Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel and Don Gagliardo

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: WOODROW (37A: First nam of a former president … or, read another way, what each of the circled lines is) — four "circled lines," each of which contains three words that can follow "Wood" in a common phrase/word:

CHIP STOCK PILE
CARVER WORK BIN
MAN WIND CUTTER
LAND CRAFT SHED

Word of the Day: Arthur RUBINSTEIN (28D: Polish-born musician who was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom) —

Arthur Rubinstein, KBE (January 28, 1887 – December 20, 1982) was a Polish-American classical pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music written by a variety of composers and many regard him as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He was described by The New York Times as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. He played in public for eight decades. (wikipedia)

• • •

This makes for an interesting visual gimmick, but not for an interesting solve. None of the theme answers are interesting. They're just plain words. So the grid has nothing going for it, from a solving perspective. Once you get WOODROW, then you know that the circled words follow "Wood," and then the end. "I DON'T BUY IT!" is a fine phrase—and the latter half of it was one of the few areas where I had to work to get the answer—but the grid is pretty dull otherwise.

Not much else to say. Blew through this in under 5. Main issue was remembering who the hell RUBINSTEIN was. The fact of someone's winning a Presidential Medal of Freedom is largely meaningless, from a solver's standpoint. It's not as if people keep track of such winners. It's a damn long list. Do you know who Russell Train was? Me either. He won one. Not diminishing him—seems like he did really important work. Just saying that winning this medal is not a significant datum from a solving perspective. [D.C.-born dancer who was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom] = CHITA RIVERA. See what I mean. Anyway, I completely forgot there was such a person as RUBINSTEIN, and so with RUBIN in place, I tried to stick RUBÉN BLADES in there. Yes, that really happened. Yes, BLADES is from Panama, his name's spelled RUBÉN (not RUBIN), *and* his name doesn't fit in the grid. And yet...

The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Maria THERESA (13D: 18th-century Hapsburg monarch Maria ___) —

Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (German: Maria Theresia; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria,Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma. By marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress. She started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, died in October 1740. Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and spent his entire reign securing it. Upon the death of her father,Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, and France all repudiated the sanction they had recognised during his lifetime. Prussia proceeded to invade the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia, sparking a nine-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession. Maria Theresa would later unsuccessfully try to reconquer Silesia during the Seven Years' War.
Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, had sixteen children, including Queen Marie Antoinette of France, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, Duchess Maria Amalia of Parma and two Holy Roman Emperors,Joseph II and Leopold II. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think there are three "bad" answers in this puzzle. Three: PENH, HE'D, and, let's say, DEARTHS, which seems weird in the plural. Nah, I can't even ding that one, really. So, two. Two "bad" answers. There are also quite a few plurals (or otherwise S-ending words), so maybe that's a fault? I am trying hard to find this puzzle's weaknesses, and it's really, really hard. The difference between the average Patrick Berry puzzle and the average (non-Berry) NYT puzzle is astronomical. For a variety of reasons (which I'll get into another time), there has been a talent drain from the NYT submission pool over the past few years. A lot of great constructors are going the independent route, or they work almost exclusively for another outfit, or they're submitting their best work to Fireball (which is better edited and pays more). So it's delightful to see a puzzle like this in the NYT—pure, glorious, professional work. Nobody handles great expanses of white space more smoothly than Berry. The clues show a good deal of thought, care, and humor. They bounce. They feel like they were written just for this puzzle (as opposed to being pulled out of some musty clue hoard). I dearly wish we saw this caliber of work more often.

The triple slant-stack through the middle is wonderful. GO BIG OR GO HOME is a great central answer that reads like a boast, or a challenge—"Come on, constructors. Try to top this." One of the main reasons I love Berry's puzzles is that I feel rewarded for pushing through difficulty. Today's puzzle wa not especially hard, but I found myself floundering a bit in the NE, north of OBSCURA. The main issue was [Stamp act?]. I had got it down to CLOG- but that's it. That seemed like an impossible opening letter sequence for an answer that long, so I started second-guessing some of those crosses, but they were all air tight. The I put the "D" in from DIE and got CLOGD- and after about 1 second of "That can't be right" the dime dropped: CLOG DANCE! Such a great clue for that answer. When I struggle and the answers come up crap, I get cranky. When I struggle and they come up gold, I'm amazed, and grateful.

Hardest part for me was getting off the ground, as I totally second-guessed the OED- start to 20A: Like some unhealthy relationships (OEDIPAL). Wrote in TRIOS and RENEE and liked all the results except OE-. Then ABIDE gave me OED- and I thought "nope, something's wrong." But everything checked out, so I plowed forward, and … oh, I remember the main problem: I had written in an "S" at the end of 4D: Holiday travelers?, giving me OEDS- (clearly impossible). Eventually got MAGS for the "travelers" and thought, and thought, and thought about how that could be correct. And then MAGI popped into my head. Toughness through clever cluing = my favorite kind of toughness.

Thanks, Patrick Berry. I do have one large complaint, though, and that's that your Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies book is out of print. I doubt a better "For Dummies" book has ever been written, and without its being readily available, I have no go-to recommendation for "books about constructing." So my questions is "what the hell?" I'll take my answer off air.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Evan Birnholz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SALMI (53D: Game stew) —

n., pl., -mis.
A highly spiced dish consisting of roasted game birds minced and stewed in wine.

[French salmis, short for salmigondis, salmagundi. See salmagundi.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/salmi#ixzz2u17CeQTh

• • •

Simple and enjoyable. No bleeping clue what a SALMI is, but everything else was fairly well within my ken. This is a very clean 72-worder, and has many lovely longer answers—four banks of 9-stacks and then two 10s across the middle, all of them solid. All of them. Nice work. The real trick is to make sure the short crosses on your longer stacks aren't dreck, and here (with the exception of the slightly wobbly AREAR / SALMI section in the SE), the crosses hold up pretty well. The only issue I had today was the easiness. Clues didn't seem to have any teeth, and I was genuinely surprised at how easy many of the answers were to get without any crosses. Take 1D—where I started: [Vaulted areas]. In five letters, my first thought, and any constant solver's first thought, is going to be APSES. Just did a clue search of "vaulted" at the cruciverb.com database, and (unsurprisingly, to me) a huge percentage (21 of 26, to be precise) of those clues were for APSE/S (21/22 where "vaulted" was used adjectivally). Certain clue words just trigger certain answers because of how commonly they're used, and the "vaulted"-APSE/S connection is a strong one. This same clue word trigger happened at 19A: Coastal fish consumers (ERNS). "Coastal" = ERN/S. [Coastal raptors] is the clue I would write for ERNS if I had just two seconds to write one, i.e. it's the hackneyed clue. So 19A was transparent. SEE TO and CRANE followed very quickly and that whole NW corner just didn't last that long.

Because I moved fairly quickly today, there weren't that many notable struggles. My favorite mistake was PEA at 46A: Split second? My reasoning was that peas are "split," of course, and … well, my brain somehow decided "second" could refer to a course at a meal. Like, maybe you have salad (first) and then (split PEA) soup, second? Anyway, it worked great until the field goal clue came up. -IDAR- (at 37D: Like some missed field goals) made no sense, and once I got to WIDAR- I knew the "A" was wrong. It had to be WIDE RIGHT. But ... "PEE!?! How is that even … oh, it's the second letter in the word 'split'. Ah. Cleeeever." Thought it was "Good LAWD A'mighty!" (which still seems reasonable) at first. Had ABAFT for AREAR (52D: In the back). Had RESOD until the very end at 48D: Plant in subsequent seasons (RESOW). Only a final grid scan revealed the mistake—I had no memory of seeing DRED Scott in the puzzle … and that's because I hadn't. The clue was 66A: Tied and the answer was DREW.

Today's constructor, Mr. Birnholz, asked me just yesterday to test-solve his latest independent puzzle—a metapuzzle contest—now up at his puzzle website, "Devil Cross." I see now that it was probably a ploy to get me to plug said puzzle today, when he knew I'd be talking about his work. So I toyed with the idea of thwarting him and not mentioning his metapuzzle at all. But then that seemed petty. Plus, his puzzle is very, very clever. So you should probably do it.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Reel-life Anniversary" — tribute to constructor's namesake, director VICTOR FLEMING (119A: Director of the eight starred films in this puzzle, who was born on 2/23/1889). Grid has a bunch of his movies in it.

Theme answers:

"RED DUST" (5D: *1932 Clark Gable/Jean Harlow film)
"THE WIZARD OF OZ" (24A: *1939 Judy Garland film)
"A GUY NAMED JOE" (54A: *1943 Spencer Tracy/Irene Dunne film)
"BOMBSHELL" (37A: *1933 Jean Harlow film)
"GONE WITH THE WIND" (68A: *1939 Vivien Leigh/Clark Gable film)
"TORTILLA FLAT" (89A: *1942 Spencer Tracy/Hedy Lamarr film)
"JOAN OF ARC" (103A: *1948 Ingrid Bergman film)
"LORD JIM" (98D: *1925 Percy Marmont film)

Word of the Day: PETREL (8D: Migratory seabird)—

n.
Any of numerous black, gray, or white sea birds of the order Procellariiformes.

[Perhaps alteration of earlier pitteral (perhaps influenced by Saint PETER walking on the water, from the fact that the bird flies so close to the water as to appear to be walking on it).]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/petrel#ixzz2u6biP0vn

• • •

I have a hard time imagining this being accepted if the constructor weren't a longtime NYT crossword writer. No way a newbie gets a puzzle like this published ("Hi, my name's Milos Forman, and I want to write a puzzle about the director of the same name, with his name and a bunch of his movies in it, in honor of his upcoming 83rd birthday … hello? Hello?"). It's just too straightforward, too arbitrary. The only charm it has is the winky constructor credit ("A Namesake of 119-Across"). Otherwise, it's just a guy born 125 years ago (that's a thing we're commemorating now?), and a bunch of films he directed, and The End. No gimmick. No twist. No nothing. "Here are some movie titles … that's all." I don't get it. The one thing I am grateful to this puzzle for is teaching me who the hell this guy is. So weird that I've never even heard of the director of two of the most famous movies ever made, but there you go—I couldn't have named the director of "GONE WITH THE WIND" *or* "THE WIZARD OF OZ" before today. So, for the trivia, I am thankful. For the puzzle, much, much less so. To the constructor's credit, he at least seems aware that the whole endeavor is pretty SOLIPSISTic (60A: Self-absorbed sort).

The puzzle is by no means bad. It's incredibly adequate. I didn't wince much, if at all, that I can remember. So the fill is solid—maybe even better than average for the NYT. I did not know that a swashbuckler "strutted" (65D: Swashbuckles, say => STRUTS). That is interesting. I thought the only mandatory criterion was swordsmanship, but apparently there is a fancy, confident walk that goes with it. Awesome. Nice contemporary clue on ELSA, which is a sentence I don't think I've ever written (102A: Snow queen in Disney's "Frozen"). Thought clue on STUDENT ID was very clever (83D: Means of access to a cafeteria, maybe). STUDENT ID is much better than my initial answer: STUDY HALL (?). Really wish POP OUT had gotten a baseball clue. Other than that, I have no real strong feelings or remarkable things to say about the fill in this grid. It's fine.

Puzzle of the Week this week was pretty tough. I was all set to give it to last Sunday's Washington Post Puzzler, a lovely themeless by Trip Payne (2/16). But then Patrick Berry's Friday NYT themeless (2/21) came along and suddenly made this decision really hard. OMG, I haven't even done today's Newsday Stumper (2/22), and it's a Doug Peterson! Hang on … oh, man, that's good too. But looking at them all alongside one another, I just can't deny the Berry. Too smooth, too strong.

Reminder for upstate NY'ers / Northern PA'ers: This Saturday, Mar. 1, is the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition in Ithaca, NY (to benefit the literacy programs of Tompkins Learning Partners). Enter as an individual or bring a team of 4 (!). Registration form here. I'll be there in some semi-official capacity. Registration info here.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***For A Monday***)

THEME: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (39A: Author who created the characters named by the starts of 17-, 24-, 49- and 61-Across) — theme answers begin with names of the March girls

Theme answers:

JOKES AROUND
MEGABYTE
BETHESDA
AMYL NITRATE

Word of the Day: CALE Yarborough (41D: Racer Yarborough) —

William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough (born March 27, 1939), is a farmer, businessman and former NASCAR Winston Cup Series driver and owner. He is one of only two drivers in NASCAR history to win three consecutive championships. He was the second (2nd) NASCAR driver to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated […]
His 83 wins places him at number six on the all-time NASCAR winner's list (behind Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip, who are tied for fourth with 84). His 14.82% winning percentage is the ninth best all-time and third among those with 500 or more starts. Yarborough won the Daytona 500 four times; his first win coming in 1968 for theWood Brothers, the second in 1977 for Junior Johnson, and back-to-back wins in 1983 and 1984. In 1984, he became the first driver to qualify for the Daytona 500 with a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). Yarborough is a three time National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the Year (1977, 1978, 1979). (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is interesting—I've seen the rough equivalent of this theme before, I think (and recently), but I still generally like the way the girls' names are hidden inside other words at the beginning of the theme answers. The non-theme fill, however, was another story. It felt very stale, very phoned-in. Also, I can't tell you how badly NESTING SITE (?) tripped me up. Had NESTING- and then … nothing. Could not bring myself to accept SITE, as that did not seem like nearly a tight enough phrase to be a crossword answer. It's not a GREEN PAINT* answer (i.e. a totally arbitrary adj./noun pairing), but it just felt off. Also, while I like that there are four longer Downs, I don't like how much longer the Downs are than half the theme answers. Very strange to have four non-theme answers be longer than two of your theme answers. But the real problem here is the staleness of the fill. Ugh to CALE (never can remember if he's HALE or KALE or what, but since both of *those* are actual words, I should really commit the non-word CALE to memory right now), and OLIVA and ADELA (super ugh) and RAE. Then there's the randomest of Roman numerals, CMVI. And lots of crosswordese like ORONO and EZINE (super ugh). And more fill-in-the-blank clues than you can shake a stick at. Most cluing feels lifted from Cluing Compendium of Yore. So, yeah, the puzzle skews very old. And not old-interesting, but old-tired. Old-dull. Old-"please, not again." There's even "Old TV's"GAVIN MacLeod… see, there's just not *balance* here; bring on the old, the new, the whatever, just mix it up and (above all) show evidence of *care* and *trying*.

Here's what trying looks like:

BIDEN*
AZURE*
JOKES
ADE*T
***

Now it's not Great (I mean, it's still got ADE, so how could it be Great), and admittedly I *tried* for only about 30 seconds, but it's an undeniable improvement on the current NW, nonetheless. BAJA can stand alone, unlike DÉJA. ERE is crosswordese, but sure as hell beats INE. AZURE crushes EZINE. DUKE beats DIKE. I think BIDEN beats DIDIN, but even if you call that a draw (or a downgrade), the overall quality of my revision is better. And I am not a top-flight constructor, and I did not get paid to make this puzzle. So … buttons.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Morning update: I read the clues to my wife as she cooked last night and she (a woman who knows her birds fairly well) couldn't get NESTING SITE to save her life. Even with NESTING in place. It was pretty funny. "NESTING … LIMB?"

Constructor: Matthew E. Paronto and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CROSSWORDESE (55A: What this puzzle's capitalized clues are, both by definition and pun) — capitalized clues are all examples of CROSSWORDESE (common, overused crossword fill) that start with E (hence the pun, "crossword E's")

Theme answers:

FENCING BLADE (EPEE)
NEEDLE CASE (ETUI)
SEA BIRD (ERNE)
ARAB LEADER (EMIR)

Word of the Day: UFW (38A: Tomato and lettuce pickers' org.) —

The United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, theAgricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and theNational Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez. This group was originally a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance but rapidly became a union offarmworkers. The shift occurred when the NFWA went out on strike in support of the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California who had previously initiated a grape strike on September 8, 1965. The NFWA and the AWOC, recognizing their common goals and methods, and realizing the strengths of coalition formation, jointly formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966.This organization was accepted into the AFL-CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farmworkers Union. (wikipedia)

• • •

First, you shouldn't celebrate this stuff. Second, you shouldn't celebrate this stuff in a puzzle that contains this stuff, in abundance (OBOE, EXE, NIN, LAN, IBIS, AFRO, ONO, REE). I don't see the humor and I don't see the point. The "pun" doesn't do much to mitigate the pointlessness. I guess one might get a mild chuckle after figuring out what the pun is (i.e. "crossword E's). But it would have to pretty darned mild. Neither the clues nor the answers display any wit, any sparkle. I am all for repurposing crosswordese for crossword purposes, and I've seen it done well, but this? Why? Conventional clues for CROSSWORDESE are trite and dull, and so the theme answers are … just that. CLOWN AROUND is a nice answer (25D: Be a goof), but you can have the rest. Fun CLOWN fact: top NFL draft prospect JADEVEON CLOWNEY has 15 letters in his name—a perfect grid-spanning length.

What else to say? Not much. Finished in just over 3, which is pretty fast for me. Not a lot of resistance here. I hesitated a bit at [Relatively near] because I expected a comparative adjective, i.e. something ending in -ER. I let NOT FAR into the grid entirely based on crosses. The clue on EMBED is fairly contemporary, and a highlight in this otherwise pretty bland offering. How do you give KIEV such a bland, fill-in-the-blank clue (14D: Chicken ___) when it's such a major political hotspot at the moment? I guarantee you the city is mentioned in the NYT. Today. Come on, man. My friend Matt just pointed out that the "Asian-American" in the LIN clue is unnecessary—you'll note there's no corresponding "African-American" for ISIAH Thomas. Speaking of BARN owls … which I am doing now … reader "Jen from CT" posted some crazy owl pictures to the FB page of The Great Backyard Bird Count yesterday. They were taken with an infrared, motion-activated camera. Here's a detail, which I'm considering making my new FB avatar.

EWER, ELOI, EVEL!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ruth B. Margolin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Sadist songs — -IST is added to familiar phrases, creating much wackiness

Theme answers:

CUBIST REPORTERS (17A: Journalists covering abstract art?)
POMPOUS ASSISTS (26A: Help from a jerk?)
STARKIST NAKED (44A: Canned tuna without mayo?)
SLEEPER CELLISTS (58A: Narcoleptics with string instruments?)

Word of the Day: VOILE (38A: Sheer curtain fabric) —

n.
A light, plain-weave, sheer fabric of cotton, rayon, silk, or wool used especially for making dresses and curtains.

[French, from Old French veile, veil, from Latin vēla, neuter pl. of vēlum, covering.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/voile#ixzz2uOeDTPln

• • •

You know what might be interesting? An ADDICT puzzle. See, that would be your revealer, and then you add -ICT to familiar phrases to create wackiness. Adding -ICT would likely be *much* harder than adding -IST, but my point here is that at least with ADDICT there'd be some rationale for adding the letters you are adding. Adding random letter strings, with no clever reveal to justify it or bring it all together, just leaves me with a hollow feeling. This is a solid puzzle, as this theme-type goes. Theme answers are mildly amusing, and you've got a couple of sassy base phrases in "pompous ass" and "stark naked" that liven things up a bit. That center part—with five consecutive 5+-letter Downs running through two theme answers—is actually very hard to pull off with any kind of grace, and I thought the effort here came off nicely. Fill is not that interesting, but neither is it groan-worthy. So what we end up with is a very adequate grid with somewhat amusing theme answers and no real sense of purpose. Revealers give add-a-letter puzzles purpose. They bring them to life. This one needs one. It doesn't have one. That is pretty much the entirety of what there is to say about this puzzle.

ASPIRE… that has interesting possibilities. [Reptilian anger?]. As you can see, I'm just looking around the grid now trying to think of anything to say. This Is How The Sausage Is Made, People. I thought the Bahamas city was NASHUA, which will be of interest to New Hampshirites, if no one else (15A: Bahamas cruise stop). Thought the [Winter topper] was a SNOCAP. It felt … right-ish at the time. There's really too many Es Rs Ls Ss and Ts for me to care much about the rest of the grid, so I'll just let you go now.

Reminder: Finger Lakes Crossword Competition is this Saturday in Ithaca, NY. Should be fun. I'll be there. Info here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Stanley Newman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Sign at a neighborhood bar: "DON'T TALK ABOUT / YOURSELF. WE / WILL DO THAT / AFTER YOU LEAVE"

Word of the Day: DIURNAL (11D: Active when the sun shines) —

adj.
Relating to or occurring in a 24-hour period; daily.
Occurring or active during the daytime rather than at night: diurnal animals.
Botany. Opening during daylight hours and closing at night.
n.
A book containing all the offices for the daily canonical hours of prayer except matins.
Archaic.
A diary or journal.
A daily newspaper.
[Middle English, from Late Latin diurnālis, from Latin diurnus, from diēs, day.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/diurnal#ixzz2uUNq9Vci

• • •

I am on record as being, let's say, not the biggest quote-puzzle fan. This quote is both strange and vaguely menacing, which I infinitely prefer to cutesy or punning, so I was not as put off as I might have been. Also, the grid is whisper quiet. 72 words (that's low for a themed puzzle) and not a rattle anywhere. This is what Stan is perhaps best known for, as editor of the Newsday crossword—search-and-destroying the short dreck that can clog up puzzles. I don't normally care what a constructor has to say about his/her own puzzle—while such "notes" have the potential to be interesting, they're usually either boring or self-serving, and at any rate have no relevance to my feelings about the quality of the puzzle. But I'm gonna quote from Stan's notes on this puzzle—not on this specific puzzle, actually, but on puzzle-editing in general—because I think his "fussiness" (as he puts it) is admirable.

In the 1,000-plus crosswords I’ve constructed and the 5,000-plus I’ve edited (for the New York newspaper Newsday and PuzzleSocial.com) since adopting Crossword Compiler in 2000, I’ve found that with careful grid patterning it’s never necessary to use obscurities, even for wide-open grids such as the 72-worder here. This sometimes requires that I check Google News and Google Books, to be sure that words I think are in common current use actually are. I look forward to the day where this fussiness will be standard procedure for constructors, so we can finally bid the OLEOs, OLIOs and ANILs of crosswordese an unfond farewell.

I told Stan last week that I was solving one of his Newsday puzzles, Downs-only, with my wife in the diner last week, and found myself adjusting my guesses based on my knowledge that he was editor of the puzzle. Wife: "4 letters: [Amazing thing]" Me: "Oh crap, it's probably stupid ONER … oh wait, no. This was edited by Stan. Try LULU." And LULU it was. A similar thing happened when we were trying to parse an Across (w/o looking at clue) and had the pattern EV_L. Wife: "It's EVIL." Me: "Could be EVEL … no, wait, it's Stan. You're right; it's probably EVIL." And yes, it was EVIL. It's nice being able (mostly) to rule out the dreck.

This grid isn't what I'd call sparkly, but for a 72-word themed puzzle, its smoothness is pretty damned impressive. Loved the clue onSODA POP (1D: Redundant-sounding refreshment), as well as the clue on AMA (8D: Org. offering group practice membership), which had me thinking NRA and imagining a bunch of people on the shooting range at once. FOODIE is fresh and original and, again, I like the clue (61A: Epicurean explorer). Unexpected clue on RIP (59D: Cut in the direction of the grain). Modern clue on AMY (55A: Adams of "American Hustle"). Just a solid, professional effort overall.

Puzzle news now: Matt Gaffney is now doing a regular metapuzzle contest for New York Magazine. See the first contest here. And, again, I'll be at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition this Saturday (3/1) in Ithaca, NY, judging and mingling and talking and god knows what. Should be fun. Info on the competition, which is open to all skill levels, here.

Now, for no reason, here is a picture of me and my dad from the early '80s. I have no idea where we are or why (in the world) I'm wearing shades.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: FLAUTIST (28D: Sir James Galway, e.g.) —

n.
One who plays the flute; a flutist.

[Italian flautista, from flauto, flute, from Old Provençal flaüt. See flute.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/flautist#ixzz2uaH5RK8E

• • •

Constructing, shmonstructing. Welcome to the age of database management!

I laughed when I opened this puzzle. Out loud.

I wish I could've been on some game show where, after seeing the constructor's name, I could've put All My Money on "Quadstack." I'd be so rich.

I feel like I need some boilerplate language I can just cut and paste into every quadstack (or wide-open "record-setting" low-black-square-count puzzle) I write up. You know: long answers have a combination boring / made-up feel, short crosses are weak / forced, etc. So let's just assume that unless I say otherwise, I am *always* saying that for these kinds of puzzles. So here's what I enjoyed about this puzzle:

XXX
TEXAS-SIZE
LIVING WAGE
Toughish cluing
I learned how to spell FLAUTIST (I would've gone, and did briefly go, FLOUTIST)

I think this puzzle must surely have set a record for "TION"s. I count four. Including, dear lord, three "TIONAL"s all on top of one another in those middle answers. Repeated letter strings of any length (say 4+) are generally frowned upon / kept to a minimum. So you really gotta love the gutsiness of stacking three 6-letter strings. Or you don't have to love it. Probably you don't.

I, ANA is terrible in all circumstances until the day when former SNL cast member Ana Gasteyer writes an autobiography with that title.

Did you know there are more than 100 species of MALARIA PARASITE? I learned this when I googled [MALARIA PARASITE] to see if it was a real phrase. Much to my surprise, it is. I would've thought "malarial."

HAD A TIN EAR has all the moral authority of ATE A HAM SANDWICH (15!)

AT SIX now has me rethinking whether XXX was truly worth it.

OK that's enough. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ian Livengood and J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ASHANTI Region (10D: Ghanaian region known for gold and cocoa) —

The Ashanti Region is located in south Ghana and third largest of 10 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of 24,389 km² (9,417 sq mi) or 10.2 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. In terms of population, however, it is the most populated region with a population of 3,612,950 in 2000, accounting for 19.1 per cent of Ghana’s total population. The Ashanti region and Asanteman is known for its major gold bar and cocoa production and also harbors the capital city of Kumasi. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is among my favorite of the JASA Crossword Class puzzles. They are always pretty good—as they should be, since the JASA teachers are always top-flight constructors, and the puzzles represent the collective effort of many sharp minds—but this one is particularly fresh and solid. Kudos to Will for letting KTHXBYE get through (18A: Curt chat closing). It's a jokey texting sign-off that looks nuts on the grid. Nuts good. Good nuts. I think it's often spelled KTHXBAI—that spelling certainly googles better. Speaking of Google: GOOGLE GLASS is also a nice modern reference, although … I have yet to see anyone wearing them (it? It, I guess). I mean, in real life. And yet I've been hearing about it for so long now that it already feels a bit like yesterday's news. See also BitCoin, which I'm sure will be in the puzzle Any Day Now (esp. with the recent fraud problems putting the "currency" in the spotlight). But BITCOIN isn't in this puzzle. GOOGLE GLASS is (42A: Modern device seen on a bridge). And despite its looking stupid (in its currently incarnation), some version of it is likely here to stay (not so sure about BITCOIN … or why I keep talking about BITCOIN).

Never heard of PERONI, so that area of the puzzle was probably the toughest for me. PERONI makes a beer called Nastro Azzurro, which (per wikipedia) was the 13th best-selling beer in the UK in 2010. So if that's ever in a trivia contest, boom, you're set. BATE is a funny word (3D: Moderate). Needs a terminal S to be a name, needs an initial A to be a "real" verb. I've never heard anyone use BATE in ordinary conversation. I had BAT- and still had no idea what the answer was til I ran the alphabet. Cluing generally seemed vibrant and interesting—a nice mix of tough and easy, trivia-based and wordplay-based. Nice question-markers on SUPEREGO (28A: One's own worst critic?) and PAJAMAS (59A: Sack dress?). Really enjoyable work. 72 words is the max for a themeless. High-word-count themelesses have a huge upside. Room for really interesting longer answers, but not soooo much room that you end up torturing the fill to make everything hold together. Long live the high-word-count themeless.

Happy March!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. SOY is in the grid and also in the "LA BAMBA" clue (1A: 1987 #1 hit with the line "Yo no soy marinero, so capitán"). You're probably only noticing it now–now that I've mentioned it—so it probably doesn't matter.

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Oscar Double Features" — wacky phrases made out of the titles of two Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated films:
Theme answers:

23A: Nelson Mandela? [1995, 1985] (BRAVEHEART OUT OF AFRICA)
30A: One giving unreliable testimony? [1976, 1985*] [* = Nominee] (ROCKY WITNESS)
53A: Reason for missing a flight? [1970*, 2000*] (AIRPORT TRAFFIC)
68A: Part of a line at O'Hare? [2002, 1976*] (CHICAGO TAXI DRIVER)
86A: Cheesy pickup line? [1944, 1995*] (GOING MY WAY, BABE)
106A: Reason why all the computers are down? [1976*, 2005] (NETWORK CRASH)
118A: Seaside outing? [1955*, 1954] (PICNIC ON THE WATERFRONT)

Word of the Day: REDAN (104A: V-shaped fortification) —

n.
[F., for OF. redent a double notching or jagging, as in the teeth of a saw, fr. L. pref. re- re- + dens, dentis, a tooth. Cf. Redented.]
[Written sometimes redent and redens.]
1. (Fort.) A work having two parapets whose faces unite so as to form a salient angle toward the enemy.
2. A step or vertical offset in a wall on uneven ground, to keep the parts level.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/redan#ixzz2ulV7cSk4

• • •

I found this one a bit of a letdown. I'll try to explain why. First, the answers aren't nearly funny enough. If you're going to got wacky, Go Wacky. AIRPORT TRAFFIC and NETWORK CRASH are just … things. There's no playfulness, no humor. They just lay there. GOING MY WAY, BABE was pretty funny, but all the other theme answers were just kind of blah. No HER PLATOON? No UNFORGIVEN WORKING GIRL? There've gotta be wackier pairings out there. Next, the theme is simply too easy to solve. Once you see that you're just dealing with really famous movies, all you need is a few crosses (if that) to figure out the movies involved. Theme simply doesn't provide enough resistance to be interesting. Lastly, the movies are almost all clustered in the post-1970 era. If we're including Oscar nominee as well as Oscar winners for Best Picture (and we are) then there are hundreds of potential answers, most of them pre-1970. But only three of these 14 movies go back that far. Yes, I am complaining about the puzzle's not being old *enough*. Actually, it's a complaint about overall balance. Note that it is the third complaint on the list, and not nearly as big an issue as the first two (which essentially sink the puzzle, for me).

Then there's the fill, which is really rough. Two words I've never seen (REDAN, BAFF) and another I've barely seen (HEMAL), and then a lot of … filler. There are some highlights (PINPRICKS, FINAGLED), but way, way too many lowlights. I know that not knowing a word is not a good reason for dinging it, but when it's rank obscurity used as a crutch (as REDAN is), then I think you have to wonder what it's doing here. It's not exactly a demanding place in the grid. There's a reason this word hasn't appeared in the NYT in 12 years, is what I'm saying. It's 16 years for HEMAL, and … hmm, looks like *never* for BAFF. I now feel much less bad for not knowing those. Thanks, cruciverb.com database! I like learning new words, but I also mildly resent when pro constructors rely on obscurities rather than solid, interesting, recognizable words and phrases (preferably with clever clues). Those three are just the tip of the weak-fill iceberg. I am a movie fan and really wanted to like this. But it ended up as a mild disappointment.

Hmm, looks like I've already gotten mail about this puzzle:

I've been playing golf my entire life. I've written award-winning articles for now defunct Travel & Leisure Golf. I have logged more hours watching golf on TV than I care to admit. I'm a single-digit handicap. I have never -- EVER -- heard the term BAFF (27A answer to the clue "Strike the ground in a golf swing"). I, of course, am sensitive to golf- -- esp. golf -- and wine-themed clues because they're something I know too much about. That's an example of the use of lexicological arcana in a Xword taken to the most ludicrous degree. […]

Interesting.

I have a small backlog of puzzles, so I'm going to have add my Puzzle of the Week later in the day. Check back. Or come back next week when I will be sure to remind you what it was.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Michael Blake

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (**For A Monday**)

THEME: "N" the middle — semi-wacky two-word phrases where the first word ends in "N" and the second word is identical, but minus the "N":
Theme answers:

DIVAN DIVA
PATTERN PATTER
FREETOWN FREETOW
EASTERN EASTER
LEARN LEAR

Word of the Day:"THE X Factor" (13D: TV's "___ Factor") —

The X Factor is a television music competition franchise created by Simon Cowell. It originated in the United Kingdom, where it was devised as a replacement for Pop Idol. It is now held in various countries. The contestants are aspiring pop singers drawn from public competitive auditions. The programmes are produced by executive producer Simon Cowell and his company SYCOtv. The "X Factor" of the title refers to the undefinable "something" that makes for star quality.^[1] The prize is usually a recording contract, in addition to the publicity that appearance in the later stages of the show itself generates, not only for the winner but also for other highly ranked contestants. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one's a bit bland. Central answer has a lovely wackiness to it, but the rest seem like afterthoughts—mostly RLSTNEA (in fact, the final two theme answers are composed *only* of those letters), and just flat. The simplicity of the theme made all the answers supremely easy to get with just a few crosses. The puzzle did have a couple of long-answer highlights—a timely CHRISTIE answer, a much-needed ESTROGEN injection—but the fill here is, once again, not good. EENYNATLERSE all 1-2-3 like that? There's not the polish that you used to see in Andrea's puzzle many years ago. She helped me polish one of the very first grids I made, and that attention to detail really, really helped. Not sure why she's not holding herself to those same high standards any more. Also not sure why all the Scrabble-f***ing. Anyone can see that the NE corner, for instance, is diminished by that "X."THEX? If that's the cost of your "X," it's too expensive.

Since it's an easy-puzzle day, I want to take a second to plug Liz Gorski's "Crossword Nation" puzzle—a weekly M/T-level puzzle by one of the greatest constructors in the country. High-quality work every time out. Subscription info here. Also, check out the puzzle I awarded Puzzle of the Week for last week—Matt Jones's "Letter Chop" (get it from the Jonesin' Crossword Google Group, here). Matt shows how entertaining a very simple theme can be.

Had a great time at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition over the weekend. Got to meet constructor Adam Perl, who made the tournament puzzles all himself, including a wicked, grid-busting puzzle for the Expert division. Not many tournaments feature all-original puzzles. I was really impressed. Plus I got to reconnect with some old students who showed up, do a little Q-and-A about The World of Crosswords, and meet a bunch of friendly people (including volunteers from a Cornell service fraternity, pictured right). Fun fact: the tournament champion came all the way from Ohio. He'd heard about the tourney on my website, and since he couldn't make this upcoming weekend's ACPT, he decided he'd get his tourney experience some other way. Turns out lots of central NY'ers either didn't know the tourney was happening or found out too late to plan for it, so next year I'm gonna work with the tournament organizers to do a little more planning and promotion, and maybe we can turn it into a regular regional tournament, accessible to all skill levels. That's the idea, anyway.

[Me, failing to solve Adam Perl's tough puzzle accurately; Adam, laughing sadistically]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Bruce Haight and Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BENJAMIN / FRANKLIN, who is "often credited" with DISCOVERING / ELECTRICITY — then there's a play on the phrase "GO FLY / A KITE," because that's allegedly what BJ was doing and the kite was hit by lightning and, well, you probably went to grammar school, so you know what's going on here…

But wait, there's more:

Black squares form rough figure of a kite in the NE corner, with the tail running diagonally across the center of the grid. I think the little Tetris-like blocks on either side of the kite tail are supposed to be lightning bolts. Not sure.

Word of the Day: IDA (18A: Song girl who's "sweet as apple cider") —

• • •

This was a rare case where examining the grid after I'd filled it in actually added to my overall enjoyment of the puzzle. The physical shape of the grid really matters here—otherwise, it's just a weird, semi-arbitrary puzzle about a persistent American myth (the kite thing's a myth, right?). But with the black squares forming a kite shape, and the theme answers all being balanced two-parters that meet at a 90-degree angle at the kite tail, this puzzle has a cleverness that's hard to resist. It's weird—there was a stretch there a while back where it seemed like every other puzzle was by Peter Collins, and I rarely cared for any of them. Then this year his output seems way down, but his puzzles have been fantastic. Gave him Puzzle of the Week honors earlier in the year, and nearly did so again last week. In general, it seems has game has gone up a notch. This is nothing but good news. I don't mean to give short shrift to Bruce Haight, who for all I know is largely responsible for the good things in this grid. So congrats to him on a fine puzzle, too.

I felt like I was moving through it slowly, but I ended up in the mid/high 3s, which is pretty normal. It helped that the fill was relatively smooth (some roughness, some staleness, but nothing too distracting). The main speed bumps were (as usual) proper nouns. Even though I'm in the middle of teaching my Comics course, I totally blanked on DR. DOOM (1A: Archenemy of the Fantastic Four). Didn't know Buzz was an EDWIN. And nearly got Naticked* at IDA / DARLA, neither of whom I'd ever heard of (Buffy and Bing being both beyond me). I put a "D" there because it was the only letter that made two plausible women's names. I see now that "cider" kinda sorta rhymes with IDA (it *definitely* rhymes with IDA in the song), so maybe I could've gotten it that way, but … from my perspective, it was a guess. But I guessed right, and I don't think there are plausible alternatives to the "D" (maybe "M", but that's a stretch). EDGED IN is not a phrase I'd ever use to describe a comment (31A: Added slyly, as a comment). Someone who doesn't want to be noticed might enter a room that way, maybe, but "I EDGED IN a comment…" sounds weird.

OK time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*For an explanation of the Natick Principle, go here and scroll down to "Some helpful vocabulary"

Constructor: Evan Birnholz

Relative difficulty: Who Knows? (See what I did there? No? Keep reading.)

THEME: CLUELESS — Theme answers are unclued and they all mean, basically, "Huh?"

You guys! It's me, PuzzleGirl! Got an SOS call from Mrs. Parker. Seems Rex is a bit under the weather so today you get me. Try to control yourselves. Let's see if I remember how to do this ....

Theme answers:

HELL IF I KNOW
I’M STUMPED
BEATS ME
DON’T ASK ME
I HAVE NO CLUE
NO I MEAN THESE ARE LITERALLY THE THEME ANSWERS, I'M NOT SAYING I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE THEME ANSWERS ARE!

Cute theme. Not too many rough spots. I had AND for ARE(29D: Word often abbreviated to its middle letter, in texts) and wondered if HELL IF I KNOW would actually include H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks or if it would be tamed down for the masses. Also, I can never remember how to spell 50D: Don of "Trading Places"AMECHE. But that's just a personal problem.

There's some nice fill here and there: SUNSPOTS symmetrical with STONE AGE, MIDTERM right smack in the middle, and JET SET is nice. POKEMON always makes me laugh because I know what it is … kind of. I mean, I know Pikachu, of course, and I know Pokemon evolve into other Pokemon and there's a show with a kid named Ash who has a really annoying voice, and I guess it's a game? Maybe with cards? Kids collect them and then they ... play a game with them? I don’t know. After that it gets a little fuzzy.

Now Nancy Drew creator CarolynKEENE, on the other hand, I know a lot about. My undergrad honors thesis was called "The New Nancy Drew: But Can She Still Tap-Dance in Morse Code?"

At the time (this was, like, a hundred years ago), it was widely believed that Carolyn Keene was the pseudonym of Harriet Adams, whose father, Edward Stratemeyer, founded the "Stratemeyer Syndicate," which produced the books. And we all just went along our merry way believing that. But then the Internet came along and all hell broke loose. Turns out Harriet Adams wasn't the only Carolyn Keene. In fact, there were many, MANY Carolyn Keenes. Harriet Adams didn't even write the first Nancy Drew title, "The Secret of the Old Clock"! It was written by Edward Stratemeyer's secretary, Harriet Otis Smith! I’ll be honest with you, I'm not entirely convinced Harriet Adams wrote ANY of the Nancy Drew books. Maybe she just got the credit because her dad was a big shot! And the moral of the story is that Nancy Drew is awesome and if you have daughters, you should get her the old books not the new ones (because, no, in fact she cannot still tap-dance in Morse Code).

Wait, where was I? Oh yes, the puzzle. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I can't exactly rave about a puzzle that includes both OTO-(12D: Ear-related prefix) and OTOE(45A: Siouan tribesman). The ARETE / AS IN / EKE OUT(53D: Glacial ridge / 46D: Words clarifying a spelling / 47D: Barely make) section is also a little sketchy. But I think that's what happens when you cram five theme answers into a grid, which seems to be pretty standard these days. Sigh.

So hey, are you all coming to Brooklyn this weekend? This is my favorite weekend of the year. I typically spend the whole weekend in my happy place, so if you see me please say hi!

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: SOAP BOX (37A: Platform … or something that appears four times in this puzzle?) — rebus puzzle where four squares contain the names of four different bar soaps:

BRONZESTAR / SEIZES THE DAY
RADIAL TIRE / DIALECT
PISTON ENGINE / MOONSTONES
BRATISLAVA / BAKLAVA

Word of the Day: BIBI Andersson (56A: Actress Andersson) —

Bibi Andersson ((Swedish pronunciation: [ˈbɪ.ˈbɪ ˈandɛˈʂɔn]); born 11 November 1935) is a Swedish actress. […] After completing school, she agreed to join the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, which she was associated with for 30 years. Her first collaboration with Ingmar Bergman was in 1951, when she participated in his production of an advertisement for the detergent "Bris". In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, she starred in more than ten Bergman-directed pictures, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Brink of Life, The Magician, The Passion of Anna, The Touch and Persona. (wikipedia)

• • •

My difficulty rating may be due partly to my illness hangover, but I do think this one was tougher than normal. I knew something was wrong when I couldn't get decent traction anywhere, and then I saw that there was something going on with BOX, so I figured out that it was a rebus at PISTON ENGINE, but at that point I didn't have the SOAP part of SOAPBOX, and I had no idea that TONE was even a soap brand, so I fumbled around a bit more until finally SOAP fell into place. After that, the first thing I did was go looking for DIAL—a true godsend for my truly messed-up NE corner, where I had had FATE for [Lot] and ACRID for [Sharp], and simply no idea about [Prima ___]. The worst hole I fell into, however, was BROCADE where BRONZESTAR was supposed to go (4D: Military decoration). I feel certain that some military uniforms feature BROCADE as a decorative element. Maybe I'm thinking of the gold rope stuff … attached to epaulets? Whatever the rationale, BROCADE stuck for a while. Only got into that section, finally, by working my way up from LABOR. Finished things up in the SW, which was harrowing, as I had no idea about the [Capital on the Danube], even after getting BR-, and so I was basically staring at a blank 4x5 grid down there. A lot can go wrong in that small a space. But OTIS and RUBIK were gimmes, and somehow off just "O" I guessed KABOB, and everything kept falling into place until I finally had that last damned rebus square cornered.

Have to go to bed now. Need more recovery sleep. Need to teach tomorrow. Above all, need to be healthy for my trip to Brooklyn this weekend. Which reminds me, I should really get a blog sub for Saturday and Sunday … I always forget until the last minute. PuzzleGirl won't be able to do it 'cause she'll be in Brooklyn with me. Speaking of, a million thanks to her for covering for me on almost no notice last night. My wife was actually the one who had to ask her to fill in for me, because *I* was in one of those illness-stupor-sleeps that cannot be stopped by mortal hand. Sleep paid off. Much much better today. Hoping the trend continues tomorrow.

And so to bed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Matt Ginsberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: imagined "parent's distressed cry" composed entirely of TV shows for some reason —

"THE NANNY / LOST / ALL MY CHILDREN"

Word of the Day: ACTAEON (47A: Greek hunter trained by Chiron) —

Actaeon (/ækˈtiːən/; Ancient Greek: Ἀκταίων), in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsmanAristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron.
He fell to the fatal wrath of Artemis, but the surviving details of his transgression vary: "the only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted; he was transformed into a stag, and his raging hounds, struck with a 'wolf's frenzy' (Lyssa), tore him apart as they would a stag." This is the iconic motif by which Actaeon is recognized, both in ancient art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance depictions. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't quite understand the concept. Why would you make an imagined parental distress cry out of the titles of unrelated TV shows? Is there a connection? Also, why is the symmetry … non-existent? I'd think maybe, for some high concept, you could break convention, but I'm failing to see what warrants it here. Mainly, the gag just seems corny to me. Puzzle just wasn't on my wavelength humor-wise, cluing-wise, or any-wise. Seems solid enough, there are good answers here and there, but conceptually, I don't get it. I'd much MUCH rather have a good themeless (what I expect from a Friday) than this.

A 72-worder on a Friday should simply be much, much cleaner than this, but I guess theme constraints (to some extent) made that difficult. SHMO (!?), CRAN, ETTE, ALIA, ESSE, ATTN, RLS, TALI, CHIA, SWEE, ENISLE, MENE, EARED, NICHT, KETT, SYNE, ERSE, FTC… Too much subpar stuff. Fridays should be for bold, clean grids. HAZMAT SUIT (29D: Requirement for special handling?) and SCHADENFREUDE (27A: Guilty pleasure?) are of course great, but nothing else is. This may just be one of those days where some people are "tickled" by this sort of "joke." So if the "joke" was worth it to you, then I guess it worked. And if not, not.

I will either have a sub tomorrow or I will be live-blogging the puzzle from PuzzleGirl's suite at the Marriott in Brooklyn. Either way, something will get written. Take care,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: STEARIC (32A: Fat-derived) —

adj.
Of, relating to, or similar to stearin or fat.
Of or relating to stearic acid.
[French stéarique, from Greek stear, tallow.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/stearic#ixzz2vLYp2k4u

• • •

I just saw David Steinberg about half an hour ago at a party my friend was throwing here at the Brooklyn Marriott. Nice kid. I'm still recovering from a cold, and now also recovering from a delicious meal, so I'm going to have to blow off the blogging specifics tonight. I enjoyed this puzzle. APATOW and BOZ were gimmes; they gave me my initial toehold, and I struggled only intermittently after that. STEARIC was the only word I didn't really know. BIG HOAX feels a little GREEN PAINT. "JUST DO IT!" was nicely clued (36D: Popular line of footwear?). 'Fraid that's all I got for you tonight. More tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Nosy News" — two-word phrases where the "zee" sound is added to back end of first word, creating wackiness (clued "?"-style)

Theme answers:

DAISY TRADER
CHOOSY TOY
EASY COMMERCE
BREEZY CHEESE
ROSY HOUSE
BOISE WONDER
HAZY SAILOR
DOOZY POINT

Word of the Day: EUROMART (86A: Continental free trade group) —

[I honestly can't find any definition of what this is. On The Internet. I cannot find. It seems to be another word for "European Market," which is possibly something to do with eurobonds or eurocurrency or some other euro-prefixed thing, but seriously wtf? The EEC is known as the Common Market, but I have no idea what relationship that entity has to this answer]

• • •

Did a very, very brutal puzzle today by this same constructor—the infamous Puzzle 5 at the ACPT, to be exact. It was so much better than this puzzle that I'm having a hard time giving this one a fair shake. Add -zee, get wackiness—as the concept goes, this is just fine. But for me, there was too much randomness: I'd get the front end of phrase, but then the back end = ??? OIL ... HOLE? SKI ... RACE? EURO ... MART? This kept happening. STEPTOE???? (8A: Isolated hill surrounded by lava) I'm sure it's a thing, but it's not making this puzzle any more entertaining. Add to this oddness the fact that the cluing was obviously deliberately ratcheted up this week (after week's of super-easiness), and the solving experience comes up less enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, I actually welcome the harder cluing on Sundays. It's just that when there's just hardness and no real payoff for overcoming that hardness, I don't get a satisfied feeling. The truth is, this is probably an above-average Sunday, but it's definitely not an above-average Quigley.

I'm still at the tournament, and I need to go back down and be social. So that's it, blog-wise, for tonight. I'll do Puzzle of the Week later in the week—maybe tomorrow. I'll also have pictures and tales from the tournament weekend. As of right now, after Puzzle 6, I'm in 53rd place, despite having no errors. This is partly because I'm just solving for "fun" and not "competing," and partly because I really tanked Brendan's Puzzle 5. I mean, I finished it, but most of my peers beat me by like 10 minutes. Total disaster. As for the tournament as a whole, the familiar names are at the top of the leaderboard. You can see results here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Kelly Clark

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (*for a Monday*)

THEME: TOOL BOX (40A: Handyman's tote) — last words of four theme answers might be found in a TOOL BOX

Theme answers:

SINGLE FILE (17A: One-by-one formation, as in walking)
MIKE HAMMER (11D: Spillane detective)
ON THE LEVEL (29D: Honest)
FINGERNAIL (64A: Manicurist's target)

Word of the Day: "ELENI" (14A: Nicholas Gage memoir) —

Gage was born in the village of Lia in Filiates, Thesprotia, Epirus, Greece. He is most famous for two books of autobiographical memoirs, the best selling Eleni (1983) and A Place for Us (1989). Eleni describes the life of his family in Greece during the Second World War and Greek Civil War. Gage’s mother, Eleni, was executed for arranging the escape of her children from their Communist-occupied village. Decades later, as an adult, Gage sought out those responsible for her death. A Place for Us relates the Gage family’s experiences as immigrants in 1950s America in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1964, Gage earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
In 1985, Eleni was made into a feature film starring John Malkovich as Gage. In 1987, Eleni was cited by Ronald Reagan as an inspiration for his summit meetings to end the arms race with the Soviet Union. (wikipedia)

• • •

What a depressing puzzle to return home to. I had such a great time at the ACPT this weekend, where I was privileged to solve a number of top-notch puzzles. There was only one tourney puzzle I disliked—the rest were good-to-great. Creative, occasionally torturous, but almost always thoughtful, humorous, and (above all) carefully, artfully constructed. The quality here, today, on this Monday puzzle, is objectively substandard. I don't even feel I need to rehearse the litany of answers that just Do Not Belong in an easy-to-fill, early-week puzzle. ELENI? Why? That completely unnecessary bit of dated crosswordese is the poster child for everything wrong with this puzzle, and lazily filled easy puzzles. Crossing ILIE and FESS, relatively near SEAEEL and ARNE. Please, believe me, I am telling you the truth when I say I know two dozen people who could make that corner so much better, tighter, leaner, etc., Inside Of Two Minutes. And the junk continues. It's everywhere. Just stale stuff that old hands (like me) will know from decades of (over-) exposure. But it's the stuff that gives crosswords a bad name. OH OH crossing HA HAS? Plural? EKED and STEN? AMICI and TENKS? STENOS with OBIS on an ISLET? Everyone Has To Do Better than this. Constructors, editors, solvers … this lazy, hackneyed fill, in such copious, unnecessary quantities, is simply beneath the dignity of the self-professed Gold Standard of crossword publications.

The theme is off too. Three tools … and a nail. A nail is not a tool. Now, it gets out of jail free, I guess, for being, defensibly, in a TOOLBOX. But nail is out of place. Maybe FIXIT is up at 1A because it thinks it's a theme answer? But there's no symmetrical theme answers, and FIXIT seems at least partially responsible for the *terrible* NW corner, *and* it's a partial, *so* the puzzle is improved how? This clearly should've been rejected with suggestions for improvement *or* the grid should've been quietly improved by one of the in-house fixers (whose names you never hear). TOP THIS? Yeah, pretty sure I can.

I got slowed a bit at TOP THIS because the clue should've been ["Try and do better!"]. What the hell is "Yeah?" doing in there? (25A: "Yeah? Try and do better!") Was there a prior conversation? It's totally superfluous, and it threw me. Other things that threw me. TOOL KIT and TOOL BAG, both of which made appearances. This made PROXY impossible (for me) to see. Wait, I'm sorry, is that TEN in the grid? In the grid that also has TEN Ks?!? Did that really happen? OK, we're done here.

[Added note: one of the puzzles from this weekend's ACPT was made by today's constructor, Kelly Clark. I just redid that puzzle. It's solid. Perfectly good work. No idea what the hell happened with today's puzzle.]

The Puzzle of the Week for last week (which I didn't get a chance to announce yesterday) was Erik Agard's "All or Nothing" (Fireball Crosswords). I solved it, saw the trick, thought, "hmmm, that's interesting … but he's done better work, I think." Then 24 hours later realized that the trick had a dimension I Completely Missed, namely that it worked in All The Relevant Downs (as well as the three Acrossese where I'd noticed it). It's fantastic. Subscribe to Fireball to get it (and other great puzzles like it, once a week), or just read about the puzzle in detail here.

Photos from the tourney tomorrow. . . well, OK, I'll give you one today, since it makes me so happy. This is me with my friend Jen (from CT) and her service dog, Justice, the sweetest, most beautiful dog I've ever met (my own dogs excepted, of course).

Jen let Justice off-duty for a bit so she could play with me. The. Best. Thing. Dogplay! Hard to be tense about anything when lab wants to lick your face and sit in your lap and play tug-of-war etc. It was really cool to then see Justice go back on-duty: total calm, total focus. Just an amazing animal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Mel Rosen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IN BUD (49D: About to bloom … or a hint to 20-, 33-, 41- and 52-Across) — four theme answers start with "BU-" and end with "-D," making … the remainder of the answer? … IN BUD?

Theme answers:

20A: Idles (BUMS AROUND)
33A: Allied supply route to China during W.W. II (BURMA ROAD)
41A: Having a rounded end, as pliers (BULL-NOSED)
52A: Sycamore tree (BUTTONWOOD)

Word of the Day: ILIA Kulik (38A: Olympic skating champ Kulik) —

Ilia Alexandrovich Kulik (Russian: Илья Александрович Кулик (help·info); (born 23 May 1977) is a Russian figure skater. He is the 1998 Olympic Champion, the 1995 European Champion, the 1997–1998 Grand Prix Final champion, and the 1995 World Junior champion. (wikipedia)

• • •

1-Across says it all: STALE. This probably would've been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill early-week puzzle, say, 30 years ago. But now it just feels like a relic. So much crosswordese that you don't need me to point it out. Nothing to put it in this century except clues on TINA (22A: Fey of "30 Rock") and NBC (42D: "Parks and Recreation" network). A theme that doesn't really work with a revealer that's oddly placed. Still baffled that quality is allowed to limp along like this. There are good, fresh, thoughtful, entertaining modern puzzles out there. I solve some on a regular basis. I did a couple this past weekend. The Gold Standard should run those. And Only Those.

The grid shape is a Real problem here today, as we are given four theme answers and then, essentially, a bunch of horrible mini-grids, particularly in the corners. The highly segmented grid means that the tired shorter stuff is isolated and therefore highlighted. What's in this little corner? Oh look, ET TU and T-NOTE! How 'bout this one? ALIS and HASAT! ANIL and ILIA! And about ILIA—inexcusable. Proper noun crosswordese like that, when the grid is Not Hard To Fill, should not be tolerated. ILIA is about as welcome as yesterday's "ELENI." Now the basic old-fashionedness of the theme answers—two of which (BURMA ROAD, BUTTONWOOD) I'd never heard of—I can accept. Constructors and solvers come from all generations, and puzzles can and should reflect that. But the STALE fill, as you know by now, I just can't. Cannot. Can't.

Was going to talk about the ACPT some more today, but this puzzle has ruined the mood. Maybe tomorrow?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Gossipy Barrett / THU 2-20-14 / Big mailer to over-50 crowd / Flooey lead-in / Golf Channel co-founder to fans / Polish-born musician who was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom

Spiral-shaped particle accelerators / FRI 2-21-14 / Queen's Chapel designer Jones / 1998 purchaser of Netscape / 18th-century Hapsburg monarch Maria

Game stew / SAT 2-22-14 / First drink ever ordered by James Bond / Punk rocker Armstrong with 2012 Grammy / High line in Middle East / Composer of opera Rusalka / Obama's favorite character on Wire

1925 Percy Marmont film / SUN 2-23-14 / 1932 Clark Gable Jean Harlow film / Sitcom with 1974 wedding / Snow queen in Disney's Frozen / 1980s-90s series based on fictional firm mckenzie brackman chaney Kuzak / New Haven reuner

Racer Yarborough / MON 2-24-14 / Actor MacLeod of old TV / Newswoman Logan / 1957 Everly Brothers hit with repeated lyric Hello loneliness / Maryland home of Walter Reed medical center

Bond girl Andress / TUE 2-25-14 / Tomato lettuce pickers org / Many Persian Gulf war correspondent / Madrid tidbit

Mob Wives star Big * / WED 2-26-14 / Compadre of Castro / Harry Belafonte genre / Hobby farm denizen / Mike Tyson facial feature / Sheer curtain fabric /

Columbus stopping point of 1493 / THU 2-27-14 / Some Coleridge colleagues / Epicurean explorer

Investments since 1975 / FRI 2-28-14 / Philatelic goals / Suffix with Edward / Singer who's a Backstreet Boy's brother / Salk Institute architect Louis / Shakespeare sonnet mentioning Philomel's mournful hymns / Modern-day locale of ancient Nineveh / City with major avenues named Cincinnati Columbus

Italian brewer since 1846 / SAT 3-1-14 / Ghanaian region known for gold cocoa / 1987 #1 hit with line Yo no soy marinero / Carrier with pink logo

V-shaped fortification / SUN 3-2-14 / Strike ground in golf swing / Astronaut Thomas as four space shuttle flights / Gallic girlfriend / Daughter in Sound of Music / Post-W.W. II female service member / Locale in Gray's elegy written in country churchyard

Parisian girlfriend / MON 3-3-14 / Complimentary road service in Sierra Leone's capital / America's Most Wanted host John / New Jersey governor whose first name starts his last name

Archenemy of Fantastic Four / TUE 3-4-14 / Rapper with 2002 #1 hit Always on Time / Song girl who's sweet as apple cider /

What a gimel means on a dreidel / WED 3-5-14 / Cuban salsa singer Cruz / "Total Recall" director Wiseman / Town with an eponymous derby / One of two in an English horn / Aria title that means "It was you"

Heavenly figure in Hesse / THU 3-6-14 / Singer with 1986 #1 album Promise / Tullius in Marcus Tullius Cicero / Land name before 1939 / Paris-based grp since 1945 / Honey-soaked dessert / Some kind of Dick Van Dyke comedy

Greek hunter trained by Chiron / FRI 3-7-14 / Merino Suffolk Dorset / Word on biblical wall / TV show that debuted on 9/22/04 11/3/94 1/5/70 / Container for Rip Van Winkle / King of terrors per Job 18

Sketches pseudonym / SAT 3-8-14 / Pimienta's partner / 100-at currency unit

Isolated hill surrounded by lava / SUN 3-9-14 / Radiohead head Yorke / Haitian couple / Snapchat demographic / FSU player for short /

Nicholas Gage memoir / MON 3-10-14 / Lacking key musically / Handyman's tote

Allied supply wrote to China during WWII / TUE 3-11-14 / Lena of Chocolat / She's back in town in Fats Waller song / Kimono securers