Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"DRINKS ALL AROUND" (38A: "I'm buying!," at a bar … or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — all the answers around the periphery of the grid are drinks, with each "side" of answers being clued with a similar frame of reference

MILK JUICE and TEA are all clued by color *and* (?) breakfast
GIN VODKA and SAKE are all clued by countries where they are "popular"
MEAD CIDER and ALE are all clued by production method: fermentation
POP WATER and WINE are all clued as "dinner quaff"s (?!?!)

Word of the Day: KERI (19A: Body lotion brand) —

Keri Lotion is a brand name of moisturizing lotion introduced by Novartis Consumer Health. The brand has traditionally included different types of Keri Lotion such as Keri- Original, Keri- Advanced, Keri- Shea Butter, Keri- Basic Essential, Keri- Luxurious, and Keri- moisture rich oil. […] Keri Lotion was first introduced by Bristol-Myers Squibb, to the American public in 1960. Keri lotion was put into doctor offices and hospitals, which was how the product was promoted. This type of lotion has been around for about fifty years. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this is a step up from the last two days of puzzles, but there are some major thematic problems. Let me put that more positively—the core concept (center revealer, peripheral drinks) is cute, interesting, light, fun, great. But the cluing is a disaster. Sometimes when you try to get fancy with things you end up destroying them, and that is definitely what happened here. The groupings are terribly forced, such that the cluing at times seems absurd and arbitrary. The best grouping is MEAD CIDER and ALE. Fermentation holds them together nicely. The "Clear libation popular in" group holds together a little less well, largely because VODKA and SAKE have such strong associations with their countries, where England's with GIN is much, much weaker. Is GIN any more "popular" in England *now* (which is what the clue implies) than it is here? That little NE corner was By Far the hardest part of the puzzle for me because a. lotion brand? b. TSKED!?!? c. [Clear libation popular in England] didn't say GIN to me at all. I had No idea what was going on there. I have lots of GIN in my cupboard. I do not live in England. Oh, and then there's d. TEA is "tan" now? "Tan"? Really. Slacks are tan. Trousers. In what universe would anyone refer to TEA as "tan"? So, yeah, that breakfast grouping is awkward. JUICE is only orange if it's orange JUICE. But the worst grouping, by far, by a million miles, is the "dinner" group. POP and WATER have nothing to do with "dinner." There is no strong *or* weak association between those beverages and "dinner." The breakfast beverages cohere fine and would've worked if you'd left color out of it. But the "dinner" beverages Don't Work At All as a grouping. So the cluing is a train wreck. No need to get fancy with the core concept, but well enough apparently could not be left alone (passive voice!). Too bad.

)
Fill is OK. Not great, but at least the two longer Downs are colorful (SNOOKERED, PAPER DOLL). You gotta get the most out of your longer answers, and all the 7+ answers are at least decent.

That's enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: COLOR BY NUMBER (13D: Kid's art activity … or something seen four times in this puzzle's solution?) — a color sits next to a number four times, just like the clue says.

RED TAPE / SIX IRON
SEA GREEN / PAR THREE
BLACK OPS / EIGHT BIT
GET A TAN / EASY ONE

Word of the Day: AVANTI (17A: Stylish 1960s luxury coupe) —

The Avanti is a sports coupe based at the Studebaker Avanti produced by a series of entrepreneurs. After the closure of Studebaker's South Bend factory on December 20, 1963, cars with the name Avanti were initially produced from left-over Studebaker components and later from General Motors and Ford chassis and engines. These are not replica cars, for they were made by Avanti Motor Company. They have created a following by some enthusiasts and collectors. (wikipedia)

• • •

This definitely challenged me in places, but the theme wasn't one of them. I pieced together the NW and then hacked at the SW for a bit before moving into the middle with ICBM, RYN, and POOR, which turned out to be all that I needed to get COLOR BY NUMBER (I thought it was "numbers," but it turns out the singular is more common). I looked up and saw RED next to SIX and thought "… OK, three more to go." I thought / hoped maybe the number / color pairings would have some rationale—Black/Eight had me thinking maybe there was a pool-ball theme. But no. Arbitrary. Completely. And the numbers aren't even hidden inside other numbers. Same with the colors. They're just … there. Naked. So it's a fine concept, clever in its way, but there's something kind of dry and (as I say) arbitrary about the theme execution. BLACK OPS and EIGHT BIT are at least nice answers. The rest are pretty dull. Fill is not abysmal, but it's not flashy or imaginative either. DONG made me laugh, so that's something.

)
You can see all the short junk, so I won't enumerate that. I think the constructor is pretty young, but the grid is creaky with old names. Hardly a thing from the 21st century. Again, BLACK OPS stands out. I have to say one thing about baseball, and that is, SFO is not an abbreviation in baseball. In airports, yes. But on baseball scoreboards, absolutely, positively, without a doubt, no. I see no way in which that clue, 22D: SFO opponent in the 2012 World Series, is not an error. DET, yes, you'd see that on scoreboards. SFO, no. No you would not.

I had two mistakes that held me up, one major, one minor. EYRE for EMMA cost me a lot of time. Everything below ESPO was just dead until I worked back up from underneath with the help of the color/number theme. Later, as I was (mostly) killing the eastern hemisphere, I mysteriously wrote in STOP IT for STEP IN at 31A: Start to break up a fight, say. This slowed me up for sure. The SE corner (where I finished), went down almost instantly. Fastest quadrant I can ever remember doing. 20 seconds tops. Weird. Wish I could find that magic more often.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Alan Olschwang

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"THE NOONDAY DEVIL" (3D: 1985 Ralph McInerny novel) —

The KGB has infiltrated the Catholic church hierarchy in America! That's the chancy premise of this thriller by the author of the Father Dowling mysteries and other Catholic-theme novels (Connolly's Life, The Priest). But, despite more than a few implausibilities, McInerny manages to avoid the heavy, shrill, or murky dangers inherent in such a notion--thanks to charmingly offbeat characters, a variety of issue-viewpoints, uncluttered plotting. . . and a hint of tongue-in-cheek. Cardinal Fergus of N.Y., leader of the US Church's right wing, has been assassinated in Rome by leftist terrorists. So the Church's left wing--led by Cardinal Carey of San Francisco, supported by ex-monk Matt Hanratty, religion editor at the N. Y. Times--quickly comes up with a two-part agenda: to grab some power away from the Pope by ""electing"" Fergus' successor at a meeting of US clergy; and to make sure that the post doesn't go to another right-winger. Meanwhile, however, Myrtle Tillman, devoted secretary to the murdered Cardinal, has taken his secret legacy--a dossier on the KGB's Church infilitration--to rightwing think-tanker Harold Packard, who hires quirky shamus Philip Knight to determine which of three bishops (all candidates for the N.Y. post) is a KGB mole. And then the novel takes its oddest, least credible twist: at their unprecedented election-meeting, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops winds up choosing an unknown Trappist monk, saintly Abbot Peregrine, as N.Y.'s new archbishop! Was Peregrine's election a KGB plot? Is he too a mole? How many KGB-ers, indeed, are lurking beneath robes and cassocks? Well, sleuth Knight (with help from his grossly fat mad-genius-brother) figures it all out--but not before the most ruthless of the KGB agents starts trying to kill just about everybody. . . including adorably feisty Myrtle. Shrewdly balanced between timely issues (e.g., liberation theology) and light Hitchcockian suspense, nicely warmed by flickers of middle-aged romance: a bright, neat tangle of Machiavellian clerics and cynical journalists--entertaining even if you don't go along with the undercurrent of serious KGB-alarm. (Kirkus review)

• • •

Way off my wavelength. Way way. These things happen. Between RON, ELLIE, SACHA, and (esp.) "THE NOONDAY DEVIL," the proper names were just beyond my grasp today. I had a lot of trouble finding *any* information on "THE NOONDAY DEVIL." I've never even heard of the author, Ralph McInerny. Jay McInerney, I've heard of. "The Noonday DEMON," I've actually heard of—it's a bestselling book about depression from a few years back. But Devil? Ralph? One-e McInerny? No way. The 15s are pretty decent in this one, the shorter stuff (predictably) pretty awful. Super-choppy grid gets us lots of 3s and 4s. I'm always put off by a bad NW corner, and this one is pretty dire. GOTAB and its ilk (namely, I guess, GOTAC and GOTAD) are deeply unwelcome. Slightly less unwelcome than, say, GOTACAT, but not much less. And IIN… is IIN. Short stuff didn't get worse from there (how could it?), but it didn't improve. That said, I've seen worse. My main problem with this is that it appears to have been written / clued by someone who lives on a different planet from me and shares virtually none of the same experiences as me. Planet Olschwang. I simply don't live there. But someone probably does, so if he/she enjoyed this (more), fantastic.

Thought the [Longtime airer of "Any Questions?"] was PBSRADIO. That one help-hurt. There should be a word for that—helped me and hurt me simultaneously. Had no idea Mecca and Medina were oases. They are the birthplace and burial place of Muhammed, respectively … that is mostly all I know about them. Thought you needed a GUN or a SKI to be a biathlete, but AIM probably helps too. "WE'RE back!" If you say so. I know SETT now, but it still always makes me sad. Same with ROTOS. I know you are defensible "words," but please go away. Had PALMS for a second at 50D: Holders of many selflies. Seemed plausible. COMPLEX ANALYSIS is just a random phrase to me; had no idea it was a branch of mathematics. This is what I mean about being on a different planet. I just wasn't the ideal audience for this puzzle. So it's important to distinguish the grumpiness caused by objectively bad stuff (quality of the short fill) vs. that caused by an unfamiliar frame of reference and different taste. Sometimes I don't particularly like a puzzle and it's not entirely the puzzle's fault. This is one of those times.

I am, however, having fun trying to reclue GOTAB. [Cheer for one's favorite diet soft drink?] [Slogan for a single torso muscle?] Etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TAMARIN (10D: Member of the marmoset family) —

n.
Any of various small, long-tailed, arboreal monkeys of the genera Leontideus and Saguinus of Central and South America, closely related to and resembling the marmosets but having a larger body, longer limbs, and lower canines that extend well beyond the incisors.

[French, from Galibi.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tamarin#ixzz2vzibQ7hE

• • •

That's more like it. Much prefer this to yesterday's Dance of the Intersecting 15s. Same amount of time spent solving, twice the enjoyment. Light on the junk, heavy on the real words and interesting expressions. TWITTER JAIL sounds made-up, though. I'm on Twitter every day, never heard of it. I googled it, and it seems you get penalized for too many tweets within a designated period. I guess this is to prevent mass spam-tweeting? Maybe? Anyway, that answer is pretty out-there. But it was inferable, or at least gettable from crosses, so it didn't make me too cross. And anyway, when you've got KISSY FACE, BRAIN FREEZE, and BODACIOUS in your grid, it's easy to forgive the odd wackadoodle answer. I love that there is not much crosswordese in this grid, and that ULEE (which is pure crosswordese) brings with it the much larger, much more interesting BEEKEEPER. Yes, I'll pay one ULEE to get one BEEKEEPER. More than fair.

On Saturdays, the missteps are often plentiful and fun to recount. Went with SHAD before HAKE (1D: Relative of haddock), but OTIS had to be right, which meant SHAD couldn't be. OTIS and MGS gave me AT-A-GLANCE very quickly, and the NW went down pretty quickly. But then I couldn't get south of CENT (despite having TWITTER in place), so I had to jump ship and start over. First traction I got was at HORAS and HAILED, the latter being a desperate guess that panned out. SLEDS and ARPEL went in and things took off from there. Might've gone faster if I could've figured out what the hell 18A: Producer of "whirlybirds" meant. Even with -APLE, I had no idea. I'd heard of a TAMARIN, so finally got that last "M" square, but it wasn't until after I was done that I looked up [maple whirlybirds] to see what the hell the connection was. This is ironic, as the damned things fall all around my house every year—we have two sugar maples out front.

Had HASPS for WARPS (33A: Buckles). MOPED for MIATA (41D: Modern two-seater). What on God's Green Earth is "I ME Wed"???? Further, who is Erica Durance? This answer is the (much shorter) equivalent of yesterday's "THE NOONDAY DEVIL." Never heard of it, and never heard of the person in the clue. Yikes. That "M" was the last thing into the grid.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. "I ME Wed" was a Lifetime TV movie … massive demerits for not putting "movie" in quotation marks.

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:"It's Better This Way" — theme answers all have "RX" in them. There are circled letters in the NW and SE that spell out SICK and WELL, respectively. Then there is a revealer: FOLLOWING THE / PRESCRIPTION (16D: With 58-Down, a patient process? … or a hint to two consecutive letters in the answer to each of the seven starred clues).

Theme answers:

23A: *He bested Leonidas at Thermopylae (XERXES I OF PERSIA)
31A: *Off-roader, often (FOUR X FOUR)
49A: *Annual draw for snocross fans (THE WINTER X GAMES)
65A: *Iconic feature of comedy (GROUCHO MARX MUSTACHE)
79A: *Founder of Marvel's School for Gifted Youngsters (PROFESSOR XAVIER)
97A: *Frequent problem faced by algebra students (SOLVE FOR X)
108A: *Horror flick starring Humphrey Bogart as a mad scientist, with "The" ("RETURN OF DOCTOR X") [Note: the "X" stands for Xavier… but we won't count that as duplication]

Word of the Day: XERXES I OF PERSIA—

Xerxes I of Persia (/ˈzɜrksiːz/; Old Persian: Xšaya-ṛšā IPA: [xʃajaːrʃaː] meaning "ruling over heroes";New Persian: خشایارشا ; Greek: Ξέρξης [ksérksɛːs]; Hebrew: אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ, Modern Aẖashverosh Tiberian ʼĂḥašwērôš), also known as Xerxes the Great (519–465 BC), was the fourth king of the kings of Achaemenid Empire. Xerxes I is likely the Persian king identified as Ahasuerus in the biblical book of Esther. (wikipedia)

• • •

Difficulty level and fill quality both Approved. But this theme is just broken. It's a mess. First, the only thing to it is "RX." I mean … that's it. Second, the revealer is nonsensical. FOLLOWING THE / PRESCRIPTION isn't … anything. It's a random verbal phrase. It cannot stand alone. It's not snappy. It's ridiculous. PRESCRIPTION tips off the theme. I have literally No Idea what FOLLOWING THE means in this context. Nothing is "following" anything. "Following" has zero to do with the theme. So it's not a real phrase, and it indicates an action (i.e. "following") that has nothing to do with the theme. Even the phrase in the *clue* for the revealer—"a patient process"—Is Not A Phrase. It's not a thing. "A patient process"—is that a pun on something? I've never heard that phrase in my life. How is following a prescription a "patient process"? The revealer is a train wreck at every level. This is a great shame, as the difficulty level is nice and tough and the non-theme fill elicited almost no groans.

I will say this about a couple of the themers, though: what? When was the last time anyone referred to Xerxes as XERXESIOFPERSIA? I've read Herodotus, I know who this guy is, but that phrase (while defensible) is nuts. Also, ("The"?) "RETURN OF DOCTOR X"?!? That's about the most unfamous movie I've ever seen as a Sunday themer. Also, the NYX is playing pretty loose with that title, as the only other times DOCTOR X has appeared in the puzzle, he has been DRX. Now, officially (or, on the movie posters, anyway), DOCTOR is written out, so today's version got it right. But that inconsistency with prior references to the movie actually threw me a little. The bigger issue, though, is that that movie is not very famous. Also FOURXFOUR is playing fast and loose with symbols. I'd accept the "X" if the fours were numerals. But I'm balking, slightly, at this version. Still, you can't say the themers aren't interesting. They are entertaining and unusual. I just wish there'd been a snappier way to tie this theme together. Even the title is awkward. Revealer, revealer clue, title—all of it is just Off.

Puzzle of the Week now … it's a tough call this week. I got a handful of puzzles sitting here vying for my approbation. Mike Nothnagel's Post Puzzler from last Sunday was pretty killer. Fireball once again brings the heat with Jacob Stulberg's very smart letter-swap theme. Evan Birnholz is out to show that his independent site "Devil Cross" is no flash-in-the-pan—you can get his latest excellent puzzle, "Nonstandard Operating Procedures,"here. Brendan Emmett Quigley's "Bottoms Up!" is spectacular and also just … so … Quigley (get it here). The guy really paved the way for the burgeoning indie puzzle movement, and he's still killing it, against all odds, twice a week, every week. His puzzle might've won this week if it hadn't appeared elsewhere before. But this week, I'm going with an easy puzzle again, and giving the nod to Liz Gorski's Crossword Nation puzzle this week:"Side Effects." It's a sweet little twist on the vowel progression theme type. Read about it here and subscribe to Liz's Crossword Nation here (especially great for folks who are beginners or who simply prefer Monday-Wednesday level difficulty).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. perfectly Mondayish)

THEME: G-M vowel progression (including "Y") — theme answers follow G-M pattern, from GAM- thru GYM-

Theme answers:

GAME WARDEN (18A: Poacher's nemesis)
GEM STATE (23A: Idaho's nickname)
GIMME FIVE (35A: Request for some skin)
GOMER PYLE (41A: Mayberry resident who became a Marine)
GUMBALLS (49A: Round candy in a vending machine)
GYMNASTICS (58A: Sport that includes the pommel horse and parallel bars)

Word of the Day: AIMEE Mann (19D: "Save Me" singer Mann) —

Aimee Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist and bassist. In the 1980s, Mann sang in the Boston New Wave band 'Til Tuesday until she left to begin a solo career in the early 1990s. In 1999, Mann recorded original songs for the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia, for which she was nominated for Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations. She has released seven solo albums. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a reasonable Monday theme. "G" changes from soft to hard, vowels change from short to long, but from a purely visual standpoint, the theme works; those vowels between the "G" and "M" sure do change. Fill is pretty decent, long Downs add some nice glitz. Big thumbs up for JIM PALMER and his underwear clue (34D: Orioles Hall-of-Fame pitcher who modeled Jockey underwear). Très SEDUCTIVE (11D: Alluring). I had #speedsolverproblems a number of times during this one. Came in a hair's breadth under 3, so, you know, it was still pretty easy, but I'm capable of going 30 to 40 seconds lower, so where were the bumps? First, dumbass me wrote in GEMSTONE (instead of GEM STATE) without even looking at the clue. Dumb dumb dumb. Then my brain paused to consider where Kabul was. Ugh. Clue for GIMME FIVE was in no way transparent, so that took many, many, nearly all crosses to get. Could not see COVER for the life of me. Had it down to CO-ER before I got it. GUMBALLS also was not quick in coming. Brain said "gumdrops" and then wouldn't allow anything else in. Making things worse—a couple of crosses that were not immediately apparent, namely IN B (43D: Bach's "Mass ___ Minor") (I should've known this, the Mass is famous, but still, I see IN [blank], I let the crosses do the talking), and 'SPOSE (53D: "Assuming it's true…," informally).

I like that the puzzle contains the homophones GUYS and GUISE. For some reason, this AMUSES me.

That's enough for today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Kwong

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:"A FAREWELL TO ARMS" (38A: W.W. I novel … hinted at by 17-, 24-, 52- and 64-Across) — theme answers are familiar phrases which have had "ARM" removed from them, creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style.

Theme answers:

BURGLAR AL (17A: Home-invading Gore?)
GENT DISTRICT (24A: Area for aristocrats?)
DEATH WED OVER (52A: Exchange of vows again for the Grim Reaper?)
SNAKE CHER (64A: Emmy, Oscar and Grammy-winning reptile?)

Word of the Day: BWI (47D: Home of the Bahamas, once: Abbr.) —

The British West Indies were the islands and mainland colonies in and around the Caribbean that were part of theBritish Empire. In 1912, the British West Indies were divided into eight colonies: The Bahamas, Barbados,British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica (with its dependencies the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cayman Islands), Trinidad and Tobago, the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't even know where to begin, so I won't. I can't. Well I can. But I won't. I can't and won't.

The basic theme is a fine one.

This is not a Tuesday puzzle. It's a hard Wednesday.

I honestly can't say anything more. Maybe someday I'll be able to explain why. But not today.

I will say, though, that I had zero idea what BWI stood for (47D: Home of the Bahamas, once: Abbr.). Or, rather, I assumed it stood for the airport. That "I" was a guess based Solely on the airport's existence, as I also have never ever seen ISA as an abbr. for (I'm guessing) Isaiah (57A: Old Testament prophecy book: Abbr.). Never. I just … again, I can't. Won't and can't. And won't. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hope all you non-"Fringe" watchers liked that 42D clue. Gimme for me, but I was like "… wow. Tuesday? OK, then."

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Get Lost— phrases meaning "Go Away" all clued following the pattern [Go away as a [***] might?], where the [***] gives you some hint to the idiom involved:

Theme answers:

RUN ALONG
BEAT IT
TAKE A HIKE
BUZZ OFF
AMSCRAY
MAKE LIKE A / BANANA / AND SPLIT

Word of the Day: SOLEA (5D: Form of flamenco) —

Soleares (plural of soleá, pronounced: [soleˈa]) is one of the most basic forms or "palos" ofFlamenco music, probably originated around Cádiz or Seville in Andalusia, the most southern region of Spain. It is usually accompanied by one guitar only, in phrygian mode "por arriba" (fundamental on the 6th string); "Bulerías por soleá" is usually played "por medio" (fundamental on the 5th string). Soleares is sometimes called "mother of palos" although it is not the oldest one (e.g. siguiriyas is older than soleares) and not even related to every other palo (e.g. fandangosfamily is from a different origin) (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty ordinary "these phrases all mean the same thing" puzzle, with the added bonus of the final epic three-part themer, which really gives the puzzle a nice dose of pizzazz. There's some odd fill—most notably SOLEÁ, which I've never seen, and which hasn't been seen at all, crossword-wise, since 2003, and which even then was a [Roman sandal] (???). XOX is terrible and always a bad way to pick up "X"s. But aside from SSGTS and ASOU (frowny face) and ARISTO (boo) (13D: British upper-cruster, for short), most everything else is solid, even interesting. TEN-DAY is pretty damn arbitrary, but … it is what it is (52D: Like some short-term N.B.A. contracts). I'm giving this one a slight thumbs-up. My perspective might be warped by yesterday's debacle, but I think this one holds up pretty well for a Wednesday.

I came in under 4 on this one, which was nice, as I have been noticeably slower of late, despite doing more puzzles than ever. No idea what that's about. Maybe it's aging-brain, maybe I'm just paying closer attention as I solve, maybe maybe maybe. Had no real hiccups besides not knowing SOLEÁ. Briefly thought the tree in the Garden of Eden was a FIR (no lie) (38D: Garden of Eden tree). Balked at AXION (44A: Particle theorized in 1977), in part because AXON was in the grid and my brain wouldn't accept the near-duplicate. I also had "BY GODS!" at 71A: "For heaven's sake!" ("MY GOSH!"). So I guess I was imagining the exclamation coming from Thor or Hercules.

My brain is mildly fried from having just experienced the end of "Breaking Bad" (finally), so I'm gonna go process.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Victor Barocas

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging

THEME: Get bent! — Some clues are followed by bracketed "Get ___!" exclamations, which refer to things that are supposed to happen to the letter string "GET" in those answers:

Theme answers:

STOREAGETANKS (24A: Oil containers ["Get down!"])
PATEGURNER (18A: Gripping read ["Get back!"])
COLLEGETOWNS (50A: Amherst and Orono, for two ["Get up!"])
ABRIDOOFAR (61A: 1977 W.W. II film ["Get lost!"])

Word of the Day: JEZEBEL (45D: Prominent feminist blog) —

Jezebel is a blog aimed at women's interests, under the tagline "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing." It is one of several blogs owned by Gawker Media. (wikipedia)

• • •

Clonk. This one went clonk, for me. Seems like an idea that would've struck the constructor as brilliant, but it wasn't that satisfying for me as a solver. I've never been a fan of puzzles with nonsense answers like ABRIDOOFAR and PATEGURNER in the grid. There's definitely something clever about the concept—I didn't grasp it fully until after I was done, or until the very end, perhaps, when I was nailing PATEGURNER into place. But somehow the weirdness of bracketed exclamations and the weirdness of the nonsense answers made the whole thing feel fussy. I had the theme, or at least part of the theme, quite early, at STORAGETANKS, and after I got COLLEGETOWNS, I thought the exclamations were just related to the direction the whole answer took at some point. Then I got to ABRIDOOFAR, wrote in ABRIDGETOO, and tried to figure out where the FAR went. Then I saw GET and TEG mirroring each other in the center-west, and instead of picking up the "GET" thing, I thought the equivalent three-letter answers on the east side of the grid would mirror each other, i.e. SAG and … GAS. Only GAS ended up being IT'S… flash-forward and I finished with very little conception of what was really going on. Now I get it (get it?). But I didn't enjoy it. I did enjoy the clue on JEZEBEL, though (45D: Prominent feminist blog). 21st century! I also enjoyed that I got CONGOLESE off just the -ESE. I remember staring at Brazzaville's atlas page recently, thinking, "This place is big … why haven't I heard of this place?" Brazzaville has over a million inhabitants, but what makes it look truly big on a satellite map is its directly-across-the-Congo proximity to Kinshasa, DR Congo, a city of over 9 million.

Theme isn't dense and fill isn't great, which is never a nice combination. 42 black squares should've made for a squeaky clean grid. But no. Other priorities, I guess. Holy crap … [counting] … 80 words?? That's over the max by two. That means the grid Really should've been AFORE- and DREAR- and BIGA- and STER-free. Disappointing.

If you want to see some good puzzles (great puzzles, actually), check out the 2013 Orca Award-winners over at Diary of a Crossword Fiend.

Time for sleep.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CRUMHORN (58A: Renaissance woodwind) —

The crumhorn is a musical instrument of the woodwind family, most commonly used during the Renaissance period. In modern times, there has been a revival of interest in Early Music, and crumhorns are being played again.

The name derives from the German Krumhorn (or Krummhorn or Krumporn) meaning bent horn. This relates to the old English crump meaning curve, surviving in modern English in 'crumpled' and 'crumpet' (a curved cake). The similar sounding French term cromorne when used correctly refers to a woodwind instrument of different design, though the term cromorne is often used in error synonymously with that of crumhorn.
The crumhorn is a capped reed instrument. Its construction is similar to that of the chanter of a bagpipe. A double reed is mounted inside a long windcap. Blowing through a slot in the windcap produces a musical note. The pitch of the note can be varied by opening or closing finger holes along the length of the pipe. One unusual feature of the crumhorn is its shape; the end is bent upwards in a curve resembling the letter 'J'. Some people think^{[weasel words]} this is so that the sound produced from the crumhorn is directed toward the player to improve the intonation in consort playing. (wikipedia) (LOL "weasel words")

• • •

Sorry about the late (but still pre-9am, for the billionth day in a row) posting today. Had one of those sleep-drowning moments last night around 9:30, after watching the first episode of "Cosmos" with the family, where I was sitting there thinking "just a half hour 'til the puzzle … you can make it …" followed shortly by "f*** it, you're doomed," at which point I just lay down on the couch right there and went Out. Then I got up plenty early but … well, I'd tell you what I had for breakfast and all, but this isn't that kind of blog. I will say that checking Twitter before doing this puzzle—big mistake. Had puzzle partially, mildly spoiled for me by my friend Dan "Big Mouth" Bernstein of CBS sports radio in Chicago, who is a big BEQ fan and who couldn't wait, apparently, to tell TAJ Gibson about his induction into the Crossword Sports Hall of Fame. I probably would've gotten TAJ anyway, but still, Dan … dude. You gotta resist the hollering urge. I *know* it's hard. But … yeah.

[38A: N.B.A.'s Gibson]

I like this puzzle quite a bit. Very much in line with the quality of BEQ's regular, 2x/week offerings at his independent puzzle website. The one thing I didn't like was that the clues here are tamer than his normal fare, and the difficulty here came largely from nutso answers like (to my feeble brain) CRUMHORN, EXEDRA, and (!) CARYN, rather than from tough-to-unravel clues. I actually found most of the puzzle Easy, but then I had to fight CRUMHORN down to the last square (seriously worried about getting Naticked there until I ran the alphabet and hit, duh, MME. for 55D: Abbr. on a letter to Paris, maybe. And *then* I really had to fight in the NE corner, where CARYN was blocking me but good underneath (30A: Figure skater Kadavy), and both EXEDRA (8D: Semicircular recess in Roman architecture) and (wrong) NINES were holding down the fort up top. Total free fall for a few moments. Then my brain was like "isn't the steel guy BESSEMER" (7A: Sir Henry ___, pioneer in steelmaking)? Good boy, brain. That turned NINES to SIXES (in my defense, NINES are higher), and I ended somewhere inside CARYN ("Somewhere Inside CARYN" being the title of the world's first and last crossword porn flick).

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

[7D: Funny or Die web series hosted by Zach Galifianakis]

Two last thoughts:

Pretty sure Antonioni is famous enough that you don't need his first name in that clue for "LA NOTTE" (26D: 1961 Michelangelo Antonioni drama). It's not like anyone was at home going "oh, *Michelangelo* Antonioni … now I get it."
I can't believe ONER(S) is even in BEQ's word list any more. Delete!!!!!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Greg Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: GREBE (44D: Diving bird) —

A grebe /ˈɡriːb/ is a member of the order Podicipediformes, a widely distributed order of freshwater diving birds, some of which visit the sea when migrating and in winter. This order contains only a singlefamily, the Podicipedidae, containing 22 species in 6 extant genera. // Grebes are small to medium-large in size, have lobed toes, and are excellent swimmers and divers. However, although they can run for a short distance, they are prone to falling over, since they have their feet placed far back on the body. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very smooth but not very snappy. It's admirably clean (as any 70+-worder in the NYT ought to be) but the only real zip is in the answer ZIP DRIVE (18A: Obsolescent storage device). Even with the Scrabble letters, I can't get that excited about a tepid phrase like ZOO EXHIBIT (22A: One often behind bars). I really think themelesses should offer some pizzazz, something fresh and fun, and this puzzle—while expertly made and without obvious defect—is just workmanlike and adequate. Stuff like ALTERANT and RENTABLE just clonk. They're words, but not good ones. Still, there is very little in the way of bad stuff, and some of the clues showed cleverness and thoughtfulness, so while not wowed, I'm something close to satisfied.

Speaking of FLEW BY (1A: Passed in a blur), this puzzle did. I had worked the whole thing down to just the tiny SE corner in just over 6 minutes (!!!). But then, clonk. Derailment. Free fall. Other metaphor signifying stoppage. See if you can guess the problem. Actually, you probably can, because it probably happened to you. I had GRAPE and wrote in JUICE. Then I *confirmed* that answer by crossing the "J" with JUMBO. Then I got UPPED and ABLAZE and OAF… and yet all the 6-letter Downs remained peskily unsolved. I invented a plant part—the CUPOLA—at 39D: Protection for flowers in bud (SEPALS), but that didn't help much. So after a minute or so of this, I did the professional thing and took out JUICE. If the "J" works, I reasoned, then maybe … JELLY. And that was that.

I found the puzzle very easy, even with that SE corner hiccup. But others, clearly, did not. So I'm curious about where people struggled. I felt like I couldn't miss today. Got PLUS / MINUS off just the "P". The NE corner may as well not have existed. Once you get ZOO EXHIBIT and the stuff beneath it, GAZEBOS and ELIXIR are obvious, and every long Across goes in bang bang bang. I kept waiting for the hammer to drop, and it did, I guess, a little, in the SE, but overall there was very little resistance for me. I'd like to thank crosswords past for teaching me what a GREBE is. I have no doubt that knowledge contributed significantly to my quickness today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Bright Ideas"— Quotation from THOMAS EDISON (86A), aka THE WIZARD OF MENLO PARK (96A: Nickname for 86-Across), inventor of the INCANDESCENT LIGHTBULB (106A: Development of 86-Across … as depicted in the middle of this grid):

"I HAVE NOT FAILED. I'VE JUST / FOUND TEN THOUSAND WAYS / THAT WON'T WORK." (26A: Start of a motivational comment attributed to 86-Across)

Circled squares form image of lightbulb, and spell out (reading counterclockwise, from the top): "AHA MOMENT"

Word of the Day: Dolph LUNDGREN (116A: Dolph of "Rocky IV") —

Dolph Lundgren (born Hans Lundgren; 3 November 1957) is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the action hero stereotype, alongside Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris,Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
He received a degree in chemistry from Washington State University in 1976, a degree in chemical engineering from theRoyal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in the early 1980s, then a Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering from theUniversity of Sydney in Sydney in 1982. Lundgren holds a rank of 3rd dan black belt in Kyokushin Karate and was European champion in 1980 and 1981. While in Sydney, he became a bodyguard for Jamaican singer Grace Jones and began a relationship with her. They moved together to New York City, where after a short stint as a model and bouncer at the Manhattan nightclub The Limelight, Jones got him a small debut role in the James Bond film A View to a Kill as aKGB henchman.
Lundgren's breakthrough came when he starred in Rocky IV in 1985 as the imposing Russian boxer Ivan Drago. Since then, he has starred in more than 40 movies, almost all of them in the action genre. He portrayed He-Man in the 1987 fantasy/science fiction film Masters of the Universe, and Frank Castle in the 1989 film The Punisher. In the early 1990s, he also appeared in films such Dark Angel (1990), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), alongside Brandon Lee;Universal Soldier (1992) as opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme; Joshua Tree (1993), opposite Kristian Alfonso andGeorge Segal; Johnny Mnemonic (1995), opposite Keanu Reeves; and Blackjack (1998), directed by John Woo. In 2004, Lundgren directed his first picture, The Defender, and subsequently helmed The Mechanik (2005), Missionary Man (2007), Command Performance (2009), and Icarus (2010), in which he also starred. After a long spell performing indirect-to-video films since 1996, 2010 marked his return to theaters with The Expendables, an on-screen reunion with Stallone, alongside an all-action star cast which included, among others, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Mickey Rourke. He reprised his role as Gunner Jensen in The Expendables 2 in 2012 and the upcomingThe Expendables 3 in 2014. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solid work, but just too easy, with a gimmick that was too transparent. I knew what this puzzle was going to do as soon as I saw the title and read the Note: "When this puzzle is done, the circled letters, reading counterclockwise from the top, will spell a phrase relating to the puzzle's theme." OK, I didn't know the phrase was going to be "AHA MOMENT," but "Bright Ideas" as a title screamed both "Edison" and "Lightbulb," and I honestly predicted the bulb shape before I even opened the puzzle. This does not make me a genius; it just makes me semi-conscious. This would be a nice gateway puzzle for people who think the Sunday is too hard for them. But I was done in under 10, and since the whole theme was essentially already known to me before I started, it just wasn't that gripping. I will say that the long Downs are gold—Ian is a Really top-notch constructor, and there's hardly anything junky in the whole grid (though because the grid is so segmented, there are a *lot* of short answers, and they can't all be winners). He's one of a handful of constructors I know who do truly care about the overall quality of the grid—The Whole Grid, not just the theme. So the puzzle is expertly made, and it's got sports teams and bands and science and SESAME BAGELS (60D: Deli stock with seeds)—a very nice mix of knowledge, with punchy answers abounding. So even if the theme was D.O.A. for me, a. it won't have been for everyone, and b. there is still a decent puzzle framework underneath that theme.

There were few challenging or scary moments for me. Typically, the place that gave me the most trouble was the last place I solved—the "Q" in IQS / QUITO was the last letter in the grid. I may have briefly forgotten that QUITO existed. In fact, I'm definitely sure that briefly happened. But we're not talking about minutes of struggle here. Seconds. Just somewhat more seconds than other parts took me. OPEN CIRCUIT isn't a concept I know a lot about, so there was some initial futzing around in that area (I had Buddha born in NEMEA at one point …) (73A: Birthplace of Buddha, now). I blanked on SHARON, briefly. [Lockup] = CAN just made no sense to me until I had it all. Then I was like "Oh, yeah … I teach a course in crime fiction, so I should Probably know that." Really didn't care for the book "Life of Pi," so when I saw that clue I was like "How the *** should I know that guy's last n—… oh, wait, I know it. It's PATEL" (102D: Pi ___, "Life of Pi" protagonist). Turns out my brain still retains useless information—maybe not as well as it did when I was a teenager, but pretty well.

I'm gonna get back to basketball-watching / exam-grading, but first: Puzzle of the Week!

So if you want to see why, like Whitney Houston, I believe the children are our future, you'll want to tune into some of the work being done by young constructors on their independent puzzle sites. It's like getting a peek inside a test kitchen. Sometimes the stuff comes out a little rough or weird or not to my liking, but more often I am privileged to witness some truly inspired work—boundary-breaking stuff that you aren't likely to see in mainstream outlets. This week I'd like to single out Neville Fogarty's "College Humor," which has a nice, timely theme, but was super tough for me due to the fact that I am old (at least compared to Neville). Great stuff if you're young, great practice for navigating treacherous proper noun waters if you're less than young, and with a solid theme holding it all together. You should also head over and check out Peter Broda's latest themeless offering, "Freestyle #30," at his site, The Cross Nerd. As I mentioned elsewhere this week, this puzzle has a single clue/answer in it of a type that I find cheap and deeply annoying—but a. not everyone agrees with my philosophy on this, and b. more importantly, that answer aside, the puzzle is a pyrotechnic display. This guy has virtuosic tendencies where themelesses are concerned. So fresh, so current, so wow. I laughed in admiration mid-solve—that's about the highest praise I can give a puzzle. But the winner this week is Ben Tausig's Inkwell Puzzle for this week: "Upbeat Mixes," an easyish puzzle with a super-clever, funny, feel-good theme. Professional, polished, entertaining, witty. Good, good work. I won't spoil it—you can get it free here from Ben's Weekly sword Google group. Hope you like it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. neglected to give Andy Kravis's "Themeless #12" the shout-out I'd intended last night when I was doing this write-up. I gotta get more organizized. Anyway, this puzzle leads with a dramatic 1-Across and doesn't let up from there. Sweet stuff. Andy drops grid science every Sunday at Andy Kravis, Cruciverbalist at Law (in fact, there's a new puzzle out Today). Add him to your list.

Constructor: Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DIRTY WORDS (60A: Curses … or the starts of 17-, 27- and 44-Across) — First words of the three theme answers are all words that suggest dirtiness

Theme answers:

FILTHY RICH (17A: Not just well-off)
GREASY SPOON (27A: Low-class diners)
STAINED GLASS (44A: Window material in many cathedrals)

Word of the Day: Treaty of GHENT (42A: Belgian treaty city) —

The Treaty of Ghent (8 Stat. 218), signed on December 24, 1814 in the Flemish city of Ghent, was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The treaty restored relations between the two nations to status quo ante bellum — that is, it restored the borders of the two countries to the line before the commencement of hostilities. The Treaty was ratified by Parliament on December 30, 1814 and signed into law by the Prince Regent (the future King George IV). Because of the era's lack of telecommunications, it took weeks for news of the peace treaty to reach the United States. An American army under Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815 . The Treaty of Ghent was not in effect until it was ratified by the U.S. Senate unanimously on February 18, 1815. (wikipedia)

• • •

Torn, once again. Fill is very nice and avoids most of the banality and ugliness that are the real dangers of early-week puzzles. But the theme is kinda soft. Only three answer … must be a million words that somehow suggest "dirty"… one of these is used in a way that actually suggests "dirty" (GREASY SPOONS), where the others aren't (not literally, anyway). At least the first two theme answers are colorful (ironically, STAINED GLASS, which is literally colorful, metaphorically isn't). I think my favorite thing in this grid is actually THE CLOUD. High contemporary quotient. But it's kind of a thin, throwaway theme. Well made, but with a theme that wasn't much to my liking. Still, I'm happy not to be groaning mid-solve, as often happens with easy puzzles and their multitude of short answers.

I flew through this in below-average time, which on a Monday is below about 2:50. 2:38 today. Felt faster, actually, but I am a stumblebum on the keyboard, and I tripped out of the gate on BY FAR, which I just couldn't see until I had all but one cross. Later, balked at both HEDGE (didn't fully read the clue, only registered the "fund" part) and couldn't come up with DIRTY without crosses. Would've liked to see a cleaner east, without the less-than-great ACNED and VAL, but those answers are hardly offensive. I seem to have the ILSA / ELSA thing down … or else I just lucky guessed it this time. Who knows?

Back to basketball. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Woolf

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (*for a Tuesday*) (3:43)

THEME: "IT AIN'T OVER UNTIL / THE FAT LADY SINGS" (17A: With 57-Across, a die-hard's statement) — two other theme answers claim to "prove" this "statement":

Theme answers:

WALK-OFF HOMER (27A: Hit that proves 17-/57-Across)
BUZZER BEATER (445A: Shot that proves 17-/57-Across)

Word of the Day: MIRIAM (9D: Moses' sister)—

Miriam (Hebrew: מִרְיָם, Modern Miryam Tiberian Miryām ; Arabic: مريم (Maryam); see Miriam (given name)) was the sister ofMoses and Aaron, and the daughter of Amram and Yocheved. She appears first in the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. // At her mother Yocheved's request, Miriam hid her baby brother Moses by the side of a river to evade the Pharaoh’s order that newborn Hebrew boys be killed. She watched as the Pharaoh’s daughter discovered the infant and decided to adopt him. Miriam then suggested that the princess take on a nurse for the child, and suggested Yocheved; as a result, Moses was raised to be familiar with his background as a Hebrew. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like the phrases involved here, but the theme feels off to me. If you're going with AIN'T, you're definitely going with 'TIL, not the fully, proper, UNTIL. Also, neither a WALK-OFF HOMER or BUZZER BEATER really proves the fat-lady statement. In a situation where either event could occur, no one in the building really thinks it's "over." Perhaps they did, earlier in the game, when there was a sizable lead. Anyway, the point is that when a single play can swing an entire game, no one is uttering the fat-lady phrase. That's a phrase for when you're down 10 in the fourth inning, or down 10 with a minute to play (in basketball).

Fill here is definitely on the weak side. Mainly tired stuff, your OLEGs and OREMs and SSRs and RATAs and OREOs and OBIEs and AWOLs and ENISLEs and what not (ENISLE is on my 10 Most Not Wanted List). Bit of Scrabble ****ing in the NE doesn't do too much damage. TEM is bad, but XYLEM livens things up a little. The Z-crosses at BUZZER BEATER (i.e. FLOOZY and ZAFTIG) are both very nice, but much of the rest felt creaky. Not sure why it played slightly harder than usual for me, especially given that the second half of the long quote was pure gimme. Took me a few passes to see PRISM, oddly (1A: Rainbow maker). I never know if it's MANOLA or MANOLO (5D: Shoe designer Blahnik). Doubted FLOOZY because the word seemed pejorative and I wasn't sure it applied (never actually seen "Chicago"). Forgot that EIGER was a [Swiss peak in an Eastwood title]; that is, forgot it was a Swiss peak, and forgot that Eastwood was in "The EIGER Sanction." Oh, looks like he directed it, too. SULFA is interesting (42D: Certain bacteria-fighting drug)—don't think I've seen that very much before. Don't think I'd know the word if I hadn't been on that class of antibiotic at some point in my life. At any rate, it's different, and different is (mostly) good.

That's all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ATOMIC / NUMBER (18D: With 38-Down, property of the first part of the answer to each starred clue (appropriately positioned in the grid))— answers to starred clues all start with an element of the Periodic Table, and the number of each clue is the same as the ATOMIC / NUMBER of the element in question.

Theme answers:

IRON MAIDEN (26D: *Medieval device with spikes) (Iron = At. No. 26)
CARBON COPY (6D: *Typist's duplicate of old) (Carbon = At. No. 6)
COPPERHEAD (29D: *Anti-Civil War Northerner) (Copper = At. No. 29)
NEON LIGHTS (10D: *They're big on Broadway) (Neon - At. No. 10)

Word of the Day: Port PHILLIP Bay (49A: Australia's Port ___ Bay) —

Port Phillip (also commonly referred to as Port Phillip Bay or (locally) just The Bay), is a large bay in southernVictoria, Australia; it is the location of Melbourne. Geographically, the bay covers 1,930 square kilometres (480,000 acres) and the shore stretches roughly 264 km (164 mi). Although it is extremely shallow for its size, most of the bay is navigable. The deepest portion is only 24 metres (79 ft), and half the region is shallower than 8 m (26 ft). The volume of the water in the bay is around 25 cubic kilometres (6.0 cu mi). (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a clever puzzle, but it left me cold. I've seen all kinds of element-themed puzzles before (I did a pretty interesting one just last week … or maybe the week before that … in the Chronicle of Higher Education), and I think they're fine, generally, but this theme doesn't really add any enjoyment to the solve. It's a grid that's designed to get you to marvel at the constructor's cleverness. But for me … there's just this moment at the end, when I'm done, where I notice that the numbers of the clues and atomic numbers correspond. And then I shrug. Now there are some good answers in here, and the fill is probably better-than-average (ignoring that NES / ESSE / STER nexus up there). So overall it's a decent effort. But I think some solvers (esp. the ones who routinely geek out about anything sciencey) will be far more impressed by this than I was. I think it's clever. Neat. OK.

Puzzle was harder than usual due almost entirely to proper nouns completely unknown to me. Never heard of COPPERHEAD that wasn't a snake; no idea that Sydney's bay was called PHILLIP Bay; and ROBB (47A: Eldest Stark child on "Game of Thrones") … let's just say I knew my complete lack of interest in all things "Game of Thrones" would eventually come back to bite me in the ass, puzzle-wise. And here we are. I also had no idea what 50D: Barbaric sorts (HUNS) was at first. Seemed like it could be a million things. And had IN A moment, instead of AHA moment at 64A: ___ moment. Cluing today felt pretty fresh, which I enjoyed, even if part of that freshness was "GOfT"-related. You got CROCs (36A: Holey plastic shoe), you got Shaquille O'NEAL's Icy Hot commercials (5D: N.B.A. great in Icy Hot commercials), you got DJS taking REQUESTs at PROM. All in all, not a bad day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jean O'Conor

Relative difficulty: Slightly tough for a Thursday

THEME: FULL CIRCLE— grid contains the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle, plus the FULL CIRCLE kicker

Word of the Day: TASMANIA (Southernmost state) —

Forever the butt of mainland jokes, Tasmania) has shrugged off the stigma of its isolation – the whole world seems to be discovering the physically dazzling, unique and accessible island. Suitably impressed, and a tad sheepish, the rest of Australia has finally stopped laughing and started visiting. ‘Tassie’ (as it’s affectionately known) has it all: vast, uninhabited slabs of wilderness, swimming at Seven Mile Beach, bountiful wildlife in Narawntapu National Park, gourmet food and wine in the Tamar Valley, a thriving arts scene and new-found urban cool.(www.lonelyplanet.com)

• • •

Matt Gaffney pinch-blogging for Rex for one day, and I got a very nice crossword to write about. It will probably be one of the five puzzles I nominate for Crossword of the Month at my blog next week, and that includes work published anytime in March in any medium in the country. It's a novel and interesting theme idea and, with one point of exception, very nicely executed.

The grid conceals

PI R SQUARED and 2 PI R in symmetrically placed down entries, which tell you the measurements around or inside a circle. Then there's a nice-but-not-necessary FULL CIRCLE kicker clued as (10-A: With 66-Across, back to the beginning ... or a description of 21- and 48-Down?), referring back to the formulas. And here are the six entries that cross them:

Theme answers:

LIFE OF (PI) (20-A: Best seller about shipwreck survivors)
R MONTHS (24-A: September through April, in a culinary guideline)
(SQUARED) AWAY (28-A: Settled up)
SIDE 2 (47-A: Where to find "Yesterday" on the album "Help!")
MAGNUM, (P.I). (53-A: Tom Selleck title role)
R MOVIES (58-A: "The Godfather" parts I, II and III, e.g.)

Note some fine points in the execution of this theme: 1) the two formulas are placed symmetrically in the grid; 2) PI is used as one lexical unit in both cases, not just as the letters "PI" in a longer word; 3) the R is used as the letter R itself in both cases, not as part of a word. That is really maximizing this theme's potential; if she had just used the letters PI in longer words and/or just used the R's as part of longer words no one would have complained (or if they had, they would have been plausibly accused of nitpicking), but these two elegant touches elevate the theme considerably.

Another aspect of the execution I liked was how much information was given to the solver. I knew something was up in the middle of the grid but didn't know quite what; then I thought we might be getting two PI R SQUAREDs or something? But no, two different formulas, with "full circle" describing both. So a nice little mystery to unravel.


Apple Pi

So what's the exception to this puzzle's execution? It would have been extremely cool if it had run on Friday, March 14th, a.k.a. National Pi Day (3.14 being the date, of course). Maybe it's rare to have a Friday themed puzzle, but I'm pretty sure it's happened before and this would've been a perfect time for an exception. Would've added another nice level of "aha!" for solvers at no extra charge.

The grid was good, with not many Scowl-O-Meter triggers (WAC/DAR might be a tough cross, but not much beyond that) and some nice entries like BIKINI TOP, Word of the Day TASMANIA, ARTEMIS and SEWED UP. The whole NW corner is elegant.

That's it from me. Visit a bunch of cool crossword websites here.

Signed, Matt Gaffney, Regent of CrossWorld for today only

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: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy, moderately breezy

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: BLUECHIPS (3D: "Relatively low-risk investments") —

"in reference to the high-value poker counter, from 1904 in the figurative sense of "valuable;" stock exchange sense, in reference to "shares considered a reliable investment," is first recorded 1929; especially of stocks that saw spectacular rises in value in the four years or so before the Wall Street crash of that year." (Online Etymology Dictionary, which looks suspiciously like the OED)

• • •

Hello! This is Ben Tausig, editor of the American Values Club xword and person who does other things as well. I'm glad to be back as a guest blogger for my friend Rex.

Big ups to David Kahn generally, but today's puzzle didn't elate me. There's a mini-theme afoot, in which CAPTAINPHILLIPS (38A) crosses SOMALIPIRATES (16D: "Hijackers who captured 38-Across"), and then Tom Hanks returns with a strained wink in the clue for SAG (48A: "Org. of which Tom Hanks is a member"). I checked to see if today was Hanks's birthday. No soap. There is in fact, delightfully, an official Tom Hanks Day, but it's April 12th. Is there some rationale I'm missing? And just like that, I'm halfway down a "Crying of Lot 49" rabbit hole.

[This 2005 film, in which I co-star, certainly won't clear anything up (Hanks is prominent, but you must be patient and maybe crazy enough to watch until the end.)]

The highlight of the puzzle (along with the aforementioned BLUECHIPS) was ALEXANDERCALDER (63A: Mobile creator), which fell quickly and brought big, colorful shapes to mind. None of the other stacked 15s (ORLANDOSENTINEL, SOURCESOFINCOME, and LOSEONESMARBLES) produced the least sensory excitation, in answer or clue -- an unacknowledged part of puzzle construction is evocation. The solver should perform mental gymnastics, sure, but it's nice to give them some imagery, if not some music and scents, in return. LOSEONESMARBLES (64A: "Go mad") has no pungency. ORLANDOSENTINEL (15A: "Central Florida daily") has all the haptic delight of smudged black ink on fingers after finishing a story about the passage of a local levy.

I won't dwell on partials COSA, AROW, ALLOR, KEA, and GEES, obscurities MEHTA, TRILBY and KLEBAN, the redundancy of ALLOR and ALLSET, or the mehness of MTNS, EDENS, MMII, ETAS, EST, ARR, and HRS. This might be a bit too much junk, but that happens in themelesses and can't be judged too harshly.

I will, however, call out ENOTE (12D: Modern message), for which I can't find support of any kind. E-whatever is a scourge and an anachronism retained almost exclusively by crosswords. Perhaps at some point in the past it seemed like "e-" could and would be affixed to anything -- e-mail, e-mag, e-rugby, e-buffet, e-chimpanzee. But now, maybe because the Internet of things, e- feels extremely dated in almost all cases. No one says "Hey guys, I'm going on an e-date! Wish me cyber luck! Winking emoji!" You can e-file or send an email, but that's about all you can e-do without getting actual-laughed at.

Signed, Ben Tausig, acting King of CrossWorld

Clear libation popular in England / WED 3-12-14 / England's Fergie, formally / Nickname for $2 Canadian coin / Clear libation popular in Japan / Fifth-century pope called Great / Fizzy dinner quaff / Old-timey agreements

Stylish 1960s luxury coupe / THU 3-13-14 / Giant novelist 1952 / Country calls itself abode of peace / Boston legend Phil to fans / Title character from village of Highbury 1815 / 11th-century founder of Scholasticism / One of vertices of summer triangle / 2000 Richard Gere title role

1985 Ralph McInerny novel / FRI 3-14-14 / Rectangular paving stone / Gervasi who directed 2012's Hitchcock / Longtime airer of any Questions /

Cayenne producer / SAT 3-15-14 / Seaweed used in brining / Wed 2007 Erica Durance movie / Vineyard in Vichy / Staples of Marvel Comics / Velvety pink

Horror flick starring Humphrey Bogart as mad scientist / SUN 3-16-14 / Thummim sacred Judaic objects / Type A friend from Friends / Country buggy / Drink with two lizards in its logo / He bested Leonidas at Thermopylae / John Candy's old comedy program

Middle Corleone brother / MON 3-17-14 / Burma's first prime minister / Orioles Hall-of-Fame pitcher who modeled Jockey underwear / 1945 Alamogordo event / Poacher's nemesis

Editor Marshall of financial publications / TUE 3-18-14 / Visual gag character of British TV / Railroad chartered in 1832 / Dwelling changes in realtor speak / Early film star Daniels / Yeast cake made with rum / Elevator pioneer Elisha

Form of flamenco / WED 3-19-14 / Particle theorized in 1977 / British upper-cruster for short / Willy who lent his name to historic Manhattan deli / Caffeine-laden nuts

1977 W.W. II film / THU 3-20-14 / Nickname for Anaheim's Angel Stadium / Prominent feminist blog / Young brothers' band / Where Maria Captain have their first kiss in Sound of Music

Figure skater Kadavy / FRI 3-21-14 / Funny or Die web series hosted by Zach Galifianakis / Sir Henry pioneer in steelmaking / Semicircular recess in Roman architecture / 1961 Michelangelo Antonioni drama / Renaissance woodwind

Rescuer of Princess Peach / SAT 3-22-14 / One of Leakey's Trimates / High rollers in casino lingo / Three Stooges creator Healy / Did entrechat

Pitcher Mike with 270 wins / SUN 3-23-14 / Eponymous German physicist / World capital on slope of active volcano / Resort city in 1945 news / Birthplace of Buddha now / Bootleggers banes / Garden State casino informally / Ex-Fed head Bernanke

Belgian treaty city / MON 3-24-14 / Rick's love in Casablanca / Pop Singer Carly Jepsen / Where many digital files are now stored

Shoe designer Blahnik / TUE 3-25-14 / Swiss peak in Eastwood title / Pleasingly plump / Shakespeare character who says I have set my life upon cast / Film noir weather condition

Eldest Stark child on Game of Thrones / WED 3-26-14 / Holey plastic shoe / Anti-Civil War Northerner / N.B.A. great in Icy Hot commercials

Celebrity cosmetician Laszlo / THU 3-27-14 / Frog's alter ego, in a fairy tale / Abba not known for singing

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

First name in '60s radicalism / FRI 3-28-14 / Screw up / English hat similar to a fedora / Superlatively bouncy