Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: animal similes —

Theme answers:

SICK AS A DOG
BLIND AS A BAT
SLY AS A FOX
BALD AS A COOT
FAT AS A COW
BIG AS A WHALE
BUSY AS A BEE

Word of the Day: LESLEY Gore (27A: Gore who sang "It's My Party," 1963) —

Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein, May 2, 1946) is an American singer. At the age of 16, in 1963, she recorded the pop hit "It's My Party". // Gore was born in New York City. She was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, in a Jewish family. Her father, Leo Gore, was a wealthy manufacturer of children's clothes and swimwear.
Lesley was a junior at the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood when "It's My Party" became a #1 hit. It was later nominated for a Grammy Award for rock and roll recording. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. (wikipedia)

• • •

Another puzzle with impressive theme density. This one's stronger than yesterday's, but still wobbles a bit in couple theme answers, and still has that spotty fill that theme-dense puzzles often seem to have. I thought I would sail through this in record time once I saw the theme was just animal comparison idioms, but then a couple things happened. First, when I got to 49A: Quite cunning, I had no idea it was a theme answer (I'd already encountered two Downs and could see another Down in the center, so the Across took me by surprise). Thus, I never considered the now-obvious fox answer, and so that corner was a tad (tod?) harder than it would've been otherwise. But the big slow down, for me, was the central themer—an idiom I have never heard. I did not even know a "coot" was an animal (a bird, for my fellow ignorant folk). None. Zero. I know coots as codgers. Foolish old men. Perhaps this meaning was only ever an extension of the baldness of the damned bird-coot, but that original, avian coot-ness is something I did not know existed. Jarring to go from such ultra-familiar expressions as SICK AS A DOG and BLIND AS A BAT to BALD AS A COOT. I had BALD AS A COO- and honestly didn't know what letter went there. "Are coons bald?" I wondered, knowing the answer.

I see that the coot idiom is a real thing, though the fact that it's not Nearly in-the-language as most of the others is, as I say, jarring. Worse for me, though, was FAT AS A COW. I can imagine someone's being called a "fat cow," but FAT AS A COW could just as easily have been FAT AS A PIG, FAT AS A HOG, or FAT AS A WHALE (which googles better than all the others I just mentioned combined). BIG AS A WHALE has significantly less currency than FAT AS A WHALE, though I have no problem with BIG AS A WHALE because of the special B-52s dispensation.

TRASH CAN before BIN. DECAMPS before ENCAMPS for some reason. No idea Monet painted anything with SNOW in the title (13D: Monet's "___ Scene at Argenteuil"). Barely heard of an OSAGE orange. I think that's it for hiccups. Overall a decent puzzle, but kind of like a balance beam routine with several significant wobbles and a not-totally-stuck landing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Anna Shechtman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SHARP —theme clues all contain the symbol their answers describe … it's hiding there in plain sight, as a simple number sign (i.e. "#")

Theme answers:

20A: #1 (TIC TAC TOE BOARD)
33A: #2 (POUND SIGN)
43A: #3 (SPACE MARK) — that's an "insert space" editing mark, in case that wasn't clear
52A: #4 (TWITTER HASHTAG)

Word of the Day: PAULO Coelho (15A: "The Alchemist" novelist ___ Coelho) —

Paulo Coelho (Portuguese: [ˈpawlu kuˈeʎu]; born August 24, 1947), is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. […] He is the recipient of numerous international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. The Alchemist, his most famous novel, has been translated into 80 languages. The author has sold 150 million copies worldwide. (wikipedia)

• • •

Just had the biggest "Ohhhhhhhh…" moment I've had in a long time. "Ohhhhhhhh…" moments are different from "aha" moments in that they are belated—moments of awareness that come not in the heat of battle, but afterwards, when you're staring at a puzzle going "… huh … I must be missing something." It was only when I began to type out the theme clues that I noticed the "#" symbol appeared in the clues themselves. My brain was just going "number one, number two …", never registering that the theme clues had always contained the image the theme answers were describing. So for that quite distinct and vaguely pleasant "Ohhhhhhhh…" moment (that's 8 h's btw), I give this puzzle a moderate thumbs-up.

I know Anna and am in a reading group with Anna and she disagreed with something I said about George Eliot earlier this week so I considered taking this opportunity to exact some petty passive-aggressive vengeance, but then reconsidered. I was oddly in tune with this puzzle and its cluing. I have this vague, completely unsupported theory that knowing someone personally, even in the most limited way, makes you better able to solve that person's puzzles. I mean, Brad Wilber used to give me fits. Now he's my friend and I *own* his puzzles (in that they now take me just an eternity instead of an eternity x 2). Feel free to test this theory for yourself. I'm sure Brad would love the attention. But back to Anna's puzzle—for me, there was an equal mix of frowny and smiley face where the fill was concerned. There were some grimace-inducing patches, mainly in the center north (from AAND across EPEES to ELEE and including INREM). TREN, TELEO, AS BIG, ISAO, ORAS, AHSO… these all gave me various feelings of uncomfortableness. But those long Downs are hard to resist, particularly BUBBLE WRAP, WHERE IT'S AT, and GAY ANTHEM. And there's even fantastic shorter stuff like HELL NO and SHTUP (!), the latter of which I wrote in immediately, certain it would be wrong but wanting to write it into the grid anyway. So despite the grimaces, I enjoyed myself.

Coincidences: I used both SCENARIO and RUBE in separate tweets (SANS TWITTER HASHTAG) just minutes before solving this puzzle. I had an OPRAH Chai Tea Latte last weekend (Wife: "What's the difference between the Oprah and the regular Chai Tea Latte?" Server: "Oprah is spicier.") (25D: Media icon with an eponymous Starbucks beverage). My STYE of EPICNESS is almost gone now, so that's not really much of a coincidence, really.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. "Ohhhhhhhh…" is to be said with a tone of slowly dawning realization, not orgasmically.
P.P.S. if you liked this puzzle, you really, really have to do this one (by one Mr. N. Fogarty). I mean it.

Constructor: James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: KIPS (20A: 1,000-pound weight units) —

A kip is a non-SI unit of force. It equals 1000 pounds-force, used primarily by American architects and engineers to measure engineering loads. Although uncommon, it is occasionally also considered a unit of mass, equal to 1000 pounds, i.e., one half of a short ton. One use is as a unit ofdeadweight to compute shipping charges. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeah. Yeah, this'll do. KIPS and PAH are absurd, but the rest of this just hums, though I repeat my contention that people simply don't say "I'M IT!" The way it works, see, is when you start, people shout "NOT IT!" and the last person to do so is, in fact, IT. Then, from there on out, whoever is IT is self-evident. Whoever is IT, upon tagging someone, might shout "YOU'RE IT!" but that person is never, ever going to shout "I'M IT." And that is your lesson in the official rules of tag. Side note, crossing an IT phrase with an IT phrase (ATE IT), not great. But back to the good stuff, which is most of it—it was a delight to see interesting phrases unfolding without also having to endure jarring, ugly stuff. This one was definitely on the easy side for me, but in those few cases where I hit a wall, it was nice to have the effort of breaking down that wall feel like it was worth it (IT!). Bottom much tougher than top for me. Even with JUDITH, ANISE and ESPY in place, I had trouble dropping those long Downs in the SW. Couldn't remember who Cal Trask was, couldn't think of anything appropriate for 29D: Very, very that began UN-S, and just couldn't see DISPERSAL at that early juncture. Had to dive down into that corner and climb my way out. Wish I'd looked at the DARLA clue first, because that was a gimme. But I managed. ELSIE and ALAMO turned out to be right, so I survived.

Wasn't sure about GRENADA and also wasn't sure I knew how to spell GRENADA (GRANADA?), so getting underneath it was tricky at first. Once I slung GALORE across there, I was able to guess NO JOKE, which immediately gave me FIJI, and once I broke through, that SE corner was over pretty quickly. Very geographical puzzle today, with three country all quite close to one another—the two above-named and then GHANA. Did you know Maya Angelou lived in GHANA for a time? I picked up All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes today in the public library (which had a nice display of her work out—pretty fast and thoughtful tribute, I thought). Her writing is so honest and compelling and emotional. I'd only read I Know Why… before today, but two pages into All God's Children… and I knew I had to check it out (despite being in the middle of four other books at the moment). Where was I? Oh, GHANA, yeah. The Angelou memoir begins in GHANA. I probably would've got that answer pretty quickly anyway, but it was nice that it was sitting on top of my brain. I had no idea FIJI was so HINDU (18A: Like about 30% of 51-Across, belief-wise). That was today's most interesting trivia bit.

Last thing. About HERSTORY (59A: Subject that includes women's suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment). I have not heard someone use that term unironically in 20+ years. I mean, I know many, many ardent feminists (married one, even), and … no. It's called "women's history."HERSTORY is one of those things, like spelling "women" with a "y" ("yeomen") (that was a joke) (the parenthetical part, I mean), that belongs to another era. Amusingly, wikipedia wants me to believe that "hertory" is a viable option. Try using it in conversation and see how far you get before someone goes "what?" It's like grotesque collision of "uterus" and "ovary" (and "artery" and "hernia"). Bizarre.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: John Lampkin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Jordan's Mount NEBO, from which Jericho can be seen (18A) —

Mount Nebo (Arabic: جبل نيبو‎ Jabal Nībū; Hebrew: הַר נְבוֹ‎ Har Nevo) is an elevated ridge in Jordan, approximately 817 meters (2680 feet) above sea level, mentioned in the Bible as the place where Moses was granted a view of thePromised Land that he would never enter. The view from the summit provides a panorama of the Holy Land and, to the north, a more limited one of the valley of the River Jordan. The West Bank city of Jericho is usually visible from the summit, as is Jerusalem on a very clear day. (wikipedia)

• • •

Decent. Dullish. Really not a lot to say about this one. Everything seems fine. And forgettable. Nice big corners, no standout answers. Phenomenal competence. Very little on the low end (AGR and REROOTED being the only real graters), but very little on the high end. Comme ci, come ça. Little bit of this, little bit of that. Win some, lose some. Etc. etc. Wasn't even particularly easy or difficult (though it leaned toward easy). Made consistent, methodical progress on it, from the west clockwise, until a bit of a stall in the NW (hardest for me by far). Really should've gotten ROUGHRIDER earlier (17A: Follower of Roosevelt). It's so literal, now that I look at it, I don't know what went wrong. I was kind of out of guesses after Truman. I have seen those foam noodles in pools before, but do not think I've seen or heard the full phrase POOL NOODLE before, so that one I was slow to accept (15A: Foam item at a water park). Key to my unlocking that corner was getting SPREE off just the terminal "E." Here's how weird a solver I am: ESSENES was a gimme (22A: Sect in ancient Judea), and EL GRECOS went in very shortly thereafter, very early in the solve, but all that other, more mundane stuff in the NW? It stopped me cold (for a bit). Still, the overall experience was not that taxing.

Is "In" being used … how is it being used? (32A: "In" => LIKED) Why is it in quotation marks? Even if it's being used slangily, it shouldn't require quotation marks. Or it should, and I just have no idea what's going on there. I managed to get "DANCIN'" despite never or barely having heard of it (39D: 1978 Broadway revue that opens with "Hot August Night"). Hmm, I just learned that Danny Terrio (who should appear in puzzles more often with a name like that) was in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is what happens when an answer you don't know stirs a memory of some cheesy dance TV show from your youth that you can't quite remember, except for the fact that the host had an Italian name, and then you do a bunch of Googles, and under Dannys Bonnaduce and Osmond, you see "Terrio," and you're like "yes!", then you notice his name is actually "Deney" (!?!?!?!), and then you read his wikipedia entry.

[Danny … Thomas?]
Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Aladdin"— Add in "Al"

Theme answers:

CHANGE OF PALACE
IDEALS OF MARCH
CIRCUS TALENT
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
CANAL OF WORMS
SPRING FALLING
OF MALICE AND MEN

Word of the Day: UNIATE (22A: One of a group of Easter Christians) —

adj.
Of or relating to any of several Eastern Christian churches that are in communion with the Roman Catholic Church but retain their own languages, rites, and codes of canon law.

n.
A member of any of these churches.

[Russian uniyat, from Polish uniat, the Union of Brest-Litovsk (1596), from unija, union, from Late Latin ūniō. See union.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/uniat#ixzz33KtQEvKP

• • •

Like most Sundays of late, this one landed with a thud. Rudimentary theme with not-very-funny theme answers made for an interminable (-feeling) grind. A FAREWELL TO ALARMS and CANAL OF WORMS have close to the needed level of genuine wackiness to pull this theme off, but the rest just don't. Plus there are only seven theme answers here; with such a flimsy premise, seems like you should've been able to go all day (and be much funnier). I can only guess that this puzzle was accepted on the strength of its title (!?!?!), which is Not a (good) reason to accept a puzzle. Non-theme stuff was decent, and the cluing had some bite, but overall, it's another Sunday Slog. Be grateful that I ate dinner and got a gin & tonic between when I solved this and when I started writing about it—my mood is actually much improved.

I haven't done "Bullets" in a long time, so, since I don't have anything left to say about the puzzle from a global perspective, let's just bullet it.

Bullets:

32A: Anoint, archaically (ANELE) — OK, so you can tell from the clue that the fill is going to be terrible, so I won't spend time shooting the fish in this barrel. What I will say is that this *archaic* answer was my first guess (Solver Brain—not to be confused with Brain Brain), but then I doubted it, first because … I mean, just look at it. It barely looks like it qualifies as a word. But also I thought the answer to 24D: Letter between two others that rhyme with it (ETA) was DEE. So I yanked ANELE. Only to have it come right back.
77D: The ___ City (New Haven) (ELM)— Really? Really? Not ELI? It's a Yale clue, that's three letters and starts EL-, and it *isn't* ELI. *%&^ you, crossword gods.
51A: Land in the Golden Triangle (LAOS) — I don't know what the "Golden Triangle" (!) is so off the "A" I wrote in MALI. Then off that "M" I wrote in MONK for 51D: Monastery resident (LAMA). In both cases, my answer needed to be much more Asian.
81D: Trousers (LONG PANTS) — also known as PANTS.
99D: Spiral-horned antelope (NYALA) — pulled this out of god knows where—some vast wellspring of crosswordese that lives in my brain. Antelope account for a sizable subsection of crosswordese fauna. ELAND, ORIBI, ORYX, NYALA…
104D: Elements of some accents (TWANGS) — I actually wrote in TILDES. I know, it's a terrible answer. But an amusing terrible answer.

Puzzle of the Week was looking to be a close call among a bunch of good puzzles—including Sam Donaldson's fantastic, tricky Fireball puzzle (read about it here) and BEQ's cheeky "Getting Head" (not what it sounds like, though not entirely "clean," either) (get it here) (read about it here). But then I solved Erik Agard's latest themeless puzzle ("themeless twenty-one") at his "Glutton for Pun" site and the contest was over. When I laugh multiple times, and repeatedly shake my head in wonder, and say "man, that's good"—all of it mid-solve—then I know I've got a winner. I really can't ask for a more satisfying themeless experience. Please go do the puzzle. It's free and it's great.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels

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

THEME: ESSAY (66A: Kind of test … or a phonetic hint to 17-, 25-, 36-, 47- and 55-Across) — theme answers are two-word phrases where first word starts with "S" and second word starts with "A"

Theme answers:

SHEER AGONY
SNOOZE ALARM
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
SAMUEL ADAMS
SMART ALECK

Word of the Day: ANISE (22D: Absinthe flavor) —

n.
An annual, aromatic Mediterranean herb (Pimpinella anisum) in the parsley family, cultivated for its seedlike fruits and the oil obtained from them and used to flavor foods, liqueurs, and candies.
Anise seed.
[Middle English anis, from Old French, from Latin anīsum, from Greek annēson, annīson.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/anise#ixzz33R9VceUp

• • •

Was going to write:

Blah blah pangram blah blah I WANNA is a terrible six-letter partial that is here only to complete the pangram, a phenomenon most solvers never even notice and that is irrelevant and/or deleterious to puzzle quality blah blah IN NO over NO IDEA wtf? blah blah blah.

Then I noticed there wasn't a "V." That *has* to be due to editorial intervention. You can smell the pangram-attempt here from miles away. Hell, if you're this close, why not go SUV / PERV? Works for me. Theme is pretty dull. I was shocked it hadn't been done before, but I checked the cruciverb database and it seems to have at least originality going for it. SNOOZE ALARM is an interesting answer. I've already forgotten the rest of the puzzle. Where is that cleverness of old? This puzzle makes me kind of sad. That said, it is a perfectly serviceable puzzle.

The problem with blowing through a Monday puzzle at speeds approaching that of light is that the wheels can really come off if you make a little mistake. Had -EL ADAMS and without even looking at the clue wrote in ANSEL. Check cross check cross check cross. Nothing. Realize "hey, it's Monday, there's no way you check *three* crosses and come up with nothing on a Monday." Actually look at clue for ANSEL ADAMS. Realize ANSEL ADAMS was probably not a founding father. Remember SAMUEL ADAMS. Aaaaaaand … flat tire repaired. No idea how long that cost me, as I still managed to finish in 2:46. Maybe the rating should be "Easy" after all. Normal people are never going to do something as stupid and negligent as writing in ANSEL ADAMS there.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Susan Gefland

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

THEME: ALL THE TRIMMINGS (60A: What Thanksgiving turkey may come with … as suggested by parts of 17-, 22-, 38- and 51-Across?) — final words of theme answers are kinds of trimming:

Theme answers:

PABST BLUE RIBBON (17A: Brand with the tagline "established in Milwaukee 1844")
SPINAL CORD (22A: Part of the back)
LUNATIC FRINGE (38A: Extremist group)
ALPINE LACE (51A: Deli counter cheese brand)

Word of the Day: ALPINE LACE —

Alpine Lace^® Deli Swiss Cheese is made with patience, passion and meticulous attention to detail in an area that's known as the 'Little Switzerland of the Rocky Mountains'.
The fertile Magic Valley of Southern Idaho, with its jagged mountains and lush, green pastures, has a climate and elevation closely resembling Switzerland.
It is here, in Magic Valley, where Alpine Lace^® Deli Swiss Cheese is made following award-winning, cheese-making traditions. Deliciously healthy Alpine Lace^® Deli Cheese is made with pure and natural wholesome ingredients. It is a premium cheese made simply and honestly. (some ad site I found somewhere on the internet)

• • •

I was loving this bouncy Tuesday offering until I got all twisted around in the bottom half of the grid, in and around proper nouns I simply didn't know (two of them, on a Tuesday—quite odd). Not having ever heard of ALPINE LACE before really, really slowed me down—to the point where I had ALPINE -ACE and made an educated guess at the RRN™ (Random Roman Numeral) there in the crossing (LVI). Never having heard of this answer all of a sudden made every answer around it harder to get. Thought the "Series" in [3 or 5 Series car, in slang] was some specific race, so needed many crosses to see BEEMER. Knew AINGE but went looking for a team name in the adjacent answer (55D: 54-Down was one), and without the themers, -A-ER really looked like LAKER (though AINGE played for the Celtics, so it didn't feel right—but olde-timey clue-crosswordese CAGER was not on my radar at that point). Had RCA for MCA for a bit (64D: Longtime record label). Things just got boggy. Still finished under 4, but just barely—noticeably slower than normal for a Tuesday. I remain a fan of this puzzle—the ALPINE LACE part of it all just kept it from elating me the way it looked like it might early on. This has so much more zip than yesterday's. A very nice easy (-ish) puzzle.

Check out the nice, reasonably contemporary long Downs on this one. I mean, CYBERPUNK's been around for at least 30 years and ENCRYPTED a hell of a lot longer, but they both still *feel* very current. It's a very Scrabbly Tuesday, but with none of that pathetic straining after pangrammitude. Hence, the fill is tight and clean *and* entertaining. Even short stuff like TVTRAY and BULKY have a certain liveliness about them. I tried to watch "Pineapple EXPRESS" this morning, but about fifteen minutes in, a couple things happened: first, I got kind of bored, and second, I realized that I had this movie confused with "The Darjeeling Limited." I kept wondering when Seth Rogen and James Franco were going to stop getting high and get on the train already. I think the clue for PERCY was pretty brutal. Unless you've currently got young kids in your house, how in the world are you supposed to remember all of Thomas's damned friends. I can't even remember ALEXA, and she's in the puzzle every month or so.

Only "faults" I'd point out are S-STAR (69A: Relatively cool red giant) (dislike all letter-STARs; crutch fill) and REIN sharing the grid with REINE, which isn't even a violation. Just more shared DNA than you want in any two answers, ideally.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Word Game — circles spell out this phrase, and all theme clues read [See circled letters]

Theme answers:

SCRABBLE
TABOO
HANGMAN
PROBE
ANAGRAMS
JOTTO
GHOST

Word of the Day: ESPARTO (4D: Grass for cordage) —

n., pl., -tos.
A tough, wiry grass (Stipa tenacissima) of northern Africa, yielding a fiber used in making paper and as cordage.

[Spanish, from Latin spartum, from Greek sparton, rope.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/esparto#ixzz33fLgSnsb

• • •

This was not that enjoyable, and I felt that way before I ever even saw the theme. That is one of the worst opening (NW) corners I've done in a while. Just groan-some. Slapped by plural TSKS and then punched by HAEC (!) and then bored by EWER and then you have to take the ESPARTO train to REMOP town? Disastrous. Fill improved somewhat after that, but not much. The theme was … just a bunch of word games, at least two of which (PROBE, JOTTO) I didn't know were word games, and one of which (GHOST) I know to be a word game but could not tell you the first thing about. Throw in an awkward partial (BEG TO) and the predictable RRN™ (MMVI), and I was just happy to be done with this one. There was some decent fill here and there (SHAME ON ME, SPANGLY, CATDOM (!?)), but it couldn't bring the enjoyment meter back to neutral.

Seems like the puzzle should've been harder than it was, given that none of the theme answers had clues, or rather than you had to solve a good chunk of the puzzle to see what their clue was—that, or infer the circled letters based on having put together any number of the theme answers through crosses alone. Most of the non-theme stuff must have been clued fairly easily. Weird to have BANANA running through ANAGRAMS since BANANAGRAMS is a word game I have not only heard of, but have played (my family won't play with me any more—turns out people who solve crosswords all the time are pretty good at BANANAGRAMS).

Gotta go put my eight hours of glorious sleep to good use now. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: LITTLE WOMEN (34A: 1860s novel that is the basis for this puzzle's theme) — rebus puzzle with four squares that contain "Meg""Amy""Beth" and "Jo," respectively. [update: someone in Comments suggested the names of the four "Little Women" are literally made "little" to fit into the squares, which adds an interesting dimension to the puzzle that I didn't notice]

Word of the Day: Jackie COOGAN (15A: Jackie who played Uncle Fester) —

John Leslie "Jackie" Coogan (October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984) was an American actor who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films. Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester on the 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, widely known as the Coogan Act. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very straightforward rebus today. It's probably important to have very easy rebuses once in a while—nice bridge for less experienced solvers between easier early-week puzzles and rougher late-week stuff. I didn't get the theme instantly, though I had some sense a rebus was involved (couldn't get anything past BRIGH- and wanted FOAMY at 5D: Like a freshly drawn draft but it didn't fit). After I got the central theme answer, however, the concept was instantly obvious and so all that was left to do was hunt down the girls (so to speak). Knowing the theme made solving every corner Much easier than it might've been otherwise. I finished in under 5, even though I decided to take the extra time and enter the girls' names in their entirety (rather than just the first letter, which is all that my solving software generally requires). There were no odd or mysterious names or words in the grid, so the whole grid just toppled rather easily. I've never heard of GLEN Canyon Dam, but I got it all easily from crosses. Everything else—familiar. EDERLE might be new to some people, but she's swum her way across enough crosswords that I know who she is by now (12D: Gertrude who swam the English Channel).

Ironically, the answer that stumped me the most was Jackie COOGAN. I say "ironically" because

I did a ton of research in 1923 newspapers last summer and COOGAN, a Huge silent film star, was all over the movie sections. One of the highest-earning stars on his age. I saw his mug a lot.
His name is on not one but two framed movie posters that hang in my house—one for "The Beat Generation" starring Mamie Van Doren, the other for "The Big Operator" starring Mickey Rooney and Mamie Van Doren.
I picked up a book of Chas. Addams cartoons from the public library just last week and put it in the bathroom (where it still is) in hopes that my daughter would find it / read it / like it (she did).

I had no idea, none, that the famous child actor / silent film star played Uncle Fester in "The Addams Family." It's a disconcerting notion if you've ever seen adorable little Jackie Coogan. Here, see?:

Little Jackie Coogan:

Uncle Fester:

OSTEAL is not a word I see ever (44D: Pertaining to bone), but then I'm not in the bone business, and anyway, it was totally inferable. This seemed overall like a very solidly put-together puzzle. Light, enjoyable Thursday fare.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NARUTO (26A: Popular Japanese manga seen on the Cartoon Network) —

Naruto (ナルト^?) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. It tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and dreams to become theHokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of all. The series is based on a one-shot manga by Kishimoto that was published in the August 1997 issue of Akamaru Jump. […] Naruto is one of the best-selling manga series in history, having sold more than 130 million copies in Japan alone. It has also become one of North American publisher Viz Media's best-selling manga series. Their English adaptation of the series has appeared in the USA Today Booklist several times and volume 7 won the Quill Award in 2006. Reviewers of the series have praised the balance between fighting and comedy scenes, as well as the characters' personalities, but have criticized it for using standard shōnen manga plot elements. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this quite a bit, though its isolated center and its (over-) reliance on proper nouns meant that I had to fight pretty hard to take it down. I don't mind a fight. I kind of mind SPITAL (wtf?) (15D: Old-fashioned shelter along a highway) and RIS, but the rest of the grid is so bouncy that I don't mind that much. Cluing also seemed tougher than normal. [Pickup line?] for RAMS took me forever. I had no, and I mean No, idea "Bonanza" had anything to do with TAHOE (29A: "Bonanza" setting). I had it somewhere in the more traditional Old West states (your Arizonas or New Mexicos or Oklahomas or Texaseses). Completely forgot the word KARST, which I've still only ever encountered in crosswords, and then only rarely (51D: Land formation known for its caves). Had [Reed section?] as SEN. because of Harry Reid (D-NV), which, now that I write his name out, makes no sense. The stickler in me wanted KESHA's name to have the "$" sign in it instead of the "S," but then I remembered that she dropped it and is now just KESHA (9D: Gaga contemporary). No-dollars KESHA. Speaking of, I wonder if people who don't know her had trouble with 5A: Athletic short? (FIVE K). FIVEK looks nuts in the grid, and that K in KESHA is utterly uninferable.

This could've proved a very challenging puzzle, but the proper nouns also helped quite a bit, when they were on my side. MARTIN AMIS (16A: British author of the so-called "London Trilogy") and ARCADE FIRE (13A: Indie rock band whose "The Suburbs" was the Grammys' 2010 Album of the Year) were gimmes, as was TYLER PERRY (57A: Writer, director and co-star of the Madea films), an answer I like a lot, mostly because I was the first person to put it in a NYT grid (last June). Most embarrassing ignorance of the day was JACOB ZUMA (30D: South African leader beginning in 2009). It rings a bell, now that I see it (seems like the kind of name a constructor would be dying to use), but honestly, I drew a total blank. Also unknown to me: CAPE CORAL, ANABIOSIS, and DAKAR RALLY (41A: Exotic annual off-road race). The DAKAR part was right in the heart of that isolated middle, so one of my crucial routes into that area was just blocked. Blank. REE Drummond? Another unknown. "NARUTO" I knew (I own vol. 1), but couldn't quite remember. I had the NA- and -TO parts, but that middle was eluding me. Once I figured out that the "language" in 30A: Language originally known as Mocha (JAVASCRIPT) was a programming language, I knocked that answer out, and the center got a Lot easier. Never heard a [Tough problem] called a STINKER.

So I got my money's worth today—genuine workout for a Friday (8+ minutes), with a surprising, fresh, diverse grid to boot. I was just talking with my wife earlier today about how, ideally, the crossword reflects the breadth of human knowledge and experience, not just the knowledge and experience of an insular cultural elite. And then, bam, "NARUTO" shows up and makes my point—not familiar territory for most inveterate solvers, but massively popular nonetheless, and therefore very much worthy of grid inclusion. In all things, balance. As I said, this grid was perhaps a little too name-heavy, but at least those names came from All Over Hell And Gone, and therefore provided solvers of all backgrounds with different access points.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: EMERITA (65A: Professor _____)

Q. I have been using the title “professor emerita” with the names of retired female professors. Now one of those professors insists that I have confused sex with grammatical gender. She writes, “The phrase is Latin; the noun ‘professor’ is masculine and should be modified by the masculine form of the adjective—‘emeritus’—regardless of the professor’s gender.” Since the sixteenth edition of CMOS has used “professor emerita” as part of an example at paragraph 8.27, I’m assuming that this usage is correct. Can you weigh in on this?
A. The professor has a point. But one of the nice things about the Latin word professor is that it has survived absolutely unchanged into contemporary English. And most people intend the English word professor in the phrase “professor emerita.” In that case, though professor is invariable and therefore neutral for gender (but not for number), it is perfectly acceptable to adjust emeritus to suit the gender (and number) of the professor(s): emeritus, emerita, emeriti, emeritae. But in this case of grammatical correctness coming up against political correctness, there is no clear winner. If you need to cite another authority, the latest editions of both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate (11th ed.) and American Heritage (4th ed.) include examples with emerita—without any warnings about usage problems.

---The Chicago Manual of Style Online

• • •

Hello, Rexworld. This is treedweller filling in. For once, I got a chance to write about a Saturday puzzle I was actually able to finish, which is why I rated it Easy. Some of you probably have a more nuanced system, but for me they are all either Easy (For A Saturday) or Impossible. Like any good weekend offering, this one required a mere mortal like myself several trips through the clues before

things started coming together (though I'm sure someone finished it in like two minutes). It didn't help that my first move was to gleefully type in "Pop-up ad" for 1A (Web nuisance), but I finally gained traction in the SE, finished the bottom half, then slowly pieced together the remainder. All those Xes in the center helped a lot.

I doubt anyone will call this THE BEST (62A: #1), but I found it quite lively and engaging without sacrificing the challenge many of us seek late in the week. So often, Saturday puzzles seem to harken back to the days of mind-numbing trivia that hardly anyone knows or cares to. Or we are amazed by the stacks of long Acrosses but hold our noses when we see the Downs. The worst fill I can find here is ITA (61D: Suffix with 28-Across) and OUTEAT (41A: Show up at dinner?). That's a small price to pay for this nice mix of new (SPAMBOT, MANCAVE) and old (BOSCO, ROLODEX), pop (LEGOS, WALK-OFF HOMER) and classical (ARTEMIS, WABASH), colloquial (LIT INTO, SCHMO) and scholastic (TERAWATT, X-AXIS).

Bullets:

20A: Donkey : mule :: ___ : huarizo (LLAMA)— I had No Idea on this one, but once I got the double-L there wasn't much doubt. Wiki tells me the other half of a huarizo is an alpaca.
35A: The middle Andrews sister (MAXENE)— This apparently refers to her age, since she always seems to be on the end in photos and videos. Wiki says her name is Maxine Angelyn "Maxene". Very forward-thinking of her to adopt a spelling variant as her nickname to create a crossword niche.
4D: 1974 John Wayne title role (MCQ)— I held off on entering IRAQ WAR a long time because I had forgotten this movie. All my favorites of his are oaters.
31D: Pipe accompanier (TABOR) — I tried "pouch" and "light" and "match" before I finally realized we were talking instruments. I couldn't say why I knew this particular drum, but it came quickly once I looked in the right direction.

Signed, treedweller

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: *cross out*— Common phrases are clued two ways. The second clue requires you to "cross out" one letter in the first answer, replacing it with 'X', to get a new phrase. UPDATE: commenter points out that, after the puzzle is solved, you "cross out" the letters that spell "crossed out." I'm sure we all have opinions about whether that makes it work.I'm feeling a little sheepish, I guess. --treedweller

Warning: video contains strong language

Word of the Day: SORORAL (88D: Like some twins) —

Fraternal or dizygotic (DZ) twins (also referred to as "non-identical twins", "dissimilar twins", "biovular twins", and, in cases of females, sororal twins) usually occur when two fertilized eggs are implanted in the uterus wall at the same time.

—Wikipedia

• • •

Happy Sunday, everyone. This is treedweller again, and I am not sure where this write-up is going. I have extremely mixed feelings about this puzzle. As I was solving, I wore a SMILEY FACE because every answer was smooth, without the irksome corners of crosswordese I expect in such a big grid. Mostly, I think, I was just relieved it didn't turn out to be a soporific slog, which is how I often see Sunday puzzles. The pop culture fill was right out of my salad days, making it very gettable and vaguely nostalgic (I saw 91A: "Vision Quest" co-star Matthew MODINE in the theater with my first girlfriend, for example).

Then I got to the end. Solving on the ipad Crosswords app, I was disappointed to find it was not giving me credit for a correct solution. After a little troubleshooting, I just asked for the reveal, where I discovered a mistake--in the software. 102A: [*cross out* Children's song] Ignore the lunch I brought and just eat the fish? was the clue, and the answer it provided was SKIP TO MY LOOX. Then I filled the grid on the NYT site and still got no satisfaction, so again revealed the solution. Turns out it wanted the "cross-out" squares to be written U/X. But that's just silly logistical issues, so I'm not overly concerned by it.

My complaint is, I can't see how the theme works. I liked the clever phrases Mr. Berry wrought with his Xes, but the name of the game is Crossword, and the crosses Do Not Work. For example, 18D: Studies intently is clearly STARES AT. It is not Staxexat, and it is not Starxesxat. So I guess you're supposed to solve with the first clue, then just alter the theme answers with the cross-outs after you're done. Maybe it passes on a technicality, but I call Foul.

Theme answers:

23A: [*cross out* Symbols of happiness] Transmission with colons, dashes and parentheses? SMILEY FAC/XES I was looking to make "emoticons" part of this answer.
29A: [*cross out* Sun Tzu tome] Madame Tussaud's specialty? THE ART OF WAR/X
38A: [*cross out* "Star Wars" character] Where droids go to dry out? ARTOODETOO/X I think this is my favorite alteration.
42A: [*cross out* Gibbons and siamangs] Mountaintop that's not the very top?
LESSER APES/X
56A: [*cross out* Pageant] Circumstances that render someone attractive? BEAUTY CONTES/XT
78A: [*cross out* Pine, e.g.] Dinosaur that never goes out of style? EVERGREEN TREE/X I have to be happy when I see a tree in the grid, though I found this to be less than satisfying as a clever twist on the phrase.
92A: [*cross out* Studio substitute] Squarish bed? BOD/XY DOUBLE
95A: [*cross out* Member of a certain 1990s-2000s rock band] Censor unhappy with "Family Guy" and "Glee," maybe? FOO/X FIGHTER I have reservations about this one based on the fact that the band members are in Foo Fighters, but one member of the band is not a foo fighter. per Wikipedia: "The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific theaters of operations."
102A: [*cross out* Children's song] Ignore the lunch I brought and just eat the fish?
SKIP TO MY LOU/X
113A: [*cross out* After-dinner display] One way to see a pie's filling? DESSERT T/XRAY

Maybe someone in the comments will tell me how to reconcile the crosses and I'll love this puzzle. As it stands, I'm just not there.

Bullets:

68D: Singer/actress Rita MORENO— My mother loved her because of "West Side Story," but to me she was the "Hey, you guys!" lady.
107A: Warner Bros. cartoon company ACME— I have done my best to remain objective on this one.

*treedweller out*

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Kerning! — Theme clues describe a one-word thing but the letters in the clues are spaced far apart. The answer is a familiar two-word phrase made up of the one-word thing preceded by an adjective meaning, basically "spaced far apart." (Hey! Explaining themes isn't always as easy as it looks!)

Theme answers:

20A: WIDE RECEIVER (T e l e p h o n e h a n d s e t)
28A: EXTENDED STAY (C o r s e t p a r t)
48A: LONG DIVISION (A r m y u n i t)
58A: STRETCHED OUT (T h r e e s t r i k e s ... or description of the theme clues)

Hi, everybody. PuzzleGirl here filling in for the vacationing Rex Parker. Rex is off on a 14-day Caribbean cruise aboard a luxury yacht. Or he's in Minneapolis. One of the two. I feel like I haven't been here in ages! So nice to see you guys! What's been going on? My son turned 15 yesterday and we took him and a bunch of other teenaged boys to a paintball park. Wow. Never been to one of those before. Some of the people looked like they took it pretty seriously. In fact, we're pretty sure we saw some honest-to-God mercenaries there presumably honing their skills. On the other hand, the ref my son's group had said his previous group was all six-year-olds and whenever they got shot they cried. So I guess it's a diverse clientele.

What about this puzzle though? Simple (cute) theme idea, straightforward cluing, it's definitely a Monday. This was only the second time I've solved online since the NYT updated its applet and navigating the grid was the biggest problem I had (and it wasn't very big). I like the update a LOT better (I mean, it wouldn't take much since that last one sucked ferociously), but I'm not quite used to it yet. Absolutely no complaints. Looking forward to using it more and becoming adept at it.

I think my favorite part of the puzzle was its Scrabbliness. It's fun to come across an X or a V or a J when it just blends right in and doesn't seem forced. The other thing I want to say is that I like how the addition of the first words in the theme answers makes the answers unrelated to their clues. If that makes any sense. Like if EXTENDED STAY had been clued "v i s i t," that would not have been very impressive because in that case the clue is basically a synonym for the second word in the answer (STAY = VISIT). Or if LONG DIVISION had been clued "m a t h o p e r a t i o n." You get the idea. If you're new to solving you may not have noticed that, but it definitely makes the puzzle more elegant.

Let's take a look at some highlights:

16A: POLAR vortex (Winter weather phenomenon). PuzzleHusband and I were talking about the "derecho" we had here in the Washington, DC, area two years ago. And, pointing to the popularity of the phrase "Polar Vortex" this past winter, he suggested that weather people are just making up words to jazz up their jobs at this point. "Polar Vortex" sounds a lot more glamorous than "Really F**ing Cold," doesn't it?
18A: JINX (Curse). Washington Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann pitched a two-hit shutout this afternoon against the San Diego Padres. He had a perfect game going until apparently someone, somewhere said it out loud.
64A: COOT (Codger). Can women be old coots? Or is it specifically masculine? If it's possible for a woman to be an old coot, I believe that term will describe me perfectly sometime in the next few years. I am definitely getting more cantankerous by the day. (For some reason, my Google image search for "coot" brought up this picture of Joe Namath and Farah Fawcett and, well, I couldn't very well NOT use it.)
69A: PEEVE (Tick off). And this is how I know I'm turning into an old coot. I have So Many peeves! I think I acquire one or two new ones every day!
5D: Your MAJESTY (way to address a queen). I just love this word. It's better then "your highness," don't you think?
22D: VEEP (#2 exec). I watched the first season of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's sitcom back when I had a broken ankle and was in bed for six weeks. (I mean, I watched a LOT of shows during that period.) Loved "Veep" but haven't gotten back to it. Not sure we have whatever channel it's on any more. It seems like every time I log onto our cable account they've added a channel I don't care about and/or taken away a channel I love. They really just do whatever the heck they want, don't they? Kinda like insurance companies. But PLEASE don't get me started on insurance companies.
49D: V-NECKS (Features of some daring sweaters). The clue to this one made me laugh.
55D: MOODY (Subject to emotional swings). I'm pretty sure I've told you this story before, but I'm going to tell it again. Back in the mid 1980s I lived in New York and used to hang out at a bar called the Possible 20. At that time, radio personality Frankie Crocker of WBLS used the song "Moody's Mood for Love" as his show's sign-off. The song was on the jukebox at the Possible 20 and was played every once in a while. But one night for some reason everyone happened to be actually listening when it came on and the whole bar sang along. A lot of people in that bar worked in the music business and some of them were very talented singers. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it would have been just as good if it had been a bunch of regular folks though. Honestly, it was magical. It's one of my favorite memories of New York (and of ever if truth be told).

57D: STATE (Misery or Missouri). Awesome clue.

See you back here tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Pamela Klawitter

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: — Famous historical figures' names anagrammed into pithy obituary notices.

Theme answers:

20A: MONROE NO MORE (Brief 1831 headline?)
27A: NEWTON WENT ON (Brief 1727 headline?)
44A: EDISON IS DONE (Brief 1931 headline?)
52A: PASSING NOTES (Secretive classroom activity ... or what 20-, 27- and 44-Across are anagrammatic examples of?)

Hey hey, PuzzleGirl here. I know it's only been one day, but OMG I missed you guys! Couldn't wait to come back and talk puzzles with you again! From the looks of Rex's Facebook page, he is having WAY more fun than we are. Let's see if we can change that.

Decent Tuesday puzzle today. Very Tuesday-ish in my opinion. I was a little confused by the two long non-theme across answers, both of which are very nice entries, but being so long it kinda felt like they should be theme answers. And then they weren't. (Additional, unrelated note: I get confused easily.)

I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a connection among the three dead guys in the theme answers. My sense is that they're just three guys from history who all did different things and whose names can be anagrammed. Please let me know if there's something else I'm missing!

Bullets:

1A: Alexander Graham Bell, for one (SCOT). How is it possible that I'm as old as I am and didn't know Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish? I'm going to guess that history was taught in a very US-centric way when I was coming up and that this fact was never mentioned. That's possible, right?
19A: Vegas hotel transport (TRAM). Second- and third-guessed myself here. Started with TAXI, then changed it to LIMO. Got to the down and saw it needed to be a T and figured I had been right in the first place. No dice. (See what I did there?)
25A: Golf ball's position (LIE). Entered TEE at first here. That's a horrible answer if you think about it. The actual answer is much better.
33A: "I am woman, hear me ROAR." Middle-aged women! Represent!
38A: Alternative if things don't work out (PLAN B). I have a former boss who would only refer to Plan B as "Another Plan A." I like that philosophy.
41A: Badger's home: Abbr. (WIS). Not a fan of this abbreviation, but it was easy enough to figure out. Also reminds me of how dumb I was when we moved back to the Washington, DC, area in 2008. I saw all the people wearing red caps with Ws on them and wondered why there were so many Wisconsin fans here. (In my defense, when we left in 2004 there was no baseball here.)
43A: Employee of TV's Sterling Cooper & Partners (ADMAN). I knew this was a "Mad Men" reference but I thought we needed to know a character's name. Since I haven't watched the show, I just cruised on by this one and picked up the second time around with a head-slap.
51A: AER Lingus. PuzzleKids will be flying Aer Lingus this summer when PuzzleMom and PuzzleDad take them to Ireland. If you want my parents to adopt you, you're gonna have to get in line.
58A: Where the Carpenters "long to be" in a 1970 #1 hit (CLOSE TO YOU). If you were upset about not having an earworm yet today, you're welcome.

7D: Bit of praise, in modern usage (KUDO). Super clunker (klunker?). Really the only one that jumped out at me though.
10D: Gotham City V.I.P. (BATMAN). Did you know that Batman is an actual, honest-to-God, legitimate last name? How cool would it be to have the last name Batman? (I believe Doug Peterson is on his way down to the courthouse right now.)
22D: Set up, as a chair (ENDOW). Very tricky clue. One of those academia things.
36D: Piano man, maybe (TUNER). Funny story. The PuzzleFam and I were watching the Times Square coverage this past New Year's Eve. They were also broadcasting from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn where Billy Joel was putting on a show. The PuzzleKids LOVE to give us a hard time about our "old people music" and couldn't resist taking some (ill-advised, as it turns out) shots at Billy Joel. PuzzleSon: "Do people even know who he is??" About 30 minutes later a Facebook friend of mine who happened to be at the Barclays Center posted a video of "Piano Man." Only Billy Joel wasn't *performing* it so much as he was leading a sing-along. Every person in the arena was singing every word. I looked at PuzzleSon and smirked, "Yeah. They know who he is."
45D: Old West "neckties" (NOOSES). I was looking for BOLOS here. Turns out the correct answer is quite a bit more morbid (morbider?).

Thanks for hanging out with me today. See you back here tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Who knows really? It's such an individual thing.

THEME — Flag Day: Theme answers are descriptions of various countries' flags. Circled letters spell out FLAG DAY ... kind of in the shape of a flag? I guess?

Theme answers:

18A: MAPLE LEAF [Canada]
31A: STARS AND STRIPES [U.S.A.]
41A: HAMMER AND SICKLE [U.S.S.R.]
59A: RISING SUN [Japan]

PuzzleGirl with you today for the third day in a row. Sick of me yet? Here's the problem with blogging. Well, the problem with me blogging anyway. I think two days is my limit. I feel like I'm all blogged out. You guys got the best of me for two days and now there's nothing left. I'm solving this puzzle and I'm enjoying it and everything but the whole time I'm thinking "What am I gonna SAY about it? Nothing is jumping out at me. Maybe I'll just tell them some rambling story about my life -- they seem to like that!" So, with any luck, I'll think of a rambling story for you at some point in this post. Until then, let me say a few things about the puzzle.

The theme is nice and, obviously, timely. I think some of the clues were ratcheted up to make it appropriate for a Wednesday. Would have been nice if it could have run on Saturday, but I don't think that would be possible with this grid and there's nothing WRONG with the grid, so I see why it was decided to run it a little early.

Speaking of difficult clues, I had a really (REALLY) hard time with the CIRCLE / HOLE / SHIP area (30D: Club / 47A: Part of a round / 44D: Overnight). The only kind of "rounds" I could think of were drinks and row-your-boat-type songs (not golf). I absolutely could NOT get that "overnight" is a verb, even though I use it that way practically every day. Those two things were just total brain lapses. But I still don't understand how "Club" is a clue for CIRCLE. Anyone? Bueller? Not being 100% sure on the spelling of MINERVA made that particular part of the puzzle a complete mystery to me. It took way (WAY) too long for me to figure it out.

What Else?

10A: Pen, e.g. (SWAN)— Very tricky clue.
23A: "For sure, dude!" ("YEAH, MAN!")— This one seems to be trying a little too hard.
39A: Big foot spec (EEE)— And this is just plain ugly. I guess sometimes it can't be helped.
51A: One sharing a bunk bed, maybe (SIS)— PuzzleSister and I shared a bunk bed for many years. Of course, being the oldest, I got the top bunk, which seems awesome until you're just a little kid and you fall out of the top bunk on your head and your mom comes home to find the front door open and barf all over the house because you got a concussion and your dad ran you out to the emergency room. Not that that ever happened to me or anything.
52A: Athena's counterpart (MINERVA)— PuzzleDaughter was studying for a quiz on Greek and Roman gods the other day. PuzzleHusband and I were *completely* *mortified* at how few of them we knew. Just really really embarrassing. Definitely something to try to learn. Not necessarily for puzzles (for that I need to practice European rivers, Jewish months and the Greek alphabet), but just for life in general.
1D: "You're dethpicable" toon (DAFFY) — Does Sylvester also have a lisp? He was the only one I could think of. I think he talks funny in a different way though, right? Like baby talk or something?
2D: English pop singer Goulding (ELLIE) — Whatever you say.
5D: '60s atty. gen. whose brother served as president (RFK)— Had an opportunity to visit RFK Stadium last month for the first time in many moons. Wow is that a crappy stadium. I think D.C. United are getting ready to build a new stadium near Nationals Park. I know there are people against the idea of tearing down RFK, but seriously, it's a mess.
7D: All-natural (REAL)— Tried PURE here.
9D: C. S. Lewis's birthplace (BELFAST)— Wait, he's not American either? (Just kidding, I knew that.)
10D: Memorial Day weekend event (SALE)— This answer made me sad. As much as I rant about the seemingly non-stop "forced patriotism" at so many sporting events these days, I do think Memorial Day is (and should be) serious and respectful. Now my first two thoughts when I saw this clue were PARADE and BARBECUE, both of which I guess might seem frivolous to some, but I think it's possible to infuse both of those activities with an honest-to-God sense of "memorial." A SALE though? Not so much.
35D: Place to play cards (POKER ROOM)— See also, "Place to lose money." (I love playing poker, but I'm really really bad at it.)
43D: Tlaloc, to the Aztecs (RAIN GOD)— News to me and awesome entry!

Thanks for hanging out with me again today. I appreciate all the kindness you've shown me in the comments. Sure some of the compliments could be mistaken for underhanded insults of one of my best friends, but I'm not going to dwell on that. I love what Rex Parker has created here and I know for sure that if it wasn't for Rex Parker, there would be no PuzzleGirl, which would be very, very sad. Thanks again. See you next time!

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Mark Feldman

Relative difficulty: Pretty hard, I think.

THEME— All of it: Theme answers are the last words of familiar phrases that start with "The whole ..."

Theme answers:

17A: MEGILLAH (Long, involved story, in slang)
18A: BALL OF WAX (Business, informally)
30A: SHOOTING MATCH (Competition in marksmanship)
51A: ENCHILADA (Queso-topped dish)
54A: THE WHOLE (100% ... or words that can precede 17-, 18-, 30- and 51-Across

Knock knock! Who's there? That's right, you're stuck with PuzzleGirl again today. Rex's flight got canceled so I got an SOS text from Detroit. Now I just told you all yesterday about how I was pretty much done with the whole blogging thing for this week, right? That should mean your expectations are sufficiently low. I guess we'll find out.

I had a REALLY hard time with this puzzle. I didn't want to admit it to you earlier this week, but I actually haven't been solving puzzles daily for a couple months now. Things just got busy here and for some reason, puzzling sort of fell off my radar. When Rex asked me to sub for him this week, I thought "Great! An excuse to get back in the habit!" And it really has been great. The problem is that when you don't regularly solve puzzles, a Thursday can kind of throw you for a loop. At least that was my experience today.

I did manage to finish the puzzle, but it was very slow going. It seemed like every clue was opaque and coming up with the answers required WAY more brain cell activity than anything else I did today. And I tell you all that to say that I'm probably not a great judge of this puzzle's difficulty level. And the fact that I've never heard of one of the theme answer, well to me that says I'm probably not a great judge of ANYTHING to do with this puzzle.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH. Huh. Megillah is, of course, a Hebrew word, so the phrase is basically Jewish (can a phrase be Jewish?). Me? I'm not Jewish. I do know a few things about Judaism though. I've been to a bris. My BFF sends me hamentashen every year at Purim. I know when to say L'shana tovah and understand why some Jews won't use umbrellas on Shabbat. But "The Whole Megillah" is new to me. I wonder if it would make a difference if I lived in New York or even in a neighborhood with a larger Jewish population. I'm curious to know whether you know this phrase or not. (And whether you're Jewish or not.) In any case, it made that corner of the grid very tough for me but I'm happy to have learned something from this puzzle.

Quick Hits:

5A: Spencer of "Good Morning America" (LARA)— Never heard of her.
12A: Common flavorer in Italian sausage (FENNEL)— Reminds me of one of my favorite "Sports Night" exchanges.

Casey: Hey what do you know about the fennel salad here?
Gordon: What do you need to know?
Casey: Well, like, for instance...what's fennel?

20A: Home of "The Gist" and "Political Gabfest" (SLATE)— Expected this to be a TV station, not an "e-mag."
27A: Final order (DESSERT)— I've worked in the legal profession basically my whole life, so I could only think of "order" as something a judge would hand down, which made DESSERT pretty tough to see.
40A: Modern term for "Roman fever" (MALARIA)— Who knew?
47A: In groups (ELITES)— In this clue "in" is an adjective, not a preposition. So. Tricky.
48A: Holy SEE.— Raise your hand if you tried COW here.
57A: Mark Twain's boyhood home (HANNIBAL)— Thankful for this gimme.
5D: Miller character (LOMAN)— I was thinking "A Streetcar Named Desire," not "Death of a Salesman." Two totally different plays written, coincidentally, by two total different playwrights.
9D: Lit up (ABLAZE)— Tried AFLAME first.
10D: Certain metalworker (PLATER)— I'm sure this is a real thing, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
12D: Bone whose name is Latin for "pin" (FIBULA)— Lots of learning going on during this solve.
29D: It has four bases (DNA)— I have no idea what this means.
36D: What a hygrometer measures (HUMIDITY)— I was just telling someone the other day how when I lived in New Mexico I had to laugh at all the people acting like they were dying when the humidity got all the way up to, say, 14%.
46D: Kind of center (REHAB)— No no no.
53D: Not be able to say "say," say (LISP)— Like Daffy!

Thanks for stopping by. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SKINNER BOX (30A: Conditioning apparatus) —

An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used in the experimental analysis of behavior to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University (Masters in 1930 and doctorate in 1931). It may have been inspired by Jerzy Konorski's studies. It is used to study bothoperant conditioning and classical conditioning.
Skinner created the operant chamber as a variation of the puzzle box originally created by Edward Thorndike
An operant conditioning chamber permits experimenters to study behavior conditioning (training) by teaching a subject animal to perform certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to specific stimuli, such as a light or sound signal. When the subject correctly performs the behavior, the chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward. In some cases, the mechanism delivers a punishment for incorrect or missing responses. For instance, to test how operant conditioning works for certain invertebrates, psychologists use a device known as a "heat box". Essentially this takes up the same form as the Skinner box, however the box is composed of two sides: one side that can undergo temperature change and the other that does not. As soon as the invertebrate crosses over to the side that can undergo a temperature change, the area is heated up. Eventually the invertebrate will be conditioned to stay on one side of a heat box, or more specifically the side that does not undergo a temperature change. This goes to the extent that even when the temperature is turned to its lowest point, the fruit fly will still refrain from approaching that area of the heat box. These types of apparatuses allow experimenters to perform studies in conditioning and training through reward/punishment mechanisms. (wikipedia)

• • •

Welcome back. Well, you were here all along, probably, maybe, and I was gone, so welcome me back. Or don't. It's good to be back. Mostly. Minneapolis was fantastic, but I did miss you all. Mostly. I also sort of began to miss crosswords, which is a good sign, I think. I didn't even look at one for five days. Five glorious days. Instead I hung out with actual human beings and went outside a lot where the "sun" was and ate delicious things in significant quantities. I did sneak a copy of Brendan Emmett Quigley's "Marching Bands" puzzles into my backpack before I left, in case of puzzle-jones emergency, and that book got a little airport / pre-sleep action, but otherwise, yesterday's puzzle, done on paper in the Detroit airport the morning after an unexpected and completely unwanted overnight layover, was the first proper crossword I'd done in days. And it didn't go down well. Here's the picture I posted from the airport.

Today's puzzle went down much more nicely. Lots of fun. But I had at least heard of the Killer Proper Nouns in this one, i.e. SKINNER BOX (to a lesser extent) and SOULJA BOY TELL 'EM (to a greater extent). I got a huge smile out of imagining the average NYT solver (that's probably you … I mean, odds are …) watching SOULJABOYTELLEM come into view, cross by cross, and having no idea how the hell any of it could be right. I was going to say "I feel like he was big maybe five years ago"—then I reread the clue, and there it is: 2009 (51A: Rapper with the 2009 hit "Kiss Me Thru the Phone"). That sounds right. I know him by name only, and after crosses made it clear who I was dealing with, I still misspelled the start of his name at first, opting for the equally creative SOLJAH. Not sure how to account for my errant Rastafication. Anyway, that name, and SLR for EOS (49D: Canon shooter), and YUCK for NYUK (50D: Stooge syllable), and later WEST for ODOM (46A: Khloé Kardashian's married name) (wrong Kardashian), all made the bottom pretty tough—much tougher than the top.

Saw right through 1A: Family guy. Sadly, this meant that I wrote in MAFIOSO with great confidence. First two Downs checked out, so that resulted in a semi-sticky situation for a while. Knowing ADRIEN BRODY helped, though not remembering if he was an "A" ADRIAN or an "E" ADRIEN didn't … help, and really kept MOTLEY out of my reach until the very end (5D: Assorted). First certain answer in the grid was ALTON Brown (6D: TV foodie Brown)—I don't watch a lot of food-related TV, so I have no idea why his name stuck, but it did.

Thanks very much to treedweller and Puzzle Girl for blog coverage during my vacation. You may see them, and others, again during parts of July and August when I will be in NZ and CA, respectively.

Couple of notes:

Peter Gordon is Kickstartering the "Fireball Fortnightly News Crossword" and his puzzles are never not good, so if you would like to add a hyper-timely, current events-related puzzle to your solving docket, you should get in on this. Information here.
Buzzfeed did a little article on how irate a bunch of you are about the NYT's new crossword app. You can read the piece here. I'm quoted (warning: mild profanity).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MONTE (30A: National card game of Mexico) —

Monte Bank, Mountebank, Spanish Monte and Mexican Monte, sometimes just Monte, is a Spanish gambling card game and the national card game of Mexico.^{[citation needed]} It ultimately derives from basset, where the banker (dealer) pays on matching cards. The term "monte" has also been used for a variety of other gambling games, especially varieties of three-card poker, and for the swindle three-card monte. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this grid pretty well, though it feels a bit crustier and olde-fashionede than yesterday's offering—except GO ROGUE and ZONK OUT. Those are great. The rest is fine, with come clunkers here and there. The DENARII bridge from DANO to ITAS was probably my least favorite part. Though it will seem minor, my greatest coup was getting EDER (23A: River of Hesse) off the presumed -ED at the end of what turned out to be JILTED, and then getting ONEIDA off of that. Four-letter European rivers, long a staple of crossword puzzles, remain a confusing morass in my brain, lo these x many solving years later, so nailing EDER feels great, even though EDER is not what you'd call great fill. I needed that boost, because this puzzle had me frustrated from 1A: "Diamonds and Rust" singer, 1975 (JOAN BAEZ). In retrospect, I have seen this exact clue (or something close to it) before, but the only singer I wanted was Neil Young (who didn't fit). Why did I want him? What does he have to do with diamonds and/or rust? I think it's the rust/rush similarity from "After the Gold Rush" that threw me, though Mr. Young also has an album entitled "Rust Never Sleeps," but since I only just discovered that now, I don't think it had any influence on my initial wrongness.

Had SASH at 26A: Wound around the body? (GASH) and PENTE (!?) for MONTE early on, despite knowing that PENTE is a game played with stones, not cards. But back to MONTE—I'm dubious about the clue, largely because the wikipedia entry has a big "[citation needed]" next to the "national card game of Mexico" bit (which this puzzle just lifted verbatim). If you google "national card game of Mexico," the results aren't promising—mainly game apps and other sites all using identical language. NYT puzzle's own blog shows up on first page of results. I'm not saying clue's wrong. I'm just saying the immediately available sources aren't exactly resplendent with authority. Anyway, in case you needed reminding, wikicluing is the worst. Trust, but verify.

Worst self-maiming moment of the day: spelling IDIOSYNCRASY with a terminal -CRACY (undoubtedly inferred from the common governmental suffix). It's an odd spelling, I think. Do other words end -RASY?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Tony Orbach

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:"Enrich"— "EN" is added to familiar phrases to get wacky phrases, clued "?"-style

Theme answers:

PREPARATION HEN (23A: Episode title for a cooking show featuring chicken recipes?)
LEAVENING LAS VEGAS (32A: Goal for a comic working the Strip?)
LET 'ER RIPEN (47A: Informal advice to an overeager picker?)
CAN I BE FRANKEN? (67A: Request to represent a Minnesota senator's side of a debate?)
RAMEN TOUGH (82A: Tarzan's response when asked if the noodles are cooked?)
ENSIGN OF THE ZODIAC (99A: Naval officer who's an expert in astrology?)
COEN ORDINATION (111A: Religious ceremony for two Hollywood brothers?)

Word of the Day: ASANTE (91D: People of Ghana: Var.) —

Ashanti, or Asante (pronunciation: /ˈæʃɑːnˈtiː/ a-shahn-tee), are a nation and Akan people who live predominantly in, and native to Ashanti, Asanteman, and in Ghana and Ivory Coast. They speak the Akan language and the Asante dialect, and are of Akan origin. Prior to European colonization, the Ashanti people developed a large and influential empire in West Africa. The Ashanti later developed the powerful Ashanti Confederacy or Asanteman and became the dominant presence in the region. The Asantehene is the political and spiritual head of the Asantes. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was an odd and, ultimately, unpleasant puzzle for me. The theme is really thin — I'm actually surprised how good some of the theme answers were considering just *now* thin — and easy to pick up, but the puzzle itself was far tougher than most recent Sunday offerings have been. Cluing very vague and enigmatic throughout, which would've been just fine, if the results had been worth it, but too often they weren't. Way too often. You hardly ever see the "Var." label in NYT puzzles anymore (much to the editor's credit). But today, two? And longer and awkwarder than you really want your "Var." to be (I mostly like my "Var."s non-existent, but that's just me). Also very, very light on the longer fill, and very dull and repetitive elsewhere. STERN *and* ASTERN? Wince. CAN TOO *and* ARE NOT. Yikes, the dreaded double-playground-retort. Unfortunate. EN DASH in a puzzle whose theme is adding "EN"? There's just an overall lack of smoothness and elegance. Also, a makeshiftness. SATIVA? HAO? Never seen either. SHEREE??? (119A: Whitfield of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta") No Siree. PENNIB looks nuts. Do you say IN REPAIR. I would think an adjective needs to get shoved in there to make real sense. I had to wait on MAY I or CAN I BE FRANKEN (an annoying wait with no aha moment involved). The whole thing was just a slog. A few of the theme answers are kinda worth it (I like the FRANKEN one best of all), but the first two feel forced. I don't feel EN-RAGE, but I don't feel good, either.

The worst problem, though, from a fairness perspective, is TENNISON (62A: Jane ___, Helen Mirren's "Prime Suspect" role). First of all, even people who have seen it before (hand up) aren't necessarily going to remember that. But that's fine. It's a valid answer nonetheless, if crossed fairly. Problem: it's not. That is not a standard name spelling. The poet is TENNYSON. He's famous. This spelling here … never seen it. So—to the crosses. And we get the super-strangely-spelled ELENORE (48D: Title girl in a 1968 hit by the Turtles), where the second "E" could easy easy easily have been an "I" (ELINORE … yes, more believable than ELENORE for sure). And then we get I WON where I WIN works perfectly as well (50D: When repeated, a happy cry). That really should've been ICON or IN ON or IRON or some other actual word that would've created no confusion. Two vowels inside a non-famous proper noun have crosses which can easily be different vowels; that's just … bad. I mean, it's bad editing. I can see how TENNISON looks better than TINNISON or TINNISIN or TENNISIN, in retrospect, but only marginally. You have to be very, very careful about the vowels in proper nouns, especially those you can't legitimately expect most people to know how to spell. There's an unfortunate carelessness about the construction here.

Vacation last week means I'm quite behind on my puzzle-solving, so I'm going to hold off doing a Puzzle of the Week this week (again), and either do Three next week or wait til the end of June and give out four Puzzles of the Month at that point. We'll see.

Going back down to watch England / Italy. (Update: England lost; but you knew that by now)

Enjoy your day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Bruce Haight

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

THEME: B-TEAM (11D: Subs … or a feature of the answers to the 17 asterisked clues?) — all asterisked clues start with "B" and have a total of two "B"s in them (I guess the pair of "B"s form a "team")

Word of the Day: CAEN (38D: Normandy city where William the Conqueror is buried) —

Caen (/kɑːn/; French pronunciation: [kɑ̃]; Norman: Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is theprefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. The city proper has 113,249 inhabitants (as of 2006), while its urban area has 420,000, making Caen the largest city in Lower Normandy. It is also the second largest municipality in all of Normandy after Le Havre and the third largest city proper in Normandy, after Rouen and Le Havre. The metropolitan area of Caen, in turn, is the second largest in Normandy after that of Rouen, the 21st largest in France. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this isn't terrible, but it was really unpleasant to solve. First there was the disappointing realization that the theme would just be "a mess of 'B's" (don't care, not interesting). Then there was the Super-choppy grid full of ho-hum short stuff that was just a pain to move through. Ugh to ALER and ABRIM and ESSES and CAEN and MNO, *especially* in an early-week/"easy" puzzle with such a high word count. Then there was the cluing, which seemed pitched a little harder than usual—not a construction fault, but a day-placement fault. It took me many crosses to get both BUGBEAR (9D: *Bogeyman) andBUSBOYS (44D: *Restaurant staffers), the first because I would never use those two words as synonyms (though I'm sure it's DD, i.e. dictionary-defensible), and the second because of super vague cluing. The revealer clue—also super vague ([Subs] goes many directions). Yes, the "B" thing helps, and it's not like I struggled mightily, but I'm not sure Mondays were meant to take *this* much "theme." This one kind of creaks under the weight of it all. And since the theme is not … anything, really (not clever, not amusing … just "B"s), the creakiness did not feel at all worth it.

I found several of the double-B word phrases charming—BÉLA BARTÓK is one of my favorite composers, and BEER BELLY had me at "Homer Simpson" (66A: *Physical attribute of Homer Simpson). But you just can't make up for theme mediocrity with a tidal wave of theme answers. More is not better. It's just more, and when All the non-B stuff suffers, we all suffer. Or I do, anyway.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Timed: 3:38

Foreign relief org created by JFK / WED 5-28-14 / Kingly name in Norway / Aladdin's monkey pal / Singers Green Jardine

Ovid's foot / FRI 5-30-14 / DuPont development of 1935 / Midwest city named for Menominee chief / Imagine grammy winner of 2010 / Oscar nominee for playing Cal Trask / Any of three authors of Pull My Daisy / Novel title character called my sin my soul / Monomer of proteins informally

Old TV news partner of David / SAT 5-31-14 / Sect in ancient Judea / Discreet music musician / 1978 Broadway revue that opens with Hot August Night / Lead role in film known in France as L'Or de la vie / Woolly bear becomes one

Spriral-horned antelope / SUN 6-1-14 / Fangorn forest denizen / One parodied on Portlandia / Crimean conference locale / One of group of Eastern Christians / Waterway leading to SW German city / Young Darth Vader's nickname / Commercial version of crazy eights

Sleep extender / MON 6-2-14 / Cubs slugger Sammy / Absinthe flavor / Founding father who had beer name after him / Nearsighted Mr of cartoons

Best friend of Thomas Tank Engine / TUE 6-3-14 / Deli counter cheese brand / 3 or 5 series car in slang / Brand with tagline Established in Milwaukee 1844

Grass for cordage / WED 6-4-14 / Stick-up man on Wire / Thriller singer in tabloids / Mark who won 1998 Masters / Full house indicator

Brightest star in Aquila / THU 6-5-14 / 1990s politico from Texas / Presenter of Borgias in brief / Creature in Rowling's Forbidden Forest / Canal with 36 locks / College named for Norwegian king / Subatomic particle with no electric charge

1974 John Wayne title role / Like some Hmong / Donkey : mule :: __ : huarizo / Orion's hunting companion / Admission ticket

Italy's San __ / Sun 6-8-14 / Bruce of "Nebraska" / Dormant Turkish volcano / Political commentator Liz / Mohs scale mineral

Garbage boats / MON 6-9-14 / South Dakota's capital / "The Naked Maja" artist / Beetle's boss, in the comics / Serb or Pole / Condescend (to)

"Funeral Blues" poet / TUE 6-10-14 / Sheryl Sandberg best seller / "The L Word" role for Katherine Moennig / Carne ___ (Mexican dish) / Harden (to)

Athena's counterpart / WED 6-11-14 / Wildcatter's investment / English pop singer Goulding / Tlaloc, to the Aztecs / Fortune 100 company based in Seattle

"Damn Yankees" team / THU 6-12-14 / "Well-bred insolence," per Aristotle / Pawel Pawlikowski film / Nevil Shute's "___ Like Alice" / Line 22 on Form 1040

TV foodie Brown / FRI 6-13-14 / Conditioning apparatus / Fermented milk drink / Feminist with 1984 book Gender Gap / Lefty out in left field / Storage Wars cry / Brand that's shortened description of its flavor

1937 film based on Gershwin musical / SAT 6-14-14 / Ornament at top of spire / River of Hesse / Teatro Costanzi premiere of 1900 / First person outside NASA to receive moon-rock award 2006 / Gathers on surface chemically / Ching preceder

Villainous noble of classic French tale / MON 6-16-14 / Physical attribute of Homer Simpsons / Normandy city where William Conqueror is buried / Hungarian composer / Rum-soaked cakes