Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Semordnilaps — The themed clues are given backward, and split across two words (mostly). The theme answers are also entered backward.

Theme answers:

DEZIMOTSUC (Customized) - 17A: Red root (To order)
STNEDUTS (Students) - 26A: Slip up (Pupils)
DEGNEVA (Avenged) - 38A: Diaper (Repaid)
GNITSIXE (Existing) - 51A: Went on (Not new)
RETEPTNIAS (Saint Peter) - 63A: Name tag (Gate man)

Word of the Day: Omni (67D: Old Dodge) —

The Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon were subcompact cars produced by Chrysler from December 1977 to 1990.^[2] The Omni and Horizon were reengineered variants of the European Chrysler Horizon, and were the first of many front-wheel drive Chrysler products to follow, including the Dodge Aries/Plymouth Reliant and the Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager/Chrysler Town and Country. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well hi-diddly-ho crossword solverinos. I'm Jake, covering for Rex while he continues his crossword sabbatical (Rumor has it he's touring all the great Will Shortz-related landmarks across the US of A). While he does that and listens to the Eagles, I'm here, listening to my current favorite band and ranting about a Thursday crossword.

(This is irrelevant to the crossword, but if you aren't listening to Lake Street Dive, you should change that.)

Usually I hate Thursday puzzles. I was actually excited when Rex said I could fill in for a Thursday puzzle because I figured I could easily get a few hundred words down quickly, full of complaints and blog-friendly expletives. Starting this puzzle, I actually found myself enjoying it? What? As this odd feeling of a fun Thursday puzzle washed over me, I hit the first themer and immediately remembered why Thursday puzzles bother me so much. But like a medieval soldier with a POLEAX or a competitive eater stuffing MEAT down my gullet, I did my duty and kept on going.

I actually enjoyed the fill on this one. I like the clue on SEE ME (20A: Note below F, perhaps?) While I was a great student in school, on the rare occasion I got one of those notes, I usually ignored it. I'd like to take a moment and apologize to my ninth grade English teacher, sorry that I never handed in that essay Ms. Dalton, but look at me now, I'm a guest blogger, that's worth an essay or two!

I also really like the answers WHEN IN ROME and CHATTERBOX, as well as the clue for WHO (32D: "Am I supposed to know this person?") That clue just felt sassy, and who doesn't love a bit of sass? (Not my ninth grade English teacher.)

As for the theme, I knew as soon as I saw the clues that something was up. Usually my go-to is to reverse the clue and see if it spells anything. However, the use of two word clues threw me off and I sat there twiddling my thumbs for a few moments before realizing the clues were over two words. Then once I got that, it took me another moment before realizing I'd have to type the answers in reverse. Let me just take a moment to say how annoying it is to type in reverse. It doesn't make solving more difficult, only more tedious. If someone creates a crossword solving software that has a reverse typing option, you'll forever be my best friend.

Overall I give this puzzle a solid 7/10. There was nothing too challenges, the fill was fun. It wasn't bogged down with a ton of crosswordese, and it used the word ASSES, and I have the sense of humor of a child, so that's still funny to me.

Well, that's all I got folks. Thanks to Rex for letting me guest blog today. Hopefully I get to do it again. I leave you all with one more song, because that's what I'm listening to right now.

(An ode to whatever Rex is drinking right now, and another plug for one of my favorite bands.)
Signed, Jake Goldstein, Man who walked into CrossWorld accidentally wearing an outfit similar to the employee uniform and who is now blogging like he works here.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Evan Kalish

Relative difficulty:Hard (for a Friday)

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day:CHICKASAW(15A: Oklahoma tribe originally from the Southeast) —

The Chickasaw (/ˈtʃɪkəsɔː/ CHIK-ə-saw) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.[2] Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family and in the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.

Sometime prior to the first European contact, the Chickasaw migrated from western regions and moved east of the Mississippi River, where they settled mostly in present-day northeast Mississippi and into Lawrence County, Tennessee.[3] That is where they encountered European explorers and traders, having relationships with French, English and Spanish during the colonial years. The United States considered the Chickasaw one of the Five Civilized Tribes, as they adopted numerous practices of European Americans. Resisting European-American settlers encroaching on their territory, they were forced by the US to sell their country in the 1832 Treaty of Pontotoc Creek and move to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) during the era of Indian Removal in the 1830s. [wikipedia]

• • •

Hello everyone! Jenna LaFleur here, filling in for Rex. When Rex gave me a few possible dates I could sign up for, I was glad to see a Friday among them. Friday, in general, is my favorite day of the week for crosswords, so I had my fingers crossed that this would be a good puzzle and give me something fun to blog about. After the last four puzzles in a row all left me feeling somewhere between :-| and :-(, I'm glad to report that I enjoyed this one overall!

The band BATTLES (21D: Much of military history), one of my own personal favorites

I set myself up to stumble early on: I started to enter CHEROKEE for 15A, realized it was one letter too short, thought to myself I guess it's CHEROKEES then?, and proceeded to get frustrated when nothing else in that corner (besides 1D and 2D) seemed to be working. Eventually I gave up and moved elsewhere in the grid to try and gain a new foothold, but I left that incorrect guess in place for way too long.

The long entries in this grid are, in general, prime examples of the kind of fun and interesting stuff I enjoy seeing in Friday puzzles. In particular, TO BE CONTINUED (33A: "This isn't over") and WHAT SHOULD I DO (36A: Advice column query) stuck out to me as the highlights of the bunch. On top of that, I thought the fill here was pretty clean throughout. When stuff like UTE and TAM is the worst a puzzle has in terms of crosswordese, that's a good sign in my book.

36A: If you're looking for serious advice, probably don't write in to the McElroy brothers.

Overall, though, I feel like the cluing on this puzzle was closer to Saturday-level than Friday-level difficulty. For example, REM being clued as (38A: Ad ___), instead of the sleep phase or the band, led me to confidently plonk down HOC in that spot, another mistake that took me a while to correct. Similarly nonstandard cluing angles for other entries all added up to make this a slow solve for me, but others' experience may vary.

Bullets:

MARTS (46D: Selling points) — This might be my favorite clue in the puzzle. Fun little bit of wordplay.
SKY (5D: Something on the horizon)— On the other hand, here's a clue I didn't like. I don't think I would really consider the sky to be on the horizon, merely above it.
SEVEN (49A: This clue's number divided by this clue's answer)— Hey, I came to this puzzle for words, not for math! :-)
IN A MOMENT (60A: Shortly)— Did anyone else get this based on some of the first few letters, and then only fill in IN A M_____ because it could also be IN A MINUTE?

I've gotta go now, but it's been fun getting to fill in for a day. I hope to return sometime in the future, so, as 33A says, TO BE CONTINUED!

Signed, Jenna LaFleur, Friend of CrossWorld

[Follow Jenna LaFleur on Twitter]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for me, but I've been having the yips all week)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Maui Wowie (17A: Potent Hawaiian Weed) —

Maui Wowie is a Sativa-dominant landrace strain of cannabis that originated in the 1970s on the Hawaiian island for which it's named.

• • •

Hey hey, everybody! This is Jeff Lin, long time reader, occasional commenter, first time blogger; it's also my birthday today so please be nice to me.

So it's been a rough week for me puzzle-wise, some of it puzzle related (like many of you, I also have NOT been a fan of the puzzles this week), some of it nervousness (I'm very self conscious, far too self conscious to post my solving time today), and a David Steinberg Saturday did not help, though I fully expected it coming (I owe you a TACO, TW). Despite starting my solving career in senior year of HS back in [REDACTED], I still find some of these older references dubious, especially for a supposed young'n like David Steinberg. I mean come on, CANDY GIRL? You don't know that, unless he's secretly 97 years old.

Frankly, the whole puzzle was an ARCANE mix of old and new. You got Tyler the Creator's IGOR, EMOJI, and JON Snow in one corner and then Cecil B. DeMille's AMPAS, Joe NAMATH, and HITHER in another (not literally of course, as some are not in corners).

Though it's probably telling that even as a youngish [citation needed] solver, even I did not expect 17A: Potent Hawaiian weed to mean strain of marijuana. Maybe I'm just a square blue-haired pearl-clutcher, but I just assumed we were looking for some invasive, valueless, wild-growing plant native to Hawaii. At no point in solving did I expect the old gray lady to be printing MAUI WOWIE... not that I, an upstanding law-abiding member of society, am familiar with that sort of federal illegal controlled substance...

Phew, I think they bought that... ELAINE's buddy Ted knows what I'm talking about. N'EST CE PAS?

Anyhoo, I found this one to be on the tougher side with some strained and tenuous cluing, looking at you, clues for NEAR, UNDID, and LORE, and some first timers (CHUGALUG, CHITOWN, CANDYGIRL) in the long acrosses and downs. But it did come together pretty quick once those new and more obscure references are in place. Thanks for letting me do this Rex, I enjoyed it, probably more than the readers.

Bullets:

TANLINE (34A: Vacation souvenir, perhaps) — You can get these without spending money on vacation, the key is to not be diligent about using sunblock. I'd show you my aggressive tanlines, but no one wants to see that
EYECUP (50A: Medicine cabinet glass) — Do people still use these things or is this more proof that David Steinberg is really 97 years old? I don't wear glasses b/c I have perfect vision ::humblebrag:: so I'm genuinely curious
PRIMERIB (12D: Steakhouse selection) — hot take: I'm more of a ribeye guy as it cuts right to the good part, but to each their own
INDIEGOGO (62A: Alternative to Kickstarter) — It's not all negativity from me, I did like this answer. First appearance for it too. I don't have anything to plug for funding, but I'm sure there are some good and worthy causes out there.

Signed, Jeff Lin, The Antipope of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Caitlin Reid

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:02)

THEME:"Are We Finished?"— "R" is added to the end ("finish") of familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily:

Theme answers:

"IS THIS A BAD TIMER?" (23A: "Should I not use my oven clock?"?)
WORKS FROM HOMER (35A: The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"?)
PICK UP THE PACER (52A: Give a ride to an Indiana hoopster?)
WATCH YOUR TONER (75A: Printer's low-ink alert?)
TOOK THE PLUNGER (89A: What a plumber did for a clogged drain?)
FIVE-SECOND RULER (105A: World's shortest-reigning monarch?)

Word of the Day: APPLET (48D: Mini-program)—

noun
COMPUTING
a very small application, especially a utility program performing one or a few simple functions. (google)

"there's a useful control applet which can be used to center the picture"

• • •

Hello. It is I, the Rex Parker of "Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle," newly returned from the hinterlands of the U.S. southwest, tired but rejuvenated and ready to resume blogging duties, sir. Was supposed to be back yesterday (i.e. Friday) afternoon, but got a text early Friday morning saying "sorry, your flight was canceled, no, we have no explanation, we've rebooked you for tomorrow, enjoy your extra day in Colorado, no we won't reimburse you the cost for another day of rental car, have a nice day" (paraphrasing). So we went on a long walk in Longmont, CO (home of my sister) and saw blue herons and killdeer and literally hundreds of prairie dogs, most of whom just stared us down with a "keep moving, pardner" kind of gaze. Then we watched three episodes of "Stranger Things 3" and read our respective books and later bought my whole family pan-Asian takeout for dinner, then got up at 3:45 a.m. today (Saturday) to catch a plane back to NY. And that's just the last 36 hours of unplanned vacation—there were 10 days of planned vacation before that: Boulder! Santa Fe! Flagstaff! MOAB! (4) I solved the puzzle most days, and was happy to see the guest bloggers had it all pretty well covered—I didn't have to deal with a technical emergency once! Though one writer did worry that their write-up was "too short" (!?). I just laughed and ignored that concern. People will write and complain about allllllll kinds of stuff, but "too short"—nah, haven't heard that one yet. Anyway, I really enjoyed hearing so many different voices (especially since they were by and large judicious, i.e. in agreement with me). I'm back to blogging for two weeks, then away again for an other-side-of-the-family trip to Montreal, then home for good after that. I'll tell you about my trip out west here and there, as it occurs to me, over the coming week or so, as it seems relevant. But for now, back to puzzle-blogging.

Yes, we are finished, and not a second too soon, as this one wore out its thematic welcome pretty quickly. Hard to think of a simpler theme concept (it's just an add-a-letter), and the parameters aren't narrow at all, i.e. there are way more potential themers than one could ever use in one puzzle, e.g. phrases ending in BONE/R, STONE/R, LIFE/R, GAME/R, etc.). Because the theme is so simple and loose, I expect the theme answers to *kill* every single time, but the only one that really struck me as funny and original is FIVE-SECOND RULER. Everything else is more of a shrug. Yeah, it works, but so what. The wackiness just isn't wacky enough. You can't carry a Sunday-size wacky-phrase theme with so little in the way of wacky. On the plus side, the grid is very clean, and the longer non-theme stuff is often quite good (see, for example, PET PROJECT, PHOTO BOMBS, COMBO MEALS, "OH, GROW UP!"). So I didn't groan and ugh the way I often do when puzzles are poorly filled. But I never got over my initial theme-inspired ENNUI (38D: It makes you yawn) (btw I think of ENNUI as somewhat deeper and more existential than mere boredom, but we'll leave that hair to split for another time).

Not much in the way of difficulty here. Most of my trouble, such as it was, came in the middle of the grid, specifically at the end of PICK UP THE PACER (which I initially thought ended in "HOOSIER"). I didn't know that ISLAM's calendar began in A.D. 622 (maybe 622 CE is more appropriate for this clue) and so APPLET, CLOTHE (oh, a verb!) (54D: Attire), and esp. MAU (49D: Egyptian ___ (cat)) gave me mini-fits. I also had BETTER and RICHER before POORER (64D: Comparative in a wedding vow).

Five things:

114A: Sign of a packed house (SRO) — Sold Right Out!*
66D: Computer guru, informally (IT PRO)— not great, but sooo much better than ITGUY
35D: Got taken for a ride (WAS HAD) — me, for what felt like hours: "WASH AD ... WASH AD ... what is a WASH AD? ... wait, is it WASHED? ... no, it's definitely LAMA (57A: Teacher of the dharma), so ... WASH AD? ... what is a WASH AD?"
79D: Old dentist's supply (ETHER) — yeesh, how old *is* this dentist?
85D: Powerpoints? (OUTLETS)— I had OUTAGES. Speaking of OUTAGES, hope my NYC readers are surviving today's. Stay cool and safe, Gothamites!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I know this isn't technically "correct," please, no letters

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:45)

THEME: SHORT CUTS (61A: Timesavers ... or the starts of 17-, 26-, 36- and 51-Across?)— first words are short haircuts, each of which can precede the word "cut" (even BOB, apparently...)

Theme answers:

BUZZ WORDS (17A: Trendy terms)
BOB SAGET (26A: First host of "America's Funniest Home Videos")
PIXIE DUST (36A: Magical powder in "Peter Pan")
CREW NECK (51A: Style of collarless shirt)

Word of the Day: India.ARIE (14A: Singer India.___) —

India Arie Simpson (born October 3, 1975), also known as India.Arie (sometimes styled as india.arie), is an American singer and songwriter. She has sold over 3.3 million records in the US and 10 million worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards from her 21 nominations, including Best R&B Album. [...] Arie released her debut album Acoustic Soul on March 27, 2001. The album was met with positive reviews and commercial success. "Acoustic Soul" debuted at number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number three on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Within months, without the concentrated radio airplay that typically powers pop and rap albums, Acoustic Soul was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), selling 2,180,000 copies in the U.S. and 3,000,000 copies worldwide. The album was also certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry and platinum by Music Canada. The album was promoted with the release of the lead single "Video". "Video" attained commercial success peaking at forty seven on the US Billboard Hot 100 and becoming her highest charting song in the region to date.The album's second single "Brown Skin" failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, but it became her highest charting single in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 29. (wikipedia)

• • •

I finished this very quickly, then went back and looked at what was going on: crew CUT, pixie CUT, bob ... CUT??? That's where I balked a bit. You wear your hair in a bob (well, probably not *you* you, but one, one does ... at least one of you ... does). I'm used to the hairstyle being called simply a "bob," not a "bob cut"—unlike all the other words in this theme set, which actually *require* the word "cut" in order to be recognized as haircuts at all. I guess you could say "I got a BUZZ," which ... I'm not sure how different that is from a CREW (cut), but anyway, "bob" feels like the odd man out today. I will say, though, that I googled it (!) and "bob cut" googles just fine, so even though I think it feels off, it's clearly not Wildly off, if it's off at all. The other things that felt off were the bits affixed to the beginnings of BEDE and MAGI. I have a Ph.D. in English literature—medieval English literature, to be specific—and while I heard BEDE referred to frequently as "the Venerable Bede," I never Ever heard "the Venerable ST. BEDE." I mean, he is ST. BEDE, but using "Venerable" there is deceptive. Moreover, absolutely nothing about the clue suggests there will be an abbr. in the answer, which is pretty messed up, esp. on a Monday. As for *THE* MAGI ... the THE feels pretty showy, and also midly off. Like, they're the MAGI. If you wanna get all formal, they're "the three MAGI" or "three wise men." Maybe if you're doing the O. Henry story "The Gift of THE MAGI," you can sneak THE in there, but then it's a partial, and yuck. The definite article feels wobbly to me (whereas in, say, THE MOB, or THE FED, it doesn't).

But overall I thought the theme held up pretty well, and the grid was certainly adequate. It's chock-a-block with names from the Crosswordese Pantheon—everyone from India.ARIE to OPIE is there, including both parts of ANG LEE's name. But with only a stray FUM or ABU mucking things up, I didn't really mind the ELSA ELIE REA onslaught. I got slowed down by 4D: Some Moroccan headwear, as I had FEZ and then wanted ... FEZHAT (!?). Also got thrown by the clue on LIZARDS (3D: Chameleons, e.g.), as I was thinking more ... metaphorically, I guess. Went looking for things / people that change appearance, blend in, etc. I never know which [Atlanta-based channel] the puzzle is going to want. I think today I went with TNT? TNN? I forget. Not TBS, at any rate. And I always have trouble between "A" and "L" at the end of YENT_ (21A: Busybody, from the Yiddish). I really should only go with YENTL when the clue specifically refers to the play or movie. Maybe I learned something today. Probably not, but ... maybe.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:31)

THEME: A-FRAME BUILDINGS (52A: 52A: Structures illustrated twice in this puzzle through both black squares and letters) — I have no idea how "black squares" illustrate anything "twice," but there are clearly two sets of "A"s forming something that looks like an inverted "V" in the center of the grid: AMERICA forms the base of one, and ANTENNA forms the base of the other

Word of the Day: JESSIE James Decker (46A: Country singer ___ James Decker) —

Jessica Rose James Decker (born April 12, 1988) is an American country pop singer-songwriter, reality television personality, fashion designer, and entrepreneur. At age 15, after auditioning for and being rejected by most of the country labels in Nashville, Tennessee, Decker began working with Carla Wallace of Big Yellow Dog Music. One of her songs attracted the attention of Mercury Records, which offered her a recording contract. She released her debut album, Jessie James, in 2009. A few years later in 2013, she starred with her husband Eric Decker, a wide receiver in the National Football League, in the E! reality show Eric & Jessie: Game On. On April 18, 2014, Decker released an EP through iTunes entitled Comin' Home. On Epic in 2017, she released a five-track EP, Gold, and released a surprise live EP on June 9, 2017 titled Blackbird Sessions. On October 13, 2017, she released her second full-length album and first for Epic Records, Southern Girl City Lights. On This Holiday, her first full-length Christmas album, was released on October 26, 2018. Decker was scheduled to release a full-length studio album in mid-March 2019. (wikipedia)

• • •

Two things make this a miss. They are obvious things, so ... I can't imagine that either the constructor or editor didn't notice; I'm sure they simply didn't care. Good Enough!™ So the two things in question are, 1. the revealer is not a phrase. It's just ... not a solid, stick-the-landing phrase. Here's what happens when you type "a-frame" into google:

This was predictable, because, as I said, the revealer is not a phrase. Not a phrase anyone uses. "House," yes. "Cabin," OK, yeah, I see those often enough. But "Building(s)"? Pfft. What you have there is someone thinking "well, it's 15 across, so it's perfect," instead of thinking, as one ought to, "it's the perfect phrase to describe the thing I am illustrating, so it's perfect." Then there's the A's. There is a problem with the A's. Where am I supposed to imagine that they start and end, in terms of their forming the "frame" in question. Because I don't know. The top "frame" has A's going down *three rows farther* on the left side than on the right, resulting in an asymmetrical "frame" that actually completely negates the whole concept of the "A-frame." Honestly, this stuff is so basic, I don't know why it doesn't rankle people who should know better. The concept of this puzzle is Just Fine. Make your A-frames actually symmetrical, at a minimum. Eliminate *all* non-frame A's from the grid—that would be a pretty baller move. Make your revealer something actual (AFRAMES, AFRAMEHOUSES). Anyway, this could've been executed well. Wasn't. The end.

Not there's not some nice stuff here. I admire the attempt to add some sizzle to the grid as a whole with the pairs of very long Downs in the NW and NE, and FACE PLANT is a very good and lively answer. But the those highs are very much undermined by the abundance of dreck (you can blame the A's for a lot of it (ASIAM, AMAT, ALIA) but not all of it (EENSIE, ABRA, ANDI, AS FAST). And ANNEALER is one of the more awkward and improbably -ER-suffixed words I've seen. JANDJ is a pretty awkward ampersandwich. Further, that whole eastern section, toward the bottom of the long Downs, is just a mess(i), a moraine of E's and S's, a dumping ground for common letters.

Five things:

37A: Diez minus siete (TRES)— me: "ok so twelve minus seven is five, so ... wait, what?" (confused "diez" w/ French "douze," [sad trombone sound]!)
12D: Et ___ (ALIA)— the literal worst solver guessing game in the world is this clue. A: both possibilities are terrrrrrible crosswordese, and B: you can't know if it's ALIA or ALII except by the crosses, fun!* (*not fun)
35D: Predate (ANTECEDE)— me: "ANTE ... DATE? No, that can't be right ... I got nothin'"
46A: Country singer ___ James Decker (JESSIE)— needed every cross there. Not the most famous JESSIE, I don't think, but that's OK. Actually, let's check w/ google again:

[well, at least she makes the list]

32A: ___ Amidala, "Star Wars" queen (PADME) — honestly stumbled all over this one. I still haven't fully digested anything after the initial "Star Wars" trilogy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Adam Nicolle

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (??) (not sure, solved in leisurely fashion on paper, untimed) (looks like lots of people set personal Wednesday records, so ... let's say Easy, then)

THEME: verb appears inside object of said verb— clues are written with "[circled letters]" replacing one of the words; that word appears in the circled letters inside the answers:

Theme answers:

CHOCOLATE (17A: Candy that the lovers [circled letters] on Valentine's Day)
REPRESENTATIVE (24A: Politician that the voters [circled letters] to Congress)
ERRANDS (35A: Quick trips that the busy person [circled letters] around town)
PENNY DREADFULS (45A: Book that Victorians [circled letters] for cheap)
LAND ROVER (54A: Luxury vehicle that the motorist [circled letters] on the highway)

Word of the Day: PENNY DREADFULS (45A) —

Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin and Varney the Vampire. The Guardian described penny dreadfuls as “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young.”
While the term "penny dreadful" was originally used in reference to a specific type of literature circulating in mid-Victorian Britain, it came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries". The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap wood pulp paper and were aimed at young working class men. More than a million boys’ periodicals were sold a week, but the popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature, especially the half-penny periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth. (wikipedia)

• • •

I weirdly don't have any strong opinions about this crossword. It's plain. The theme cluing is both clever and awkward. The fill is generic but clean. So the theme ... is there. And it works. And the fill is there. And it doesn't grate. So whatever this is, it's not a negative review. I do expect the NYT to be producing puzzles that move me more than the list of ingredients on a cereal box, buuuuuut how badly the NYT has missed the mark recently, I'll take this as a little Wednesday wake-up exercise. The theme cluing is only truly irksome on LAND ROVER ... I mean, what else does one do with a vehicle but drive it "on the highway"? The other theme clues had somewhat tighter, more specific contexts for their verbs. LAND ROVER is a 4-wheel drive vehicle, so the clue could've at least indulged the pretension that people who own them go on, like, expeditions or safaris or ... well, off-road at all. Yeah, most of them are just status symbols, but give me a little more color than a mere "motorist" driving "on the highway." The best thing about this puzzle, by far, was the answer PENNY DREADFULS. Like the reading material itself, this was eye-grabbing and exciting to see. It's also one of two themers that I no-looked toward the end of my solve. I had enough material from crosses that PENNY DREADFULS and LAND ROVER both went in without my having to move my eyes over to the clues. This also happened with EYE LEVEL and ALIBIS. I can see how, if I'd been timing myself, I might've flown through this one.

I did, however, have one semi-catastrophic error at the outset of my solve, as I sat there, pencil in hand, puzzle on clipboard, waiting for the tea water to boil.

actual finished puzzle, actual pencil

The ultra-generic, didn't-conjure-any-image clue at 4D: File box filler (honestly, is there a duller clue anywhere?) took me from REC- (which I had) to ... RECORDS! Files, RECORDS, I dunno, it made sense to me. The horrible result of this error, though, was that 27A: Traditional time to start work looked like this: --NDA-. So yeah, of course I wrote in MONDAY. Then couldn't get NAB or RICE (I try to think about Bush 43 as little as possible and actually forgot that Susan RICE was also a RICE). Anyway, RECORDS to MONDAY to disaster. Especially disastrous as I had not yet fully woken up or imbibed warm liquid yet. By the time I warmed up, though (in the bottom half of the grid especially), I was flying. Maybe if I'd started this puzzle at NINEAM, with a fresh brain, I wouldn't have fallen into the stupid RECORDS/MONDAY trap. But this post has to be up by NINEAM *at the very latest* (it's actually never that late), so ... morning mistakes are made.

Five things:

46D: Sped-up part of a contest commercial (RULES) — Hurray for imaginative cluing!
35D: Slippery (EELY)— was just relistening to a podcast I did with my friend Lena a couple years back where we dove into the crossword's weird eel obsession and the eel vocabulary that it's helpful to know if you're a solver. EELY definitely came up.
1D: Org. that regulates I.S.P.s (FCC) — I am so bad w/ agencies. I got this one right, but honestly feel like I'm frantically rifling through my file box of initialisms every time. "FCC! FAA! HUD! OSHA! DNA! Uh... pass!"
28A: Occur, as complications (ARISE) — nothing particularly interesting here; I'm just fascinated by the stuff my brain gets instantly and the stuff it just can't computer. Today, I had AR- here, looked at the clue, and ... nothing. Speed-solving me would've moved on, quickly, but pencil-solving me just stared at the blank spaces in disbelief, wondering how I could have 40% of such a basic-seeming answer filled in and *not* know the answer. Sigh.
62A: "Buona ___" (Italian greeting) (SERA) — I know the following isn't Italian (it's ungrammatical Spanish), but ... I just miss Doris Day (1922-2019).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Matthew Sewell

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:24 at 5 in the a.m.)

THEME: two-letter words >>> two-letter initialisms — familiar phrases clued as if one of the two-letter words in that phrase is really two initials:

Theme answers:

THE WIZARD OF I.D. (20A: Bouncer who can always spot a fake?)
LIFE OF P.I. (30A: Backstory for T.V.'s Magnum?)
I.M. A BELIEVER (35A: Advice for how the pope can reach out online?)
THIS IS U.S. (42A: Statement before "... and that's Canada!"?)
SOME LIKE I.T. HOT (53A: Certain people prefer their computer specialists to be attractive?)

Word of the Day: Julián CASTRO (1D: Democratic politico Julián) —

Julián Castro (/ˌhuːliˈɑːn/ HOO-lee-AHN, Spanish: [xuˈljan]; born September 16, 1974) is an American Democratic politician who was the youngest member of President Obama's Cabinet, serving as the 16th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 to 2017.
Castro served as the mayor of his native San Antonio, Texas from 2009 until he joined Obama's cabinet in 2014. He was mentioned as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. Castro is the twin brother of Congressman Joaquin Castro.
On January 12, 2019, Castro launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020 in San Antonio. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think the only thing that truly slowed me down today was the stunned, blinking surprise I had on discovering that ... that was it. It's just a two-letter word imagined as a two-letter initialism. The End. Feels like it should've been a Wednesday theme. Certainly my solving time was more Wednesday than Thursday. Pretty basic, pretty old-fashioned, pretty generic, but OK. The themers actually mildly amused me. Well, THE WIZARD OF I.D. did—that one's smashing. And THIS IS U.S. still has me smiling, primarily because of the clue, which is completely absurd. I always say, if you're gonna go wacky, go big or go home, and "big" can include "flat-out ridiculous." Honestly, just trying to imagine the context in which anyone would say this answer and then go "... and that's Canada!" (exclamation point!) is pretty entertaining. Probably not great to have IT in the grid (31D: IS IT?) when "IT" is one of your central themer words. Also, "I'M" is bugging me as a base word. It's a contraction. Feels ... off. Like cheating. I'm not being fair, there, as I'M is clearly a word and clearly has two letters, but somehow the apostrophe's being in there makes it an outlier in my eyes. Biggest actual solving struggle today was APTNO (8A: Metropolitan address abbr.)."Metropolitan" threw me, and also ... isn't the abbr. usu. just APT.? Do you really write out "APT. NO. 2B?" At one point my brain wanted APTWO (it was thinking "apt. 2," to the extent that it was thinking at all). Also, the cross there (NOT) did NOT mean anything to me (11D: What "!" can mean in computer programming).

Five things:

24A: Cinephile's channel (TCM)— I'm so used to the NYTXW's getting this wrong that I actually wrote in the wrong answer, TMC, at first. TCM is in fact the correct answer to this clue. No one even watches The Movie Channel, do they?

5A: Projecting arm of a crane (JIB) — just learned this from some other puzzle I just did. Also wasn't at all sure I remembered it correctly and had to use all the crosses to confirm it.
49D: Half-laugh (TITTER) — I thought "well at least it's too long to be TE(E) or HEE."
36D: What B and C (but not A) may represent (ELEMENTS) — my god I'm bad at these types of clues. It's a stock clue type, and my only hope is just hacking the crosses until a word appears.
35D: Biometric reading (IRIS SCAN) — I wrote in IRIS SIZE ... I figured it was something like ... measuring pupil dilation? ... maybe? ... anyway, I was looking for a specific measurable, not a reading *type*.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Medium (Brutal SW + v. easy elsewhere = Medium) (6:06)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Eudora WELTY (57A: Pulitzer-winning writer of "The Optimist's Daughter") —

Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer and novelist who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ouch. Actually, ooh, nice ... then ouch. Really was enjoying this one until I hit the SW, where I couldn't make anything happen, and even after I circled the entire rest of the grid and came back to it, I couldn't make anything happen. As I was finishing off the SE, I was thinking "ugh, I gotta go back there and I'm already walled in and no help is coming so fuhhhhhhdge." So, yeah, this isn't the greatest thing, this having one corner be drastically harder than the rest of the grid (early Twitter feedback shows me very much not alone in my SW struggles). The problem is that now the SW is all I remember about this grid. Everything weirdly hard about the SW. And ATHIRST (38D: Quite eager). It's like the worst thing in the grid, why would you make the ATHIRST corner your hardest corner?? It just ensures that ATHIRST stays with you instead of drifting away as better answers come to the fore. To be clear, this is a very well-made puzzle that I mostly enjoyed, and ATHIRST is the only thing that makes me go ugh. Just ... don't put the ugh word in your hardest section. It makes everything so much ugh-ier.

Problems with the SW started with the always annoyingly ambiguous ELUDE-or-EVADE dilemma at 29A: Shake off (EVADE). ELUDE is sooooo much better as an answer for this clue. I think of EVADE as going around something and ELUDE as *specifically* escaping from something. I mean, fine, they are roughly synonyms, but ugh. And 60% of their letters are the same, double-ugh. So that went bad. And then MENACE clue was super vague (25D: Shark, to swimmers), so even with the "M," no help. Both long Downs meant nothing to me (and one was a tricky "?" clue). I really hate the cluing on ARIA and EPIC mainly because those are perfectly good ordinary words that have been given proper noun clues (ugh) and (bad luck for me) clues that are specifically from **** I care nothing about. I hate casino names like you wouldn't believe. Resent having to know them at all. Misremembered ARIA as AIDA, so that hurt. And EPIC Games??? Pffft, no way. The entire stack of four proper nouns down there, EPIC / BJÖRK / MOOSE (!!?!!) / WELTY, was utterly unknown to me at first. I own BJÖRK albums so I got her eventually, and I know *of* WELTY, at last, but oof, between all that and the ridiculous ATHIRST, I was most definitely screwed. Oh, and EGG HASH, LOL what? What is that? I'm in diners a lot and ???? Corned beef hash is a big deal. But EGG HASH?! Yikes. I didn't know what a SKIN GAME or what BLUSH PINK (?) was either, but their crosses were super-workable, so ... no complaints. Lovely puzzle overall, just wish it hadn't been so lop-sided, difficulty-wise.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (honestly it felt pretty easy, but clock said 8:48 when I was done, and ... I wasn't actually done, because I had errors that took me another minute to sort out)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: JANK (42A: Of very poor quality, in modern slang) —

google.com

• • •

Hey, I just learned that a JANKER is a device for transporting logs (Scot.). Handy! Honestly, though, that _ANK / _ASPER crossing was a teeny bit dicey for me. I know "janky," and I guess I have heard JANK (which means ... the same thing??), but I honestly considered DANK, and then wondered how it was possible that I've never really known what DANK meant at all (me : DANK :: Joni Mitchell : clouds). *Thank*fully I knew (vaguely) that JASPER was some kind of stone (don't ask me which kind) (42D: Often-reddish quartz), and DASPER seemed super-dumb, so felt pretty confident in that "J." The main memorable moment in this puzzle, however, was not a fun one. It was my ultra-confidently (and, to be quite honest, *correctly*) putting in LEROY at 38A: Man's name that means "the king" (ELROY). See, LEROY is a name that both means "the king" *and* might belong to a non-toon human being. ELROY is solely a Jetson, whereas Leroy Brown (both the titular Jim Croce character and Encyclopedia Brown!) and Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige and artist LeRoy Neiman and, uh, former Mariners rightfielder Leroy Stanton are all very real Leroys. Whereas when I google ELROY my first hit is a Wisconsin town of about a thousand souls. Seriously, this is the big image at the top of the first page of hits:

So when I finished I had RETILD (23D) and SEEDRIDE (!) (35D), which I knew were wrong, but I just couldn't see how anything in the grid was off. That's how solid "Leroy" seemed. Eventually I saw SLEDRIDE (35D: It's going downhill) and got to the "right" answer.

first thing I put in the grid (2D: Nebula Award winner Frederik)

The one thing I really liked about the puzzle was "BEER ME!" (59A: "Another Bud, bud!"), though I haaaaaaate the clue, which no one would say, ever. Or, you know, I hope not, 'cause it's terrible. Less terrible, but still not great, is the "AH" at the beginning of "AH, THIS IS THE LIFE" (34A: Comment of complete contentment). It's a pretty well-known crossword fact that the sound one makes when luxuriating at a spa or some other place of deep relaxation and, let's say, contentment, is "AHH" or maybe "AAH," but not "AH," which is really just a tepid form of "AHA." As in "ah, I see." The whole deal with the sound you make before saying "THIS IS THE LIFE" is that you are siiiiighing it, and the mere two-letter "AH" does not convey this sense of audible bliss at all. It's like someone just stumbled on "the life," and was like "ah ... I guess this is it." Like they found the sock they were looking for.

("... and this is Canada")

Other issues:

12D: Complained loudly and publicly (MADE A STINK) — had MADE A SCENE, as did you at some point, I'm guessing
32D: Capital on the Balkan Peninsula (TIRANE) — ugh, *this* place. Puzzle can never decide whether it's final letter is "E" or "A," so I can't either
20A: "Bandleader" with a 1967 #1 album (SGT. PEPPER) — had "SG-" to start and thought, "well, that's wrong ..."
8D: Best-selling game with a hexagonal board (SETTLERS OF CATAN)— I guess lots of people play this. I know the name, of course, but was reluctant to put it in, as I thought "Catan" was spelled like "Bataan," i.e. with two a's. I guess it's just called CATAN now??? My nerd friend seemed to suggest that. I wouldn't know.
15A: Fix without doctoring (HOME CURE) — oof. Pretty sure term you're looking for is "home remedy"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jason Mueller + Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: easy (6:30)

THEME:"Fifty Years On" — a tribute puzzle to the Apollo 11 moon landing

Theme answers:

APOLLO ELEVEN (3D: Long-distance traveler of 1969)
MAN ON THE MOON (14D: Achievement of 1969)
TRANQUILITY (23A: Name of a sea first visited in 1969)
ARMSTRONG (71A: Newsmaker of July 1969)
ONE SMALL STEP (32D: What 71-Across took in 1969, as represented literally in a corner of this puzzle)
ONE GIANT LEAP (36D: What 71-Across took in 1969, as represented literally in another corner of this puzzle)
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED (110A: Announcement of July 1969)

Word of the Day: RBG [59A: The Notorious ___ (Supreme Court Nickname)] —

[Ruth Bader] Ginsburg has been referred to as a "pop culture icon". Ginsburg's profile began to rise after O'Connor's retirement in 2006 left Ginsburg as the only serving female justice. Her increasingly fiery dissents, particularly in Shelby County v. Holder 570 U.S. 2 (2013), led to the creation of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr and Internet meme comparing the justice to rapper The Notorious B.I.G. The creator of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr, then-law student Shana Knizhnik, teamed up with MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon to turn the blog into a book titled Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Released in October 2015, the book became a New York Times bestseller. In 2015, Ginsburg and Scalia, known for their shared love of opera, were fictionalized in Scalia/Ginsburg, an opera by Derrick Wang. [Wikipedia, emphasis mine]

• • •

Christopher Adams here, filling in once again for Rex. Fun fact: today's puzzle was originally scheduled to be by me, but then it got pushed back to next week because this puzzle needed to run today. So that means I don't get to self-blog my own puzzle. It also means I had a pretty good hunch of what the theme was going to be, although the title may or may not have given things away, depending on how much you've seen in the news about the anniversary.

In any case, this one definitely played easy, and about the only stumbling block I hit was right at the beginning. After filling in TSA(an agency I don't care for, with a cutesy clue I don't care for either), my brain decided that the [Long-distance traveler of 1969] was ALAN SHEPHERD; folks more knowledgeable about this sort of thing will realize that I messed up both the spelling of his name (it's SHEPARD) and the landing he was in (his was a few years later). But thankfully, lots of easy answers like ROE and OTOH, coupled with some old standbys like ETO, OSLO, PALEO, etc., led to me fixing that error very quickly.

I didn't particularly like the spelled out ELEVEN(instead of APOLLO 11), but symmetry dictated it. OTOH, I did like the ONE SMALL STEP / ONE GIANT LEAP symmetry; I've never noticed before that they're the same length. From those, filled in the lower corners very quickly, thanks to the theme clues, and then most of the bottom. I'd like to call attention to the bottom middle, which is (a pair of helper squares aside) essentially a 5x7 region, and filled very cleanly, and with some good answers. FOOD CHAIN is my favorite there, but IDLESSE and DELTA (whose clue, [Dirty mouth?], I absolutely loved) ensured that I was SOLD ON that area.

Most of the theme answers in this one filled themselves in pretty fast, especially once I got confirmation on the theme. None came as fast THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, though, which I dropped in without any crosses. Despite being the last theme answer, though, I encountered it maybe a third of the way into solving, thanks to hopping around the grid. But I like that it's at the end; it's like the entry itself is landing on the bottom of the grid.

Otherwise, though, the rest of the solve was just that—a solve. Not too much stood out, good or bad. Finished up in the center, which was a bit closed off from the rest of the puzzle. Would've liked to have that connect more to the rest of the puzzle, or at least contain some longer answers; definitely felt a bit choppy, and AMBIT (a word I could do without) didn't help either. But RBG, COOKIEJAR, JOR-EL, even CYANIDE (more for the fun fact in the clue than for the word itself) were enjoyable, so I can't complain too much about that area.

Also: that center area kinda looks like a face; not a happy face, not a frowny face, just a face. It almost wants to say that "yeah, this was a puzzle" and nothing else; I'm a little more upbeat about this one. It may not have knocked my socks off, but it was cleanly filled (which is always my top priority) and, unlike some recent tribute puzzles, didn't make me wince and groan by stuffing way too much in there. And sure, this one may feel a bit encyclopedic at times (especially with the repeated "1969" in clues, which wore a little while solving), but at the end of the day, there's nothing that feels out of place here, nothing that feels missing, and the little touches in the bottom corners are a nice bonus.

Olio:

OMANI (65D: Nationality seen in most of Romania)— More of a cryptic clue than a normal clue; OMANI is literally found in Romania, sandwiched between the R and the A. That said, definitely on the easier side of cryptic clues, and with fair crossings everywhere, it's the perfect place to use such a clue.
BEER ME (88A: Request for a cold one) — Debut yesterday, second time today. I've noticed Will has a tendency to phase in some newer answers with short intervals between appearances, which is a good way to reinforce learning; in any case, given the weather, make it a really cold one.
NBA TEAM (95A: Wizards, but not witches) — The masked capital strikes again! (Masked capital meaning that the first word is a proper noun and is not just capitalized because it's the first word in the clue.)
SATS (4D: 800 things?) — Didn't care for this. For one, the clue doesn't have a surface meaning w/o the question mark, so it's not good wordplay. For another, the SAT isn't out of 800; only the individual sections (but not the essay!) are. Finally, it's just a meh plural initialism; with SITS ATOP nearby, I might've changed this.
MAIA (90D: Mother of Hermes) — Forget ~~Roman~~ Greek mythology, let's clue this as American ice dancer and Olympic medalist Maia Shibutani, who turned 25 yesterday, and who also merits a tribute puzzle.

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:51)

THEME: RUM PEL STILT SKIN — clue to the revealer says it all: 61A: Fairy tale question whose answer is spelled out in the starts of 18-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across ("WHAT'S MY NAME?")

Theme answers:

RUMMAGE SALE (18A: Yard event to clear out the attic)
PELICAN STATE (24A: Louisiana's avian nickname)
STILTON (40A: Strong-smelling cheese made in England)
SKINNY DIPPER (51A: One barely in the water?)

Word of the Day: EUROPA (66A: Mythical beauty who lent her name to a continent) —

In Greek mythology, Europa (/jʊəˈroʊpə, jə-/; Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē, Attic Greekpronunciation: [eu̯.rɔ̌ː.pɛː]) was the mother of King Minos of Crete, a Phoenician princess of Argive origin, after whom the continent Europe is named. The story of her abduction by Zeus in the form of a bull was a Cretanstory; as classicist Károly Kerényi points out, "most of the love-stories concerning Zeus originated from more ancient tales describing his marriages with goddesses. This can especially be said of the story of Europa."
Europa's earliest literary reference is in the Iliad, which is commonly dated to the 8th century BC. Another early reference to her is in a fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, discovered at Oxyrhynchus. The earliest vase-painting securely identifiable as Europa dates from mid-7th century BC. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle might very well have been even easier than I've rated it. I say that because I absolutely drove the car into the ditch in one answer—total and complete incompetence and negligence on my part. Some bad luck, but mostly just idiocy (mine, and ironically, at an answer that crosses IDIOTPROOF (30D: Impossible to mess up): instead of coming down the middle of the grid, from left to right, like a normal, I did this dumb thing where I followed a solving path off the end of PELICAN STATE and then straight down the east of the grid via IDIOTPROOF (so proud to get that off of just a couple letters ... insert maxim about pride here). In following this path, I ended up in the position of having to come back into the center of the grid upside-down and backward, i.e. from bottom right toward the upper left. Fine, doable, except what happened was a. when I looked at 49A: Ledger entry on the minus side, I had one letter in place (the final "T"), and b. when I read the clue, my eyes never got past the "Ledger entry" part and I wrote in .... ASSET. So not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. Couldn't-be-wronger. And if I hadn't had that "T," I probably wouldn't have screwed up and jumped the gun, and if I'd just read the clue to the end, I certainly would've gotten DEBIT. But see "T" write ASSET biff bam boom. And then, predictably, I immediately stalled. No hope for PIPE and BISECT to say nothing of OPED and STUDY. I got so flustered that I couldn't figure out how to clean up the mess and just started up again back in the NW and worked my way back down, at which point the error quickly became obvious. Still, I probably lost 15-20 seconds with that screw-up, which means I *should've* been in the 2:30s, not the 2:50s, and 2:30s, for me, is very fast. Not record, but record-adjacent. But what about the theme!? Was the puzzle good!? Tell me what to think!?!?! Easy. We're getting there.

Lynn Lempel's name doesn't pop up in NYT crossword bylines as much as it once did (back in the mid/late '00s. Back then, Ms. Lempel was averaging 8 puzzles a year or so for a while. Of course back then, the NYT was publishing considerably more woman-authored puzzles (nearly 50% more than now!), but more on that some other time (i.e. the next time I think about it, maybe tomorrow). She has a well-deserved reputation for sparkling M/T puzzles: tight, clever themes, clean grids. This one's no exception. Theme type here is a reasonably common one, and the revealer didn't land for me the way it probably did for others (that question makes me think more Snoop Dogg than Stilt Skin), buuuutt the revealer questions does tie nicely into the theme, in that it forces you to sound out his name (and, uh, keep your first-born child, I guess). In an odd coincidence, I had a stilton cheese sandwich this afternoon. Eeeeeeerie.

Thanks to Christopher Adams for filling in for me last-minute yesterday—it did not occur to me until quite late that going to a concert at night, 90 minutes away from my home, might seriously interfere with my ability to produce the Sunday write-up in a timely fashion. His generosity allowed me to enjoy Blondie and Elvis Costello without that "youregonnahavetoworkwhenyougethome" feeling nagging at the back of my mind all night.

Sometimes when you go to concerts, there are crossword constructors there (Mike Nothnagel says 'hi')

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium (slightly faster than usual, but it's a narrow (14-wide) grid)

THEME:"JUST THE TWO OF US" (54A: 1981 hit with the lyric "We can make it if we try" ... or a possible title for this puzzle) —the letter pair "US" appears twice in each themer:

Theme answers:

"EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" (16A: "Spare me your lame reasons!")
MARCUS AURELIUS (26A: Roman emperor who wrote "Meditations")
WALRUS MUSTACHE (42A: Facial hair for Sam Elliott and Wilford Brimley)

Word of the Day: SEDUM (41A: Garden plant also called stonecrop) —

Sedum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Crassulaceae, members of which are commonly known as stonecrops. The genus has been described as containing up to 600 species updated to 470. They are leaf succulents found primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, but extending into the southern hemisphere in Africa and South America. The plants vary from annual and creeping herbs to shrubs. The plants have water-storing leaves. The flowers usually have five petals, seldom four or six. There are typically twice as many stamens as petals. (wikipedia)

• • •

first themer I got

The theme works. The phrasing on the revealer is a *bit* of a stretch, in that it's hard to imagine someone using the "two of ___" phrasing (where the blank is just one word). The "of" wants a "the" to follow it. If I were ordering two plain bagels, I might say "two plain" but almost certainly not "two of plain" (or "two of bagel(s)"). There are two items *in* US, not two USes. Anyway, the idea that "two of us" could mean "two appearances of the letter pairing US" is grammatically a stretch, but we're in puzzleland, where wordplay magic is in effect, so sure, whatever, two USes, grammar be damned. Not super thrilling that one of the themers was just the same word twice—seems a cheap way to get your two USes in there, but "EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" is certainly a legitimate stand-alone phrase, so, as with the somewhat awkward grammar implied by the revealer, I'll allow it. Theme: acceptable. Less acceptable is the grid, which is chock-a-block with crosswordese and a few really unfortunate answers. The best place to see what I'm talking about is the mid-Atlantic section of this grid—everything in the east between the central two themers. That is a hellhole of junk, with the noises UHHUH (tolerable) crossing HEHE (completely intolerable, what is that?), abutted by SEEME, all lost in a field of something called SEDUM (!?). How bad is SEDUM? How completely out of place is that little bit of desperation fill? This is only the *second* time it's appeared in the Shortz era. It hasn't been in the puzzle for *sixteen* years. Thus, though it's possibly I've run into it in some other puzzle, I have never encountered, not once, in the 13 years I've been blogging the NYT. And ... it's Tuesday?? I'll give you SEDUM if you really, really need it. But in this morass of crosswordese, in a not-hard-to-fill grid, on a Tuesday? No. No, I will not give you SEDUM.

Clue on "EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" is bad (stop using "lame" this way, please) (it's especially bad here, as the phrase "lame reasons" makes absolutely no sense—the phrase is "lame excuses," which, again, I wouldn't use at all, but if you can't use "excuses" in your clue, then jeez, change the adjective you use in the grid; don't use the adjective that goes *only* with "excuses") ("terrible reasons?""terrible justifications?") (be creative, just lose "lame"). LOL at the idea that most "book clubs" really get down to THEMES, like it's a college course or something (6D: Topics for book clubs). I teach English *and* have been in book clubs, and was baffled by this clue/answer pairing. Clue on SOCCER BALL was pretty bad, in that you can score "goals" in a lot of sports, so there's nothing very soccery about the clue (3D: Necessity for achieving one's goals?) (ACHIEVEONESGOAL (15)) (please don't put that in your crossword, thanks). Also, the fact that SOCCER BALL had a "?" clue made me think it was a themer. Confusing. I forgot YODELS existed (haven't thought about them since middle school). I forgot Bizet was a GEORGES (thought the only GEORGES I knew was Seurat). My favorite part of the puzzle was when I looked at what turned out to be the revealer and saw that what I had in place was —WOOFUS. My first thought was "what kind of nonsense phrase is this going to be? DOOFUS WOOFUS?" Alas, no. Even more embarrassingly, I didn't write in the last letter of 14A: Nonsense word repeated in Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races" because I thought the answer might be DOODAW (Like GEWGAW? ... which is *not* a nonsense word, somehow!).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Challengingish (this was a 5am wake-up solve, though, and I despised this thing from square one, so that *might* have affected my time...) (5:19)

THEME: colloquial infinitive phrases, clued as if they were "Tasks" :(

Theme answers:

TO NAME A COUPLE (20A: Task for new parents of twins?)
TO PUT IT MILDLY (38A: Task for a Thai chef cooking for typical Americans?)
TO SAY THE LEAST (55A: Task for a Benedictine monk?)

Word of the Day: ERIKA Christensen (59A: Christensen of "Parenthood") —

Erika Jane Christensen (born August 19, 1982) is an American actress and singer whose filmography includes roles in Traffic (2000), Swimfan (2002), The Banger Sisters (2002), The Perfect Score (2004), Flightplan (2005), How to Rob a Bank (2007), The Tortured (2010), and The Case for Christ (2017). For her performance in Traffic, she won the MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture along with her co-stars.
In 2006, she starred on the short-lived drama series Six Degrees on ABC. From 2010 until its ending in 2015, Christensen starred as Julia Braverman-Graham on the NBC family drama series Parenthood. In 2014, she won a Gracie Award for her performance in the role. Christensen portrayed Betty Beaumontaine on ABC's short-lived crime drama series Wicked City. (wikipedia)

• • •

NATASHA's face is my face

This puzzle is a cry for help. Or a middle finger to the solving audience. You decide. All I know is that a theme this thin should not have fill This Bad. Egregious. Painful. Answers starting in the NW quadrant *alone* were bad enough that I would've quit if I didn't have to write this thing up. It is inexcusable to have so much room, so much space, so much leeway (given your very weak, barely-there theme), and still lard the puzzle with garbage like ABITOF INE ONENIL ANACE ALGAL ATPAR ASLOPE (!??!?!?!?!). That right there is enough junk to sink an entire puzzle, but as you'll note, I haven't even made it out of the NW yet. Does it get better? Well, it doesn't get worse, but honestly, how could it? And is the theme worth it? Well, no theme is worth this, and this theme in particular deserves very little in the way of special dispensations. TO NAME A COUPLE is horrible. Horrible. You don't have much to go on with this theme, so All You Themers Have To Land. As every English speaker knows, the phrase is "to name a few."TO NAME A COUPLE is some jury-rigged, kinda/sorta, lawyer-needing baloney. I have no problem struggling with difficult puzzles that are supposed to be difficult because it's late in the week, the clues are clever or tricky, etc. I have tons of problems with difficulty that arises because of constructorial / editorial incompetence. Any self-respecting editor, any editor editor who is not in a sinecure and not too complacent to do his job, should have (if this theme "tickled" him) Sent This Back For A Complete Refill. How do you not make your constructor do better? I've seen rejected puzzles that were So much better than this that just didn't pass the "tickle" test. It's maddening. LOATHE doesn't even begin ...

[deep inside I hope *you* feel it too...]

The whole experience was made worse by the fact that even clues on normal, decent fill meant nothing to me much of the time. MONDO? Shrug (19A: Mario's world). LEVELA? What the hell (41A: Like the most protective hazmat suits). Who knows hazmat suit rating levels?!?!? Further, who knows what key "Isn't She Lovely" is in!? (OK, you hardcore music types might, but yeeeeeesh—that is bad fill made infinitely worse) (and how, How, do you make something Worse by *adding* Stevie Wonder to it? That might be a first in human history) (17A: INE). Your clue for LAW (a fine word) is 41D: Part of LSAT??!? Do you hate clever clues? joy? the English language? Why steer us back *into* an abbr. when you don't have to??? And why oh why steer is *into* some *very old* and *German* song (LOL "hit") for the very simple, you-could-do-anything-with-it answer ARE!?! (43A: What "bist" means in the 1930s hit "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen"). This is Bad Decision Theater at its baddest. And we wrap it up with [checks notes] HOR over ENS ... [chef's kiss]. Sigh. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. In case you were wondering, 68A: Non-majority? is ENS because the ENS (the actual letters: the "n"s) make up the "majority" of the prefix "non" ... I'm sorry, but it's true.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard and Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Medium (5:29)

THEME: JUMPERS (25D: Some basketball shots ... and the theme of this puzzle) — theme answers are two-word phrases that "jump" an answer *and* contain (in circled squares) a word that means "jump"; *that* word, the "jump" synonym in the circled squares, is required to make sense of the jumped answer; so:

Theme answers:

MOBILE APP (17A: iPhone download) "leaps" over (LEAP) YEAR (18A: 2020, but not 2019 or 20121)
ECHO PARK (40A: Los Angeles neighborhood that includes Dodger Stadium) "hops" over (HOP) ON POP (41A: Classic Dr. Seuss book)
SKI PATROL "skips" over (SKIP) TOWN (63A: Flee to avoid obligations, say)

Word of the Day:'AS I AM" (4D: 2007 #1 Alicia Keys album) —

As I Am is the third studio album by American singer and songwriter Alicia Keys. It was released on November 9, 2007, by J Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at various recording studios during 2005 to 2007. Production was handled primarily by Keys, Kerry "Krucial" Brothers, Jack Splash, and Linda Perry, with a guest contribution from musician John Mayer.
The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 742,000 copies in its first week, highest ever for a female R&B artist and eventually earned a triple platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It became an international commercial success and produced four singles that achieved chart success, including "No One", which became the song most listened to of 2007 in the United States. Despite some criticism towards Keys' songwriting, As I Am received positive reviews from most music critics and earned Keys several accolades, including three Grammy Awards. It has sold over five million copies worldwide. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was nifty. Might've helped me a little if I'd managed to fully process what was going on while I was solving—I saw that the answers were "jumping" other answers, but I kept having to infer what the verb involved was because I Somehow Didn't Notice The Circled Squares Spelled It Out. Sigh. I think my initial impression—that there was some kind of "missing letter" thing going on with those jumped answers (see circled "LE" preceding YEAR, which made me think "AP" were somehow buried in the black square???)—got dispelled but never fully replaced, i.e. I never mentally revisited those circled squares after I figured out "jumping" was involved. It's continually amazing to me what my brain will and won't do. So I probably lost some time trying to figure out what "jump" synonym was in play with the "jumped" answers, but still the puzzle was pretty doable. And enjoyable. There's an impressive complexity to the theme even though it feels and looks so simple. This is highly accomplished and *very* polished work. The fact that they were able to stick a revealer in there, in the damn middle of the grid, going Down *through* a theme answer—well, that's just showing off is what that is.

No major sticking points today. Had DOPA and then SOPA (?) before SOMA at 1D: "Brave New World" drug. Seen it many times, couldn't call it up today. Had trouble with BAY because I forget that's a type of horse *and* I hadn't fully worked out the theme at that point, and YEAR seemed definitely wrong for 18A: 2020, but not 2019 or 2021. Took me a while to put "hotel room" and ARMOIRE together (not that it's wrong, just ... if I had to name ten things in a hotel room, that's not one of them). TARPS has one of those cutesy "?" clues that play way too fast and loose with grammar for my taste, so that took some work (48D: Sheets of rain?) ("of"? sideeye). My biggest holdup, though, was pretty funny in retrospect, in that I ran through all the different plausible *wrong* answers you could get from 23D: Aquarium attractions with a --T--- letter pattern in place. First stop, TETRAS. Then I got the initial "O" from TVMOVIE (22A: Film not seen in theaters), and thought, "Oh, I see now: OTTERS." Eventually the OCTOPI showed up and ate the OTTERS, as often happens in (my very limited understanding of) nature.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:42)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ZEBRA FINCH (5A: Bird named for its black-and-white markings) —

The zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) is the most common estrildid finch of Central Australia and ranges over most of the continent, avoiding only the cool moist south and some areas of the tropical far north. It can also be found natively in Indonesia and East Timor. The bird has been introduced to Puerto Rico and Portugal. (P.S. its markings are not very Zebraish)

• • •

This grid looks pretty good, but man none of these clues meant anything to me. I'm exaggerating a little, but I haven't struggled to get started this much in a long long time. I feel like a minute or two of my time was just a freefall at the beginning, where I roamed around the grid, dropping in stray answers here in there, but totally unable to put a run together. If I'd looked at the clue for RAZORBACK (a gimme) early on, things might've gone much better (I tend to overlook longer clues when I'm starting out, stupid stupid stupid). But as it was, I put in FELT and LOIS ... and froze. Then AMY and CNET ... and still nothing. RIC was the only thing I could put in the center. Then TIS and THANE, and finally, finally, I surmised EXES and then got TWIX and IWANNASEE, and despite short answers that were completely beyond me (wtf do I know about euchre, ugh (50A)) (and ZEKE??? wtf is that? (58A)) I managed to put that corner together, and then the SW corner, and then I creeped around filling in the rest of the grid. Would've been great if this had been clued a. like a Friday as opposed to a Saturday, or b. in ways that I personally clicked with or found interesting or enjoyable. But again, if we just look at the grid, I think it's good.

[LOL this opens, improbably, with an AGENA rocket, which is some hardcore crosswordese]

My daughter just walked in the door, after 7 weeks of working in New Zealand, so I'm gonna wrap this up quickly if you don't mind (also if you do).

Five things:

23D: Pismire (ANT)— I'm sure I've known that this word means "ANT," but today I got it confused with "quagmire" and wrote in BOG. And then FEN.
3D: Item sold at Burger King but not at most McDonald's (ONION RING) — No. In the plural, sure. In the singular (!?!?!), no. Buger King does not sell a single, stand-alone ONION RING, I guarantee it.
45A: Taboo word (MUST'NT) — oof, what? So it's a word you use when you are defining something *as* a taboo, and also speak like a quaint 19th-century governess? OK.
25D: Rembrandt or Vermeer (OIL) — ugh. Yes, we use artists' names as metonyms for their paintings, and we use "OIL" as a kind of substantive adjective, I guess, for an "OIL painting," I guess, but all the transitive properties in the world can't make this pleasant.
38A: Your heart may go out to it (ORGAN BANK) — thanks for making me imagine my own untimely death. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. just for fun, here's Garbo in "NINOTCHKA" (33D: 1939 film banned in the Soviet Union)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium? Maybe Medium-Challenging? (solved it on clipboard, in comfy chair, untimed)

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"TARAS Bulba" (18D: Gogol's "___ Bulba") —

Taras Bulba (Russian: «Тарас Бульба»; Tarás Búl'ba) is a romanticized historical novella by Nikolai Gogol. It describes the life of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap. The sons study at the Kiev Academy and then return home, whereupon the three men set out on a journey to the Zaporizhian Sich (the Zaporizhian Cossack headquarters, located in southern Ukraine), where they join other Cossacks and go to war against Poland. [...] The original 1835 edition reflects the Ukrainian context of the story. In response to critics who called his The Government Inspector "anti-Russian", and under pressure from the Russian government that considered Taras Bulba too Ukrainian, Gogol decided to revise the book. The 1842 edition was expanded by three chapters and rewritten to include Russian nationalist themes in keeping with the official tsarist ideology at the time, as well as the author's changing political and aesthetic views (later manifested in Dead Souls and Selected Passages from Correspondence with his Friends). The changes included three new chapters and a new ending (in the 1835 edition, the protagonist is not burned at the stake by the Poles). The little-known original edition was only translated into Ukrainian and made available to the Ukrainian audience in 2005.

• • •

I generally love Byron Walden's puzzle. I *liked* this one—it's tough, fairly smooth, and has a lot of original / unusual entries (all pluses), but for some reason the marquee stuff just didn't grab me. It felt technical. I didn't even know TIDEWATER ACCENT was a thing, so I can't really appreciate it, and LOAN TRANSLATION is fine but dull. In getting both ACCENT and TRANSLATION, I had this feeling of let down, like ... that's it? Part of a professional argot, not springy, bouncy, mainstream stuff. Fine, not at all *bad*, but kind of a waste of prime real estate, imho. As for the rest of it, most of it was a challenging, good time. Only times I really screwed up my face in distaste were 1. FARMPLOW (??). This felt awfully redundant. Where else are we using plows, now? I guess there are snow plows, OK, but I feel like we all agreed to call FARMPLOW just "plow" and I liked it that way. TEEN PEOPLE was basically TEEN + [throw a magazine title in here and pray!]. Actually PEOPLE came to mind reasonably quickly, but since it was in that big open area in the SE, it was tough to confirm. Wait ... Oh, right, sorry, I was listing the times I made faces. So 1. was FARMPLOW and 2. was TARAS (18D: Gogol's "___ Bulba"). Gogol is a reasonably famous writer and so fair game, but my god TARAS feels like hardcore crosswordese. In my entire life, that title has only ever come up in crosswords. I learned it from there, and there it was stayed. So it feels emblematic of the worst kind of crosswordese: old-school gate-keeping. If you've been solving *forever*, it's probably a gimme, but if you've been solving even a Long Time in this century, there's a good chance you've Never seen it, and since it is nowhere near inferrable: tough luck. This is just the third appearance of this clue since I started blogging ('06), and only the second of this decade. By contrast, here's the frequency of "TARAS Bulba" clues in the '70s:

from xwordinfo

I guess I should just be grateful that we don't get the [Tannin-yielding plants] clue anymore, yeesh. Anyway, this Gogol clue splits the solving audience *hard*—it's (likely) a handout to us ancients, and (likely) a bleeping mystery to younger solvers, even those who in recent years have solved a Ton. I'm just saying, I'd go for the plural name over the partial title. Feels more democratic.

Having HIRES and SAPPHIRES in the same grid, so close to each other (practically on top of each other) was a little unfortunate. Repeated letter strings of that length aren't totally taboo, but you'd usually try to keep them apart so as not to draw attention to them. Binge-eating is certainly a real phenomenon, but something about BINGE EATER (22D: Certain obsessive-compulsive) feels bad to me. Cruel somehow. I don't like being excited / entertained by guessing someone's malady. Again, *not* offended. I'm just explaining why I didn't completely love the vibe of this puzzle. Also cruel: the clue on ASHLEE (44A: Simpson who infamously lip-synched a song on "S.N.L."). Not inaccurate. But mean. She has become overdefined by that moment of public humiliation. Again, it feels not great to have my puzzle pleasure REST ON someone else's suffering. I'm probably overfocusing on the negative today; Byron's just so good that my expectations are unreasonably high. Things started out with a fantastic BOING (1A: Spring report), and continued on in a largely impressive, engaging way. There were just fewer wow moments than I would've liked. Probably more SENARY (?) (34D: In base 6) and BETTAS (??) (1D: Siamese fighting fish) moments than I would've liked as well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (25:22, pretty normal for me for a Sunday)

THEME:MIXED METAPHORS (105A: Some laughable language mistakes - as found literally (in consecutive letters) in 24-, 37-, 55- 75-, and 92-Across)

Theme answers:

ATMOSPHERE (24A: Aura)
BLAST FROM THE PAST (37A: Real Nostalgia Trip)
FOR THE MOST PART (55A: Generally Speaking)
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (75A: Sometime Collaborator with William Shakespeare, per the Oxford University Press)
PRIMROSE PATH (92A: Easy Way the Might lead to error)

Word of the Day: EPIPHYTE (113A: Organism that grows on another plant nonparasitcially) — An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. Epiphytes take part in nutrient cycles and add to both the diversity and biomass of the ecosystem in which they occur, like any other organism. They are an important source of food for many species. Typically, the older parts of a plant will have more epiphytes growing on them. Epiphytes differ from parasites in that they grow on other plants for physical support and do not necessarily affect the host negatively. An epiphytic organism that is not a plant is sometimes called an epibiont. Epiphytes are usually found in the temperate zone (e.g., many mosses, liverworts, lichens, and algae) or in the tropics (e.g., many ferns, cacti, orchids, and bromeliads). Epiphyte species make good houseplants due to their minimal water and soil requirements. Epiphytes provide a rich and diverse habitat for other organisms including animals, fungi, bacteria, and myxomycetes.

• • •

Hello out there in crossworld! Dan Felsenheld coming to you from Arlington, VA here filling in for Rex so he can take a much needed vacation. I was excited to see Christopher Adams' name when I opened up the NY Times website to download the puzzle this evening. I've done a number of his puzzles and always enjoyed them, they are often challenging and sometimes have math themes. Full disclosure, as a crossword nerd and attendee at various crossword tournaments I have met Mr. Adams a few times and enjoyed chatting with him. It's been a crazy week for me (I was traveling for work and have been unsuccessfully fighting off a cold all week) but it's always nice to sit down with a Sunday puzzle. The grid was extra wide this week I guess because of the theme clues.

My solving experience was actually a bit choppy, I had a few errors along the way that really slowed me down. I can never remember how to spell SEGO (25D: Beehive state bloomer), there is a SAGO palm that also shows up in crosswords but this refers to the cactus instead. I really wanted to put down MOZART for 66A: "A Little Night Music" composer and it took me forever to figure out it was SONDHEIM. For some reason I has put GESTE at 102A instead of GUSTO so that slowed me down a bit. In fact here is what my grid looked like about halfway through my solve:

So I had the top half, mostly (with errors), had a bit of trouble in the middle and was trying to work my way back up. At this point I had figured out that MARTINIS was wrong (I saw Gin and Vermouth and immediately filled in MARTINIS, ignoring the Campari reference) - but didn't yet know that it was supposed to be NEGRONIS instead. I've never had a NEGRONI, but I know Rex is a fan. I "finished" but had at least one error (I use Puzzazz on ipad for solving). Turned out I had several errors, as you can see I had ITALIA instead of IBERIA at 30A, I hadn't yet gotten there but I had PEP instead of PUP which was the last thing I filled in before I finally got the fully correct grid.

Now about the theme - Mixed Metaphors - I have to say I love a good mixed metaphor, they are usually hilarious, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it", "Now the glove is on the other foot", Barack Obama once said that someone was "Green behind the ears". George W. Bush was quoted saying "There's an old saying that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again". So while I thought the theme concept was sound, when I think of mixed metaphors I think "they make me laugh when I hear them", and I was trying to figure out what it was about the puzzle that was off to me and it's that there is very little hilarity in this puzzle. I mean it's cool that you were able to find different phrases that had the letters for METAPHORS consecutively - CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE is an especially great find, but it felt less than elegant when there are letters before and after the METAPHOR string. The themers are all perfectly good fill, in the language phrases that work well on their own, but having the word METAPHORS anagrammed in them,¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not a constructor, I don't know what exactly could have been done to improve this puzzle, maybe somehow try to work some actual mixed metaphors into the clues for the themers? Somehow ramp up the humor in the clues? I do have to say, to his credit, I had no idea what these theme answers had in common until I got to the revealer at 105A, which is something that I do like in a puzzle. There were a few partials in the puzzle: ORA, THEA, ISAID, SETA, TAI, but these didn't really bother me much.

There were a number of things that I did like about the puzzle. 83A: Place where musical talent may be wasted (KARAOKE BAR) is fantastic. Nice touch having PAX ROMANA (76A: Stable period from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius) right next to HOMO (77A: Man, to Marcus Aurelius). Had never heard of the song RODEO before (not a big country music fan, but I like it)
Clever way to clue IAMB(68D: One of two in "The Grapes of Wrath")

Bullets:

1D: One-named singer with the 2017 #1 Album "Melodrama" (LORDE) — My teenage daughters got me into listening to Lorde (to their embarrassment, bwahahaha), her music is quite good, go listen to it if you haven't
110A: Cocktails with gin, vermouth and Campari (NEGRONIS) — Saw Gin and Vermouth in the clue and imediately put down MARTINIS, only to change this later based on the crosses. I know Rex is a fan of these, I've never had one.
81D: Russian Rulers of Old (TSARINAS) — I got lucky on this one, whenever I see TSAR(INA), there is always the dilemma, is it going to be CZAR, CSAR, TSAR, or even TZAR. I don't remember seeing TSARINAS too often in the NYT puzzle, I would have to look at that other site that keeps track of these things to know the frequency. Also kudos for having more female representation in the puzzle!
115A: Bening with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (ANNETTE) — I love her as an actress, I feel like I haven't seen her is much lately though her IMDB page seems to indicate that she has been steadily working. Forgot she was in "The Grifters" which is such a great film, go out and find it if you haven't seen it.
104A: Girl's name that's also a state abbreviation (IDA): No. IDA is only a state abbreviation in crossword land not in real life. This couldn't have been clued this as "Muckraker Tarbell" or African-American investigative journalist and early civil rights leader Wells?
96D: Baby Shark (PUP): I mentioned to my wife (hi Donna!) that the clue was "Baby Shark" and she immediately started singing "do do do do do do" but I won't link to the recently resurgent earworm video, nope, I won't. (but now you all have that song running through your brain don't you?)

You can follow me on twitter @imfromjersey if you want, I rarely tweet but I occasionally respond to others.

Signed, Dan Felsenheld, King (for a day) of CrossWorld.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: BRUCE HAIGHT

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:18, below my average by 2:30)

THEME: ON THE BENCH (59A: Place where 17-, 23-, 37-, and 48-Across might be found)
Theme answers:

BALLPLAYER (17A: Athlete with a mitt)
PARK VISITOR: (23A: One going for a stroll among urban greenery)
TRIAL COURT JUDGE (37A: Official hearing a case)
JAZZ PIANIST (48A: Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea)

Word of the Day: OSSA (39A: Peak near Olympus) —

Mount Ossa (Greek: Όσσα), alternative Kissavos (Κίσσαβος, from South Slavic kisha "wet weather, rain"^[2]), is a mountain in the Larissa regional unit, in Thessaly, Greece. It is 1,978 metres (6,490 ft) high and is located between Pelion to the south and Olympus to the north, separated from the latter by the Vale of Tempe.

• • •

Hi All, Jake from ~~State Farm~~ Ann Arbor filling in for Rex today as he continues his vacation in Montreal! I’m not the greatest at crosswords, as my Monday times show, but I have fun doing them.

This was a decent Monday puzzle! The theme was neat, but the fill varied for me.

Starting with the fill, you’ve got fun stuff like BIG IF, QUEST, ÊTRE, and BANTU, which are great fill because they cater to my specific interests: linguistics, French, and the need to make my errands sound that much fancier.

And then you’ve got the classic fill throughout: ALEE, HUH, HEE, I BET, I CARE. One could even say it was a bit EEL-y, wriggling back and forth between fun fill and slop. Okay, yeah, I broke out the EDAM for that one.

The theme was solid, I will give it that, but it wasn’t super exciting, like last week’s surprise!Rumplestiltskin. I will admit to having filled in I BET with I SEE before I got to the actual I SEE, which, when combined with a YEE instead of a HEE lead to a TRIAL CO?RE JUDGE. I think that might be a variant on the TV judge. I also was unfamiliar with both Hancock and Corea, so that took me a couple crosses and the revealer to get. I’m not much of a jazz person in general, but I’m listening to Head Hunters by Hancock while writing this and it’s kinda fun. The revealer was more of a “Yeah, that works” for me after getting most of the theme answers than it was a “Now I understand everything” as they so often can be, but overall it was solid.

Bullets:

30A: Abba of Israel (EBAN) — This, like the Word of the Day, is one of those things I need to just learn for crosswords, especially considering it's shown up three times since May, most recently two weeks ago. I got it off the crosses then and didn't need to pay attention to the clue, today I was not so lucky, as detailed with my I SEE/I SEE MISHAP.
46A: Tevye's occupation in "Fiddler on the Roof" (MILKMAN) — "If I were a rich man, Yibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum!" And now, that's stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Bruce and I totally collaborated on this one. You're welcome.

Anyway, I have a deepened respect for Rex’s depth of knowledge about crosswords and his vast experience doing them from doing this review. But I guess when I’m older than Methuselah like he is, I’ll have done rather more crosswords than I have now.

Anyways, ADIOS, everybody!

Signed, Jake Taylor, Microbiologist of Cross World

[Follow Jake on Twitter]

Constructor: Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium - ~2 minutes below my average Tuesday

THEME: STARTUP CAPITAL (38A: With 40-Across, money required to open a business ... or a hint to 18-, 24-, 47- and 57-Across) — Theme answers each start with capital cities.

Theme answers:

RIGAMAROLE (18A: Petty set of procedures)
PARISH PRIEST (24A: Local officials in dioceses)
BERNIE SANDERS (47A: Longest-serving Independent member of Congress in U.S. history)
ROMEO ROMEO (57A: Part of a Juliet soliloquy)

Word of the Day: HORUS (25D: Falcon-headed Egyptian god) —

Horus is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists.^[2] These various forms may possibly be different manifestations of the same multi-layered deity in which certain attributes or syncreticrelationships are emphasized, not necessarily in opposition but complementary to one another, consistent with how the Ancient Egyptians viewed the multiple facets of reality.^[3] He was most often depicted as a falcon, most likely a lanner falcon or peregrine falcon, or as a man with a falcon head.

• • •

Rebecca Falcon here, filling in for Rex today. Thrilled to see a woman constructor - and even more excited to learn that today is Christina Iverson's debut puzzle! On to the puzzle!

This was a solid Tuesday puzzle. I'm always a fan of puzzles that have seemingly unrelated theme answers and a nice AHA moment with the revealer and this one delivered on that. Like many Tuesdays, it wasn't the most exciting, but certainly an enjoyable solve overall. I did spend some time after solving trying to figure out why these specific cities, but it doesn't seem like there was a reason for these choices beyond the grid.

Theme-wise, RIGAMAROLE was my favorite, and also probably the hardest for me to get - I kept trying to parse it as several words and even when the word clicked I was unsure of the spelling, but once it settled in there it was a great start. ROMEOROMEO feels an O short, but works for the theme, and this proud theater geek will never be mad about a Shakespeare reference. My feelings about BERNIESANDERS aside, he's a timely entry and a great city selection. PARISHPRIESTS feels a little green paint to me, but it suits the theme perfectly well.

View this post on Instagram

Not me, US. Thank you Senator Bernie Sanders for sitting with me and sharing your plans on how you will change this country. A couple of weeks ago I asked my followers if you had the opportunity to have a question answered by a democratic candidate what would it be ? I got a lot of submission and selected the most popular questions to get answered. Stay tuned to see how he will fight for economic, racial, and social justice for all. Together, let’s build a movement of young people to transform this country.LETS LEARN OUR CANDIDATES!
A post shared by MOSTHATEDCARDI (@iamcardib) on Jul 29, 2019 at 5:36pm PDT

(47A and CARDI B together!? - it would be a crossword crime not to post this)

Non-theme thoughts - some really excellent bonus fill happening in the puzzle, with SNOWSUITS, BABYBUMPS, ITGIRLS, and DREAMON among my favorites. These long downs made up for some of the gluey fill in the puzzle which I was never bothered too much by because each section had its bright spots that made me smile. The clue for FOXIER (36A: More cunning) seems wrong to me - I suppose it's definitionally accurate, but I'm not sure I've every heard someone use FOXY that way in real life, so even when I knew that's what the puzzle wanted, I hesitated to enter it. I've also never heard the phrase GIN UP -is this a thing people say?

Fav Clues of the Day:

TENNIS— 4D: Something you'll have to go to court for?
SNAP— 66A: Lead-in to chat or dragon
BDAYS— 9D: They're almost always shared by twins, informally
DENT— 42A: Feature of many an old car

And I know I can't be the only one with this stuck in my head thanks to FANTA (36D: Fruity soda brand) - I bet you can hear the song before even pressing the play button.

Congrats to Christina on a great debut!

Signed, Rebecca Falcon

Before I go - some shameless promotion - if you're in California and a fan of crosswords and comedy check out Zach Sherwin's Crossword Show - it is a show like nothing else you've ever seen and the grid is by yours truly.

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THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2019

Oklahoma tribe originally from the Southeast / FRI 7-12-19 / Advice column query / "This isn't over" / Means of interstellar travel

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In the Underworld Offenbach opera / SUN 7-14-19 / Trendy superfood / Numerical prefix from Grek for monster / Gloria in Madagascar films / Bygone monitor for short / Classical personification of ideal human beauty / Overlord for battle of Normandy / Computer guru informally / Old dentist's supply

Venerable monk of Middle Ages / MON 7-15-19 / Magical powder in Peter Pan / Style of collarless shirt / Aquarium accessory

Country singer James Decker / TUE 7-16-19 / Oakland's Oracle for one / Demo material for Wile E Coyote / Speedy Amtrak option / Smallest state in India / Glassworker at times

Traditional time to start work /.WED 7-17-19 / File box filler / Sped up part of contest commercial / Surname of national security advisers under both Bush 43 Obama / Green branch for short

Mascot of Winnipeg Jets / FRI 7-19-19 / Las Vegas casino with musical name / Mormon settlement of 1849 / Orange half of iconic duo / One-name singer with 1993 platinum album Debut / Spun wax say / Player of Skipper on Gilligan's Island

Often-reddish quartz / SAT 7-20-19 / Best-selling game with hexagonal board / Pioneering thrash metal band with its own music festival Gigantour

They don't keep their thoughts to themselves / SUN 7-21-19 / "However," in textspeak / Someone who might engage in a hobby with some frequency? / Dangerous substance that smells like bitter almonds / Org. with an Inspiration Award and an Award of Valor

Fairy tale question / MON 7-22-19 / Strong-smelling cheese made in England / Louisiana's avian nickname

Garden plant also called stonecrop / TUE 7-23-19 / Facial hair for Sam Elliott Wilford Brimley / Nonsense word in Stephen Foster's Camptown Races./ 1981 hit with lyric we can make it if we try / Compound with fruity scent

Violin virtuoso Niccolo / WED 7-24-19 / Actress comic Kemper / Tank topped ponytailed Futurama character / Circular arrow button in address bar

2012 time travel thriller / THU 7-25-19 / Los Angeles neighborhood that includes Dodger Stadium / 1990s antidiscrimination law for short / New Hampshire academy locale / Edible algae used to wrap sushi

Trixie's mom in comics / FRI 7-26-19 / Eccentric fashion designer in Incredibles / Either of two highest trump cards in euchre / Small fruit high in pectin / 1939 film banned in the Soviet Union / Starcy-producing palm tree

Siamese fighting fish / SAT 7-28-19 / Tragedy first performed in 431 BC / Roman god invoked by Iago / Believers who practice ahimsa / Manner of speaking in eastern Virginia

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MON 7-29-2019

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