Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Ari Richter

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:20)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AD COUNCIL (27D: Group working on P.S.A. campaigns)—

The Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and agencies of the United States government.
The Ad Council partners with advertising agencies which work pro bono to create the public service advertisements on behalf of their campaigns. The organization accepts requests from sponsor institutions for advertising campaigns that focus on particular social issues. To qualify, an issue must be non-partisan (though not necessarily unbiased) and have national relevance.
The Ad Council distributes the advertisements to a network of 33,000media outlets—including broadcast, print, outdoor (i.e. billboards, bus stops), and Internet—which run the ads in donated time and space. Media outlets donate approximately $1.8 billion to Ad Council campaigns annually. If paid for, this amount would make the Ad Council one of the largest advertisers in the country. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi all! It's indie constructor Christopher Adams filling in for Rex while he's in DC for the Indie 500 this weekend. Really wish I could be there and actually see a lot of crossword friends, but I'll have to settle for solving the puzzles at home; as always, they'll be great, and I can't wait to solve them. To those of you solving live tomorrow: may your solves be fast and your grids be clean, and above all, may you have fun.

Anyway, onto this puzzle. I didn't recognize the name when I opened it, and turns out it's a debut. And a low word count debut, at that: only 62 words. The first thing I noticed was the sheer number of cheater squares; there's 14 of them. No doubt that was to aid in filling this; I have no problems with them myself, especially if they result in better fill across (and down) the board. And this puzzle had a lot of good, long answers. Every answer of nine or more letters hit home for me, and especially BLANKET HOG, NONE FOR ME, and MASHED PEAS. (THIS SECOND, maybe, thought it feels like it's missing RIGHT in front of it.) Some shorter goodies, too, including SAD FACEand SCREENER (though I feel that's more the actual physical copy of the film and not the showing itself, but YMMV).

That said, as good as the long fill was, the shorter stuff wasn't as good as I'd hoped, given all the cheater squares. Don't get me wrong; I liked the puzzle, and thought it was reasonably clean, all things considered. But a few too many ONELS, ILE, ESIGN, RETOOK, AEGIS, TFAL, SOG, SIMONES, etc for me to love it. Not that any of these are outright awful, but in toto it sours slightly, especially since I have such a high personal standard for fill. I'm sure many solvers won't bat an eye at this. And again, I liked the puzzle, but I did have slightly higher hopes. Still, a very solid debut.

As for solving, the quick time is, by and large, the result of the clues seeming way too easy for a Saturday puzzle. Of course, it always helps when 1-Across ("Baseball great who was the subject of the 2006 best seller "Game of Shadows") is a gimme (at least for this sports fan). So was ESIGN, with an incredibly straightforward clue (Authorize, as a digital contract). With the entire top row in place, most of the downs offered no resistance whatsoever. Some, like ONELS, are just things that show up all the time. Others, like EXCONS, DRONE, and SERGES, had direct clues that don't try to trip the solver up. And some, like SMOKE (Go to pot?) tried to be tricky, but I've seen so many clues along those lines that it didn't even register as clever.

Two clues that I did think was rather clever were 36-Across (Hot wheels?) and 40-Across (They're spotted at fire stations) for STOLEN CARS and DALMATIANS, respectively. (I might be slightly biased on the first; I've used "Grand theft auto?" for GETAWAY CAR myself, but it's so nice that I'd like it anyway.) Otherwise, not a lot of flash in the clues; as noted, most were straightforward.

33D: Locale of London's Leicester Square (WEST END)

Olio:

(Winner of the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in N.F.L. history (16 total points)) PATRIOT — A gimme for me; I flew to Boston specifically to watch both The Replacements and this Super Bowl with a bunch of Boston-area friends who, if anything, were rooting against the Patriots while drinking Harpoon Dunkin' Coffee Porter. Fun times; pretty sure there were more people there wearing Shane Falco jerseys than Tom Brady jerseys.
(Disturbed) DERANGED — This one was pretty hard for me; it's a straight synonym, but if you asked me to define DERANGED for you, I'm pretty sure I'd start talking about permutations before getting to the actual definition.
(Baseball great who was the subject of the 2006 best seller "Game of Shadows") BONDS — The full title is Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports; not to be confused with the Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr., although I'd watch the hell out of that crossover.
(Annoying bedmate) BLANKET HOG — It me. (¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:25)

THEME: "Stoners' Film Festival" — phrases containing both words that can be interpreted as pot-related and words that can be interpreted as movie-related are hilariously interpreted as such

Theme answers:

PUFF PIECES (23A: Stoner movies?)
POT SHOTS (30A: Components of stoner movies?)
HIGH DRAMA (43A: Tension in a stoner movie?)
SMOKE BOMB (46A: Stoner movie that flops at the box office?)
JOINT RESOLUTION (62A: Ending of a stoner movie?)
ROLLING IN / THE AISLES (82A / 84A: Like an audience during a stoner movie?)
BAKED HAM (98A: Bad actor in a stoner movie?)
DIRECT HITS (107A: Be behind the camera for a blockbuster stoner movie?)

Word of the Day: NOSRAT (Samin ___, best-selling cookbook author) —

Samin Nosrat (Persian: ثمین نصرت‎, /səˈmin ˈnʌsrɑːt/, born November 7, 1979) is an American chef and food writer. She is a regular food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and has a Netflix docu-series based on her cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

...

Nosrat's 2017 cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, illustrated by Wendy McNaughton and including a foreword by Michael Pollan, was named "Food Book of the Year" by The Times of London and was a New York Times best seller. The cookbook also won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook, was named Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and won the 2018 IACP Julia Child First Book Award.

A Netflix docu-series based on the cookbook, also called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, was released on October 11, 2018, with each of the four episodes based around one of the four elements of cooking set out in the title. In episode 1, Nosrat goes to Italy to talk about the use of fat in cooking; in episode 2, Japan for salt; in episode 3, Mexico for acid; and in episode 4, returns to the United States, cooking at Chez Panisse as well as with her own mother, to discuss heat. The show was described by The Washington Post as "unlike any other food show on TV." (Wikipedia)

• • •

It's me again, indie constructor Christopher Adams filling in for Rex while he's in DC for the Indie 500 this weekend. I've spent the following along on Twitter (and feeling the #fomo) and wishing I could've seen everybody there today. Among the many excellent people there include tournament organizer Erik Agard, whose byline I really wish I saw more of. I was very excited to see his name on this puzzle, though honestly it didn't need it—his voice, personality, and style shine through this puzzle so much that I would have very little doubt, as a solver, identifying him as the constructor if I didn't know that ahead of time.

And, as expected, I loved this puzzle; it was, as the kids might say these days, MONDO DOPE(109A: Very, in slang / 110A: Hella cool). The theme is straightforward, but very well done; the title and the first theme answer perfectly give away the idea, and I had fun finding each theme answer as I made my way through the puzzle. It usually didn't take more than a letter or two to figure them out, but I genuinely enjoyed each of them.

The rest of the puzzle, I thought, was pretty easy too; the only difficulties, if I can even use that word, were things like writing AXES for AXED (25A: Fired), messing up my French (COTE for CITE at 27A: Île de la ___), or guessing the wrong AP class (CALC instead of CHEM for 88D: Tough H.S. science class). For that last one, in my defense, I'm a huge math person, and I'd just filled in STEM for 114A: Big acronym in education.

TARO is the only acceptable Bubble tea flavor, don't @ me

Anyway, even with some errors, and a few typos on top of that, this puzzle wasn't much of a challenge. I'd like to specifically note that the fill on this is squeaky clean, and between that and the clues, not a single letter is in doubt. This is a well-constructed puzzle, and it is what more puzzles should be (or, at least, aspire to be). I don't even care that the theme type isn't some boundary-pushing stunt or idea. It's a standard idea, but it's tried and true, and in the hands of a master craftsman, it works beautifully.

And on top of that, the fill absolutely sings. CODESWITCH, FLOOR MODEL, KEG STANDS, OFF THE GRID, LOUISVILLE, MOTOR CITY, and even AMATEURISH would all be assets in a themeless; here, where there's not as many long answer slots to go around (and more constraints, due to the theme), it's amazing that these are all great. Fun, new short fill too: the aforementioned NOSRAT, MONDO, andAP CHEM, but also CHICANA, I DID NOT, and RAINN (especially as clued).

Olio:

ELIS (Ancient Greek land that hosted the Olympics) was a complete unknown as clued, even though this is, more or less, the clue used three of the last six times ELIS has been in the NYT. At least crossings were fair. But definitely felt out of place, difficulty-wise. (See also CITE, a valid English word clued otherwise.)
Film heroine who says "Somebody has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy"is a great quote for LEIA, who will be dearly missed in the upcoming The Rise of Skywalker; also, interesting to have this intersecting LANDO without a cross-reference, or at least an acknowledgement in the clues.
Part of V.S.O.P. is OLD; it stands for Very Superior Old Pale.

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWord

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: GOOD DOG— Theme answers were compound words or two-word answers ending in a common obedience command for dogs.

Theme answers:

MAINSTAY (16A: * Chief source of support)
TAR HEEL (22A: * Chapel Hill athlete)
GOOD DOG (37A: Praise after the proper response to the end of the answer to each starred clue)
HOW COME (50A: * "Why?")
HOUSESIT (59A: * Tend an absent individual's property)
FAIR SHAKE (10D: * Equitable treatment)

(Wikipedia)

GOOSE DOWN (32D: * Soft bedding material)

Word of the Day: CLOVIS (58A: First king of the Franks [A.D. 481]) —

Clovis (Latin: Chlodovechus; reconstructed Frankish: *Hlōdowig;^[1]c. 466 – 27 November 511)^[2] was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the form of leadership from a group of royal chieftains to rule by a single king and ensuring that the kingship was passed down to his heirs.^[3] He is considered to have been the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries.

• • •

Wow, it's my first post-grad Annabel Monday. The first of many, I hope, but like....weird. I'm so used to writing these frantically in between midterm papers. Graduation was great, though! Anita Hill was our guest speaker, and she did an amazing job. And then we all had to go pack up our dorm rooms so they could kick us out by noon the next day, so it kind of hasn't really hit me yet. Anyway, I'm living in Connecticut, with the same summer job as I had last summer. I'm really excited to be back, but after the summer ends, I dunno what my plans are. I guess that's how it is sometimes.

Anyway the puzzle! Honestly a little easy for me, but that's how Mondays should be: they're not for me or Rex or whoever, they're for newcomers. Hard clues were made up for by kind crosses for the most part, not too many celebs, and you have to love any puzzle that uses HOOEY, and clues it with "poppycock" for good measure. Those are just some good solid words. Rex might have a gripe with NEE and IDEE missing l'accent aigu but honestly I think it's fine. A little bit of the usual Monday overused three/four letter words with ERAS and IDO but it could be (and usually is) way worse. Also, it feels like it's been too long since I've reviewed a puzzle that hasn't been dripping baseball!

The theme hit me riiiiight in my soft spot for dogs. I actually had GOOD BOY for 37A, because I feel like I've heard "who's a good boy?!?!?!" way more often than I've heard GOOD DOG. But GOOD DOG is nice too; more gender neutral. Again, this was a perfect Monday theme for me: it was simple and the puzzle could be solved without it, but it was also easy to figure out, and it helped me figure out other clues! It's the perfect way to ease new solvers into crosswords. Like steps up to a bed for old dogs that have hip problems so they can ease themselves into bed and totally take up all the space and maybe also put their heads on your pillow, and like, you could try to take your pillow back but they look at you with those big ole eyes and okay fine Juliet I'll sleep on the corner of the bed with no pillow.

Try to say no to that face, I dare you

Bullets:

ROGER (8D: Radio's "got it")— I was a driver for the campus escort van (mostly driving people who couldn't walk across campus for medical reasons, as well as making sure people got home safely at night) and the only bad part of the job was that we didn't say "Roger" over the radio. We said "received," which is way more boring.
SYNC (65A: Harmonious, after "in")— More like after 'N, am I right?

POL (56A: One running for office, informally)— This is a new one to me. Do people really use "pol" as shorthand for "politician"?

ELLE (55D: Her: Fr.)— Speaking of postgrad plans...

Signed, Annabel Thompson, Wellesley College Alumna(!!!!!!!!) (Now accepting job offers.)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)

THEME: CONS (68A: Disadvantages found in this puzzle's three longest Across answers ...) and PROS (69A: ... and advantages found in them) — two-word phrases where first word starts "CON-" and second word starts "PRO-"

Theme answers:

CONSUMER PROFILE (20A: Need for targeted advertising)
CONTENT PROVIDER (39A: Netflix or YouTube)
CONCLUSIVE PROOF (55A: It settles a case)

Word of the Day: SANSA (4D: Eldest Stark daughter on "Game of Thrones") —

Sansa Stark is a fictional character created by American author George R. R. Martin. She is a prominent character in Martin's award-winning A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Introduced in A Game of Thrones (1996), Sansa is the elder daughter and second child of Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Lady Catelyn Stark. She subsequently appeared in the following three novels: A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), and A Feast for Crows (2005). While absent from the fifth novel A Dance with Dragons, as the books are separated geographically, Sansa is confirmed to return in the forthcoming next book in the series, The Winds of Winter.
In HBO's adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones, Sansa is portrayed by English actress Sophie Turner. The character has received critical acclaim, including praise as the 4th greatest character in the series by Rolling Stone.^[4] She and the rest of the cast were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. (wikipedia)

• • •

The themers are kinda boring and the revealer is backward. Those are the blunt facts of the puzzle. Sometimes wordplay is not enough to overcome certain hard truths, and I'd say this is one of those times. There's no doubt that the theme has something going—all 15s, all neatly CON + PRO, all solid phrases. Didn't like the clue on CONCLUSIVE PROOF (*does* it always "settle a case"???), but that's the editor's fault, in the end, so I'm not too mad about that. Still, neatness and consistency notwithstanding, this was not entertaining, themewise, and the revealer is gratingly backward. The phrase is "pros and cons." Coming in with CONS and PROS is maybe supposed to be cute, but it plays like a big miss. Long Downs somewhat compensated for the dreariness of the themers. Otherwise, the fill was mostly just OK. Lots of short / crosswordy stuff, including the horrible kind where you have to guess at what the answer will be, or just wait for crosses to tell you, i.e. symphony keys (A MAJ) and Morse Code (DAH).

I stopped reading "Game of Thrones" because it just wasn't interesting. My wife stopped reading because it was so relentlessly rape-y. We tried to watch the TV show and never made it past the pilot. So this whole recent end-of-series *phenomenon* has must missed me. I tried to mute every "GOT" term on Twitter because the world just wouldn't shut up about it, but it was becoming a part-time job (so many names!), so I gave up and just scrolled past it all. This is all to say that even if I watched "GOT," I would think SANSA, in that position (i.e. a not-hard-to-fill position), on a Tuesday, is garbage. I get that the constructor is trying to be hip and current, but currency is the Only thing recommending that name. Imagine if you saw that name but instead of the "4th greatest character on 'Game of Thrones'" (per Rolling Stone), it was the "fourth greatest character on 'The A-Team' (or 'Moonlighting' or 'Gunsmoke')." It's the uninferrable name of a secondary character: perfect if you really need it for your demanding Saturday grid (and the crosses are fair), but here, on Tuesday, where you definitely do not need it (you can easily refill that NW corner much more cleanly, and lose LAIC in the process), not so good. Don't confuse "hipness" with "goodness." Pull out proper nouns like that only when necessary. SANKA is better fill, frankly. Here's a not scintillating but Very clean NW corner that I concocted in like a minute:

You could go NARC / NODS too. You could also rewrite the whole corner tons of other ways. The point is, in tiny corners, cleanness + interesting clues wins every time. Good clues can make even ordinary fill fun, and common terms have tons of cluing possibilities, whereas SANSA ... does not.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Rich Proulx

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:05) (though I'm seeing people say it's both very easy and very hard, so who knows?)

THEME: SEVEN WONDERS (49A: Monuments of classical antiquity ... or what literally is missing from this puzzle) — seven answers need "WONDER" before or after them to make (full) sense:

Theme answers:

BREAD
ONE-HIT
DRUG
BRA
STEVIE
WOMAN
LAND (32D: Domain of the Queen of Hearts)

Word of the Day:"NEVER LET ME GO" (19A: 2005 dystopian novel adapted into a 2010 film) —

Never Let Me Go is a 2005 dystopian science fiction novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize (an award Ishiguro had previously won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day), for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award and for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine named it the best novel of 2005 and included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.^[1] It also received an ALA Alex Award in 2006. A film adaptation directed by Mark Romanek was released in 2010; a Japanese television drama aired in 2016. (wikipedia)

• • •

Bizarre theme execution here. The NW is essentially a (half-way decent!) themeless puzzle: lots of white space, splashy marquee answer, Totally Devoid Of Theme. Then you go tripping through the rest of the grid, encountering theme material on the NE-to-SW axis, though probably not even knowing you're encountering some of it, as stuff like BRA and DRUG went in for me without my knowing they were theme material. The "WONDER"s sometimes come before the answer, sometimes after. Maybe you think there's a pattern, but beyond symmetry, there really isn't. Then the revealer comes, and the wording of the clue is weird: they are the "SEVEN WONDERS *Of The Ancient World*" in every formulation I've ever heard. Why not just say "Monuments of the ancient world" in your clue? (clue isn't bad, just odd, for this reason). And there you are. The "Seven" part, by the time you get it to it, is less big revelation and more "oh, is that how many there are? I wasn't really paying attention." There's an added problem if you decide to overthink the theme, which I saw expressed by Evan Birnholz (Washington Post xword writer/editor) on Twitter: if you know that the SEVEN WONDERS have largely disappeared, then you are apt to wonder (!) if there's some theme connection between the actual "wonders" being gone and the word "WONDER" being gone seven times in this grid ... the problem with that idea being that one of the original SEVEN WONDERS still exists (the Great Pyramid of Giza). So ... yeah. Frustrating to see an *almost* next-level theme idea not quite come into focus. Thankfully, I was not thinking as deeply as Evan.

Those giant corners are so weird for a mid-week themed puzzles. I'm not mad, as they are pretty well filled, but the puzzle definitely took a quality dip once I moved from that NW corner into the rest of the grid. Themes are just Hard to do perfectly, and if they're not done perfectly, they mostly just feel like a burden on the fill (resulting in ASYLA and DROITS and KOR AGIN UTE OISE and what not). Giant corners are pretty E-R-S-T heavy, but they came out OK.

DADAART feels painfully redundant (YEW TREES slightly less so). The second half of OVERFILL held me up pretty bad, for some reason. Seemed like those four letters could go anywhere (16A: Exceed the capacity of). I lucked out with PELEG, having seen it just this past weekend at the tournament (I've read "Moby-Dick" and would've gotten it eventually, but it was nice to have PELEG fresh on my mind). SLOW JAM is great. This puzzle feels like a good themeless that got infected by Dutch Theme Disease (that's a play on "Dutch elm disease," not a slur against the Dutch). The NRA remains a terrorist org. that profits from the blood of children (40A: Range org.) and you should keep them the hell out of your grids. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Fred Piscop

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:56)

THEME: D-DAY (59D: Its beaches begin five answers in this puzzle) — yep, those are the five beaches of D-DAY:

Theme answers:

OMAHA STEAKS (17A: Direct-to-customer beef retailer)
GOLD ORE (40A: Calaverite or sylvanite)
SWORD DANCER (66A: Performer with a weapon)
JUNO PROBE (11D: NASA spacecraft orbiting Jupiter)
UTAH STATE (36D: The Aggies of the N.C.A.A.)

Word of the Day: LEE Krasner (42D: Abstract Expressionist Krasner) —

Lenore "Lee" Krasner (October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage, who was married to Jackson Pollock. This somewhat overshadowed her contribution at the time, though there was much cross-pollination between their two styles. Krasner’s training, influenced by George Bridgman and Hans Hofmann, was the more formalized, especially in the depiction of human anatomy, and this enriched Pollock’s more intuitive and unstructured output.
Krasner is now seen as a key transitional figure within abstraction, who connected early-20th-century art with the new ideas of postwar America, and her work fetches high prices at auction. She is one of the few female artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess I don't have much to say about this. It's a fairly staid first-words-type theme. I don't know why it feels weird to commemorate such a bloody day with wordplay, but it does. Mostly I'm disappointed that I didn't get a proper Thursday puzzle. I mean, congrats on putting the D-DAY puzzle on actual D-DAY, but boo for bumping the tricksy / ambitious puzzle I've come to expect on Thursday. Best themed day of the week and poof, gone, not here. All so that we can trudge solemnly through a pedestrian theme with theme answers that feel mostly boring (GOLD ... ORE? UTAH ... STATE!? That's the best you can do with those!?!?!). SWORD DANCER is just ... what is that, actually? Well, in addition to being Horse of the Year in 1959, looks like it's ... a semi-militaristic phenomenon in other parts of the world that I know next to nothing about (Here's a not-terribly-helpful wikipedia page about it). JUNO PROBE is a cool and somewhat timely answer (it reached Jupiter just 3 years ago). I liked that, and the cluing of LEE as the artist Krasnick, and not a ton else.

It was all over pretty quickly, though the clues on BIT and BETS held me up a bit (!) in the east (I think of "memory units" as BYTES and I thought agreeing to "make things interesting" was maybe BIDding (not BETting). SE was hardest part for me, largely because of the DANCER part of SWORD DANCER, but also because the clues down there were often toughly vague (see clues on EVENT, CAST, TESTS, for example). Also took a while to get SHEDDER (25D: Labrador retriever or Alaskan malamute, notably) (I have a chocolate labrador retriever, and shedding isn't really an issue most of the time, so I can't relate to this clue), and the PISMO clue was hard (and I've been to PISMO Beach) (53D: ___ clam (mollusk found off the coast of California)). That's all, folks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium (5:51)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Earl "FATHA" Hines (5A: Nickname in early jazz piano) —

Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one major source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".
The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (a member of Hines's big band, along with Charlie Parker) wrote, "The piano is the basis of modern harmony. This little guy came out of Chicago, Earl Hines. He changed the style of the piano. You can find the roots of Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, all the guys who came after that. If it hadn't been for Earl Hines blazing the path for the next generation to come, it's no telling where or how they would be playing now. There were individual variations but the style of ... the modern piano came from Earl Hines."
The pianist Lennie Tristano said, "Earl Hines is the only one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone." Horace Silver said, "He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist". Erroll Garner said, "When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines".
Count Basie said that Hines was "the greatest piano player in the world". (wikipedia)

• • •

Very nice Friday grid, for the most part. Lots of colloquialisms, and slang, so it felt very fresh. I'm on record as despising the term ADULTING, but it's a word in the world and I am learning to coexist with it (though I'll neeeeevvvvvver use it). The cluing was off my wavelength much of the time. "ARE YOU GOOD?" in particular felt strangely clued "Is there anything else I can help with?" sounds like something a sales clerk would say to a customer, whereas "ARE YOU GOOD?" decidedly does not. Mostly, though, the clues didn't seem wrong; I just struggled (a bit) to pick up their meaning. Also there was a bunch of trivia I didn't know, like Einstein's wife's name (ELSA) and the Lone Ranger's real ("real") last name (REID). I always confuse Buck OWENS and Buck O'NEIL and did again today. I felt slightly guilty about getting CORY so easily—I really was too old for that show, but that didn't keep me from watching it. A lot. Man I was depressed in grad school. Any way... thank you for not making me spell TOPENGA (TOPANGA!?)

The one huge, obvious, glaring, how-did-you-not-fix-this flaw with this puzzle—an objectively bad spot—is the FATHA / TOLTEC crossing. I have that "T" circled and a giant "YIKES" written next to it on my puzzle print-out. Predictably (I mean, Very Predictably) the first Twitter responses to this puzzle overwhelmingly pointed to this cross as a problem. The fact that I have heard of TOLTEC, and knew FATHA from earlier puzzle failures, doesn't make me feel any more accepting of this cross. Proper nouns are very dangerous, and when you get complacent with them, you create areas where a good chunk of the solving population is going to have to guess. In short, this cross is a total Natick—two not-extremely well-known proper nouns crossing at a non-inferrable letter. Honestly, for the constructor, for the editors, that cross should be glowing neon. It needs fixing. It's a blot on an otherwise good grid. It means that many solver will remember only one thing about this puzzle. Bound to leave a bad taste in solvers' mouths. Not worth it.

I am lucky that the long Downs in the NE (DINE AND DASH, ADULTING) were gimmes, because that section was hard for me otherwise. Couldn't convince myself that ECUMENISM was as word (I know the word "ecumenical," but ... not this weird -ism), and I didn't understand the clue for LEDGES until I typed in the "S" (my last letter in the grid). If I wasn't so annoyed by the FATHATOLTEC Natick, I'd've had a lot more to say about the ridiculousness that is the "word"NAPERY (47D: Table linens). Who says that? Come on. "Table linens" are table linens. NAPERY sounds like KNAVERY and JAPERY's annoying little cousin. It sounds like hijinks that people get up to specifically and solely in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. It is, in short, a hella dumb word and should go back to the obscure place it whence it came. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:48)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SULU Sea (33D: ___ Sea, body of water between Borneo and the Philippines) —

The Sulu Sea (Tausug: Dagat sin Sūg; Chavacano: Mar de Sulu; Cebuano: Dagat sa Sulu; Hiligaynon: Dagat sang Sulu; Karay-a: Dagat kang Sulu; Cuyonon: Dagat i'ang Sulu; Malay: Laut Sulu) is a body of water in the southwestern area of the Philippines, separated from the South China Sea in the northwest by Palawan and from the Celebes Sea in the southeast by the Sulu Archipelago. Borneo is found to the southwest and Visayas to the northeast. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solid, if somewhat tepid, and very easy. The long stuff didn't shine as much as I'd like, and there's some glaring bits of crosswordese like INRI and ADEN and EELPOT (not fond of ODE over ODED, either), but in the main the puzzle holds up well, and it's hard not to like an extremely crushable Saturday puzzle. Yesterday's puzzle was dicier in the short stuff, but much better in the long stuff, and so I liked it slightly more. But yesterday had that terrible, almost disqualifying TOLTEC / FATHA cross, and it had NAPERY ... nothing that bad or wacko here. This one was certainly smoother, but more ho-hum. It's all such a tricky balancing act. The hardest parts for me today were the last four letters of DEVELOPMENT HELL (7D: Long gestation for a film, informally) (I had DEAL, and the "E" and "L" were correct, so the error stuck), and then the NERF / ERAS crossing. NERF War is not a term I know (or, now, like ... at all). NERF War is a nothing burger to me, and also it is like "nothing burger" in that I hate it as a term. Anyway, that cross was rough for me. Aside from some struggling to get ahold of the SW corner, I didn't struggle much anywhere else.

Wrote in CAREE- at 3D: Proceed wildly (CAREEN) but then pulled up short because CAREEN and CAREER both fit the clue.

m-w.com

Crosswordese you should know: INRI, ADEN, EELPOT (the entire vocabulary of eeldom, really), URAL (esp. that "Risk territory" bit)
Proper noun watch: NOLTE, MITZI, PEALE, ATWOOD, SHREK, NOLTE, DAMON ... and yeah, even PEALE, knew 'em all. Was gonna say "Why go with N.V. PEALE (45D: Norman Vincent ___, best-selling motivational writer) over the far more famous and current Jordan?" but Jordan is PEELE, not PEALE. Clue on SULU was the one proper noun clue that threw me. REILLY seems like the hardest name in the grid (41D: Ignatius J. ___, protagonist in "A Confederacy of Dunces"), but if you've read the novel (as I did, long ago) that name's a gimme. Overall, the names were handled well. No bad crosses.
Tricky clues:

25A: Sleep still? (CEL)—because a still pic of Sleepy (from "Snow White") would be an animation CEL
11D: Local leader (UNION REP)—because "local" is a noun here meaning "local branch of a trade union"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Seth A. Abel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:41)

THEME:"Don't Quote Me"— Famous quotes that were never actually said, and the famous characters who didn't actually say them:

Theme answers:

WICKED WITCH (58A) / "FLY, MY PRETTIES, FLY!" (23A: Line never said by 58-Across)
CAPTAIN KIRK (83A) / "BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY!") (36A: Line never said by 83-Across)
EARL OF GREYSTOKE (17D) / "ME TARZAN, YOU JANE!" (44D: Line never said by 17-Down)
SERGEANT FRIDAY (99A) / "JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM" (121A: Line never said by 99-Across)

Word of the Day: TTY (122D: Communication syst. for the deaf) —

A teleprinter (teletypewriter, Teletype or TTY) is an electromechanicaldevice that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initially they were used in telegraphy, which developed in the late 1830s and 1840s as the first use of electrical engineering. The machines were adapted to provide a user interface to early mainframe computers and minicomputers, sending typed data to the computer and printing the response. Some models could also be used to create punched tape for data storage (either from typed input or from data received from a remote source) and to read back such tape for local printing or transmission. [...] Teleprinters have largely been replaced by fully electronic computer terminals which typically have a computer monitor instead of a printer (though the term "TTY" is still occasionally used to refer to them, such as in Unix systems). Teleprinters are still widely used in the aviation industry (see AFTN and airline teletype system), and variations called Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDDs) are used by the hearing impaired for typed communications over ordinary telephone lines. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was hard to watch. Not hard to do, but hard to watch unfold. Why hard? Well, the theme is actually interesting, in my opinion: a fortuitous coming together of concept and answer lengths (i.e. it's amazing that these non-quotes and their non-sayers can be arranged in a neat symmetrical fashion. There's probably a website somewhere that lists "famous quotes that never actually happened," and then the constructor fiddled around with names and quotes until he noticed that he could get symmetry to work out with these four (here's a list of such quotations that has two of today's examples on it) (there are dozens more). So it's a short, random list culled from a website list, but it's cute, and fun, and informative, and a good reminder that even in the internet age, with so much info at your tips, we all go around in various states of delusion and misapprehension all of the time. I enjoyed remembering (or misremebering) the quotes. Fine. No great shakes, but good enough, esp. on a Sunday. But ... wow, the fill on this one is extremely dreadful. Like, regular Dreadful looks at this grid and thinks "Hey, maybe I don't look so bad."

ABLUR AJAM AHUM. ITY TTY. Plural GEDS and SOYS and PSHAWS (!??). OPA! PINOAK (!?!?!?). SOIN! ROXANE IN A CAN!!!!! (actually, the ROXANE part of that is fine, I just wanted to say 'ROXANE IN A CAN'). I finished up this puzzle by doing the Downs along the bottom, roughly from west to east, and it was like being repeatedly punched, with the near-knockout / ragequit / "Uncle!" blow coming at MTST, which I am pronouncing muttsutt! I can't say I haven't seen muttsutt before, because I have, but it is So Bad. Like, a partial *and* an abbr. combining for exponential terribleness growth. All over, everywhere you turn, this thing is ugly in the fill department. IDIGIT / STOPSIT / ATEITUP ... seriously though, stop "IT."

The puzzle has a couple more big problems on its hands, both of which are causing distraction / annoyance / consternation among solvers, and both of which could've been easily avoided. Let's start with the clue on DIMITRI (18D: Anastasia's love in Disney's "Anastasia"). You might have no idea there's anything problematic or controversial about that clue, but if so, then you are not half the animation nerd that many early solvers of this puzzle appear to be:

It was not a Disney release, but Disney owns it now. The clue is defensible only in a strictly legal sense. When "Anastasia" became a big deal, i.e when it was released, it was decidedly not Disney. You wanna know how this confusion could've been avoided? It's pretty complicated, but try to follow along: drop "Disney" from the clue. The. End. Or just call it "the 1997 animated film 'Anastasia'." No need to bring Disney in and muck up the timeline and get people confused and riled etc. Unless Disney's paying you for product placement, in which case, knock yourselves out, I guess. The next avoidable problem, more serious, and slightly (but not much) harder to work around, is Why Is A Disgraced, Child Sexual Abuse-Enabling Football Coach In My Grid!?!?

PATERNO, yuck (94D: Former Penn State football coach). No. They took down his damn statue on the Penn State campus, you'd think the least the crossword could do is put his name on the No Fly list (the No Fill list?). Here is Washington Post editor Evan Birnholz's quick workaround in that corner:

Got rid of NOES and MRAZ and DEJA too, so it's better in every way. Amazing what a little elbow grease can do when you actually care about the quality and overall vibe of your puzzle product. Okay, I'm done for today. TTY Later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday) (3:28)

THEME: PURSE (56D: Where the endings of 17-, 33-, 43- and 63-Across are often found) — things found in a PURSE, just like it says:

Theme answers:

DRAMATIC LICENSE (17A: Not strict adherence to what really happened, say)
SHIFT CHANGE (33A: When a fresh factory crew arrives)
FLORIDA KEYS (43A: Archipelago forming the southernmost part of the continental U.S.)
SAN DIEGO CHARGER (63A: Member of an N.F.L. team transplanted to Los Angeles in 2017)

Word of the Day: SLUE (33D: Swivel around) —

m-w.com

• • •

I'm a bit tired and I've had a drink, but even so, I don't think that accounts for how slow I was today. Just couldn't move through the grid easily at all. Not hard, but choppy and odd, w/ alt spellings like SLUE and weird partials like AGOAT and insane parsings like THE space O, plus a very segmented grid and no answers longer than seven letters outside the themers. Not a lot of fun to move through; just sloggy. The theme was OK. One of those "last words"-type themes you see all the time, with nothing special to recommend it, i.e. no clever revealer, no real wordplay ... nothing. Also, it's a pretty arbitrary assortment of PURSE things. They're fine, they're certainly PURSE items, but "change" strikes me as odd (ROSANNE CASH might've been a better answer there, in that it's a broader, more inclusive term—seems like carrying around "change" (like, the metal kind, which I assume is what was meant) is probably increasingly rare. If this were "Family Feud" and we were doing "Things Found In a PURSE" I have to imagine the most popular answers list would look a little different, and might include, among other things: wallet, credit cards, lipstick, lip gloss, tampons, snacks, phone... I dunno. All I know is this theme has me imagining all the things it left out. The premise of a PURSE containing four items is a bit strange. Also, how long ago as this puzzle written? SAN DIEGO CHARGER has been dated for a while now.

I was slow on the uptake with some of the longer answers. Getting the second half on the first two did not come easily. Brain: "DRAMATIC ... IRONY!? No? Sorry, I'm out of ideas." I got the second halves of the last two themers first, and that somehow made solving them easier, which strikes me as unusual, or unexpected. Often backing into answers makes them harder to pick up, but FLORIDA KEYS and SAN DIEGO CHARGER came easily off the back ends. Sticking points: A GOAT (never picked it up, all crosses), ANYHOW (had ANYWAY) (29A: "Be that as it may ..."), SHAPE (16A: Many a New Year's resolution prescribes getting into it) (ugh, the wordiness), ECLAT (9A: Flashy effect) (I think of this more as a "splash"or "hurrah" or something), THE O (28D: Letter you don't pronounce in "jeopardy" and "leopard") (my kingdom for [Cubs GM Epstein] or [Huxtable son]), and, most dire of all, ROLE (49A: Auditioner's goal), which I has as SALE because I read the clue as [Auctioneer's goal]. SALE then led me to my best wrong answer of the day: CAT SHOW (45D: Annual Westminster event). Me: "Really, they do cats too??" No. No they don't, although it looks like cats are now included as part of the DOG SHOW now, what the hell? The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: wide variation: Medium-Challenging (4:14) for me, but it's very early and I've literally never seen any version of the movie in question. Possibly easier for you.

THEME: THE LION KING (23D: Discney movie released in June 1994)— roughly 25th anniversary of this movie's release. A mid-grid CIRCLE OF LIFE (i.e. L, I, F, E, arranged in a kind of circular pattern) gives the puzzle added thematic interest :

Other theme answers:

"HAKUNA MATATA" (56A: Song from 23-Down)
NO WORRIES (16A: 56-Across, roughly translated)
PRIDE ROCK (61A: 23-Down setting)
JULIE TAYMOR (10D: Director of 23-Down on Broadway)
NALA (1A: Simba's mate in 23-Down)
SCAR (70A: 23-Down villain)

Word of the Day: LEONA Lewis (37D: British singer Lewis with the 2008 #1 album spirit) —

Leona Louise Lewis (born 3 April 1985) is a British singer, songwriter, actress, model and activist. She was born and raised in the London Borough of Islington in London, where she attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. Lewis achieved national recognition when she won the third series of The X Factor in 2006, winning a £1 million recording contract with Simon Cowell's record label, Syco Music. Her winner's single, a cover of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", peaked at number one for four weeks on the UK Singles Chart and it broke a world record for reaching 50,000 digital downloads within 30 minutes. In February 2007, Lewis signed a five-album contract in the United States with Clive Davis's record label, J Records.
Lewis's success continued with the release of her debut album, Spirit, in 2007; it was certified 10× platinum in the United Kingdom and became the fourth best-selling album of the 2000s. It is one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history. In the US, Lewis became the first UK solo artist to debut at number one with a debut album, with Spirit. The lead single, "Bleeding Love", spent seven weeks at number one in the UK where it became the best-selling single of 2007. She achieved international recognition with the album in 2008 when it topped charts around the world. Spirit has sold more than eight million copies worldwide, and "Bleeding Love" peaked at number one in over 30 countries, including the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the best-selling single of 2008. (this is one of worst wikipedia pages I've ever read, in that its intro is exceedingly long and feels like it was written entirely by a promoter or agent) (186 footnotes? Really?) (wikipedia)

• • •

Lots going on here. This is a theme that will make it very easy (or easyish) for hardcore fans of the franchise and less so for people who don't care. That's how pop culture / proper nouns generally work: gimmes or mysteries. Actually, for me—a person who has never seen "THE LION KING" in any incarnation and is not about to start this weekend (when a new "live-action" (?) version will open in theaters and break all kinds of records and I will continue not to be interested)—the answers were not mysteries, for the most part, since that movie saturated the culture when it came out, via music, and has continued to do, so via crosswords. The one thing I had trouble with was PRIDE ROCK (had no idea it had a name—sidenote: happy PRIDE Month everybody!) and then the spelling of JULIE TAYMOR's last name (thanks a lot, Jeffrey TAMBOR). Tried to parse "NO WORRIES" before I had other themers and couldn't shake idea that the answer was NOW OR ___ ("... Now Or ... Then?"). The construction is pretty intricate—the theme is dense, with intersecting long themers, and a visual theme element in the middle of the grid. Consequently (I mean, probably consequently) the fill is Less Than Great in places (see stuff like OTIC, KER, EYER, and esp. IS FOR (!!), which slowed me down badly). But given the pressure put on the grid by the themers, the fill is honestly reasonably clean. If it weren't a Very dense theme, I would Not be saying this. Anyway, this one was not for me, but it was maybe for you, so happy Tuesday, however you feel.

I loved "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" but when "The Lion King" came out in 1994, I was deep into grad school and less aware of / interested in Disney movies. Plus, it looked somber and dull and platitudinous. Monarchy, shmonarchy. Patrimony, shmatrimony. Also, the music, wow. Just ... horrendous. Nadir Elton John. "CIRCLE OF LIFE" makes me want to murder things, ironically. I guess I just don't like patriarchal morality tales with heavy-handed self-important preachy songs. Just me. I also thought SCAR had to be SKAR because why would you just use the word SCAR when you could change it to something cool like SKAR, but thankfully I knew it was ORC, not ORK (thanks, D&D), so I survived. Center section up to the ISFOR section was the toughest part for me. Though FAVA or SOYA, not LIMA (35D: Bean type). Also thought RERUN, not REAIR (40A: Show again).OFFER was weirdly hard for me, given the clue (20D: Job seeker's success). Too long to get FRAT (30A: Greek group that's not in Greece) (I was looking for a group of things, plural, not one thing that is itself a group). Those are all my ILLS. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:31)

THEME: LACK OF CHARACTER (53A: Amorality ... as suggested by 17-, 25- and 41-Across?) — movie titles that suggest that a "character" goes missing or is "lack"-ing:

Theme answers:

"THE LADY VANISHES" (17A: 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery)
"RUNAWAY BRIDE" (25A: 1999 Garry Marshall comedy)
"INVISIBLE MAN" (41A: 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film, with "The")

Word of the Day: DOSAS (13D: Crepes in Indian cuisine) —

A dosa is a cooked flat thin layered rice batter, originating from the Indian subcontinent, made from a fermented batter. It is somewhat similar to a crepe in appearance. Its main ingredients are rice and black gram ground together in a fine, smooth batter with a dash of salt. Dosas are a typical part of the Southern Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil diets, but the dish is now popular all over the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, dosas are served hot along with sambar, a stuffing of potatoes, and chutney. They can be consumed with idli podi as well. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer is just a clunker. A huge let-down. A massive disappointment. Anticlimax epitomized. First off, I don't even think LACK OF CHARACTERmeans"amorality"—the latter strikes me as something much more severe than some kind of character deficiency. But mostly the phrase just fizzles. It's weak and old-fashioned and decidedly lacking in pizazz or elan or verve. I had LACK OF and (given [Amorality...]) immediately tried to write in CONSCIENCE. So I got LACK OF CONSCIENC ... There's a germ of a theme idea that seems interesting, but that revealer just made the whole thing go pfft. Not that it was really humming before then. I nearly slammed my computer shut at MALE NAME (4D: August, e.g., but not May or June). Blargh. I was very proud when I saw right through that clue and wrote in MAN'S NAME. Not sure I like either one, but MALE NAME just rubs me the wrong way somehow. Also, "June" is not a MALE NAME, eh?:

June Sheldon Jones III (born February 19, 1953) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach and general manager of the Houston franchise in the XFL. Jones was the head football coach at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1999 to 2007 and was the head football coach at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2008 to 2014, before resigning on September 8, 2014. Previously, he coached in the National Football League (NFL): a three-year tenure as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 1996 and a ten-game stint as interim head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1998; he also spent 1½ seasons as head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League (CFL). (wikipedia)

And NAIVER?? (15A: Not so savvy about the ways of the world) LOL who says that?? Any sane human would say "more naive." I also didn't like how heavily segmented the grid was, with a bunch of 3x4 sections (i.e. a lot of short fill) and only one fairly narrow way to move from the top half of the grid to the bottom (i.e. right through the center). When I got to J--- at 35D: Don't you believe it! (JIVE) and wrote in JOKE, that pretty much killed all momentum and I had no choice but to head into Empty Territory and try to start over. Hate that. Had to go all the way down to the DTS (hate that, a lot) (59A: The shakes, for short) and build my way back up.

NAPIER (57A: Mathematician John who discovered logarithms) over EX-ALLY (60A: Former friend) is ultra-unfortunate. Obscure over awkward. Down there with DTS and the revealer, those answers really added to the unpleasantness of the last 1/4 of my solve. I'm just glad I knew "THE LADY VANISHES" and had some idea of DOSAS because if you didn't know the Hitchcock film or the Indian "crepes," you could easily have found yourself with "THE LADY VANISHED" / DODAS. Not keen on the fact that "THE LADY VANISHES" gets its definite article, but "The INVISIBLE MAN" has a definite article that has vanished, run away, gone invisible (actually, it's just been stored in the clue). Tiny detail, I know, but when the puzzle doesn't deliver much in the way of pleasure, those tiny details come to the fore. Today's errors included the aforementioned MAN'S NAME (for MALE NAME) and JOKE (for JIVE), as well as TEE (for CEO) (16A: Top of an outfit, for short?) and AVERS (for AVOWS) (18D: Asserts openly). I will never, ever be able to keep "aver" and "avow" straight. I should stop trying and just accept my fate.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Michael Blake and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:58, and I was still asleep I think ... so sleepy ...)

THEME: UPPERHAND (58A: Advantage ... or what the answer to each starred clue has?) — answers to starred clues need the letter string "HAND" attached to their fronts to be complete—that letter string, in each case, is directly above said answers (inside a different Across answer):

Theme answers:

OOH AND AAH / IWORK (20A: *Needlepoint, e.g.)
CHANDELIER / ICAPS (33A: *Sets the odds for)
HAN DYNASTY / YMEN (50A: *Plumber/carpenter types)
UPPERHAND / ED IN (64A: *Submitted)

Word of the Day: WORD (CLUE) —

DEFINITION

• • •

I like this theme, and I like the way the revealer has also been incorporated into the theme gimmick (often, usually, revealers stand to the side and point at the theme, but this one joins in, or lends a hand, I guess (I'm sorry). I opened this puzzle while still yawning at 5:30AM knowing that my time was gonna come in slow (but being too tired to care) ... and then my time came in solidly faster than normal, which means this puzzle was Super easy. I just stumbled around answering the fairly simple short answers until theme stuff started to come into view, and then figured out IWORK was missing its HAND pretty readily, noticed there was a HAND just above it, imagined a HAND at the beginning of [*Sets the odds for], which made that answer obvious, changed DAM to VAC (24D: Hoover, e.g., for short), and I was off. After that, I ran into a few clues whose answers I just didn't know or remember at first (SEAN Parker, EDISON as a rival of Westinghouse, EYESHADE as a word for the EYEVISOR that accountants stereotypically wear), but mostly I just filled in answers as I encountered their clues, with only mild ambiguities (e.g. "is it SCAT or SHOO?" (39D: "Git!") holding me back at all.

The longer Downs in the NW and SE add some life and personality to this grid, which is otherwise, like sooooo many NYT grids of late, bogged down with tired short fill. Not so egregious today as it has been recently, but that SW corner really should be torn out and totally redone. I groaned my way through that. I realize that your theme, particularly that "D" in every "HAND," sets you up for some terrible letter combinations in the Down answers (GODRIC, BADPR and DNY being the other examples of D-handling today), so DNALAB was kind of inevitable, and that inevitability almost certainly put tremendous pressure on the corner as a whole. Still, OCULI and CINE and SABE was all a little xwordy / icky / much. Not sure why GODRIC couldn't have been (much more common) CEDRIC. Change it to CEDRIC / CLAD / EERO / ARA and you are not exactly in Beautiful territory but you are Definitely better off than GODRIC / GLAD / OENO (blargh) / ANA. And again, that "fix" took me three seconds. An actual constructor (or editor) actually constructing (or editing) could surely do better.

I would love it if the crossword weren't so obsessed with the suffering of alcoholics, i.e. the DTS (twice this week now!?) (51A: Rehab woes, for short). If you have to use that cruddy fill, there are always Defensive Tackles who could use the publicity. The best thing about this puzzle is being unable to read 44A as anything but HANDY NASTY, which, I mean, put a comma in there and it's a Tinder bio.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Caitlin Reid

Relative difficulty: Mediumish (maybe on the easier side ... I wasn't in speed mode, honestly) (6:01)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Zack SNYDER (14D: Action ifilm director Zack) —

Zachary Edward Snyder (born March 1, 1966) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He made his feature film debut in 2004 with a remake of the 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead. Since then, he has done a number of comic book and superhero films, including 300(2006) and Watchmen (2009), as well as the Superman film that started the DC Extended Universe, Man of Steel (2013) and its follow-ups, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017). He also served as co-screenwriter for 300, Sucker Punch (2011), and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), an executive producer for Suicide Squad (2016) and Aquaman (2018), and as co-writer of the story for Wonder Woman (2017) and Justice League. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was some kind of ride. A roller coaster. A BEAST! (27D: World's longest wooden roller coaster, with "The"). Actually, not a beast at all—at least not difficulty-wise. But my emotions were certainly getting thrown all over the place. No sooner would I "ugh" than I'd "whoa" and then "WHOA!" In the end, there were more whoas than ughs, so the whoas have it (whoas are good, btw, in case that wasn't clear). Winced at PREGGO (that and "preggers" just ... no) (I mean, good, in-the-language slang, just ... cutesy euphemisms for normal bodily things make me cringe ... whatever, sometimes words just rub you the wrong way ... please don't put BUN IN THE OVEN in youtr grids, thanks. "KNOCKED UP" is a movie, so that's fine). I probably would've winced harder if the constructor had been a dude, but ... yeah, not a pleasant "word" to me. So the puzzle and I got off on the wrong foot right away, but then when I got HARD PASS, I was like "OK, maybe this is going somewhere good." Totally stymied trying to get out of that corner, so I came down via ASIS / RAMS / AMENRA, the last of which made me go "ugh" again (this time, for crosswordese reasons), and then ENROLLEE, another disappointing blow (buncha 1-point tiles strung together), but Then DEAD SEXY and WINK WINK lifted me up again. This pattern kept repeating. But at the finish (in the eastern part of the grid, generally) the good far outweighed the bad. The NW corner is particularly nice. Overall, a bold, daring, contemporary grid.

Things I thought as I solved this thing:

15A: Reading Fightin Phils, e.g. (AA TEAM)— Eastern League! The Fightin Phils are coming to town to play the Binghamton Rumble Ponies next month. Might catch one of those games.
3D: Put away a sandwich, perhaps (ATE LUNCH)— my go-to example of an arbitrary-phrase (or "green paint") answer is "ATE A SANDWICH." I don't know how much better ATE LUNCH is better, but you can see how ATE ___ can get out of hand. ATE BRUNCH? ATE A SNACK? Where will it all end!?!?
33A: Actors' unions? (SHAM MARRIAGES)— just killed me. Had the SHA- and thought it would be "SHARED ... something" (because "unions"?). Even after getting it, I thought it was supposed to have something to do with actual screen actors, movie stars, specifically gay actors who were trying to present a straight image to the outside world. I think this used to be more of a thing. But of course the "actors" in this clue are simply the people pretending to be (i.e. acting as if they were) married.
8D: Die, as a light (GO OUT)— me, mid-solve: "whoa, GOOUT looks crazy in the grid! It's like someone's shouting "GOUT!"
25A: "It's no use" ("CAN'T WIN") — wow I hate this clue. Complete sentence cluing incomplete sentence = yuck. Also, I can't imagine someone saying "CAN'T WIN" without a pronoun, specifically the "I." Even if you mostly eat the "I," you're still saying it. I had CAN'T and just ... couldn't. CAN'T BE? CAN'T DO IT? Ugh.

27A: Celebrity mug shot, typically (BAD PR) — LOL. Again? (twice in two days!)
39D: Reply often made with a sigh ("YES DEAR") — not feeling this. Something about the caricature of marriage as some kind of hell hole where your overbearing spouse is constantly harshing your buzz ... nah. Something normatively sexist about it. Don't like it. Not the phrase, per se, but the clue. I'm assuming the "sigh" is put-upon.
57A: Pro QB Manning, by birth (ELISHA) — Me: "Uh ... PISCES?"
4D: Royal stand-in (REGENT)— first thing I put in the grid. I spend a lot of time with kings and queens in the courses I teach, so after "viceroy" (which didn't fit), this was the first thing to spring to mind.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (8:45)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: FLOUR BOMB (47A: Protest item that leaves a powdery mess) —

Flour bomb is a fragile container (e.g. a paper bag) filled with flour for the purpose to be thrown at a person or object to cause an inconvenient messy stain.
Flour bombs are a classic protest method, along with the throwing of eggs and overripe tomatoes. [...]
Flour bombs saw notable use during the controversial 1981 Springbok Tour at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand. In an attempt to disrupt the match, flour bombs, along with flares, leaflets and a parachute-support banner reading "Biko" were dropped into Eden Park from a light plane flying overhead. A New Zealand All Blacks player was felled by one of the flour bombs. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not sure what to say about this one. It seems well made—that is quite a stack through the middle there, and there's very little of the cringey crosswordese that normally gets on my nerves. But I didn't enjoy myself at all. Some of that was because there were so many longer answers that I just didn't know, or barely knew. Then there was exceedingly dull cluing, which was often just trivia, or else blunt and vague. And then SICKROOMS was just ... morbid. Never had that feeling (the feeling I had multiple times yesterday) of "ooh, good one." Again, this all seems structurally sound. I just didn't dig its personality. Also, I wasn't sure if the puzzle was trying to make some kind of theme happen in the center/NW area, with BLUE and GREEN and RED all huddled together there. A secret shout-out to Namibia? The Gambia? New Caledonia? Azerbaijan??? I apologize if there is a theme here somewhere, but I don't apologize too much, because if a theme falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it ... well, something like that.

[from the album "Blue"]

LOL GOOGLEHOME is a thing?? How are they losing the name recognition battle that badly? They're Google, but apparently Google is the Bing of voice-activated assistants, yikes. Had GOO---HOME and still had no idea what that one was about. GREEN TAPE, what? Just no idea. None. Had that one as a plural (with "S" on the end) for a minute. SINBIN??? Yuck, since when did hockey fans take up sing-songy moralization. This is easily the stupidest sports term I (now) know and y'all should be ashamed to keep using it. FLOURBOMB... apparently it's a "classic" protest method. I'm sure I've seen it before, but I had no idea it had a name and had FLOUR and still no idea. Also had the [City near Tesla Gigafactory 1] as BRNO, so that SE corner was a tad rough. Remembered DRAGO at 17A: "Rocky IV" rival who makes a reappearance in "Creed II" but not whether that was his first or last name so after I plunked down AMASSED (3D: Stocked up) I put down DRAGO ... and then ... (brain: "Malfoy?"). There was somewhat more delight to be had in the middle of the grid, which is really the best thing going on here today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (10:59)

THEME:"Not In So Many Words" (Unthemed)— well, not theme, but they want you to know that the word count is low for some reason ...

Word of the Day: PLISSÉ (44D: Puckered fabric) —

adjective
1.
(of fabric) treated to give a permanent puckered or crinkled effect.
"a plissé prom dress"
noun
1.
material treated so as to be permanently puckered or crinkled. (google)

• • •

My god this puzzle is annoying. And coy. Oh, it's themeless ("Unthemed") but oh, tee hee, 1-Across is FATHER'S DAY, which is today! ... but no, yeah, it is Actually themeless and there is nothing else FATHER'S DAY about this. This is called punting. We got nothing good in the hopper, we can't pull off a Sunday theme to save our lives lately, so let's try to make the word count as low as possible (near as I can tell, this ties the record for low word count for a Sunday at 124 ... the puzzle it ties was published New Year's Eve 1961, and it's A Doozy) (in that it has "words" like FOSSA, GISHU, ARRHA, TEMENI, KEZIA and FISCS). Look, 21x21 is just too big for a themeless. Not enough constraint. 15x15 works well for themelesses—you can make it superhard and it's still small enough not to take forever, and the constraint (in terms of size and word count, which must be 72 or lower) forces a certain amount of creativity and ingenuity. A 21x21 canvas is just too big for a themeless. I can't really be impressed that you could pull off *anything* in a 21x21 grid. What's stopping you? Who even thinks in terms of word count on a Sunday. Mostly this is just word sprawl. Very little of it is bad. Some of it is fun. But it's mainly just blah blah blah. And then ADIT and TISCH crossing PLISSÉ, bleecccccch. THE SLOTS and THE BIT. Do Something Interesting. Just slapping FATHER'S DAY at 1-Across isn't it.

I did not have a bad time solving this. I merely had A Time. Not enough for the Marquee Puzzle, though. Not nearly enough. Sundays are the hardest day of the week to pull off. Themed puzzles are hard in general, and to get one to work, and not become tiresome, across such a great amount of space, is truly special. Which is why y'all should go back and admire Agard's "Stoner Movies" instead of whinging that it was about drugs. Eric is (almost) single-handedly keeping the NYTXW from being a full-on embarrassment of bygoneness and white-guy mediocrity. Sincerely, they're lucky he lets them publish his stuff.

I don't care about this grid enough to comment much.

Didn't know:

PALOMA (39A: Cocktail of tequila and grapefruit soda)—rough clue. I think Picasso is the only PALOMA I know
PLISSÉ (44D: Puckered fabric)—oof. OK. New words are cool, but crossing ADIT and TISCH, maybe less than cool
DENNIS—(83D: Co-owner of Paddy's Pub on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia")—may as well have been clued [Man's name] or [Name]. Uniconic.

Did know:

ADIT—the most Maleskan of all the crosswordese. In the early '90s, I actually used to sign off my emails to my fellow NYT-solving friend with pieces of 4-letter crosswordese. ADIT was a favorite. "Favorite."

Knew and actually liked:

TOTORO—a lovely movie
ASSHAT

OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. FACEVEIL? As opposed to what, ASSVEIL? Come on. (80D: Muslim niqab, e.g.)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard and Yacob Yonas

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:02)

THEME: ___ IN THE ___— themers follow this pattern, and first and last words rhyme

Theme answers:

FUN IN THE SUN (17A: Beach outing, say)
MADE IN THE SHADE (31A: On easy street)
BACK IN THE BLACK (39A: Financially afloat again)
EYE IN THE SKY (57A: Traffic helicopter, e.g.)

Word of the Day: MACAU (10D: Asian gambling mecca) —

Macau or Macao (/məˈkaʊ/ (listen); 澳門, Cantonese: [ōu.mǔːn]; Portuguese: Macau [mɐˈkaw]), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, is a special administrative region on the western side of the Pearl River estuary in southern China. With a population of 653,100 and an area of 32.9 km² (12.7 sq mi), it is the most densely populated region in the world.
Macau was formerly a colony of the Portuguese Empire, after Ming China leased the territory as a trading post/treaty port in 1557. Portugal governed the area under titular Chinese sovereignty until 1887, when it was given perpetual colonial rights for Macau. The colony remained under Portuguese control until 1999, when it was returned to China. As a special administrative region, Macau's system of government is separate from that of mainland China.
Originally a sparsely populated collection of coastal islands, the territory has become a major resort city and the top destination for gambling tourism. It is the ninth-highest recipient of tourism revenue and its gaming industry is seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. Although the city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, it has severe income inequality.
Macau has a very high Human Development Index and the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world [???? wikipedia elsewhere says 30th, so ????] [Oh, this list by the CIA has Macau at No. 4 ... weird]. The territory is highly urbanised and most development is built on reclaimed land; two-thirds of total land area is reclaimed from the sea. (wikipedia)

• • •

This might in fact be a Very Easy Monday, as I am half-drunk on a single (1) Rusty Nail, which undoubtedly affected my time, and I still got a very normal Monday time, and also the few early times I am seeing posted on Twitter are scorchingly fast (faster than mine), so, yeah, perhaps I am the only one who got weirdly held up by both of the 8-letter Downs because I just Could Not Parse Them. That is a very plausible scenario. Also, I just didn't trust the phrase BACK IN THE BLACK somehow, perhaps because BACK IN BLACK was such an iconic AC/DC album when I was in elementary school that the phrase in the puzzle just felt ... wrong. It's certainly the least ... tight ... of the themers. But it's fine. The whole thing is fine. Simple, sure, but it's Monday, and it all works fine, and the grid is not loaded with junk (except PENH, which is junk), and maybe WKS/MOS, but they had the same clue (10A and 38D: Calendar units, Abbr.), so I kind of think they're adorable instead of gross. Singsongy theme that follows the "___ IN THE ___" pattern perfectly. Can't complain.

OK, so MCESCHER, man did I screw that up (24D: Dutch artist known for his "impossible" drawings). M dot C dot ESCHER. I was like "It says Dutch ... why is it Irish ... why!?" Also, I would say "NO CLUE" for ["Beats me"]. "NOT A CLUE" is oddly slow and formal. I mean, it's correct enough, just ... I just couldn't pick it up without a bunch more crosses. Those two answers were responsible for virtually all my slowness. Well, those and the Rusty Nail. Oh, and EYE IN THE SKY, which is ... a category of thing? (57A: Traffic helicopter, e.g.) The clue says "e.g." Are there other EYE(S) IN THE SKY? My kingdom for an Alan Parsons Project clue!!!

Oh, and I forgot the consonant that went in A-U (8D: Aladdin's monkey sidekick). APU? No. ADU? No, he was yesterday. ABU just looked / felt wrong. But wasn't. Bah! ESIGN is bad, and EENY is also not great, and MACAU is a crosswordesey place and OKED with the "E" looks dumb, but I'm really just *trying* to carp now, and it's taking too much effort. It's a lovely little Monday puzzle. Perfectly Mondayish. Better than average. Huzzah.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Stillman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium (3:30)

THEME: Interrupting MCs— familiar two-word phrases have MC- added to front of second words, creating wacky phrases that appear to be about famous(ish) people / characters with Irish last names ...

Theme answers:

BEING MCCOY (17A: Autobiography of a "Star Trek" doctor?)
SACRIFICE MCFLY (23A: Kill off a major "Back to the Future" character?)
RUNAWAY MCBRIDE (51A: Film star Danny hurriedly leaving the set?)
ICE MCQUEEN (60A: Help film star Steve recover from an action sequence?)

Word of the Day: Danny McBride (See 51-Across)—

Daniel Richard McBride (born December 29, 1976) is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He starred in the HBO television series Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, both of which he co-created with frequent collaborator Jody Hill. He has also starred in films, such as The Foot Fist Way(2006), Pineapple Express (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Up in the Air (2009), Your Highness(2011), This Is the End (2013), and Alien: Covenant (2017). (wikipedia)

• • •

So there's an idea here, but it doesn't really have anywhere to go. Maybe there is some way to make this theme work—some way to give the themers that extra layer of coherence that they so desperately need, some way to bring the lot together with a playful revealer or something—but whatever that way is, if it exists, this constructor hasn't found it. He seems to want to bring the group together around some vague concept of Hollywood—two fictional screen characters, two actors—but that just puts us all in Uncanny Valley territory: close enough for us to see it's trying, but not close enough to be convincing. So it's just MC MC MC MC. The core gimmick is consistent, but it's slight, and who cares? Beyond that, there's not much here. Why would you put actual CRAP in your own puzzle. CRAM is approximately 2 million times better there. Maybe 3 million. Unfathomable. And I'M A MESS, too. This puzzle is literally crying for help.

Very slow to start on this one, as "adjuncts" to me (from my university setting) refers to people, not parts of classes (in this case, LABS) (1A: Science class adjuncts). All LAB clues should be required to be about dogs. I'D'VE made the clue about dogs, for sure (note: just 'cause I just used I'D'VE doesn't make it good). And then there was a horrible moment of total guessing on my part when, after SPOCK was wrong, I wrote in MCCOY, which I thought was maybe MCKOY (which now looks ridiculous to me, but mid-solve, seemed plausible). That C/K issue was In No Way resolved by the cross, which was RICKI, a name in the title of a movie I have literally never heard of before this puzzle (7D: "___ and the Flash" (2015 Meryl Streep movie)). Once you know the theme, you can see that it has to be MCCOY (though "being coy" is a very weak base phrase, imho). Also, as I say, MCKOY looks very wrong once you type it out (I was probably thinking of MCKAY). Anyway, lots of hesitation in here as I tried to make sense of what the hell was going on. Rest of the grid went Much faster.

Why would you clue OTIS as [Mayberry sot]. Aside from being super dated, it feeds into the whole tired "alcoholism is here for our amusement" thing. There are many OTISES (OTI? OTES? OTISSES?) in the world. Redding. That elevator dude. To name just two. Also, maybe make PAM an actual woman instead of a cooking spray. I see you've got MARIAH in there but Did You Know you can put more than one woman in a puzzle!? I mean, you put four dudes in the puzzle In The Themers Alone. Theme should've been tighter, fill should've been more polished. PAM and OTIS deserved better. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Challenging (I got stuck, stopped trying, let the clock run ... this was just a really unpleasant experience)

THEME: MARRIED MEN (62A: Bachelors no more ... or, literally, the answers to the six starred clues) — "literally" being pushed to its limits here ... the theme answers are all two men's names squished together (so ... "married?"):

Theme answers:

PHIL/ANDERS (17A: *Plays around (4 & 6))
RUSS/IAN (23A: *Language in which "hello" is "privet" (4 & 3))
BAR T/RICK (25A: *Opening a beer bottle with a ring, e.g. (4 & 4))
RICO/CHET (38A: *Bounce (4 & 4))
NORM/ANDY (53A: *Omaha Beach locale (4 & 4))
CAL/GARY (55A: *1988 Winter Olympics host (3 & 4))

Word of the Day: CODONS (6D: Genetic sequences) —

noun
BIOCHEMISTRY
a sequence of three nucleotides which together form a unit of genetic code in a DNA or RNA molecule. (google)

• • •

This is just wrong in so many ways. First, it's a Thursday puzzle, in difficulty level and trickiness. Misplaced, badly. I stopped timing, but if I'd finished in a normal fashion—if the upper middle hadn't stopped me cold, and I hadn't just stopped caring / trying—I'd've come in wellllll over my Wednesday average. So it's misplaced. It's also oversized for insufficiently good reason. You need to put an 8 in the middle? OK, but ... if you're gonna screw w/ grid dimensions, your theme better be super good, and this one really is not. It's Abutting Men, not MARRIED MEN. How are they "married"? That is an ATROCITY of a revealer. Also, who is named "Anders"? OK, in other countries, sure, but ... yeesh, that is one hell of an outlier "name." CAL? Silent or Ripken or GTFO. Again, I don't know how "married" works here. Like ... yoked? MARRIED MEN is just so bad, so unsnappy, so nothing. And the little numbers in parentheses after the clue ... not helpful. Just confusing.

Then there's the grid design—so instead of just contenting with the weird theme, solvers have to contend with these absurd huge Saturday corners. Separate puzzles unto themselves. Whole puzzle had Fri/Sat cluing. Had trouble getting little stuff like ERIE, OFT, TSA, TOLL, TRIG. Then there's the painful crosswordese. ITER!?!?! AUER!? LOL I haven't seen that antiquated name for like a decade. ECARTE, ugh. It's like that old Latin saying: ICEE OPER OMNIA. ["Lohengrin" soprano]?!?!?! Why? Why? On a Wednesday, why? I don't even know what "Lohengrin" is (I see it's Wagner. Great.). The worst was ADAH. Who? My god that is crosswordese. So stale, so obscure, it hasn't been in the NYTXW for eight years, and this is only the third appearance in the 13 years I've been blogging. Makes AMAH look fresha and fun. These answers, with characters from minor operas and tertiary biblical characters and 19th-century Russian violinists, cause this puzzle to Reek of the Maleska era (aka the bad old days). Because I didn't know ADAH, and I didn't know CODONS (only the third appearance, singular or plural, in this century), and I thought GRAYED was the English spelling, I had absolutely no idea what was going on at 28A: 27-Across, e.g. (SHADE). This is what my grid looked like when I basically quit:

That ridiculous cross-reference (why do that?) is so dumb. It's already gonna be hard enough to get, running through weird answers, colloquialisms, and obscurities. I have no confidence in the way you're gonna spell HOO BOY (I thought puzzle might go "WOO BOY!"); BAD COP has a nutso clue (25D: Dark blue?); ADAH is from the mustiest corner of the Bible; GREYED is an English variant ... and through all that, you run an answer with a lousy (truly lousy) cross-ref clue. Why? Because it x-refs the clue immediately before it? Why Is That A Thing? Who Reads The Across Clues Sequentially? How has this puzzle managed to make a gay marriage puzzle this off-putting and dull?

Had SLOVEN for SCHLUB (2D: Disheveled sort), and that pretty much encapsulates my entire experience with this thing—trying vainly, at every turn, to figure out a disheveled thing. Also BERT for BURT (and thus EXTRA for ULTRA) (19A: Very, very). Pfft. THANK GOD it's over.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Aimee Lucido's American Values Crossword Club (AVXC) puzzle (Jun. 19, "Shrunken Heads") (subscribe here) was so much more delightful than this thing. Wish I hadn't done it first. I need something to get the taste of this one out of my mouth.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easyish (5:15 in early-a.m. / non-speed mode)

THEME: CONSONANT (53A: Something each of this puzzle's answers begins with) — sigh, just what it says. That is it:

Theme answers:

all of them

Word of the Day: BEALE Street (31A: Music festival street in Memphis) —

Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km). It is a significant location in the city's history, as well as in the history of the blues. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts periodically bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. (wikipedia)

• • •

Speaking of consonants (and letters notably absent from this grid): Y!!?? As in "Y did you do this?""Y should anyone be happy to see jumbles of consonants strung all along the western and northern borders of the grid?""Y did anyone think CONSONANT (tada!?) would be a compelling revealer?""Y on god's green earth did you extend the conceit Into The Clues, making clue phrasing occasionally stupid and awkward?" So many Ys. I am trying very hard to understand a puzzlemaker sitting there and thinking "What if every answer began with a CONSONANT?" Where does the interest lie in that, exactly? Where's the joy? The wordplay? The Anything related to the reasons puzzles are fun? Sincerely thought, about halfway through, that I was solving a Friday, i.e. a themeless. Then the consonants piled up (NBC, BBQ) and I snapped back to reality: "Oh, there a theme ... some kind of abbr. theme?" Didn't matter. You didn't need to know there was a theme. You didn't need to figure anything out. This is a themeless with a ridiculous constraint most people would never see without the revealer, and most people (don't lie) aren't going to care about. Go ahead and be "impressed with the construction" or whatever, but pffft. It's a mediocre themeless (72 words! It qualifies!), and that's that.

Here's an early sampling of Twitter reaction:

Other reactions include a general consensus that it's an Easy puzzle, and (to be fair) a couple tweets expressing at least mild admiration, though even the person who gave the puzzle a "B" spent most of the tweet telling you the "trick" wasn't worth it:

As a themeless, this was cleanish (minus the obv. xwordy abbr. stuff) and dull. LITMUSTESTS and FIREWALL and STPAULIGIRL are kinda fun, but not enough to be build a quality themeless around. Did the constructor just have SMTWTFS sitting in his wordlist and think "what the hell am I gonna do with that?" and bam, here we are? It's all so bizarre. I probably should've been much faster, but I was lolling, and I kept mistyping and misreading (I'm blaming 5am). Read [Music festival in Memphis], for instance, completely missing the (crucial) "street" part. I had AMIGA at 38A: Friend for un muchacho (CHICA) and SINE (!?!?!) at 34A: Hypotenuse, e.g. (SIDE). Actually, to be honest, my first thought was that the clue at 34-Across, was [Hypnoteuese, e.g.] ... like, a woman who performs hypnosis? Strange.

Guessed correctly at the [Davis of film] clue (three possible answers there, with BETTE actually being the *least* likely, but I guessed it anyway) (see also OSSIE, GEENA). Could not figure out what the last letter of PROTOZOA- was supposed to be (16A: Single-celled organism). I find all stock clues exceedingly dull and painful, though I guess I have heard of STOPLOSS (40A: Kind of liability-limiting stock order). Had PHI for PSI briefly (37A: Penultimate letter). Not sure why "Safe" is in quotation marks in 25D: "Safe" kind of film? (HEIST). You've got your "?" to do the work of telling the solver there's wordplay involved. No Need for quot. marks. Strange. Oh, and finally, the clue on RADIO can f&!^ right off (26D: Rush job?). White supremacists do not deserve your cutesy *$&%&ing wordplay (clue is referring to this guy, in case it wasn't clear). Or I guess we can all just pretend the clue refers to this band, heard frequently on the RADIO (esp. in Canada):

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Baseball great who was the subject of the 2006 best seller "Game of Shadows" / Turnovers, e.g. / Winner of the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in N.F.L. history (16 total points) / Political figure who became a CNN commentator in 2015 / Locale of London's Leicester Square

Shift from one dialect to another, depending on the social context / TV host with the autobiography "Born a Crime" / Animal wearing red pajamas in a children's book / Pioneer who lent his name to six U.S. counties / World capital once behind the Iron Curtain

Chapel Hill athlete / India's first P.M. / Is melodramatic / 33 1/3 RPM records / __ and anon

Eldest Stark daughter on Game of Thrones / TUE 6-4-19 / So-called architect of India / Rizzo hustler in Midnight Cowboy / Occasion celebrated 364 times year in Carroll's Through Looking Glass

Heavy ankle-high shoe / WED 6-5-19 / Three stooges laugh sound / Landon who lost to FDR in 1936 / Arp Duchamp output / Co-owner of Pequod / Title girl in 2001 Oscar-nominated French comedy / 2005 dystopian novel adapted into 2010 film

Visitor to King Mongkut / THU 6-6-19 / Hawaiian entree for short / Direct-to-customer beef retailer / Navajo dwelling made of logs mud

Nickname in early jazz piano / FRI 6-7-19 / Early Nahuatl speaker / Outline in Arby's logo

Coinage of 2000 / SAT 6-8-19 / Sleepy stil / High-quality coffee variety / Oxymoronic break

Common landscaping tree with acorns / SUN 6-9-19 / Graham Oprah's longtime beau / Stinky Le Pew / Anastasia's love in Disney's Anastasia / Surgical removal procedure / Seattle-based insurance giant

Time of lackluster performance / MON 6-10-19 / Elusive Tupperware components often

Long-eared lagomorphs / TUE 6-11-19 / British singer Lewis with 2008 #1 album Spirit / Repeated Survivor setting / One of Bobbseys in children's literature

Crepes in Indian cuisine / WED 6-12-19 / 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film / Mathematician John who discovered logarithms / Eponym of world's largest tennis stadium / Builder of Domus Aurea / Adan's mate in la biblia / 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery / Title meaning commander

Gryffindor who founded Gryffindor House at Hogwarts / THU 6-13-19 / East African native / Sedgwick 1960s it girl / Layer of Italiian muffuletta sandwich / Country that lost quarter of its territory in 2011 / Dweller on Arabian peninsula

Action film director Zack / FRI 6-14-19 / Mythological judge of dead in underworld / Supreme god of universe in ancient Egypt / Banjoist Fleck / 1/746 horsepower / Schooled on field / Royal stand-in

Puckered fabric / SUN 6-16-19 / Co-owner of Paddy's pub on It's always sunny in philadelphia / Onetime US soccer prodigy Freddy / Weapon with distinctive hum / Thomas Aquinas others philosophically / Classic play with Delphic oracle

Aladdin's monkey sidekick / MON 6-17-19 / Most widely spoken native language of India after Hindi / Gaelic spirit who wails to foretell death in family / RuPaul's purview

Aziz Iraq War figure / TUE 6-18-19 / Double-apostrophe contraction / Old Italian capital / Jumbo combatants

Violin virtuoso Leopold / WED 6-19-19 / Lohengrin soprano / Invention celebrated by NBC's peacock logo / Card game akin to whist

Series seen on many planner or pill container / THU 6-20-19 / Friend for un muchacho / Chocolaty spread since 1964 / Maritime hazard