landau is a coachbuilding term for a type of four-wheeled, convertible carriage. It was a city carriage of luxury type. The low shell of the landau made for maximum visibility of the occupants and their clothing, a feature that makes a landau still a popular choice for the Lords Mayors of certain cities in the United Kingdom on ceremonial occasions. (wikipedia)

• • •

This??? This is your Queen Victoria's 200th birthday tribute puzzle? Just ... her name? Look, do a damn tribute or don't do a tribute, but this half-assed half-themed junk has got to go. I kept looking around for Victorian material. Kept thinking there was some theme building that I just couldn't see. Seriously, when I got to the cross-reference clue at 65A: Some descendants of 62-Across (MEXICANS) I briefly thought "... MEXICANS are descended from QUEEN VICTORIA???" But no. "Grandmother of Europe," ugh, why are we "honoring" her? Was the idea ... what was the idea? Just put her name in the middle and then build a very old-fashioned, very old, kinda mediocre themeless around her? LINDY in a LANDAU, that's what this thing was. For the NONCE. It's painfully hoary, and could not have been more off my wavelength if it tried. This was some classic Maleska-era stuff, complete with your classic crosswordese (ÉTÉ! ODIE! LANDAU!!) and your almost exclusively olde-tymey frame of reference. Who the hell is Manchester, the WRITER (24D: London or Manchester). That clue killed me, and kept me from accessing the NE in a way that had me wondering if I was even going to finish. Satan is The DEUCE!?!? LOL, when? Who? Woof.

But seriously, Manchester? There is a guy I found named that, and he wrote books, but I would submit to you that he is not not not famous enough. Which is why I'm not naming him—I think I must be overlooking someone. But I can't figure out who. [Do so hope]??? I just stared at that going "what does that ... even mean? When would you say that????" The phrasing ... so archaic and forced and sad. Why is an EDGER [Tool used while on foot]??? You might use any tool while on foot. Why would *that* be your clue? The cluing here is perverse in stupid ways—designed to make things hard, no doubt, but mostly just off. If you're gonna go hard, you better be on. And this thing is off fro stem to stern.

OK, since no one has offered a better explanation, it looks like the Manchester in question is William Manchester, a historian and biographer (!?!?) that I've never ever heard of. The idea that you think he is an iconic WRITER on the level of Jack London (or Jack Vance or even Jack LaLanne) is hilarious. Did you really want your English city "joke" so bad, So Bad, that you went with William (??) Manchester!? Every idea this puzzle has about being "difficult" is actually bad. It's sour. It's off. EMAILS are not a "cause" of flooding. They are the substance. Whoever's sending them is the cause. Some bot or spammer or whatever. Or, just, all the people who (still) email you for some reason. (Thanks to my friend Helen for pointing out that particular cluing infelicity). Also, EMAILS with an "S," ugh. Grating. I felt guilty getting ABRAM instantly. I Don't Even Know Whose Middle Name That Is, but I've done enough crosswords to know that it's a [Presidential middle name], ugh. I also felt guilty at having the entire arsenal of carriage lingo at my fingertips thanks to decades of doing dated puzzles. LANDAU! (ask me about the SURREY, the HANSOM, the TROIKA, etc.)

Had KEPT TO for HELD TO (9D: Didn't stray from), AMASS for HOARD (9A: Stockpile), AMENS (?) for SMARM (21A: Unctuous utterances) (had the "M" from ST. ELMO, my first answer in the grid). No idea who Jamie DORNAN is (45D: Jamie ___, co-star in the "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie). Please stop putting TEC in puzzles, as I can assure you, as someone who studies and teaches crime fiction, it's a non-thing. No one says that. Even re: Spade. At least indicate its datedness, its bygoneness, whatever. Quit passing it off as an ordinary slang term. It isn't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:21)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Howard ASHMAN (54A: "The Little Mermaid" lyricist Howard) —

Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several works and is most widely known for several animated feature films for Disney, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Menken composed the music. Ashman and Menken began their collaboration with the musical God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979), for which Ashman directed and wrote both book and lyrics. Their next musical, Little Shop of Horrors (1982) for which Ashman again directed and wrote both book and lyrics, became a long-running success and led to a 1986 feature film. The partnership's first Disney film was The Little Mermaid (1989), followed by Beauty and the Beast (1991). After his death, some of Ashman's songs were included in another Disney film, Aladdin (1992). [...] On the night of the 62nd Academy Awards, Ashman told Menken that they needed to talk when they got back to New York, where he revealed to Menken that he was HIV positive. He had been diagnosed in 1988, midway through the making of The Little Mermaid. During the making of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney animators were flown to work with Ashman at his home in Fishkill, New York. There they discovered that he was seriously ill. He grew weaker but he remained productive and continued to write songs. After the first screening for Beauty and the Beast on March 10, 1991, the animators visited Ashman in the hospital. He weighed 80 pounds, had lost his sight, and could barely speak. The animators and producer Don Hahn told him that the film was incredibly well received by the press. On the early morning of March 14, Ashman, age 40, died from complications from AIDS, in New York City. Beauty and the Beast is dedicated "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950–1991." Ashman was survived by his partner Bill Lauch, his sister Sarah Ashman-Gillespie, and his mother Shirley Thelma Glass. He is buried in Oheb Shalom Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this was probably my least favorite Paolo Pasco puzzle ever, and I really liked it—just to give you some sense of how far beyond most constructors this kid is (he's my daughter's age, I get to call him "kid"). ONALEASH was a little wobbly and RATA and ENE, bleh, and who the hell says "DASH IT!" and I just personally hate the phrase "drop TROU" (not the puzzle's fault, exactly) and I have never seen GLADHAND (57A: Insincere welcome) as a noun (as a verb, yes, and GLADHANDer, yes), and ASHMAN strikes me as pretty obscure (only his second appearance of the millennium, and the center stack, though very solid, is not exactly scintillating, and (saving worst for last) ILIADS, plural, dear lord no, the dictionary has betrayed you! (34D: Epic narratives). OK, so on one side there's all that, but on the other side, everything else was delightful and current and smooth and occasionally EDGY, drawing from all over the knowledge spectrum, and some of the clues were so great (don't know if they were Paolo's or the editor's, and I don't care—just glad they made their way to me). Stupid fun clue on DELIS (20A: Establishments whose products might be described by this answer + H), interesting and original clue on NON (56D: Prefix with binary), and great deception all over, including [Push-ups, e.g.] for LINGERIE and [Off in biblical lands?] for SMITE. Honestly, this thing had me at CHRISTIAN MINGLE (8D: Website relative of JDate)—finally, a reason for having suffered through those TV ads so many times. What show was I even watching when the CHRISTIAN MINGLE onslaught happened? I don't remember. But this payoff is sweet.

I was cruising—absolutely shredding this thing in the NW and then down through CHRISTIAN MINGLE—but those three central Acrosses just wouldn't budge. I had the vast majority of all of them filled in before even one of them fell. I'm embarrassed that HAWAIIANSHIRT took so long (33A: Top of a Pacific island chain), but CATE BLANCHETT ... I'm not even sure what movie she won the Oscar for (36A: Only person to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winning actress). I thought she won for "Blue Jasmine"? She played an Oscar-winning actress in that? I never saw it. Whoops, nope, she played Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator," and won Best Supporting Actress for that (she won plain old Best Actress for "Blue Jasmine"). Well, at least I know this trivia for future use now. As for MICHELIN GUIDE, I had considered at least two other kinds of "stars" for the frame of reference (movie, outer space), but neither one was any help (37A: Book of stars?). I didn't get hung up, but I definitely had to labor my way through the middle. And finally the SW was really threatening to sink me for a bit. MIDRASH / MIDROSH??? Couldn't decide, and that vowel is the first letter in ASHMAN, which I didn't know at all. In the end, OSHMAN seemed far less like a name, so "A" won. STOPGO was hard (59A: Congested, in a way). I had STUFFY at first. So I ended up with a good but not great time on this good if not great puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:26)

THEME:"Buzz Cut"— I don't really understand the title, but the theme premise is that voiced "S" (i.e. "Z") sounds at the ends of phrases (most of them plurals) are rewritten as if they are just the regular hissing "S" sounds, which entails all new words and spellings and, if you're lucky, wackiness and hilarity:

Theme answers:

JURY OF YOUR PIERCE (23A: Facebook friends weighing in on the new belly button ring?)
TWO-PIECE IN A POD (44A: L'eggs brand bikini?) (LOL this is gonna need so much explanation to someone who has no idea what the L'eggs egg is, i.e. most people under 40???) ("Though the L'eggs egg became integral to the brand and their marketing and advertising, in 1991 Hanes ceased packaging the hosiery in the hard plastic containers, as the plastic eggs were seen as an example of wastefulness."—wikipedia) (looks like they brought the eggs back for a limited time in 2014 as part of some promotion)
HISS AND HEARSE (70A: Final scene of "Antony and Cleopatra"?) (there was a "hearse" in that play?)
DOWN ON ALL FORCE (96A: Like a confirmed peacenik?)
CAN'T BELIEVE MY ICE (120A: "Our driveway has been incredibly slippery since the storm!"?) (this phrase is very weird without the subject, "I")
TELL ME NO LICE (16D: Parent's fervent prayer to the school nurse?)
WARM AND FUSSY (64D: Like a sick baby?)

Word of the Day: MASER (60D: Atomic clock timekeeper) —

noun
a device using the stimulated emission of radiation by excited atoms to amplify or generate coherent monochromatic electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. (google)

• • •

ILRE *and* ORLE in the same damn grid? To say nothing of all the other klassic krosswordese in this thing: MASSIF, NEY, AMAHL, ALIG, ARTIE, ANYA, TENTER (?), TEENER ... I mean, there's the tell: if you think TEENER is a word, then your frame of reference is a good half-century out of date. Also, if you think L'eggs still come in a plastic egg (i.e. "pod"), which hasn't been true for 28 years, this puzzle will be right up your alley. Otherwise, yikes. There are some more modern things here (E-SPORTS, The BIEB) but mostly this puzzle was *aggressively* dated. Again, we aren't talking about some stray answers—we're talking about a strong, persistent, overall vibe. This puzzle is only for people who have been doing puzzles forever, and particularly for those who cut their teeth in a much earlier, much stodgier era. This puzzle might have been fine in the '80s, but today it feels exclusionary. Only for the cognoscenti, the longtime, inveterate solvers, the Maleskavites among us. I myself am a former Maleskavite. I left the Party after Maleska's death and, after a brief flirtation w/ Shortzianism in the late '90s / early '00s, found myself firmly in the neo-Tausigian camp (if you don't know what that means, then you don't subscribe to the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX), and, honestly, why is that? You should change that.). Seriously, though, ILRE is the worst thing I've ever seen in a grid, ever (well, worst thing that wasn't absolute sexist / racist garbage). And crossing ADLER and a weirdly "?"-clued REHAB, oof and woof and ouch. My printed-out grid is just a lot of angry ink in that section.

It's a piercing, not a PIERCE, so that first themer is rough, but I do like the effort. It's really trying to be clever and current. I actually don't mind the theme that much. I didn't really grok the premise very clearly as I was solving, but in retrospect, it's executed pretty cleanly and consistently, and the resulting themers aren't totally unfunny, as change-a-sound puns often are (that is ... they are, often, unfunny ... and here they aren't ... that is, they are ... funny). I made pretty good time, but then I know ORLE, which will not be true of most solvers. Well, of most younger / newer solvers. Can't much more obscure than heraldic terminology. What's next, GULES? (no, seriously, that's a thing—trust me, I'm a medievalist!). Weirdly, the very very hardest part of the grid for me, the very last part I finished, was the section in and around MASSIF. Biggest problem (besides not really knowing MASSIF) was that I could not, for the life of me, parse "I MIGHT" (45D: "It depends on my schedule"). That stuff about a "schedule" had me thinking the answer would be some much more specific phrase, and when I got "IM-" I thought it was "I'M... something." Didn't trust RIBMEAT, didn't trust GRANNIE (-IE??? not -Y?), and didn't even get HISS AND HEARSE at all. HISS part was all screwed up because of the MASSIF section, and the HEARSE part was all screwed up because what in the world is MASER?!?!?!? (60D: Atomic clock timekeeper). Apparently this is the fourth time it's been in a puzzle in the Rex Parker era (i.e. since '06), and somehow I've never bothered to look it up. So now it's my Word of the Day. You're welcome.

Someone should now do an inversion of this theme, with answers like BRUISE LEE (see 112A: Actor with a famous side kick). What does "Buzz Cut" mean? Nothing is "cut." There's no such thing as a "bus cut." I'm so lost. Oh well, it's not the first time. Hope you enjoyed this more than I did.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:42) (undersized grid, tho) (14x15)

THEME: MULTIPLE CHOICE (58A: Kind of test ... and a hint to a word hidden three times each in 16-, 22-, 38- and 48-Across) — the word is "OR"

Theme answers:

CORPORATE WORLD (16A: What M.B.A.s enter upon graduation)
WORD FOR WORD (22A: Verbatim)
TORONTO RAPTORS (38A: Canadian team in the N.B.A.)
HORROR STORY (48A: Tale that might feature a haunted house)

Word of the Day: PROST (33D: "Cheers!," in Berlin)—

One of the most important Oktoberfest words, prost is German for ‘cheers’ (and is useful outside Oktoberfest contexts, as well!). You will notice that Oktoberfest visitors like having a toast before drinking, a so-called Prosit. Alternatively, you could also say ‘Zum Wohl’ (‘To your health’). ("18 Essential Words for Oktoberfest" at Oxford Dictionaries)

• • •

This isn't a good representation of what a MULTIPLE CHOICE exam is (there are no "OR"s involved) and hiding "OR" doesn't seem like that great a feat (even if you are hiding it 3x) and there are far too many stray "OR"s around the grid. If you wanna put all your eggs or OVULEs or whatever in the "OR" basket then no WORN, no SNORE, no ODOR. If you're gonna do a theme, and especially if you're gonna do it with a meager, emaciated grid, at least do it cleanly. The long Downs are pretty good, but the rest of the fill is quite stale. I was tired of this thing already by the time I hit the north (BEAUT, OER (!), BAA, OUT OF, STENO, ONO, SAO ... it's a lot to take in one gulp). OD ON and ON CD are not good and especially not good in the same grid. NEYO LETO PSST TSAR, ECO x/w ECON ... there's just an accretion of crosswordesey stuff. You're allowed a little, but come on. The only real positive thing I have to say about this thing is that it's oddly, coincidentally timely, in that the central answer, the TORONTO RAPTORS, literally just this past weekend (Saturday, to be exact) advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time ever. So if you wanna read this is a little shout-out, a little low-key tribute to KAWHI-have-I-never-been-in-a-crossword-grid Leonard et al, then cool. I can live with that.

Didn't know ADLER (though I guess I've heard of the planetarium, in retrospect) and really didn't know PROST. Oh good, looks like it's very uncommon—only third time I've seen it in my blogging lifetime, and I've never seen it on a Monday before today (other times: Sat., Wed.). We went 17 years between PROST appearances (2000-17). Let's revisit those halcyon days. Well, maybe not the Bush years, but def. the Obama era—blissfully PROST-free. OD ON crossing LETS DIE is pretty morbid. I tried to make TURBOCHARGE happen before realizing it had too many letters. Slightly wrong kind of OOMPH, I guess. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this more than I did. Better luck (for me) tomorrow!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi, all!

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day and will enjoy this short week! I've officially started my law clerk summer job, and so far my only complaint is that I have to deal with rush hour times on the Metro in DC. Ugh!

Anyway, on to the puzzle!

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BUTT HEADS(64A: Disagree... or a hint to the starts of 17-, 26-, 40- and 49-Across) —Four answers all begin with some synonym for the word "butt."

Theme answers:

BUM AROUND (17A: Wander locally with no plans)
REAR WINDOW (26A: Hitchcock movie with James Stewart and Grace Kelly)
BEHIND THE SCENES (40A: Backstage)
BOTTOM LINE (49A: Final amount)

Word of the Day: DELLA(66A: Street in "Perry Mason")
“Della Street is the fictional secretary of Perry Mason in the long-running series of novels, short stories, films, and radio and television programs featuring the fictional defense attorney created by Erle Stanley Gardner” (Wikipedia)

• • •

So that was a pretty weird-ass puzzle, wasn't it? And, to that effect, what a weird "ass" puzzle. Ha ha. Get it? I thought the theme was fun and surprising, albeit kind of weird. It was certainly different and unexpected. I definitely chuckled when I figured out what the theme was. At first, I thought the puzzle might lead to something with an acting theme, with REAR WINDOW and BEHIND THE SCENES, but that never went anywhere. (Side note: Anyone who hasn't seen "Rear Window" before should go see it ASAP — it's Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly at their absolute best.) It turns out the puzzle was getting a little saucy with a theme of BUTTHEADS, along with DAMNRIGHT (3D: "Hell, yeah!"), which I initially had as "darnright." We usually don't see any curse words in the puzzle.

Overall, I liked the construction. It didn't feel super heavy, and, though I got a bit stumped in some places, the puzzle never felt like a slog. The theme answer all the way across worked well in the middle of the grid and provided some support for those clues I was struggling with.

I did get stuck in the southwest with BEADS (49D: Alternative to a door between rooms) crossing DELLA. I mean, I've seen beads in doorways before, but they're really a '70s thing, and it never crossed my mind that that was what the puzzle was referring to. Especially because I had no idea who DELLA Street was (a character who, while famous in her time, was in a show that went off the air in 1966). So, I lost a lot of time trying to puzzle that crossing out.

In general, the fill was clean — if you don't mind the usual ETTE, ELL, NEO, SSN, ERE, EAU, ARAL, and SPA. I'm against seeing RAE (15A: Singer Carly __ Jepsen) in puzzles now because I feel like I've seen her on overload recently — the Times could learn a couple more current singers. Or something. But I do like her music, so it's nothing personal!

Overall, there were some fun words and themers. I particularly liked BUMAROUND. And, seeing DUNGEON (21A: Basement of a castle, perhaps) in the puzzle was kind of fun (mostly becaue it's medieval, and that just appeals to me). I'm not sure, though, about INTERFACE at 37D: Communicate (with). I at first thought it was kind of cool and just a different word, but I now wish it had been clued differently because, as I've learned from my grammar freak Dad, INTERFACE is actually a noun, not a verb.

Misc:

I liked the clue for LIBRA (52D: Cooperative, balanced type, they say) because I definitely wasn't originally thinking about Zodiac signs, so I found it amusing when I worked it out. I don't put much stock in Zodiac, though, because I'm a Cancer, and Cancers are supposed to be super emotional, and I'm just... not!
I grew up singing the song "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" by Shania TWAIN (9D), so it's fun to see it in the puzzle — though it must've been something to see a 10-year-old singing a song about being a woman. (As I'm writing this, the song is playing in the Bruins-Blues hockey game. Maybe Boston's good taste in music is the reason the Bruins won the game.)
I could eat NUTELLA (27D: Chocolatey spread) by the spoonful. I will again say that NUTELLA is the best thing to put on crepes.
I found the clue for 68A as UNCLE cute because I love the royal family and, like most girls, once dreamed of being a princess. I do feel bad for Prince Louis, who apparently, didn't rate for this puzzle.
Loved the clue/answer for 67A: Basket part grabbed after slam-dunking as RIM. You didn't think I could finish a write-up at this time of year without talking about my Warriors, did you? I can't wait to see some epic dunks from the Warriors where they grab the RIM— I'm just glad we don't have to face Giannis, who might've been the one doing the dunking against the Dubs. (Anywho, go, Warriors!!)
Jesse OWENS (22D) is one of the greatest American athletes of all time and a huge inspiration to me.
I only know HEATH (16A) bars because it's a candy I got at Halloween each year that I'd always threw away.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a happy law clerk

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jules Markey

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:05)

THEME:"Say Say Say (Say)" or "Talk Talk" / "Talk Talk" or ... — theme "?"-clues that seem to be about speaking have answers that are (in regular usage) not at all about speaking (... except the last one ... although I guess the speak in SPEAK VOLUMES is almost always metaphorical so ... OK):

Theme answers:

UTTER RUBBISH (19A: Talk trash?)
STATE MOTTOES (33A: Recite aphorisms?)
EXPRESS LINES (41A: Perform poetry?)
SPEAK VOLUMES (54A: Narrate audiobooks?)

Word of the Day: BENICIO Del Toro (8D: Del Toro of "The Usual Suspects") —

Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967) is a Puerto Rican actor. He won an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of the jaded but morally upright police officer Javier Rodriguez in the film Traffic (2000). Del Toro's performance as ex-con turned religious fanatic in despair, Jack Jordan, in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003) earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as well as a second Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination and a BAFTA Awardsnomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. [...] His noteworthy body of work also includes portrayals of the Collector in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar in Escobar: Paradise Lost, Lawrence Talbot in the 2010 remake of The Wolfman, and codebreaker DJ in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was Medium in just about every way. My time was Medium and my feelings are Medium and fill quality is Medium. SO-SO, stem to stern. The theme was reasonable right up until the end, where you really have to lawyer that last one into agreement. In the other themers, the clue truly repurposes the first word, away from a completely non-talking-related word and toward talking. "Utter" = total. "State" = part of the union. "Express" = fast. "Speak" = ... well, speak, just a metaphorical kind of speak?? The repurposing there is super-weak, and since that's the final themer (assuming you're solving top to bottom, as I did), the theme really ends with a thud, a pfft, a whimper. Obviously the phrase SPEAK VOLUMES has been reimagined by the clue, but it's still a swing and a miss. Or maybe a pop-up, or a weak grounder. Anyway, it's 3/4 solid and 1/4 wonky, which is actually probably above average for a NYT themed puzzle these days. Still not terribly satisfying, but not fundamentally broken, at least, which is something. The fill is also not atrocious. UAR (23A: Bygone Mideast inits.) (United Arab Republic) was the only answer that had me going "oh, wow, ok, are we doing this?" But most everything else was just fine. Totally unexciting / inoffensive fare. I did like seeing BENICIO Del Toro and SOFTPEDAL (the marquee answer of the day, for me).

I did not like the grid shape, in that it was black-square heavy, super-segmented (i.e. fussy), and it's got what I'd call 'useless corners': these completely cut off little 3x4 bits in the NE and SW that require you to go up and get them, but only out of a sense of duty—they connect to nothing, and they contain no revelations (how can they? they're 3x4). These are segments where a constructor will be tempted to Scrabblef*ck with you, in the mistaken belief that a J-tile will make your efforts in these dusty corners feel worthwhile. The good news is, you can't really Scrabblef*ck a 3x4 corner too bad if it's not compromised by the lone answer running into it. Thus, nothing awful about those corners. I just resented having to go into them to pick up a bunch of short stuff I didn't even really want. Highly segmented grids slow me down and add unpleasantness, but sometimes the grid just is what it is and you have to roll with it.

Slow parts for me: figuring out that the "meal" in 5D: Fine meal (FLOUR) was not a repast; figuring out that RUS- did not not not have a fourth letter "H" at 20D: Prepares on short notice (RUSTLES UP); figuring out that 36D: Slider on an abacus (BEAD) was not DISC or BALL; figuring out what the hell could in -OTTOES (!?); figuring out SORE ARM and especially NO LOSS (I was just slow on those). The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:02)

THEME: words that can follow ... words that can follow ... — sigh ... OK, so ... familiar two-word phrase is the clue, only it's presented as [First word ... / second word ...], the idea being that the answer in the grid will have Zero to do with the clue phrase, but will instead be a New two-word phrase (or compound word) made up of a Word That Can Follow The First Word (in a familiar word or phrase) + Word That Can Follow The Second Word (in a familiar word or phrase) ... so essentially four different phrases are involved in every themer, somehow ...

Theme answers:

JACKSON HOLE (17A: Peter ... / Rabbit ...) (Peter Jackson / Rabbit hole)
TIME FLIES (24A: Space ... / Bar ...) (Spacetime / Bar flies)
BEAT BOX (30A: Dead ... / Drop ...) (Deadbeat / Dropbox)
POTHEAD (42A: Jack ... / Cheese ...) (Jackpot / Cheesehead)
POWER PLAY (49A: Fire ... / Screen ...) (Fire power / Screenplay)
PADDLEBOARD (59A: Dog ... / Star ...) (Dogpaddle / Starboard)

Word of the Day: cheesehead (see 42A) —

noun
1.
INFORMAL
a resident of Wisconsin, especially a fan of the Green Bay Packers football team.
2.
INFORMAL
a blockhead; an idiot. (google)

• • •

I find fill in the blank clues, i.e. [Word ___] exasperating, so solving this was double the "fun." I should've spent less time with the themers themselves, and just kept hacking at the crosses until something legible appeared as a themer. This is essentially a 2x "words that can follow" theme, with no actual clues anywhere, and so it's just a lot of rolling possibilities through your mind until one of them "worked." I found it really unpleasant to solve. I can't say that the concept is bad, and I don't think the puzzle is poorly made. I'd just rather never solve this type of theme again. Its cleverness is the kind you have to draw diagrams, or at least slow way down, to appreciate. And even then, I don't know exactly how clever it is. Seems like an awfully boring theme to conceive of, actually. I came up with [Knock ... / Out ...] (DOWNSIDE) pretty quickly, but I wouldn't want to have to do that a bunch more times. Since you can make clues / answers like this forever and ever (theoretically anyway), the themer group feels arbitrary. Solving this felt more like solving a two-star quiz in Games magazine than solving a crossword puzzle. Like one kind of puzzle shoved into crossword form. Not my thing. Though, as I say, not bad. Fill is actually nice in places, AMIRITE!?

You can shove KEN STARR, though. Shove him all the way back through his ill-fated Baylor presidency (mishandling sexual assaults) through the Clinton era back to oblivion. I'm gonna tolerate PACK HEAT only because it's a colorful and slightly old-fashioned phrase I might find in the hardboiled / noir fiction I enjoy. Love PALADIN because it reminded me of being a nerdy D&D-playing middle schooler. "Good" times!

Small words were the most vexing today. Most of the grid, outside the themers, was pretty easy. Cleaned up the NE and SW corners in lightning-fast time. All of my non-theme trouble came from very short answers. First TAX (24D: Duty). Ugh, that one-word clue. Ask me to define "duty" and it's gonna be a while before I remember it has anything to do with taxing. And then PAY, which I had as AGE, and then, even when I had -AY, I couldn't understand. I finished up the grid the first time with HAY / HOTHEAD (!?!?). I clearly had given up on even looking at the words in the theme clue (as "jackhot" is not a word" and HAY is not a [Sensitive figure to ask someone about], I don't think. No idea about HAAS. Misspelled PLAME the first time (PLANE). No idea about WEBER (well, only the dimmest of ideas, from the last time I took Physics, i.e. 28 years ago). No idea about VESTED (?) either. I know the word, but not the technicalities of the stock meaning. So the themers and a few choice small answers slowed me way down, resulting in a slightly above-average, but still pretty average, time. Decent, considering how much I disliked solving the themers, and considering I solved it first thing in the morning.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: No idea (solved on paper, in leisurely fashion; felt normal)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: FREEMIUM (17A: Sort of pricing model with multiple tiers) —

Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering or an application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods. The business model has been in use by the software industry since the 1980s as a licensing scheme. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a sold grid, but it's filled with things that just aren't that interesting to me. It's a super bro'y puzzle that looks and sounds like a dude who watches a lot of sports at his frat house and is totally gonna get a job on Wall Street as a financial ANALYST after graduation, FAM! Gotta get that lettuce (?), son! (see 57D). There's only one woman in all of the answers (and clues!) (DEEDEE), and she's obscure, and she's only there because she provides useful letters (18A: Singer Sharp with the 1962 hit "Mashed Potato Time"). I mean, there's one BROAD, but that hardly counts (see 44A). The cluing just felt off to me too, all over the place. "WHAT'S NEXT?" is a pretty weird thing for someone who is merely "anxious" to ask. That's someone in the middle of a catastrophe, or series of catastrophes. "I SEE" is a good fit for "Gotcha"—I SEE *IT* ... less so. Then there's M.A. DEGREE, which, first of all, doesn't signal the abbr. in the clue (boo), and second of all, is a redundancy. I mean, if you believe that M.A. doesn't need to be indicated by an abbr. signal in the clue because everyone knows what that is, then you also believe that every knows that what that is is a DEGREE, so why is DEGREE there? "I got my M.A." not (probably) "... my M.A. DEGREE." Bleh. Opening with guns at 1- and 9-Across (a metaphor, and then an actual murder) ... bang bang ... feels very This Puzzle (1A: Stick to one's guns / 9A: Mission for a Mafia member). I enjoyed seeing Uncle PHIL and the GOOD DOGGY. Didn't enjoy too much else. Again, this grid is well built. Just not at all for me.

Got SOFT G instantly (for once!) but (off that "T") thought 19A: ___ bar was TIKI ... my god was TEND a let-down. I'm fine being wrong, but then to have the right answer be that weak (as fill-in-the-blanks go), ugh. That was the only serious snag for me today. Definitely didn't know HYDROXYL, but was able to work through it without too much trouble (9D: Chemical group with the formula -OH). I forgot that TYMPANI was spelled with a "Y" so I freaked out briefly when I had TYM- to start that answer, but ... nope, that's how it's spelled, so all's well. BRO-HUG is pretty much the defining entry for this puzzle, in that it feels like the thing the puzzle is most proud of, and it's the very thing that makes me want out. Oh, wow, this article ("Get Over Here, Man: Decoding the Bro-Hug") (written by a woman!) totally gets me today: after rooting the BRO-HUG in the history of African-American resistance to white norms of social decorum, she goes on: "When you see twenty-something investment bankers using it to greet each other at a happy-hour spot, chances are they’re not using it to subvert an oppressive institution; more likely they’ve adopted the bro-hug for its social function."BRO-HUG to SAKE bomb to CFO—that's a career arc right there.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Moon of Saturn named after Greek oceanid / SUN 5-12-19 / Nickname for Thomasina / WW II admiral nicknamed Bull / Three-time Pro Bowler Culpepper / Nevada's largest county by area / Home of Sinbad Island / Early 20th century author who foresaw TV wireless telephones /

Europe's highest volcano / MON 5-13-2019 / Early talk show host Jack / Architect Saarinen / Real-life lawman who lent his name to a 1950s-'60s TV western

Obsessive fan in modern slang / TUE 5-16-19 / Mer contents / Belly in babyspeak / Cereal brand wth weight-loss challenge / Mideast royal name / Skill tested by Zener cards for short

Hindu aphorisms / WED 5-15-19 / Canadian stadium renamed Rogers Centre in 2005

South American landmark whose name means old peak / THU 5-16-19 / One-named singer with "ö" in her name / Not kosher in Jewish law / Superhero with lightning bolt symbol /

Daughter (and granddaughter) of Jocasta / FRI 5-17-19 / John who wrote "Appointment in Samarra" / Photographer Goldin / Mr. Microphone manufacturer

Stadium divertissement / SAT 5-18-19 / Classic opera set in Cyprus / Conflict that saw sieges of Ladysmith Kimberley / Like lion slain in Herclues' first labor

Member of South Asian diaspora / SUN 5-19-19 / Miser's daughter in Moliere's The Miser / Male buddy in slang / Steinbeck novel featuring madam Dora Flood / 1984 Steve Perry hit

Massage intensely / MON 5-20-19 / Girl Scout cookie with geographical name / Much visited site in Jerusalem

Primary outflow of Lake Geneva / TUE 5-21-19 / Automaker with supercharger stations

Surfboard kayak hybrid / WED 5-22-19 / Religion with apostrophe in its name / Redhead on kids tv / Pioneering computer operating system / Ancient land conquered by Caesar

Sweet Rosie of old song / THU 5-23-19 / Game with maximum score of 3,333,360 / Host Allen of TV's Chopped / Gulager of old TV and film / Fictional schnauzer / Animal feared by Winston in 1984

Fictional land named in some real-life international law cases / FRI 5-24-19 / Euphemism for Satan / Inventor of 17th-century calculator / Horse-drawn four-wheeled carriage / Priciest 1952 Topps baseball card / Cold War opponent informally

Tarot card that bears numeral XIII / SAT 5-25-19 / Top of Pacific island chain / City sobriquet for New Haven / Hebrew scripture commentary

Cheers in Berlin / MON 5-27-19 / Desert crossed by ancient Silk Road / Old office worker who took dictation

Japanese comic art / TUE 5-28-19 / Have the wheel / Superbrainy sort / Tuna type

Old Soviet naval base site / WED 5-29-19 / Bygone Mideast inits. / Hoppy quaff for short / Slider on abacus / Marriott competitor / Exemplar of innocence

Big sender of CDs in 1990s / THU 5-30-19 / Outed covert CIA officer Valerie / Knight renowned for heroism chivalry / System used in hematology / Enchilada topper / Arya's father on Game of Thrones / Sport competed in barefoot in brief

Greeting that might follow fist bump / FRI 5-31-19 / Group of close friends in modern slang / Sister company of Peugeot / Chemical group with formula -OH / Singer Sharp with 1962 hit Mashed Potato Time / Sort of pricing model with multiple tiers / Uncle main role on Fresh Prince of Bel Air