Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Surround Sound"— theme answers are wacky two-word phrases where first word is completely aurally subsumed by the tail-end of the second word. First word is disyllabic in every case:

Theme answers:

RANDOM MEMORANDUM (23A: Office missive sent out arbitrarily?)
GRANITE POMEGRANATE (30A: Stone fruit?)
LUNAR BALLOONER (48A: Aeronaut who's headed for the moon?)
ROTC PAPARAZZI (66A: Photographers who stalk future lieutenants?)
PEWTER COMPUTER (84A: Desktop machine made of malleable metal?)
MENTIONS DIMENSIONS (101A: Provides some idea of an object's size?)
COLLIE MELANCHOLY (113A: Lassie's affliction after failing to rescue Timmy?)

Word of the Day: ASUNCIÓN (37D: South American capital) —

Nuestra Señora Santa María de la Asunción (Spanish pronunciation: [asunˈsjon], Guarani: Paraguay) is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.
The Ciudad de Asunción is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San Antonio, Limpio, Capiatá and Villa Elisa, which are part of the Central Department. The Asunción metropolitan area has more than 2 million inhabitants. […]
It is the home of the national government, principal port, and the chief industrial and cultural centre of the country. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a passable theme, but I expect more than "passable" from Patrick Berry. Way, way more. To be blunt, Patrick Berry needs to be, minimally, Very Good, every time out. The overall quality of the NYT is really riding on a handful of stalwarts who are capable of producing puzzles of a very high order. Wentz, McCoy, Gorski, Chen, Steinberg, Berry … these people just can't fall down or even trip on the job. They have too much of other people's mediocrity to make up for. Unfair? Of course. But that's the current reality of the NYT crossword. There are definitely some good moments in this puzzle—the acronymic use of ROTC (i.e. relying on how it sounds, not how it's spelled) is inspired , and the clue on COLLIE MELANCHOLY(113A: Lassie's affliction after failing to rescue Timmy?) is genuinely hilarious. But MENTIONS DIMENSIONS and RANDOM MEMORANDUM just lie there. Too much real estate to give over to boring answers, especially in a puzzle whose theme is so basic that it really Needs to be great at every turn.

There were times when this felt like the easiest Sunday I'd done in a while, and other times where I got oddly bogged down by a single word or small handful of them. Turns out I am capable of confidently spelling neither MEMORANDUM (considered -EM ????) nor POMEGRANATE (somehow thought maybe there was another "N" in there just before the "G"; again ????). OXFAM is familiar to me after-the-fact, but during-the-solve, it was nowhere. Needed nearly every cross. I somehow wrote in MOAN at 98D: No longer standing tall? (MOWN), which really stopped me at the end, as I considered TAITTER as an answer to 108A: Feed supplier (good clue for TWITTER, btw). Given a five-letter answer starting with "I" and given the clue [2006 World Cup winner] the only (and I mean *only*) country I could think of was INDIA, which, I was 99.7% sure, was wrong. When I got ITALY, I laughed. Sorry, ITALY. Forgot about you. Also forgot Jessica Simpson's sister's name, mostly because I forgot about Jessica Simpson, who (like her sister) hasn't been relevant for years. Anyway, ASHLEE is spelled thuslee, which caused some minor confusion in the south.

Had LEAD for LEAK (73D: Boon for an investigative journalist), and then RHYME for 45D: What some dreams and themes do (RECUR). I guess I just ignored the "some" in that clue. My bad. But the worst struggle I had was in the NE, where SALE TAG for NAME TAG (16D: Retail clerk's accessory) really gunked things up. Had LILI for MIMI, EASE for WANE, and thus EOLAN for 14D: George Eliot, but not Marilyn Manson (WOMAN). And then I just sat and wondered what the problem could be. Eventually pulled SALE from SALE TAG. Then NAME TAG leapt forth and all the surrounding right answers popped into view. Happy 195th birthday to George Eliot, by the way. Read Middlemarch for the first time this past summer and Loved it.

Some quick announcements:

First, though I haven't done all the puzzles this week, I am going to give a Puzzle of the Week nod anyway, this time to Andrew Ries and his latest Aries XWord puzzle, "Symbol Synonyms." Neat gimmick, where all-caps clues are single words which can be reimagined as a Periodic Table abbr. + clue word, which combine to clue a familiar phrase. Thus, [AUGUST] is the clue for GOLD RUSH (AU = gold, GUST = rush, as of wind). [CURING] => COPPERTONE, [CAPE] => CARBON COPY, and [ALBUM] => ALUMINUM CAN. Andrew Ries's Aries XWord puzzles are available only by subscription, but said subscriptions are ridiculously cheap. You can solve free samples at his site. Definitely check him out.

Next, I am very happy to plug Patrick Merrell's Kickstarter campaign for his graphic novel / puzzle project, "Zep: A Puzzling Adventure." Here's the pitch: "An action-packed tale of adventure, intrigue, and gadgetry for kids; a baffling, multi-step puzzle for adults hidden in the art." Patrick is a professional cartoonist as well as a professional puzzlemaker, and the project looks genuinely fantastic. Read all about it, see samples, and watch a short (adorable) video at his Kickstarter page. Seriously, do it. It's worth a look. The project is a Kickstarter Staff Pick! His book's got a hidden puzzle! An Evil Dr. SUMAC! What's not to love?

Lastly, a plug for the country's newest significant crossword tournament, The Indie 500, brought to you be a crew of some of today's best young constructors: Erik Agard, Evan Birnholz, Peter Broda, Neville Fogarty, and Andy Kravis (all of whom run independent puzzle sites of their own). The tournament will be held for the first time in Washington, D.C. on May 30, 2015. But more than plugging the tourney itself, I want to call attention to the fact that they are accepting puzzle submissions from novice constructors (with no more than 10 published puzzles) to fill the last slot on their tournament puzzle slate. Eligibility requirements are right here. So mark it on your calendar and, if you're relatively new to constructing and think you've got a great idea for a tournament puzzle, consider submitting. I know all the people running this show, and their collective skills and professionalism are legit. Go. Solve. Do. Fun.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Robert Seminara

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (I mean, yes, easy, but a couple places gave me trouble, which virtually never happens on Monday)

THEME: ROFL (36A: Texter's expression spelled out by the starts of 18-, 28-, 46- and 59-Across) — ROFL stands for ROLLING / ON the / FLOOR / LAUGHING (hence sometimes styled as "ROTFL")

ROLLING PINS
ONTHE DOWN LOW
FLOOR MIRRORS
LAUGHING GAS

Word of the Day: COZEN (16A: Deceive) —

coz·en (kzn)
v. coz·ened, coz·en·ing, coz·ens
v.tr.
1. To mislead by means of a petty trick or fraud; deceive.
2. To persuade or induce to do something by cajoling or wheedling.
3. To obtain by deceit or persuasion.
v.intr.
To act deceitfully.
[Perhaps from Middle English cosin, fraud, trickery.] (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

My first question was "do people still text that?" though I'm guessing that the answer is someone, somewhere still does. Having a texting expression as the revealer gives this puzzle a patina of up-to-dateness, though nothing else about the grid feels very hip or modern or contemporary at all (nice contemporary clue on SCOTLAND, though) (40D: Site of a 2014 vote for independence). I'm currently having a back-and-forth with another constructor about ROFL vs. ROTFL (the version of this same expression that includes the "T" for "the"). ROFL and ROTFL mean the same thing, essentially, as far as I can tell, so I don't see the big deal, but his/her point is that ROTFL is a better revealer—you've got a "the" in your answer, and you say your revealer "expression" is "spelled out by the starts" of the answers, then you should have the "T" in your revealer (since it's right there in the theme answer). ROTFL is more precise. Here, "O" stands for "On the," which is at least a little odd. In the texting expression ROFL, the "the" is elided, but when you get into claiming that something is "spelled out" in the puzzle, now you're on shakier ground. ROLLING / ON / FLOOR / LAUGHING is spelled, but that's not how you'd translate the expression. THE is in your theme answer, but it's not "spelled out" in your revealer. Still, I think the stakes are pretty low here, and I have no real problem with the theme's execution.

I don't know what FLOOR MIRRORS are, and don't think I've seen them in dressing rooms. Are they free-standing, just sitting on the floor? Seriously, I've seen lots of mirrors in dressing rooms, but they're always affixed to walls. Anyway, with no hope at the FLOOR part of that answer, that west section all of a sudden got really hard. Had CMI and TAT and *nothing* else west of LEO. Couldn't get any of the Downs from their first and last letters alone. If I hadn't known ROFL, well, LOL. But I knew it, and things fell into place. Got slowed down by weird AGO clue (60D: "Give it A GO!"), and the pretty awkward cross-reference at 59D: See 58-Down (LAB). Rest of puzzle was OK, though it felt safe and old-fashioned. Tepid. Grid is highly segmented, loaded with short fill, and short on interesting stuff (except BEDSORE, which literally made me say EWW…) (24D: Long-term hospital patient's problem). I like the digital spirit of this one, but overall it's just about average.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: JOE DIMAGGIO's 100th birthday

Theme answers:

CENTERFIELD (17A: Position of 62-Across)
HITTING / STREAK (24A: With 27-Across, record-setting achievement of 62-Across)
FIFTY-SIX GAMES (38A: Duration of 62-Across's 24-/27-Across)
YANKEE / CLIPPER (52A: With 54-Across, moniker of 62-Across)
JOE DIMAGGIO (62A: American athlete born 11/25/1914)

Word of the Day: ALTON Brown, host of "Iron Chef America" (57A) —

Alton Crawford Brown (born July 30, 1962) is an American television personality, celebrity chef, author, actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats, the mini-series Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and host and main commentator on Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen. Brown is also the author of several books on cookery. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is about as dull as you can make a tribute crossword. I don't understand even making this puzzle if all you can do is plug in tired facts as theme answers. The puzzle overall is certainly competently constructed—there's not too much bad fill, and the big NE/SW corners are rather nice. But the theme? It does nothing. It has no twist, no play, no zing, no anything. Just the facts, ma'am. If you are going to pay tribute to a guy (or gal), Pay Tribute (with something genuinely inventive and creative) or stay home. Seriously, though, those big corners are nice. If I ignore the theme and just look at those, then I can work up warm feelings about this puzzle. Although that warmth might also be a. the bourbon I've been drinking tonight, or b. the mild case of rage I have over this whole Ferguson debacle. Just to end on a high note, though, a solid ovation for that NE corner—all the Downs, gold.

If there were more to say, I'd say more. But there's not, so I won't. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Michael S. Maurer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: WAR GAMES (58A: 1983 sci-fi drama … or a possible title for this puzzle) — theme answers are terms related to the military and … I guess the clues are playing "games" by being wacky (?):

Theme answers:

M*A*S*H UNIT (17A: Potato?)
SHORE LEAVE (24A: Ebb tide?)
PRESENT ARMS (34A: Inoculation order?)
FIRING LINE (49A: "Clean out your desk!"?)

Word of the Day: LAVALIERES (9D: Some microphones) —

lavaliere′ mi`crophone n.
a small microphone that hangs around the neck of a performer or speaker.

• • •

Had my fingers crossed for a decent birthday puzzle, but this one didn't quite come through. I'm not even sure I fully understand the theme. I don't see the "GAMES." I see wacky clues—are those the "GAMES"? I can only guess. Also, "WAR" is inapt in the extreme. Only two of these themers are related to war (M*A*S*H UNIT and, possibly, FIRING LINE). The others are military, but have no necessary connection to war. The whole "possible title" makes very little sense. Seems awfully tenuous. In the revealer clue's defense, though, it just says "possible title," not "appropriate" or "good title." Puzzle played hard for a Wednesday, largely because the themers were not easy to pick up even after you grokked the theme. PRESENT ARMS took me forever. I ended up solving this in very unusual fashion—closing in on the middle from all sides. I think my last letter in the grid was the "R" in PRESENT ARMS / LAVALIERES. I'd never heard of the latter. Not that I could remember. Other crosses for PRESENT ARMS were hard to pick up as well. SALESMAN was not easy to get from 37D: Infomercial figure. I'd never heard of the EARLS (did they wear LAVALIERES? (which I keep wanting to call LEVOLOR, like the blinds, which I only just now found out was spelled that way). STEP INSIDE, also tough to get to from [Words of welcome]. Bit of a toughie, and a bit old-fashioned-feeling, overall. Outside LISTEN UP and STEP INSIDE, the fill is pretty musty/creaky. All DAR and BIREME (43D: Old galley) and ELIA and OSIER and RMN. This puzzle might've felt fresh during the RMN administration.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, I don't like the "?" clue on ANAGRAMS. In a puzzle where the themers have "?" clues, you don't give "?" clues to other long answers that run in the same direction. That's just confusing. Getting the "?" clue there, in an answer that's as long as the themer in the NW corner, made me think theme clue. Then when I got ANAGRAMS, I tried to see how it was thematic, only to discover it wasn't. OK, fair game, my fault for not noticing it wasn't precisely in a theme position. But I would've avoided the "?" clue there. The clue itself doesn't really make sense. Is the idea that a "Letterman" is someone who enjoys … letters? But … why would that mean you enjoyed *rearranging* them, specifically? There's just a ton of slack in the logic of this puzzle. IOR IOR IOR. SPLAT. Maybe next year I'll get the birthday puzzle I've always wanted. This year, I'll have to settle for cake.

I'm also not convinced "WAR GAMES" is a "sci-fi" movie, even though wikipedia says it is. Everything was supposed to be plausible, right? It's not like aliens inhabited the computer. "Joshua" wasn't like Hal—it didn't develop a kind of human sentience. Did it? Maybe I'm misremembering the level of Joshua's anthropomorphosis. Anyway, "Star Wars" was sci-fi. "Blade Runner" was sci-fi. "E.T." was sci-fi. "WAR GAMES"—I'm less sure.

Travel safe if you're traveling, especially in the NE.

See you on Thanksgiving.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Stanley Newman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: [Thanksgiving phrase] — "Thanks a lot" (roughly) in three different languages

Theme answers:

MUCHAS GRACIAS
MILLE GRAZIE
MERCI BEAUCOUP

Word of the Day: COO (53D: Corp. manager) —

A chief operating officer (COO), also called the chief operations officer, director of operations, or operations director, is a position that can be one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, comprising part of the "C-Suite". The COO is responsible for the daily operation of the company, and routinely reports to the highest ranking executive, usually the chief executive officer (CEO). The COO may also carry the title of President which makes that person the second in command at the firm, especially if the highest ranking executive is the Chairman and CEO. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a reasonably solid themeless—yes, I see the theme there, but … I don't know. Those countries don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so while it's literally true that those are all "thanksgiving phrases" , the whole conceit seems rather thin. Also, the theme is just thin generally—just 35 squares total. So its feel is mostly that of a themeless. The most interesting thing about the theme is the way the clues exploit the first-letter-capitalized cluing convention to get you to think that the clues relate to capital-T Thanksgiving, when really they're related only to lowercase-T thanksgiving. The foreign angle … I don't really get. I guess those three phrases just fit nicely/symmetrically into the grid.

Solved this one slow-fast-stopped … then done. Got AAH and SCAM but nothing else in the NW. Then PECS and PSI got me going in the NE, though it still took me a while to throw MUCHAS GRACIAS back across the grid and into that NW corner. I had -RACIA- at the end of that answer, and I was like "… how is a [Thanksgiving phrase] going to end in 'RACIAL'???" After that top themer went in, the puzzle went down fast, until I put in MERCI BEAUCOUP. I thought with LAGS, AUEL, and BEAUCOUP going for me down there in the SE, I'd be set, but Nuh-o. Got TSP and PAST… still nothing. I just sat. I put the blame entirely on COO. Nobody expects a perfectly good word to be clued as an abbr. I will add that nobody *wants* it, either. Why you decide to clue a word as an abbr., I will not know. I guess just to f*** with solvers. Mission accomplished. Without GEORGE, I had no hope down there. No way I was getting RETORT from [Counter with a sharp edge] (clever) or SERAPES from [Clothing items with fringes] without much help from crosses, but those just wouldn't come. I just couldn't pick up any of those short Acrosses from their final letters. Somehow, finally, my brain managed to see through T---U-H to THROUGH, and only then did I realize, "Oh … COO." And then I was done.

I had no idea JUDGE JUDY was still on the air. Seriously. [Highest-paid TV star of 2014, by far]?? Wow.

Happy capital-T Thanksgiving,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: BLACK FRIDAY (56A: Time of annual madness … or a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — rebus in which "SALE" appears in four different squares.

Theme answers:

JERUSALEMCROSS / SALERNO
SPRINGSALEAK / NEWSALERT
ROSALEEPARKS / SALEM'SLOT
ADAM'SALE/ESALEN

Word of the Day: ESALEN (64A: Big Sur institute) —

The Esalen Institute, commonly just called Esalen, is a retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education. Esalen is a nonprofit organization devoted to activities such as personal growth, meditation, massage, Gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, and organic food. The institute offers more than 500 public workshops a year, in addition to conferences, research initiatives, residential work-study programs, and internships.
Esalen was founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their goal was to explore work in the humanities and sciences, in order to fully realize what Aldous Huxley had called the "human potentialities".
Esalen is located about 45 miles (72 km) south of Monterey and nine miles (14 km) north of Lucia. Esalen is situated on 120 acres of Big Sur coast. The grounds were once home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, from which the institute got its name. (wikipedia)

• • •

A puzzle to celebrate idiotic consumerism. Great. Fantastic.

Even if I didn't find the "madness" this puzzle is celebrating slightly repugnant, even if I was a huge love of BLACK FRIDAY shopping, I would still have found this puzzle wanting. There were a couple big reasons for this:

It's just a SALE rebus. I mean, that's it. Straight. Basic. Kind of dull. If you're going to have a revealer like BLACK FRIDAY, it seems like you could exploit black squares or the letters FRI or something, anything interesting. That's certainly what a Fireball or American Values Club or other high-end independent outlet would've done. Something truly creative. This is simply a SALE rebus. Four SALEs. I do not see how this is an adequate way to represent a self-described "Time of annual madness." Four SALEs is not madness. It's barely Presidents' Day weekend.
While the theme does get us a couple nice rebus-containing answers (SALEM'S LOT, and, especially, NEWS ALERT), it also gets us dreadful old crosswordy answers like the ADAM'S ALE / ESALEN crossing, and the improbable and utterly uncrossworthy middle-name version of Rosa Parks's name. Also, SALEM and JERUSALEM are too related to inhabit the same grid. Salem, in the bible, is the "royal city of Melchizedek, traditionally identified with Jerusalem." This is where other SALEMs get their name. I consider JERUSALEM and SALEM dupes. Bad form.

Fill overall is middling, with EILAT and SHMO being the most irksome stuff (though that ALOHAS MESON SYST bank is pretty rough, too). Most of the rest is solid, but none of the non-theme stuff really shines. The main difficulties in this puzzle were a. figuring out that there was a theme at all (who's looking for it on Friday?), and b. just finding out where those four squares were. I didn't know until quite late that there was a theme. I had almost all the N and NE worked out. But I had SPRINGS A - (crossing NEWS RT, which I didn't blink at). So I thought there was a rebus of some kind, but from where I was sitting, it looked like the rebus was "LEAK." Then I scanned the clues to see if there was a revealer, and found it, and then things got much easier from there. The cluing is really uninspired on this one. I'm looking around for clues to single out for praise, and honestly don't see any. Seems like your big blow-out BLACK FRIDAY puzzle should be bolder and more creative than this. So many people will be working the puzzle today—what the hell else are you gonna do, stuck at home with the family you've already spent so much time with? Why not give solvers something daring, bold, and truly tricky?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: THREE-LETTER WORD (32A: Something not found in this puzzle's answer) — not a theme, really, but since this sits right across the middle of the grid, and refers to an overall quality of the grid, I'm calling it a 'theme.'

Word of the Day: ANSONIA (51A: Historic residential hotel in Manhattan) —

The Ansonia is a building on the Upper West Side of New York City, located at 2109 Broadway, between West 73rd and West 74th Streets. It was originally built as a hotel by William Earle Dodge Stokes, the Phelps-Dodge copper heir and share holder in the Ansonia Clock Company, and it was named for his grandfather, the industrialist Anson Greene Phelps. In 1899, Stokes commissioned architect Paul E. Duboy (1857–1907) to build the grandest hotel in Manhattan.
Stokes would list himself as "architect-in-chief" for the project and hired Duboy, a sculptor who designed and made the ornamental sculptures on the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, to draw up the plans. New Orleans architect Martin Shepard served as draftsman and assistant superintendent of construction on the project. A contractor sued Stokes in 1907, but he would defend himself, explaining that Duboy was in an insane asylum in Paris and should not have been making commitments in Stokes's name concerning the hotel.
In what might be the earliest harbinger of the current developments in urban farming, Stokes established a small farm on the roof of the hotel.
Stokes had a Utopian vision for the Ansonia—that it could be self-sufficient, or at least contribute to its own support—which led to perhaps the strangest New York apartment amenity ever. "The farm on the roof," Weddie Stokes wrote years later, "included about 500 chickens, many ducks, about six goats and a small bear." Every day, a bellhop delivered free fresh eggs to all the tenants, and any surplus was sold cheaply to the public in the basement arcade. Not much about this feature charmed the city fathers, however, and in 1907, the Department of Health shut down the farm in the sky. (wikipedia)

• • •

Fell asleep before the puzzle came out. Then woke up in the middle of the night and solved it. Since I was woozy with sleep and it was Saturday (i.e. the toughest day of the week), I went slowly. Methodically. Poking away. This is all to say that I finished in my normal Saturday time, but the puzzle might've been easier than a "Medium" difficulty rating suggests. I never got significantly hung up, as I sometimes do on Saturdays, though there were a couple of areas that felt threatening for a bit. This is one of those highly segmented jobs that plays more like five mini-puzzles than one large one—these can often be deadly. You get caught in one of these (roughly) 7x6 or 8x7 sections, with no THREE-LETTER WORDs to grab on to, and the white space can just eat you alive. Luckily for me, the grid-spanners were fairly forthcoming, meaning that I was able to get a good decent preliminary toehold in every section. Got I CAN'T SLEEP AT ALL rather easily (it turned out to be I CAN'T SLEEP A WINK, which is why the SW was briefly harrowing). After the west was won, just a little tinkering in the middle allowed me to see THREE-LETTER WORD. Then I got very lucky, and with just the -WD- in place, got WEEKEND WARRIORS. After that, the NW (with HORSE already in place from the 52A cross-reference) played like a Tuesday, and then it was just a matter of fighting through the I/E dilemma at ERMAS, and finally fighting through the NYC provincialism of ANSONIA (!?). And I was done.

All things considered ("all things" being the relatively low word count and the four big chunks of white space in the corners), this puzzle felt pretty clean. The "theme" is mostly trivial, but that center answer neatly describes a feature of the grid that makes it hard both to fill and to solve, thus giving it a nifty meta-puzzle feel ("meta" in the sense of its being a puzzle about a puzzle, not "meta" in the sense of there being another puzzle to solve after you complete the grid … unless I'm missing something … it's the middle of the night, so who knows …?). No 3-letter words, but (not surprisingly) the four-letter answers do groan a little under the strain of the construction. They are almost always the worst thing in any section of this puzzle. Two long Downs are lovely, and none of the 5+-letter answers made me wince, so overall I'd say that's a victory.

OBAMANIA feels weird to me. I don't remember seeing it in '08, and I'm finding it hard to say. Awkward. It wants to come out OH'-buh-MAY'-nee-uh or oh-BAH'-muh-NEE'-uh, neither of which sounds like anything you'd use, given the high likelihood that your conversation partner would respond to you with "What?" I don't doubt the validity of the answer—it's one of the more interesting things in the grid. I just can't manage to say it in a way that sounds reasonable. I don't know who EVE BEST is, but then, until last year or so, I didn't know who "Wallis Simpson" was either. I saw Michael DORN on screen earlier in the evening; wife and daughter are working their way through "Star Trek: TNG," and today I sat on the margins and ate leftover birthday cake and occasionally asked dumb questions or offered commentary, "MST3K"-style (especially during the smooth jazz sequence where fake-Picard asks Crusher to dine with him in his chambers…). Anyway, Worf was in today's episode. He eventually agreed to mutiny against the fake captain. Everybody lived.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Matt Ginsberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:"Zap!"— the ADs have been "zapped" from familiar phrases. So the "AD"s are visible, but they've been rebused into individual boxes (a visual representation of fast-forwarding?); wacky "?" clues reference the "AD"-less phrases (though you need the "AD"s in the crosses). Actually, now that I think of it, maybe the ADs are not there in the Acrosses, but are there in the Downs … this is, of course, impossible to represent visually … but it explains the "AD"-containing crosses. Anyhoo, here are your long themers:

Theme answers:

BRO[AD]-MINDED (19A: Focused on one's fellow fraternity members?)
IRISH BALL[AD] (24A: Dublin dance?)
CHANGE OF [AD]DRESS (36A: What Clark Kent needs to become Superman?)
ON THE SH[AD]Y SIDE (45A: Somewhat bashful?)
FIVE O'CLOCK SH[AD]OW (63A: Local afternoon newscast?)
[AD]OPTION AGENCY (83A: Business offering the right to buy and sell securities?)
FOLLOW THE LE[AD]ER (93A: How to find what a creep is looking at?)
L[AD]IES FIRST (109A: Says "I didn't do it!" before fessing up?)
LEGAL [AD]VICE (115A: Cigarettes or booze?)

Word of the Day: TONY MARTIN (72D: Singer whose "I Get Ideas" was on the charts for 30 weeks) —

Tony Martin (December 25, 1913 – July 27, 2012), born Alvin Morris, was an Americanactor and singer who was married to performer Cyd Charisse for 60 years. (wikipedia)

• • •

I thought this one worked reasonably well, and the cluing felt well and truly toughened up, making the Sunday something other than the dull walk in the park that it has occasionally become in recent years. I have already gotten mail from people wondering what the hell "Zap!" has to do with ADs, making me wonder if this concept isn't dated already, a hold-over from a time when people recorded shows on VHS tapes. Certainly, the idea of fast-forwarding through ads is still with us (if you use a DVR, you've almost certainly done this), but I don't think I've heard the expression "zap" in this context in ages. I generally associate it with the '90s. I have no explanation or evidence to support my feeling that the phrase is no longer with us in the way it once was. Just a gut feeling. I also thought the current pope was es-shoe-ing the whole RED SHOE thing these days. Clue is still correct, historically, but the first thing RED SHOE made me think of was "uh uh."

While I generally like this theme, there are a couple clunky things. First SHADY and SHADOW are too closely related, etymologically, to both be crucial theme-answer words. They're not exactly dupes, but they're close kin, and a truly well-crafted and elegant construction isn't going to the "shade" well twice in the same puzzle. [Addendum: a second dupe—a friend just pointed out that SH[]OW doesn't just dupe SHOWY, it intersects it] Second problem is also a result of inadequate attention to craft. If you're going to zap ADs, you *zap* ADs or you omit them entirely, i.e. there should be no "AD"s in this thing, *anywhere*. Again, this is a matter of elegance. One could argue "that rule applies only in the theme answers." OK, but in a puzzle called "Zap!", I expect them to be zapped. Everywhere. And I especially don't want the first answer I encounter, 1-A-bleeping-cross, to be ADDS (!?). I see only one other instance of "AD" in the grid (at ADANO), meaning that it wouldn't have been hard At All to zap them. Just do it! Get rid of 'em. Come on. Raise the bar, NYT. A theme idea this good deserves commensurate execution.

Biggest trouble spots for me were the SE and NE. I got into the far SE corner pretty easily, but the rest of that quadrant, yikes. Might've helped if I'd ever heard of CANNA, or knew what West ELM was. Had to infer the S and the S and the Y in MESSY to pick it up and then travel up from there. Harrowing! But I had a much worse time in the NE, where the phrase IRISH BALLAD just … didn't seem like a coherent thing to me, I guess, so much so that I had IRISH --LLAD and thought I must have an error. I had never heard of either of the missing crosses there: IMAGER (OK, maybe I've heard that, but yuck, is that really the term for the viewfinder?) and BARDED (I've read soooooo many works with armored horses in them, and have never ever seen this word). If I didn't know that SLADE was an [English glam-rock band with six #1 hits], I might've had fatal trouble up there. I had GIRDED for BARDED and my first glam-rock answer was T-REX. But I survived. And overall, I enjoyed the challenge.

Puzzle Worth Noting this week goes to Tyler Hinman's seasonal creation for American Values Club crossword, which does some truly stunning things with the black squares. It's titled "Open Up," and you can get it for $1 here, or just subscribe already, what the hell?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: blank my blank— "adoring" expressions from people of different professions (if you accept "arsonist" as a profession…)

Theme answers:

"ROCK MY WORLD" (17A: "You really___!," said the adoring seismologist)
"SUIT MY FANCY" (11D "You really___!," said the adoring tailor)
"FLOAT MY BOAT" (51A: "You really___!," said the adoring ship captain)
"LIGHT MY FIRE" (25D: "You really___!," said the adoring arsonist)

Word of the Day: REDOUBT (10D: Fortress) —

A redoubt (historically redout) is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, although others are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a hastily-constructed temporary fortification. The word means "a place of retreat". Redoubts were a component of the military strategies of most European empires during the colonial era, especially in the outer works of Vauban-style fortresses made popular during the 17th century, although the concept of redoubts has existed since medieval times. A redoubt differs from a redan in that the redan is open in the rear, whereas the redoubt was considered an enclosed work. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, this actually works pretty well. I'd've done Everything I could to get rid of PEE (!?), and I think the "arsonist" clue really ruins the "professional" consistency of the theme clues, but other than that, I think this puzzle works. It's easy, the theme is bouncy, the fill is clean and interesting. ARDOR and "arson(ist)" are etymologically related, but something tells me nobody but I will notice that, so no foul. Most of my trouble came with REDOUBT, both because I never use and never see that term anywhere (thus often completely forgetting that it exists at all), and because I had a typo in the third letter, and thus was looking at a word starting RES- (instead of RED-) for far too long. YELP gets a nice modern clue (18D: Website for customer reviews), though URI is still down there "bending" spoons (seriously, that PEE corner needs a total reboot). I had SUIT MY TASTE at first, instead of SUIT MY FANCY; went with the "I" spelling of REATA; and couldn't make any sense of the chicken clue, both because I wasn't sure if "Ready" was a verb or an adjective, and because, well, the clue just looked silly somehow—couldn't process it. As a chicken … readies things for market? Seriously, that clue is going along just fine until it hits "chicken," and then the wheels kind of come off (and again, I say, the house at PEE corner must go). But ALL TOLD, this gets a thumbs-up.

[trying to fact-check my claims about ARDOR / "arson," I accidentally looked up "ardor urinae," which is an ardor no one is going to make a movie about any time soon, I tell you what …]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I *completely* forgot that the first Monday of every month is guest blogger ANNABEL's day … my bad. She graciously agreed to do next Monday instead (12/8).

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Challenging (like, off the charts for a Tuesday)

THEME: Curses in one direction are taken literally in the other, I think —

Theme answers:

'ZOUNDS / ZEBU ("Holy cow!" / Holy cow)
DAMN / DAFT ("Nuts!" / Nuts)
WOW / WALTER ("Great Scott!" / Great Scott)
TELLS / SHOOT (Rats / "Rats!")
BLAST / TREAT ("Fudge!" / Fudge)
GEE / HOMBRE ("Man!" / Man)
HECK / SOCK ("Darn it!" / Darn it)
CURSES / BOWS ("Fiddlesticks!" / Fiddlesticks)

Word of the Day: ALGAL (36A: Harmful ___ bloom (aquatic growth)) —

An algal bloom is a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae (typically microscopic) in an aquatic system. Cyanobacteria blooms are often called blue-green algae. Algal blooms may occur in freshwater as well as marine environments. Typically, only one or a small number of phytoplankton species are involved, and some blooms may be recognized by discoloration of the water resulting from the high density of pigmented cells. (wikipedia) (I assume "ALGAL" just means "of or related to alga")

• • •

Not going to spend much time on this one, largely because I found it so unpleasant. This may be the most badly misplaced puzzle I've ever solved. Took me nearly 2x my normal Tuesday time. This would've been OK, in theory, but in practice, I had to suffer through one damned antiquated quaint oath after another, and then through crosses that were often painfully forced. [Fudge] = TREAT? That's like [Camaro] = CAR. Total junk. If you don't have the "e.g." after it, it's not a legal clue. Likewise, [Great Scott] needs a "?" in order to indicate WALTER. Would you ever, in any other context, use just [Man] to clue HOMBRE? No. [Man of La Mancha], [Man, in Havana], yes. Just [Man], no. I think the core idea in this puzzle is kind of interesting, but man ("Man!") was it painful to solve. ALGAL?! I just stared at ALGA- / TEL-S forever, wondering what the hell? ALGAL is … it's just so bad, as fill. Is it ENOUNCE bad, you ask? Almost. Not sure how many D'OHS (!?) I uttered during this solve, but I'm going to say "several."TOMTIT DEFRAG (… now I'm just writing random absurd stuff from the grid …) ALAI IRAE. So much shrugging. If this had been a. a Thursday puzzle, and b. more cleanly filled, I might've been somewhat more kindly disposed toward it. But as is, yikes. Yoinks. Egads.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Patrick Blindauer

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PANDA (38A: World Wildlife Fund logo … or a three-word hint to the answers to the four starred clues) — two-word phrases: first word P-, second word A- …

Theme answers:

PARTY ANIMAL
"PATCH ADAMS"
PARK AVENUE
PENNY ARCADE

Word of the Day: Jason GIAMBI (15A: Jason who was the 2000 A.L. M.V.P.) —

Jason Gilbert Giambi (/dʒiˈɑːmbi/; born January 8, 1971) is an American professional baseball first baseman and designated hitter who is a free agent. In his Major League Baseball (MLB) career, which began in 1995, he has played for the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians.
Giambi was the American League MVP in 2000 while with the Athletics, and is a five-time All-Star who has led the American League in walks four times, in on-base percentage three times, and in doubles and in slugging percentage once each, and won the Silver Slugger award twice.
Giambi took performance-enhancing drugs during his career, for which use he has publicly apologized. Giambi was named one of the Top 10 Most Superstitious Athletes by Men's Fitness. (wikipedia)

• • •

A light romp. Did it about a minute and a half faster than I did yesterday's puzzle, which is to say, I did it in reasonably normal Wednesday time. This feels like more of a Tuesday than a Wednesday concept; with a little cluing adjustment, this could've played yesterday and yesterday's could've played today, and while that would not necessarily made yesterday's puzzle more pleasant, it would've made it slightly more explicable. But enough about that, let's talk about this. It's very straightforward. It's a theme type I know I've seen before, possibly with CANDY (or the like) as the revealer. This is wordplay 101—take a common word, and then parse it differently, imagine it as multiple words, see where it leads you. Patrick's brain has been doing this in its sleep (and out of it) for years and years. There's nothing mind-boggling about this concept, or this grid, but the fill is reasonably clean and there are some interesting words and longer phrases, and so, as easy puzzles go, this seems like a success to me. I'm trying to think of other P and A phrases—seems like there should be a bunch—but I'm not having much success. PAUL ANKA, PLATE APPEARANCE (15!), PAPER AIRPLANE …

There's an added level of constructing difficulty here, as the themers cross. This is the reason that *these* themers (and not others) were chosen—they fit symmetrically in the grid. On the one hand, this gives the grid an interesting shape, with giant NW and SE corners (leaving only tiny NE and SW corners, and a rather choppy middle diagonal section connecting them). Sometimes it's nice not to have the themers be in the more predictable Across places. "PENNY ARCADE" is a popular, long-running webcomic, but I'm guessing that's well outside the knowledge base of your average NYT crossword solver. I'd've appreciated the comics clue, but only about a dozen other people would've felt the same, so oldey timey clue it is! I resent having to remember that "PATCH ADAMS" exists (not the way I want to remember Robin Williams), but having it in the grid did add to the list of potential answers for my "hidden African countries" puzzle (along with ANIMAL INSTINCTS (15!), that brings total such answers to two—I'm on my way!)

NYT still having issues with turnaround time. This puzzle was made in 2009 …

Patrick Blindauer has his own puzzle site where you can get a new free puzzle on the first of every month (which means there's a new one I haven't done yet … whoa … I'm doing it right now. The trick with the main theme answers is pretty amazing … go get it (under "Play")). He's also got a new Space Puzzlefest coming out later this month: a dozen puzzles that are part of a larger metapuzzle. Check it out.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Kacey Walker and David Quarfoot

Relative difficulty: Medium or Challenging, I don't know

THEME: ANAGRAMS (63A: What the three possible answers to each of 26-, 36- and 44-Across are, leading to 27 possible solutions to this puzzle) — three theme answers are clued as SCRABBLE racks (7A: Game with its own dictionary); each theme answer has three possible solutions, all ANAGRAMS of one another

Theme answers:

WORRIED / ROWDIER / WORDIER (26A: Play in 7-Across with the rack DEIORRW)
RESIDED / DESIRED / DERIDES (36A: Play in 7-Across with the rack DDEEIRS)
GARDENS / DANGERS / GANDERS (44A: Play in 7-Across with the rack ADEGNRS)

Word of the Day: SKID (25D: What one might attach to a vehicle after a snowstorm) —

n.
1. The act of sliding or slipping over a surface, often sideways.
2.
a. A plank, log, or timber, usually one of a pair, used as a support or as a track for sliding or rollingheavy objects.
b. A pallet for loading or handling goods, especially one having solid sideboards and no bottom.
c. One of several logs or timbers forming a skid road.
3. skids Nautical A wooden framework attached to the side of a ship to prevent damage, as whenunloading.
4. A shoe or drag applying pressure to a wheel to brake a vehicle.
5. A runner in the landing gear of certain aircraft.
6. skids Slang A path to ruin or failure: His career hit the skids. Her life is now on the skids.

(thefreedictionary.com)
• • •

I admire the construction, but I didn't enjoy the solve. This is likely just bad luck on my part—putting in one of the three possible answers and having the necessarily forced/awkward cross clues make no sense to me. I say "necessarily forced/awkward" because they are clues that have to work for two different words. That's twelve different Down clues, each of which has to work for two different answers. So I wrote in RESIDED for the central Across, and then couldn't do anything with the short stuff on top of it. Nothing. This is all because I had never, ever heard of a SKID, meaning "a runner attached to the underside of an aircraft for use when landing on snow or grass." Just, never. So I kept going "well, it's SLED …" And that's pretty much where I stayed for a long time, until I realized, "oh, just put one of the ANAGRAMS in and see if that changes anything." Then in went DESIRES, and I saw SKIS, and then, hey, it's SIRI (31A: One with all the answers?), not SAGE or SIRE or whatever the hell else I'd been trying. Seriously, that SLED trap, combined with the actual answer's being a word unknown to me, really put a damper on my enjoyment of this. This is very much a constructor's puzzle—one meant to elicit "oohs" and "aahs," but not necessarily designed with solving fun in mind. But I will say that, to its credit, that ANAGRAMS thing actually worked. I mean, it saved my ass. So at least knowing the theme actually helped with the solve.

My other major issue with this puzzle was that, aside from that one epic faceplant in the middle of the grid, it was a cinch. Tuesday/Wednesday-easy. Having SCRABBLE as a flat-out gimme was just, well, too much gimme. And there were no great / interesting longer answers. So all the interest / challenge was in those crosses. Which meant all the interest / challenge was in the clues that were, by necessity, most tortured. I'm not mad at the puzzle. I think it's smart. It's just not a flavor of puzzle I personally enjoy. Also, I am an inveterate hater of SCRABBLE, in general, so this thing had its work cut out for it from the jump.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I do not recall "Citizen Kane"'s having Roman-numeraled scenes (5D: When Kane dies in "Citizen Kane") (SCENE I). I mean, it's great, but it's not Shakespeare.

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging, though maybe closer to Medium if I'd been less stubborn ...

THEME:none

Word of the Day: Victor Herbert (53D: "___ Modiste" (Victor Herbert operetta))

Victor August Herbert (February 1, 1859 – May 26, 1924) was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the tin pan alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna, Austria, and Stuttgart, Germany, during which he began to compose orchestral music. Herbert and his opera singer wife, Therese Förster, moved to the U.S. in 1886 when both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera. In the U.S., Herbert continued his performing career, while also teaching at the National Conservatory of Music, conducting and composing. His most notable instrumental compositions were his Cello Concerto No. 2 in E minor, Op. 30 (1894), which entered the standard repertoire, and his Auditorium Festival March (1901). He led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1898 to 1904 and then founded the Victor Herbert Orchestra, which he conducted throughout the rest of his life.
Herbert began to compose operettas in 1894, producing several successes, including The Serenade (1897) and The Fortune Teller (1898). Even more successful were some of the operettas that he wrote after the turn of the 20th century: Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste(1905), The Red Mill (1906), Naughty Marietta (1910), Sweethearts (1913) and Eileen (1917). After World War I, with the change of popular musical tastes, Herbert began to compose musicals and contributed music to other composers' shows. While some of these were well-received, he never again achieved the level of success that he had enjoyed with his most popular operettas.

• • •

Pretty ordinary except for the SE, where I floundered quite a bit. In retrospect, it really looks like I could've pulled myself out of the SE quicksand much faster if I'd just looked up—I had TURNED THE TA- in place in the central answer. Surely that would've been enough to see TURNED THE TABLES, which would've given me BR- at the head of 38D: Showed signs of life, which, when coupled with the smattering of crosses I think I already had, would most certainly have given me BREATHED and thus gone a long way toward opening up that corner. But I did not do that for some reason, and so BREATHED remained hidden, as did EEL (Gulper? Yeesh, no way) and MLLE. (…? I don't think I've ever even heard of Victor Herbert before today, let alone his opera with an abbr. in its title; again, yeesh, no way). BBGUNS, really hard to see. DIE LAUGHING, also Really hard to see with that clue (57A: Totally break up). So I pieced things together somewhat slowly, from OSAKA (off the "S") to OBLAST (a guess … I just know that word as a term relevant to Russian geography). So many common letters in that corner (mainly "E"s and "L"s) that the "K" from OSAKA and the "H" (!) from BREATHED ended up being really important just to get some kind of grip on how to parse those long Acrosses. Sadly, there was little that was entertaining about this struggle-corner. It is an adequate corner. Nothing wrong. But nothing great (except possibly the phrase DIE LAUGHING, whose clue I didn't really like). I felt this about most of the puzzle, actually, even though the rest of the puzzle was much easier for me—mostly adequate, partly interesting, only occasionally enjoyable.

[I saw this in the theater. I was roughly ten. I am seeing parts of it again right now for the first time in 34 years. Pretty sure it scarred me. Feels like a repressed traumatic memory. By 1980, my Bud Cort movie exposure was dangerously high. I have no idea what my mom was thinking.]

There's some gold-medal Scrabble-f***ing in the middle of this grid. When I wrote in that "Q" from COQ and then saw that the "Q" had a symmetrical "J" as its counterpart, I think I literally laughed out loud. Way to cram in those high-value tiles! That does … well, nothing to the quality of the grid. It has this superficially showy look, but the answers involved are pretty blah, even "JOHN Q" (27D: 2002 Denzel Washington thriller), a movie no one will remember but for crosswords. So depressing that STEVE CARELL gets a sad, already dated Maxwell Smart clue. He's done much better work *and* is currently an awards-season favorite for his portrayal of philanthropist / philatelist / naturalist / murderer John Eleuthère Du Pont in "Foxcatcher." He deserves better than a 2008 Maxwell Smart clue, is what I'm saying. "Daily Show"? "Crazy, Stupid, Love"? "Anchorman"? "Over the Hedge"? Holy crap, how is "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" about to turn 10 Years Old!?!? That just came out!

Otherwise, let's see … I really enjoyed 1A: "Perish the thought!" ("GOD, I HOPE NOT!"). While the rest of the grid is not bad, it's a bit dull in the long stuff and a bit creaky in the short stuff (ENE, XESIN, BIS, NOE, ATEN, NIM, ITE, TRE, IRREG, ETRE-TETE-COQ-MLLE, etc.) for my tastes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. clue on SUN TAN OIL is quite good (31D: Browning selection?)
P.P.S. "acid" in clues (33A), ACID- in the grid (13D) :(

Constructor: Josh Knapp

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium

THEME: awesomeness

Word of the Day: HMS BOUNTY (1A: Site of a 1789 rebellion) —

HMS Bounty, also known as HM Armed Vessel Bounty, was a small merchant vessel purchased by the Royal Navy for a botanical mission. The ship, under the command of William Bligh, was sent to the Pacific Ocean to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to British possessions in the West Indies. That mission was never completed, due to a mutiny led by the acting Master, Fletcher Christian. This was the famous Mutiny on the Bounty. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've gotten into this weird habit of late. I fall asleep early (like 9 or 10pm), then wake up a couple hours later, then solve / blog, then (eventually) sleep some more. It's pretty great. I remember reading some years ago about "second sleep"—that pre-modern sleep patterns were likely to feature a middle-of-the-night waking period. And I remember thinking, "that sounds cool." And it is. I mean, I still have that semi-sh***y "just woke up from a nap" feeling for a while, *right* before I solve the damned puzzle, so it's not all bourbon and chocolate, but I'm pretty in to the overall rhythm of the sleep-solve-write-read-sleep thing. Why am I telling you this? I don't know, but I loved this damned puzzle. I mean, Loved it. Frame it and hang it, because you're just not going to see much better than this. So clean, so current, so smartly clued. Time and again I had that great "Huh? … what the hell? … damn … OH!" feeling when solving a clue. I got through it in reasonable time, but the whole time I had that exhilarating/nauseating feeling I used to get when I'd break through to a new level of Donkey Kong and stuff would just be coming at you so fast and you feel like you're barely holding it together but you're somehow not dying! Yee haw. I don't think there's a bad answer in the grid. Not one. SO-SO POPO! Even the tiny stuff is making me smile.

[22A: Dimwitted title character of a 2001 comedy]

HA ha, I only just now got the clue at 51A: Number one number two (ADAMS). It was bugging me that I couldn't parse the clue correctly. "I know ADAM was the 'number one' man, but how do you get from there to plural ADAMS?" A: You don't. It's John ADAMS, the first ("Number one") vice president ("number two") of the U.S. Oh, HANDM—that is almost an answer I don't like, but only because it's really H&M (the way BTEN is B-10). But I've been kind of nostalgic for ampersandwiches lately. Feels like they don't come around much any more. So here's to you, HANDM. If HANDM is the worst a puzzle HANDs you, you're in good shape. I will say, though, that I'd've changed MENNEN to TENNER (10-pound note), just to get rid of HAND so close to HANDM. Picky, yes, but … well, you read this blog, so you can't be surprised.

I realized mid-solve that the puzzle was something special (which doesn't happen often—usually I'm just on GO!). Threw KIM JONG-IL across, thought "damn, that's good," then allowed myself a moment's reflection on everything I'd solved to that point: all real answers, no crap anywhere, a banks of long Downs (UNFAZED NEOCONS TWO-TONE) that's amazing in its own right, even though it's masquerading as a mere passageway from one section of the grid to another. And somehow the puzzle managed to finish (SE corner) on a high note. Oohed and aaahed (!) at every long Across as it came into view down there. It's very clear that high word--count themelesses that have been polished within an inch of their lives are the puzzles most likely to hit my happy zone. All killer, no filler, I AVER.

[TWO TONE]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (with chewy Medium-Challenging center)

THEME:"Holdup Man"— puzzle is about ATLAS (102D: Mythological figure hinted at by the answers to the eight starred clues as well as this puzzle's design); ATLAS is (in the grid) positioned directly beneath and thus visually sort of "holding up""the world" (that floating ball of squares in the middle of the grid). Theme answers are common phrases that you can kind of punnily associate with the whole ATLAS situation…

Theme answers:

SUPPORTING ACTOR (23A: *One who's not leading)
BRACE YOURSELF (29A: *"I have some bad news…")
PILLAR OF STRENGTH (16D: *Comfort provider during difficult times)
WEIGHT OF THE WORLD (37D: *Crushing burden)
UPPER BACK PAIN (100A: *What a massage may relieve)
SHOULDER THE LOAD (114A: *Not shirk a difficult task)
HEAVY DUTY (69A: *Very durable)
MR. OLYMPIA (45D: *Arnold Schwarzenegger, once)

Word of the Day: DEEP WEB (78A: Content that's hard for a search engine to access) —

noun
the part of the World Wide Web that is not discoverable by means of standard search engines, including password-protected or dynamic pages and encrypted networks.
"the biggest weakness of the Deep Web is also its greatest strength: it's really hard to find anything" (google)

• • •

This puzzle is like a very well-made car that I would not, personally, care to purchase. This is to say, I recognize that what we have here is a thoughtful theme and heroic (!) execution, but the cuteness of the theme answers was a bit cutesy. For Me. I still admire the hell out of this thing for a lot of reasons, namely its sheer creativity (specifically, to the "earth" in the middle of the grid) and the pair of loopy but fun answers I've never seen or heard of before, but trust actually exist (DEEP WEB, ROBOT SUMO). The "earth" part of this grid was both the most impressive and the most enjoyable part of the solve, largely because it was the only part of the solve with any teeth. I really had to fight to conquer that damned orb, whereas I went through the rest of the puzzle like it wasn't there. If I hadn't hit the chewy center, I'd've had a record Sunday time, easy. As it was, I still finished under 10 (fast for me). Impressive that the "earth" part has two additional theme answers, as well as one very creative abbr. I've never seen before (P.O. BOX NO.). I don't know what native WIT is, or who Pasquale AMATO is, and if I've seen Warren ADLER before, I don't recall, but otherwise the extraterrestrial parts of the puzzle put up virtually no resistance. Toughest part was probably the far SE, where [Forte] (LOUD) and [Break] (TAME) were terse and enigmatic enough for me to need all the crosses—including SUMO, which I had to infer.

OK, good Sunday. Onward. Oh, a reminder (to myself as well as you): my regular first-Monday-of-every-month guest blogger will be back for tomorrow's write-up, even though it's the second Monday of the month (I screwed up and spaced out last week, doing the whole write-up before realizing it wasn't my turn). So do return for that. Bye then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Well, now that last week's SNAFU is over, it's back to our...regularly...scheduled........ANNABEL!!!!!!!!!

Constructor: Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Hard (for a Monday!!!) (for ME on a Monday that is)

THEME: SAY SEE SCI SO SIOUX— The first syllable of each theme answer starts with an S, and rhymes with A / E / I /O / U

Theme answers:

SAYHEYKID (17A: Nickname for Willie Mays)
SEENOEVIL (25A: Catchphrase for a monkey with its eyes covered) 🙈
SCIFICONVENTION(38A: Where Darth Vader might meet Captain Kirk)
SOFARAWAY (52A: Carole King hit from "Tapestry")
SIOUXCITY (64A: Iowa port on the Missouri River)

Word of the Day: SEGO (25D: Lily with bell-shaped flowers) —

The Sego Lily, Calochortus nuttallii, is a bulbous perennial which is endemic to the Western United States. It is the state flower of Utah.

The bulbs of this and other Calochortus species were roasted, boiled or made into a porridge by Native Americans and were also used as a food source by the Mormon pioneers in Utah. Currently, it is grown as an ornamental for its attractive tulip-shaped flowers. (wikipedia)

• • •

What a great puzzle to come back to after last week's SNAFU! Really liked the alliteration in the northeast corner (ONETO, OCTET, OTERI, ORA). There were also a few words I genuinely didn't know, which was nice for a Monday, and I found out that SEGO lilies are really pretty! The Down clues in particular, though, left me a little AT SEA. I wonder how Down-only people did today?

The theme was nice, and as simple as A-B-C...er, A-E-I-O-U. I didn't understand it at first, and needed one of Rex's BFFs (my mom) to help me, but once I did, I liked it a lot. It would have been cool if the words had been linked in more ways, though, but hey, it's a Monday!

Bullets:

SCIFICONVENTION(38A: Where Darth Vader might meet Captain Kirk)— This one stuck out as a theme clue a little, because of that extra C, but A) it sounds the same so it doesn't matter and B) you'll never see me complaining about a SCI-FI CONVENTION! Actually...my friend went to one of those, and brought me back some Kirk and Spock figures from Star Trek, so naturally, I sent them on an adventure around my room.

"What is it, Mr. Spock?"
"It appears to be some sort of...mind-weapon, used in one of this planet's brutal coming-of-age rituals."

They also went waltzing, and got attacked by an alien strangely similar to a cat...so, basically, Season 3 of the original series.

BIGOT (8A: Archie Bunker type)— I have never watched All in the Family, but I immediately recognized Archie Bunker from a 1982 MAD Magazine parody, which then made it into an 864-page anthology, which I have read so many times I have some of it memorized. So, fellow students, if you want to be super smart, read comics all day.
ARE (Diamonds ___ a girl's best friend)— Song jackpot!!! Okay, okay, so I originally knew this one from Moulin Rouge, not Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but Marilyn Monroe's version has shown me that both are equally fabulous. "Square-cut or pear-shaped, these rocks don't lose their shape…"

KOI (Japanese pond fish) — When I was little, I had two goldfish named Tilly II and Tess II. (These were replacements for the first Tilly and Tess, who died the day after we got them because goldfish do that a lot.) At a certain point, Rex's BFF my mom decided she did not want to take care of them any more, and, apparently, they're bad feng shui, so she put them in the neighbor's koi pond fifteen years ago. They're still alive, swimming around, making friends with the koi and thinking of me and my mom!

…Wait, the Internet says koi eat goldfish...

FAVA (____ bean) — "I ate his liver. With fava beans and a nice chianti."
Just like the koi did with Tilly II and Tess II!

Well, that about wraps up this Monday. Thank you Rex for being awesome, and thank you all for reading, and don't eat any goldfish! (Seriously - I'm not even sure they're NONTOXIC.) I will see you all next month, on time, hopefully!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired high school student

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

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

THEME: SHOE (67A: Item depicted by this puzzle's circled letters) stepping on gum— this is what the circled squares depict when you connect them all with a pen or maybe just your mind...

Word of the Day: D LEAGUE (7D: N.B.A. farm system, informally) —

The NBA Development League, or NBA D-League, is the National Basketball Association's official minor league basketball organization. Known until the summer of 2005 as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL), the NBA D-League started with eight teams in the fall of 2001. In March 2005, NBA commissioner David Stern announced a plan to expand the NBA D-League to fifteen teams and develop it into a true minor league farm system, with each NBA D-League team affiliated with one or more NBA teams. At the conclusion of the 2013–14 NBA season, 33% of NBA players had spent time in the NBA D-League, up from 23% in 2011. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, the league will consist of 18 teams; 17 will be either single-affiliated or owned by an NBA team, with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants being the lone exception. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, once I was done, I could indeed draw a reasonable facsimile of a shoe by connecting all the relevant letters. And there's some GUM, cute. Sadly, though, before I got to the art portion of our puzzle, I had to endure the actual-putting-letters-in-boxes portion of our puzzle, and *that* was decidedly less fun. The fill here is nothing short of abysmal, especially for a 78-word Tuesday, especially for the puzzle that bills itself as the best in the world or whatever they're saying now. I'm trying to find some way to express my feelings about -EERS, and … I think my favorite ("favorite") thing about it is that it's crossing EERO. If you're going to put bad (i.e. terrible) fill in your grid, why not be comical about it. Cross it with something that is also not desirable, and that kind of rhymes! At least that makes the badness semi-interesting. ODO and OVO and AH, SO!? If "GUM" is the thing the toe of the shoe is stepping on, I can only assume that the AH, SO under the heel is a kind of metaphor for that other material you wouldn't want to step in.

The puzzle doesn't even bother to try to hide the easternmost SOLE and the HEEL. Honestly, this puzzle is at least two drafts away from being presentable. Hide those words and make the fill even semi-presentable, and you've got a cute little Tuesday. But as is, no. It's bad. AIRCON? I keep laughing every time I look at that answer, for three reasons. 1. No one ever says that (though in last two minutes I've had one person tell me it's British, and another tell me he (not British) grew up saying it but was recently mocked by a 20-something for saying it), 2. It's hilarious that it's clued as [House cooler, for short], as us normals have an even *shorter* way of saying it (or writing it, anyway) … and 3. because I like to imagine AIRCON is some kind of sequel to "CON AIR." Gah. You know, the problem is almost never "bad idea." It's almost always, lately, "decent idea that hasn't been sufficiently well developed or polished or crafted." The "Good enough!" mentality reigns. So many OYS.

I liked D LEAGUE (7D: N.B.A. farm system). That's about it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Selenium Hinton — authors whose names start with two initials have those initials reimagined as symbols for elements of the periodic table:

Theme answers:

THORIUM WHITE (for T.H. White) (20A: "The Sword in the Stone" author, to a chemist?) (couldn't remember dude's name and had to *force* myself not to simply do a 180 and look on my shelf…) (also, this clue really really really should've been ["The Once and Future King" author, to a chemist?]—the "Sword in the Stone" is just one volume in "TOAFK," and is better known, title-wise, as a fairly cruddy animated movie)
CESIUM FORESTER (for C.S. Forester) (34A: "The African Queen," author, to a chemist?) (yes, Lewis would've been better, but Lewis wouldn't have allowed for the all-important theme answer symmetry…)
PALLADIUM JAMES (for P.D. James, R.I.P.) (43A: "The Children of Men" author, to a chemist?)
MERCURY WELLS (for H.G. Wells, lover of Margaret Sanger, about whom you can read at length in Jill Lepore's new (fabulous) book, "The Secret History of Wonder Woman") (58A: "The Island of Dr. Moreau" author, to a chemist?)

Word of the Day: Tarquinius Superbus (66D: Title for Tarquinius Superbus => REX) —

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (died 495 BC) was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome, reigning from 535 BC until the popular uprising in 509 that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen Superbus, a Latin word meaning "proud, arrogant, lofty". (wikipedia) (not a single mention of the word "REX" in the whole wikipedia write-up …)

• • •

I laughed out loud at the very first clue I saw (1A: Rocker Huey), which is always a good sign. I mean, it's not ha-ha funny, but something about those two words next to each other got me.

More solid goodness from Mr. McCoy. There's a hell of a lot of luck here, but you gotta be paying attention to be lucky like this—there just aren't that many well-known authors who go by their first two initials, and whose first two initials are also atomic symbols. Then throw in the fact that the thematic tetrad has to be able to fit into the grid symmetrically once their names have been converted to chemistry form … !? It's incredible that there are four such author names in existence, because there aren't that many author names left on the table, frankly. C.S. Lewis. S.E. Hinton, a few others. SELENIUM HINTON actually would've worked as an answer for this puzzle (theoretically, you could swap it out for Forester or James), but the names in the grid are almost certainly and definitely certainly more famous, respectively.

The fill is junkiest, predictably, in and around where the "Q" and "Z" (respectively) have been shoehorned into the grid. Most of the fill east of and including STOA is a bit icky as well. Still, I've seen soooo much junkier fill of late that this thing looks absolutely spit-shined by comparison, so I can't complain too much. And actually, on second glance, the fill around "Q" isn't too bad, and it probably seemed a pretty natural choice in that position, given the fixed (thematic) position of the "U" from MERCURY WELLS. MERCURY WELLS, by the way, is my favorite of the theme answers, because it sounds so much like someone's actual name. Like a late-'70s Golden State Warriors point guard or a jazz saxophone player or a beat poet or something. Whereas PALLADIUM JAMES maybe you could pass off as a drag queen, at best, while the others just sound like nonsense. Longer Downs in this one are pretty good, all manly JAWLINEs and ROUND-EYED wonder. High-five to that DRAWERS / DEBRIEFED pairing up there. Maybe they're not close enough to be a real pair. But I see a pair. A pair from which SHIH-TZU should stay far, far away. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry—I'm not sure I do either). See you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I get, and applaud, thematic consistency, but I don't really "get" why the book examples in the theme clues are all, also, movies. Feels like it was by design (why "Sword in the Stone" and not the more famous *book* title "The Once and Future King"?), but maybe it's just coincidence. Anyway, that's a kind of "consistency" I would find puzzling, as I do Not see the point.

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: [THROUGH] — phrases that go "___ through ___" are represented by the first part of the phrase literally passing through the last part of the phrase:

Theme answers:

NACHO [through] THEBES
EXPELS [through] LIP
IS NOT [through], DINGBAT!
SMUT [through] ISLAM

Word of the Day: ED AMES (42A: One of a group of singing brothers) —

Ed Ames (born Edmund Dantes Urick; July 9, 1927) is an American popular singer and actor.^[1] He is best known for his pop and adult contemporary hits of the 1960s like "When the Snow is on the Roses" and the perennial "My Cup Runneth Over". He was part of a popular 1950s singing group called the Ames Brothers. […] In the early 1960s, the Ames Brothers disbanded, and Ed Ames, pursuing a career in acting, studied at the Herbert Berghof School. His first starring role was in an Off Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, going on to starring performances in The Fantasticks and Carnival!, which was on Broadway. He was in the national touring company of Carnival.
Ames' dark complexion and facial bone structure led to his being cast regularly as a Native American. He played Chief Bromden in the Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, opposite Kirk Douglas.
Talent scouts at 20th Century Fox saw Ames in the production and invited him to play the Cherokee tribesman, Mingo on the NBC television series, Daniel Boone, with Fess Parker, Patricia Blair, Darby Hinton, and Veronica Cartwright. His character's father was an English officer. In an episode of Season One, Ames also portrayed Mingo's evil twin brother, Taramingo. Ames' main character was actually named Caramingo, but went by Mingo throughout the entire series. Ames played a bandit on a 1962 The Rifleman episode and guest-starred as Kennedy in the 1963 episode "The Day of the Pawnees, Part 2" on ABC's The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, with Kurt Russell in the title role. He guest-starred in 1963 on Richard Egan's NBC modern western series, Redigo. (wikipedia)

• • •

A reasonably strong example of this type of puzzle (where a common phrase is completed by mental addition of a word represented by an answer's action, direction, etc.)? There are mild consistency issues (two third-person singulars, CUTS and PULLS, but then a SLIP and a GOING; also two THE X phrases, but then a ONE'S X and an IN THE X phrase), but the core idea is just a missing "through," so on a syntactical level, all these theme answers work. I don't like PULLS [through] IN THE CLUTCH much, though. The IN just glitches the whole effect. IN is fighting "through" for directional primacy. It just feels like a clunker to me. Also, that section has PLU, which is D-grade fill. I honestly didn't know what it meant when I was finished (47A: Like arts and crafts: Abbr.). Couldn't think of anything it could possibly mean. Turns out it's an abbr. for "plural." Not anywhere I've ever seen, but somewhere. You can bet if it's in the grid, some dictionary somewhere has confirmed that it's legit. Still, PLU = ugh. I think the theme answer / grid set-up just gets you in a tight jam from the get-go, as you have very limited options where H---G is concerned (37A). And since PULLS and SLIP are also immovable, it's probably lucky that PLU is the only real casualty in that middle section. This puzzle has some junk, but it really doesn't make the puzzle creak and groan too much. Even the obvious Scrabble-f***ing in the SW *and* SE doesn't in fill that's *too* bad. NAM and NDAK and ATTN are not good, but we see them pretty frequently, and ESTERC… also, in my book, not good, but at least it's unusual. So mild thumbs-up for this one.

Bullets:

60A: Longtime Burmese P.M. (U NU) — old-skool crosswordese. Up there with U THANT. U NU is the shortest full name you'll ever see (at least in a crossword grid).
24A: Togs with red tags (LEVI'S)— About the last thing I got. I own LEVI'S. Several pairs, I think. I don't know what "red tags" refers to. I had no idea that was an identifying feature. Also, "togs," ugh. Sounds like a word ED AMES or one of the guys from The BOX TOPS would use. Actually, no, those guys are too hip.

18D: Ancient site of the Luxor Temple (THEBES) — I always (and I mean Always) forget that there is another THEBES besides the one in Aeschylus's "Seven Against Thebes" and Statius's "Thebaid" (i.e. the Greek one).
26A: Aerial anomaly (UFO) — gave me trouble. Thought the "aerial" was the thing your analogue TV used to need to get reception.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Evan Birnholz

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: JONI Ernst (34D: Iowa politico Ernst) —

Joni Kay Ernst (née Culver; born July 1, 1970) is an American politician who is the United States Senator-elect from Iowa, elected in the November 2014 election, defeating Bruce Braley, her Democratic opponent. She previously served as a Republican member of the Iowa Senatefrom 2011 to 2014 and is also a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard. Ernst is the first woman to represent Iowa in the United States Congress and the first female veteran in the U.S. Senate. (wikipedia)

• • •

Grid is just fine, but the clues were a. Saturday-level, and b. too cute and/or forced for me, much of the time. This was a Saturday puzzle. No question. A Medium to Medium-Challenging Saturday puzzle for me. A nearly 2x Friday puzzle. Could've been Friday. But the clues. JONI Ernst is not anyone, yet. She might be, in 2020, but she's not now. Now she is that Senator-elect best known for introducing hog castration to the lexicon of modern political advertising:

[Double threat: JONI and ERNST]

And FEHR? I'm supposed to know the N.H.L.'s *players' rep*!?!?! Baffling. I can't name the players' rep for any of the major sports. I wasn't aware it was a thing I was supposed to commit to memory—especially the players' rep of the least popular of the four major US sports leagues. Attempts to get cute with the [Talk show V.I.P.] double-up meant that I was asked to believe that a BOOKER is a "V.I.P." A BOOKER is important, I'm sure, but name one. . . I know. Me either. That clue was probably (or should've been) [N.J. Senator Cory] or something like that, originally. Between the two talk show clues and the Saturday-hard clue on ABBESS (1A: Person at the top of the order), and FEHR (again, ?!), I couldn't finish the NW until the very end. Eastern grid (the southeast in particular) was somewhat more tractable, though BASEMEN has a terrible clue (35A: Ones trying to prevent stealing). It's trying to get all misdirective and cute, but it's awkward and inapt from a baseball perspective. Without "first""second" or "third" in front of it, BASEMEN is odd. Not used. And catchers are the real steal preventers. It's defensible, this clue, but yuck. Get cutesy, you better *land* it. Otherwise, wince.

I had no idea how to spell ELISHA. I wanted ELIJAH. This made things awkward in the west. Also, I thought 32D: Run through the gantlet, say was TYPO. Sincerely. "Gantlet" is one of those words that is "right" but shifting hard to "gauntlet," which is what most people *say*, and what dictionaries list as the primary spelling ("gantlet" being the variant). British dictionaries list "gantlet" as "American." Anyway, doesn't really matter. Point is, I was sure the answer was TYPO. Well, not sure, because I figured out quickly that that wasn't going to work. HAZE… I got all from crosses. This patch in the west would've been Very hard had I not Hail Mary-guessed ADONIS and crossed it successfully with IDOL. The place was pretty blank before that moment. Finished with FIGHT, also poorly / cutsily clued (28A: All hits all the time?). That's a radio slogan, I think, but it is a poor "?" clue for the generic word FIGHT. [All hits all the time] sounds like a very violent FIGHT, i.e a subset of FIGHT. I "FIGHT" all the time without hitting anyone. Point is, boo. Again, grid is pretty nice, but the cluing just missed the mark too often for me. And, again, this should've run tomorrow.

I will say, though, that the clue on "THE WIRE" (48A: Series of drug-related offenses?) is excellent.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. congratulations to a certain young woman who guest blogs for me on the first Monday of every month—she found out just yesterday that she got into Wellesley, early decision.

Rent character Marquez / SUN 11-23-14 / Headmaster honorific / Five-time Jockey Club Gold Cup winner / Poem in our eyes per Emerson / Chinese company whose 2014 IPO was world's largest in history / What Gustave Dore's Confusion of Tongues depicts

French Sudan today / MON 11-24-14 / Longest river wholly in Switzerland / Shopaholic's indulgence / Beermaking knitting

American athlete born 11/25/1914 / TUE 11-25-14 / Early moon lander for short / Conifer with toxic seeds / Conventioneer's ID

1983 sci-fi drama / WED 11-26-14 / Old galley / Willow shoot / Like Toves in Jabberwocky / Sci-fi author Stanislaw / Letterman's favorite activity? / Doo-wop group with 1963 hit Remember Then / Biblical debarkation point

Statistician Silver / THU 11-27-14 / Second-largest moon of Saturn / Highest paid TV star of 2014 / State south of Veracruz / Sister of grand duchess Anastasia / Upwards of 170 beats per minute / Eastern terminus of Erie Canal / Actual first name of Tom Seaver Orson Welles

Gulf of Aqaba resort city / FRI 11-28-14 / Trading insider Boesky / Space blanket material / Italian port on the Tyrrhenian Sea / Theater magnate Marcus / Mother of the Freedom Movement, to friends / Tolkien protagonist

Historic residential hotel in Manhattan / SAT 11-29-14 / But in Bonn / King of old comics / Onetime host of CBS's Morning Show / Boxer who won 1980's Brawl in Montreal / Principal lieutenant of Hector in Iliad / Nickname in Best Picture of 1969 / Masks Confronting death painter 1888

Website for customer reviews / MON 12-1-14 / Spoon-bending Geller / Mineral layer involved in tracking / Sleuth in old crime fiction

Reorganize computer data to improve performance informally / TUE 12-2-14 / Landslide winner of 1972 / April Love singer 1957 / Drinking buddy for Falstaff / Harmful bloom aquatic growth / Seductive Austin Powers android / Polynesian dietary staple / 2000 Richard Gere title role /

Daisy Mae's love in funnies / WED 12-3-14 / Mongolian for red / Jason who was 2000 A.L. M.V.P. / Nonpolygamous grouping / Swing Shift actress Christine / Suisse sweetheart

Plant protrusion / THU 12-4-14 / Woman's name with ring to it / Singer on Canada's Walk of Fame since 2005 / 1977 horror film set at sea / Car that famously debuted on E Day /

Title bird in Rimsky-Korsakov opéra / FRI 12-5-14 / Old show horse / Umami source briefly / Furry oyster cracker / Social even in no no nanette / French soliloquy starter / 2002 Denzel Washington thriller / Ancient game much studied in game theory

Site of 1789 rebellion / SAT 12-6-14 / Bygone Asian dynast / Certain street dancer in slang / Four-time Pro Bowler Michael / Bygone bomber whose name is call in bingo / Director Justin of Fast Furious franchise

Coordinated gene cluster / SUN 12-7-14 / Operatic baritone Pasquale / Bartiromo of Fox Business / Engineers competition set in ring / Warren who wrote war of roses / Sci-fi shooter / Superfood used in smoothies / Godfather enforcer who sleeps with fishes /

"Airplane!" star Robert _ / MON 12-8-14 / Carole King hit from "Tapestry" /"Airplane!" star Robert _ / Lily with bell-shaped flowers / Charlotte of "The Facts of Life" / Nickname for Willie Mays / Certain vacuum tube

Doggone quaintly / TUE 12-9-14 / Black Swan role / Gotcha facetiously / William Sydney Porter's pen name / Doggedly pursuing / Mad Libs label / Fork-tailed bird / Gently used transaction / Pre-ayatollah leader

Chair designer Charles / WED 12-10-14 / Greek walkway / Taiwanese PC maker / Street performer in invisible box / Rocker Huey / Land bordering Lake Chad / Title for Tarquinius Superbus /

Longtime Burmese PM / THU 12-11-14 / Togs with red tags / Brand name in immunity boosting / Fox's partner on X-Files / Ancient site of Luxor Temple / Old service site informally / Aerial anomaly / Cat Stevens surname now / 1975 Tony-winning play with Latin name /

Iowa politico Ernst / FRI 12-12-14 / NHL players representative Donald / Relative of harrier / Number of weeks in il Giro d'Italia / Land east of Babylonia / Tuber grown south of border / Car modified for flying in Absent-minded professor