Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Langston Hughes's "CORA Unashamed" (6D) —

The Ways of White Folks is a collection of short stories by Langston Hughes, published in 1934. Hughes wrote the book during a year he spent living in Carmel, California. The collection, "marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism," is among his best known works. Like Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman (1899) and Wright's Uncle Tom's Children (1938), it is an example of a short story cycle. […] David Herbert Donald called "Cora Unashamed"— one of the stories in The Ways of White Folks — "a brilliantly realized portrait of an isolated black woman in a small Middle Western town, who stoically survives her own sorrows but in the end lashes out against the hypocrisy of the whites who employ her." That story was adapted into a film of the same name from The American Collection directed by Deborah M. Pratt, starring Regina Taylor and Cherry Jones, and released in 2000. Cinematographer Ernest Holzman won an American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Award, for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Movies of the Week/Mini-Series'/Pilot for Network or Basic Broadcast TV, for his work on this film. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeah, here we go. Here's Friday's puzzle. Found it. It was hiding. In Saturday's spot. Finished this one several minutes faster than I did yesterday's, borne forward on a fortuitous series of gimme-waves (BUTTOCKS! ANTS ON A LOG! LONI!) and helped along by generally easier clues. Maybe the difficulty difference has something to do with word count. Yesterday's was lower (68, I think, v. today's max 72), and it's just generally easier to find toeholds in higher word-count puzzles. The way this grid is structured, it's basically all toe-holds. No big patches of white. I guess the NW and SE are sizable, in their ways, but they're riven through by so many 3s and 4s that finding purchase shouldn't have been that tough. To its credit, the puzzle kept those 3s and 4s pretty toughly clued. Still, there are just so many ways to come at this one, so many ways to work around whatever impasse you might hit. This is not a bad thing. What's weird, though, is that the fill on this one is actually not as good as yesterday's, overall. I mean, it's not bad, either, but there is a bunch more short junk here (yesterday's grid was pretty damn clean—it was the off cluing that I had a problem with). The only bits that really bothered me was the BAD / EMS cross-reference (EMS is indeed BAD; don't make it worse by forcing me to spend longer with it than I have to) (42A: With 54-Across, spa town on the Lahn River) and STUS ("Lakers commentator"???? *And* others??) (19A: Lakers commentator Lantz and others). And the ridic clue on ONO (5D: Mackerel variety on Hawaiian menus). Most of the other common short stuff is shake-offable, and more than made up for by solid longer fill.

I think of LIQUOR UP (17A: Become ripped) as a transitive verb phrase. You LIQUOR someone UP. Or maybe you also get liquored up. Something about the phrasing here, making LIQUOR UP something akin to REST UP or GAS UP, just felt off. I get that you wanted to use misdirection in your clue, but: clonk. KNURL has to be one of the ugliest words in the English language (7D: Small projecting ridge). Linguistically Moreauvian. Unholy offspring of two words that should never have gotten together. I have to boo at STREET MEAT, as I just don't think that's a thing. STREET FOOD (what I put in the grid at first)—totally a thing. STREET MEAT sounds like some kind of sex slang. I'd like to give high-fives to "TEQUILA" (as clued!), HIT ME UP, and JABBER. The clue on CALI is exquisite (25A: City known for its traffic violations). I liked this puzzle, though the [Somewhat] trilogy (40D, 21D, 36A) really saps the puzzle's energy. It's like I'm being encouraged to think, "Meh."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jim Peredo

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Well, Golly!" — "Gee" sound added to familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily ("?"-style)

Theme answers:

KITTY LITURGY (23A: Religious rituals for cats?)
KANJI ARTIST (42A: Master of Japanese writing?)
WEIRD ALGAE (52A: Strange pond scum?)
GENIE JERK REACTION (67A: "Grant your own damn wishes," e.g.?)
BEE GEE LINE (87A: "How deep is your love?" or "You should be dancing"?)
GPS, I LOVE YOU (93A: Comment from a driver who finally reached his destination?)
OH, DARJEELING (115A: Surprised comment upon rummaging through a tea chest?)

Word of the Day: ZOLTAN Korda (26D: Korda who directed "Sahara") —

Zoltan Korda (3 June 1895 – 13 October 1961) was a Hungarian-born motion picturescreenwriter, director and producer. He made his first film in Hungary in 1918, and worked with his brother Alexander Korda on filmmaking there and in London. They both moved to the United States in 1940 to Hollywood and the American film industry. […] In 1940, Zoltan Korda joined his brother Alexander in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Working through United Artists, he served as executive producer of The Thief of Bagdad. Zoltan Korda spent the rest of his life in southern California. He made another seven films, including the acclaimed 1943 World War II drama, Sahara (1943), for which he wrote the screenplay. It starred Humphrey Bogart. His films included A Woman's Vengeance (1947) with Charles Boyer and Jessica Tandy. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is the oldest theme in the book—or one of them—but it's mostly redeemed by a couple of features: genuinely funny theme answers, and a fairly wide open, fairly clean grid. I have to say that just this week, the overall fill quality of the puzzles appears to have taken at least a slight upturn. I haven't seen an avalanche of crud all week, that I can recall. I don't know if this is an anomaly, but I hope not. Perhaps there will be a renewed sense of commitment to polish. One can hope.

This is not the most contemporary of grids. Most of the fill feels like it could've come straight out of the era in which one might've said "Well, Golly" unironically. Even the internet slang (NETIZENS) feels dated. Still, though, we're not talking about bad dated. We're just talking about a lack of contemporary reference, which is fine if most of the answers are well-known words or phrases, one that people of any generation might know and use. I do want to give props to BESTIE, though—a nice little modern flourish. There's only one teensy glitch in the theme, and that's that you have to change the stress of the phrase pronunciation when you add the "gee" sound in GENIE JERK REACTION. "Knee" goes from stressed to unstressed syllable. This (admittedly minor) change doesn't happen with the others. It almost happens with DARJEELING, but I think of that word as (oddly) having three equally stressed syllables. Am I in the woods here, in the minutiae, chasing fireflies as they (don't) say? But it's true, none of those other added "gee" sounds change the stress of the original phrase. Consider it an observation rather than a criticism.

[Two of the base phrases are Beatles songs—can you find the other?]

Trouble? Some. Not much. ZOLTAN and JALAPA (exotic proper nouns both) were unknown to me, so there was some effort required in the NE. I had to scan the whole grid to find my error at DIPS / DOODLER. I had TIPS / TOODLER. I couldn't make any sense of the DOODLER clue (66D: Many a bored student). I had TODDLER at one point. I also couldn't process 103A: Arsenal workers (ARMORERS), as I now know Arsenal primarily / exclusively as an English Premiere League football team, and thus briefly couldn't remember what "arsenal" even meant. Even picturing the damn cannon logo of the football team, I couldn't remember. I had ARBORERS at one point, that's how far I'd lost the thread. Also, 121A: "Just ___" left me blank. And I had AS-. "Just a se-"? "Just as I…"? Not (for me) an easy FITB. Anyway, overall, nice little diversion. Simple theme, pleasantly executed. Nothing stunning, but not a faceplant, either.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel and Dennis Ryall

Relative difficulty: Easy (my fastest time in years)

THEME: STOP (69A: "Freeze!"… or, when broken into three parts, how the answer for each of the six starred clues goes) — they start with "S" and end with "P"

Theme answers:

SLAP (1A: *Obstetrician's action on a newborn's behind)
STANLEY CUP (18A: *Goal an N.H.L.'er shoots for?)
SKINNY DIP (20A: *Go swimming in one's birthday suit)
SKI TRIP (40A: *Visit to Vail, maybe)
STEEL TRAP (56A: *Sharp mind, figuratively)
SUMMER CAMP (61A: *Setting for "Meatballs" or "Friday the 13th")

Word of the Day: Jack OAKIE (65A: Actor Jack of "The Great Dictator") —

Jack Oakie (November 12, 1903 – January 23, 1978) was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. […] Oakie is probably most notable for his portrayal of Benzino Napaloni, the boisterous dictator of Bacteria, in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), for which he received an Oscar nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Award. This role was a broad parody of the fascist dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, this was easy. Even for a Monday, easy. Cluing was very straightforward and the theme is essentially a non-theme. Starting with "S" and ending in "P"… so, five unrelated things. Oh, sorry, six. I forgot about SLAP. Couple of things about this theme: it's an old concept, this breaking STOP into three parts. When I've seen it done before, it has involved a letter change (i.e. turning "S" to "P," to wacky effect). I don't think I've seen this interpretation of the S TO P concept before. I don't know what to say about it. There it is. I do think the theme density, particularly up top, gets you into some fill problems. I mean, stacking those two themers gives you an overlapping succession of letters that are not that fill-friendly. Ends -TD. Ends -AI. Has -NP- in the 3 & 4 spots of a five-letter answer. Probably lucky to get out of that mess with ERL as the only atrocious bit of fill. On a Monday, I think ERL, ALAE and OAKIE are all pretty much unacceptable. Like ERL, OAKIE is in a danger zone (right next to overlapping themers again). And I have a theory about ALAE, which is that it's also a victim of theme pressure—my hypothesis is that STP was supposed to be a themer. That this grid was designed to have STP there, in the crossing center position. Then perhaps the editor was like "that's a really weak themer, let's pretend it's not one" but then didn't have constructors rework the grid. How else to explain the fact that it's an answer that goes from S to P, in a totally acceptable theme position, that is yet unstarred? This means ALAE is sitting smack between two very theme-dense areas, which would explain its existence. Otherwise, how in the world do you end up with ***ing ALAE in your Monday puzzle?

The clue on SLAP is disturbing on several levels. It's the syntactic level that bugs me most, though. "Action on a behind" is such odd, inelegant, creepy phrasing. Otherwise, cluing seems fine. Just dull.

SALARY CAP, STUTTER STEP, STOCK TIP … you could go on and on. But please don't. Let's just leave this be and move on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Joel D. Lafargue

Relative difficulty: DOOK

THEME: THE BEE GEES (60A: Trio whose members start 17-, 26- and 44-Across) — theme answers all share the first names of the brothers GIBB (66A: Last name of 60-Across):

Theme answers:

BARRY WHITE (17A: R&B singer backed by the Love Unlimited Orchestra)
ROBIN WILLIAMS (26A: Late comic genius)
MAURICE SENDAK (44A: Children's author/illustrator with a National Medal of Arts)

Word of the Day: Jane ADDAMS (45D: Jane who won a 1931 Nobel Peace Prize) —

Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer American settlementsocial worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. In an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilsonidentified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed the vote to be effective in doing so. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is a non-starter. It's a non-theme. There is nothing happening. It's so literal, so weirdly untricky, that I half-suspect I'm on Candid Camera. Or, in slightly more modern parlance, that I'm being Punk'd. The gratuitous, extra, doesn't-have-a-symmetrical-partner GIBB is just the unasked-for cherry on an otherwise unadorned sundae. I'm at a loss. There's no word play. There's no play at all. There's no twist. There's nothing. Yes, those are the names of the brothers, and those names are not uncommon. Other people have those names. Some of those people are famous. Who cares? One of them sings; that's kind of a connection. Kind of. But. But. There's just nothing here. No revelation. I can't remember seeing a theme this rudimentary in forever. How in the world does this theme "tickle" anyone? A bunch of two-word phrases where the first word started with "B" and the second word started with "G"—*that*, while not earth-shattering, would've made Sooooooo […] ooooo much more sense. BILL GATES! BUDDY GUY! BETTY GRABLE! But this. This. What is this?

The fill is EDUCE-A-MINT. It is what it is. HI-DE-HI.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Stu Ockman

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging

THEME: some rhetorical devices— I don't even know, really...

Theme answers:

IT'LL TAKE FOREVER (17A: Hyperbole for an arduous task)
MAKE HASTE SLOWLY (22A: Oxymoron for cautious travel)
NOT UNATTRACTIVE (45A: Litotes for beauty)
AS THICK AS A BRICK (50A: Simile for denseness)

Word of the Day: NENE Leakes (56A: Leakes of reality TV) —

Linnethia Monique "NeNe" Leakes (/ˈniːniː/; née Johnson; born December 13, 1967) is an American actress, television personality, producer, author and fashion designer. She is best known for being on the reality television series The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which documents the lives of several women residing in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2013, she was commissioned to star in the spin-off series I Dream of NeNe: The Wedding, which focused on the preparations for her remarriage to husband Gregg Leakes.
Leakes portrayed the recurring character Roz Washington on the sitcom Glee since its third season in 2012, and has also played Rocky Rhoades on the award-winning sitcom The New Normal until its cancellation in 2013. Leakes appeared as a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice 4, where she finished in seventh place in 2011, and the eighteenth season of Dancing with the Stars. It was also announced that Leakes would be joining the cast of Cinderella on Broadway from November 25th, 2014. (wikipedia)

• • •

The best thing about this puzzle is the new, fresh (though totally unknown to me) clue for NENE. I was like "who the what?" but that's pretty legit screen cred she's got there. Nothing I've seen, but the clues can't all be "Broad City" and "Rockford Files."

[PKW is fill I can get behind…]

The rest of this puzzle is a disaster. Ill-conceived and weakly executed. We seem to have yet another non-theme. Just a very, very loose assortment of rhetorical devices that have nothing in common with each other, content-wise. They're just rhetorical devices. Oh, and they're all 15 letters long. Which brings us to this puzzle's bigger problem—72 words??? It's hard enough to make a good themeless at 72 words. Why in the world would you torture a themed grid like this if you don't have to. I mean, if you can pull it off cleanly, more power to you, but hoo boy. No. From the DPI / ALT / WELL KNIT (!?!?!) opener to the KEW / KUE (!) / AMI / AH ME (!!) closer, this thing has "No" / "Do Over" / "Refresh!!!" written all over it. EELER?! ADELA! So creaky … ISMANIS! RITTATEE! Boo. Delete. Escape. Reboot.

HYPER in the grid when "Hyperbole" is one of your rhetorical devices? No.

I'm done. I hear tomorrow's puzzle is good. So let's hope my intel's solid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: PIG LATIN (62A: Hint to interpreting the five starred clues) — clues are all real words / names that, when heard, can be interpreted as PIG LATIN renderings of other words:

Theme answers:

17A: *X-ray [i.e. Wrecks] (JALOPIES)
24A: *Ashtray [ i.e. Trash] (RIP TO PIECES)
32A: *eBay [i.e. Be] (LIVE AND BREATHE) (not STINGING INSECT?)
41A: *Outlay [i.e. Lout] (KNUCKLE-DRAGGER)
48A: *Airway [i.e. Wear] (DETERIORATE)

Word of the Day: George SEATON (67A: George who directed "Miracle on 34th Street") —

George Seaton (April 17, 1911 – July 28, 1979) was an American screenwriter, playwright, film director and producer, and theatre director. […] Seaton joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a contract writer in 1933. His first major screen credit was the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the Races in 1937. In the early 1940s he joined 20th Century Fox, where he remained for the rest of the decade, writing scripts for Moon Over Miami, Coney Island, Charley's Aunt, The Song of Bernadette, and others before making his directorial debut with Diamond Horseshoe in 1945. From this point on he was credited as both screenwriter and director for most of his films, including The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Miracle on 34th Street, Apartment for Peggy, Chicken Every Sunday, The Big Lift, For Heaven's Sake, Little Boy Lost, The Country Girl, and The Proud and Profane.
But Not Goodbye, Seaton's 1944 Broadway debut as a playwright, closed after only 23 performances, although it later was adapted for the 1946 film The Cockeyed Miracle by Karen DeWolf. In 1967 he returned to Broadway to direct the Norman Krasna play Love in E Flat, which was a critical and commercial flop. The musical Here's Love, adapted from his screenplay for Miracle on 34th Street by Meredith Willson, proved to be more successful.
Seaton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay twice, for Miracle on 34th Street (which also earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay) and The Country Girl, and was nominated for Oscars three additional times. He received The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1961. He directed 1970's blockbuster hit Airport, which earned 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Seaton's screenplay. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not much time to give to this one, as I had to sit here and wait nearly an hour for the NYT's website to behave. So now it's late. Anyway, the puzzle was mostly worth the wait—very clever. I don't usually like the whole answers-as-clues genre of puzzle, but the weird way this puzzle revealed itself made the answer phrases delightful, in a "what the hell?" kind of way. In retrospect, they can seem a bit forced (esp. LIVE AND BREATHE as an answer for the simple word [Be]), but the phrases are colorful and bouncy and I have no problem with them. I do think [Bee] would've been a better clue angle than [Be], but with the theme answers this densely packed, you gotta go with whatever works. The good thing about all the theme answers is that they are all good stand-alone phrases—unlike STINGING INSECT, which would make a fine clue for [Bee], but is no good on its own in the grid. All of these themers are plausible fill—not just clues posing as fill. Yes, this makes a big difference to puzzle quality / enjoyment, at least for me.

Fill is pretty nice, especially considering theme density. TINORE makes me squish my nose up a bit, but nothing else made me flinch even a little. OK, maybe GSN, which seems to be a casualty of trying to redeem ADEAL (45D) with the cross-reference IT'S (65A). If that's a problem, it's a small one. Favorite clue is probably 30D: Attribute of the 1%? (REDUCED FAT). It's bold, just this side of far-fetched. But that's why god invented "?" clues—to give leeway to boldness. I didn't know SEATON, but the rest of this was pretty much over-the-plate. Approved.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Brad Wilber and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LINE CUT (41D: Black-and-white engraving) —

NOUN
An engraving from a drawing consisting of solid blacks and whites, without gradations of color. (oxforddictionaries.com)

• • •

This is stunning work. This is what the "best crossword in the world" should look like All The Time—or at least most of the time. Fresh fill, vibrant phrases, clever cluing. There's a host of suboptimal fill—NEC SST ANI AMO ETD ENE DIR—but it's largely innocuous and it's holding together these gorgeous banks of longer answers. Looping, cascading, dancing—the lovely, crafted quality of this grid stands as a sharp visual rebuke to most recent NYT puzzles. Now, it's not really fair, as today we have not one but two of the very best constructors working today. No exaggeration. Can't remember the last time I did a puzzle by either of these guys where I was like "[frowny face]." At worst, good; mostly, great. Haven't seen a lot of their work in the NYT of late. They have been working other venues, for a variety of what I'm sure are very good reasons. But it's great to see them here. OJ TRIAL! Even their dated stuff sounds fresh!

Fast start on this as SPA TON and ELK went in 1 2 3, and those long Downs were not far behind. Had trouble rounding the corner up into the NE, as LITERS was not an intuitive answer for me to 5D: Some bottled water purchases (I was looking brand name). But I got STANDS ALONE from just the S-A- and things came together from there. TULLES is not a word I know. I confuse it with TUILES and TOILES and other things that are all jumbled together in my mind in a closet marked "Fabrics." Looks like each successive quadrant got a bit harder for me in this one. Easy NW, Pretty Easy NE, Mediumish SE, and Medium-Challenging SW, where not (exactly) knowing LINE CUT and not getting how SAGA is a good answer for 53D: Novel format and not being completely certain of SPIREA (45A: Flowering shrub whose name comes from the Greek for "coil") had me struggling a little. Also, I thought the "T" in SALT was "treaty" :( It's TALKS (49D: Part of SALT).

Best little surprise of the day was OPEN MRIS (23A: Tests that accommodate claustrophobes) Plural doesn't thrill me, but the term is very current, very common, and yet nothing I've ever seen in puzzles before. I also liked SENIORITIS, as it is timely (you'd know what I mean if you could see some of the student work on my desk right now…). My biggest hiccup of the day was 43A: Find a spot for, say. I had ADOPT. Later, I had ADMIT. Neither of those was right.

Gonna go watch the last "Colbert" now and then be sad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Kevin G. Der and Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Dock ELLIS (50D: Dock ___, Pirate who claimed to have thrown a no-hitter on LSD) —

Dock Phillip Ellis, Jr. (March 11, 1945 – December 19, 2008) was an American professional baseball player. A pitcher, Ellis played in Major League Baseball from 1968 through 1979 for the Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Yankees, Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers, and New York Mets. In his MLB career, he had a 138–119 win–loss record, a 3.46 earned run average, and 1,136 strikeouts.
Ellis threw a no-hitter on June 12, 1970. He later stated that he accomplished the feat under the influence of LSD. Reporters at the game say they do not believe the claim. Ellis was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game in 1971. That year, the Pirates were World Series champions. Joining the Yankees in 1976, he helped lead the team to the 1976 World Series, and was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year in the process.
Ellis was an outspoken individual who advocated for the rights of players and African Americans. He also had a substance abuse problem, and he acknowledged after his retirement that he never pitched without the use of drugs. After going into treatment Ellis remained sober and devoted the remainder of his life to counseling drug addicts in treatment centers and prisons. He died of a liver ailment in 2008 at the age of 63. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, Christmas is coming early this year. Or maybe it's the eight great puzzles of Hanukkah. Just a crazy Friday/Saturday themeless constructor line-up this weekend. Wilber/Peterson yesterday, Der/Livengood today. Makes me want to ask "Where the hell have y'all been lately?" But let's focus on the wondrous bounties of the present moment. I found yesterday's a snappier puzzle than this one here, but this one here is still lovely. A little sturdier, a little more inside-the-box, but still packing a decent wallop, and hiding a few real surprises. Biggest surprise (the one that came closes to knocking me flat on my ass) was UNO DUE TRE (13D: Italian count?). Try parsing that **** from the back end. Me: "What the hell ends in -UETRE!?" Had me doubting DEA and everything. Didn't help that the Italian answer was abutted by the highly questionable MANSLAYER. I mean, really, what is that? Murderer = slayer. MANSLAYER is redundant, at best. What, is it supposed to remind me that I'm not dealing w/ Fenimore Cooper's "The Deerslayer"? Manslaughter, I've heard of. Maneater, same (watch out boy, she'll chew you up). But MANSLAYER, choke yuck ack. I had the -SLAYER part and still struggled to get that. I teach crime fiction: no MANSLAYERs up in there.

Still, there's great answers APLENTY here. REAL GOOD stuff. Speaking of APLENTY, not so easy to see when you have decided 36D: Caterwaul is HOWL. Had 35A: In abundance ending in -ENTH for too long. Also went for NINJA over WICCA (9D: Practice with the Book of Shadows). Even in retrospect, seems plausible. The only thing I'd really never heard of was "NED'S Declassified" (54D: "___ Declassified" (old Nickelodeon show)). But then I never even saw the clue. That corner, and its symmetrical opposite, were pretty easy. It was the other corners that smacked me around a bit. 6x9s somehow way harder to piece together than the 5x8s. Puzzle started out very easy with a gimme at 1D: Tagliatelle, e.g. (PASTA), with the "P" then confirming my suspicions that 1A: Where much grass grows was POT-related. There were a sizable number of Gimmes today: PASTA, MOLIERE, SERAPE, novel-ETTE, Dr. DOOM, Janet MASLIN. Still, puzzle clocked in only slightly faster than usual. I think the clue on ABBA (5D: Ones repeating "I do" in 1976?) was my favorite, though I don't think it needs a "?", actually. Clue is pretty damn literal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Season's Greetings"— add "HO" sound for wackiness:

Theme answers:

HO HUM DINGER (22A: Homer that leaves people yawning?)
HOKEY WORD (24A: "Shucks!" or "Pshaw!"?)
BLACK-EYED HOPIS (42A: Southwest tribe after a fistfight?)
DESPICABLE HOMIE (67A: Backstabbing pal?)
NO-MONEY HOEDOWN (91A: Barn dance that's free to attend?)
CROSS HOBO (114A: Vagrant after getting kicked off a train, say?)
HOKUM TO PAPA (117A: Stuff your dad finds ridiculous?)

Word of the Day: MARA Liasson (111D: ___ Liasson, NPR political correspondent) —

Mara Liasson (/ˈmɑrə ˈlaɪ.əsən/; born June 13, 1955) is an American journalist and political pundit. She is the national political correspondent for National Public Radio^[1] and also a contributor at Fox News Channel. (wikipedia) (I will never not make public radio correspondents my WOTD … I'm coming for you, Ira Flatow …)

• • •

If you never solved a Christmas-themed puzzle in your life before today, this one likely seemed cute to you. And it is, without a doubt, a well-made puzzle, with a consistent theme and very good, fresh fill. If Joel (who works for W.S.) is being groomed for Will's job, well, fine by me. He's super-talented and lives in the 21st century, so thumbs-up. But back to the theme—I knew what it was before I started. Or, rather, I said to myself, "It's not just adding 'hos' to things, is it?" And then that's exactly what it was. Very good HO-adding, for sure, but very predictable HO-adding nonetheless. Either I am some kind of psychic *or* I've seen this theme before at least once. I mean, seriously, it was the most obvious / cliché theme I could think of off the top of my head, so it must've been done more than once. Still, though, these answers are new to me, and pretty funny on the whole. And you'll struggle to find bad fill here. The future looks bright. Here's to more careful editing, better attention to detail, and cleaner fresher fill in 2015. Not sure why I'm making the New Year's speech now, but I am.

My coup of the day was remembering SLYE (14D: Roy Rogers's real last name). Took me just 25 short years to commit that old-school GEM to memory. Yay me. TIM COOK (5D: Steve Jobs's successor at Apple) and EBOLA VIRUS (16D: Cause for quarantine) give the puzzle a very up-to-the-minute feel, while YOGA POSE and SOY LATTE show that the NYT *knows* its demographics. KUDOS also to BAR SCENE and its clue (11A: Likely feature of a college town). Took me a lot of crosses too see it, but when I did: your prototypical "aha" moment.

PUZZLE NEWS: Matt Gaffney's (amazing) Weekly Crossword Contest is going to a subscription-only basis in 2015 (and good for him—good puzzles are worth paying for). 52 top-tier meta-puzzles for just $26. All the details here. For aficionados and aficionados-in-the-making. Get some.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. SOY LATTE anagrams to SLYE TO A T. Like, when you describe a young Roy Rogers perfectly. "That's SLYE TO A T!" she said, delightedly.

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: PED XING (39A: Something often seen on a street corner, briefly … or , literally, something seen in eau corner of this puzzle) — four crossing "PED" letter strings:

Theme answers:

SPED AWAY/ IMPEDIMENT
SHARP EDGE / PEDRO
STAMPEDE / BRAKE PEDAL
PIPE DREAM / HOPED

Word of the Day: SOLON (70A: Wise man) —

Athenian lawgiver and poet. His reforms preserved a class system based on wealth but ended privilege by birth. [Thus…]n.
1. A wise lawgiver.
2. A legislator. (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Seen it. Well, a version of it, back in 2009, when the crossing PEDs were rebusized. But no matter—this is clean and reasonably clever. Very theme-dense. My only beef is … well, two beefs. 1. I prefer when the hidden/embedded word spans two words (as in SHARP EDGE) rather than simply sits inside a word (STAMPEDE) or (worse) sits inside one word in a two-word phrase, leaving that second word just flapping there in the non-thematic wind (SPED AWAY). There are many PEDs to deal with here, so phrase-spanning PEDs in every case would be too much to ask for, but it would have been elegant to have them in all the longer answers. And then 2. I prefer when embedded words find themselves in phrases in which their base meaning is disguised. In this case, that would've meant no "PED" where "PED" was referring to feet. But both IMPEDIMENT and PEDAL have the same Latin root (interestingly, STAMPEDEappears to have no etymological relationship to L. pes, pedis 'foot'). I can forgive IMPEDIMENT, since it isn't so obviously foot-related, but PEDAL feels too spot-on. Too related to the PED in PED XING. Yes I'm over thinking this, but (also) yes I think elegance is a worthy consideration, even in a Monday.

Bullets:

11D: Simple aquatic plant (ALGA) — this is one of three spots where I had some hesitation. Actually, here, I wrote in a flat-out wrong answer: ALOE.
32D: Late (TARDY) — Had TAR-Y. Wrote in TARRY—a weirdly related but clearly wrong answer.
70A: Wise man (SOLON) — Had the S- and couldn't come up with it immediately. Forgot SOLON was a generic term and not just a specific Athenian lawmaker.

That's all for today. My holiday eating regimen is sapping my energy a bit ...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"JACK and the BEANSTALK"— puzzle visually represents the fairy tale with JACK (in circles) at the bottom of the BEANSTALK, GIANT (in circles) at the top, and then the FEE-FI-FO-FUM chant represented in descending and *aaaaaalmost* (but not) symmetrical places in the grid.

Word of the Day: ESCALLOP (39D: Bake in a sauce) —

v.t.
1. to bake (food) in a sauce, milk, etc., often with breadcrumbs on top; scallop. (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

No thanks. I mean, it has potential, I guess, but the there are architectural issues, which create fill issues, which create grumpy-face. I mean, with that centered BEANSTALK, you've basically gotta stack sevens in all the corners (hence the cheater squares in the SW/NE corners—those are like release valves). Stacked sevens aren't hard to pull off, but here they are burdened by thematic constraints, and so we get the fallout: EZINE made me wince and ILLE made me check out entirely. Also, circling 5/6 of GIANTS… I mean, you can't really *hide* GIANT in another answer, but still, when you're hiding everything else, it stands out. It's not hard to "hide" FEE or FI or FO or FUM. They don't add much here. They're not symmetrical, as they really should be. and they don't have the right sounds inside their own answers, e.g. it's ELFIN, not ELFINE, and PERFUME, not PERFUM. Mainly it just feels anemic, weak, kind of pointless, not worth it.

[I'm posting this only because I sang it at the top of my lungs with my sister last night as she was driving us around town, with the mystified/horrified kids in the back seat…]

Further: clue on ENABLER is hilarious, in that it appears to be the opposite of true (20A: One helping an addict). If you are an ENABLER, you are not, I assure you, "helping" an addict. "PEACE" for ["Ciao"] is a massive stretch. ESCALLOP… I don't know what that is, but it's not really a fun Tuesday-level answer. Not sure when GASSER was last uttered unironically, but I guarantee you it was before I was born. And doesn't "gas" mean essentially the same thing? Clue on GO FOR (47A: Attempt, as a field goal) … as my friend just said, "You usually use that term when you don't attempt a field goal but try to pick up the first down."This whole puzzle just 46-Down. I prefer a puzzle that is 100% SARG-FREE(H). If you want some genuine (and seasonal) crossword entertainment, please try The Grid Kid's latest puzzle, "Ho-Ho Ha-Ha." It's pretty (read: very) racy, but approximately 763% funner than today's NYT.

Best news I heard today, puzzle-wise, is that in the new year, at least one daily crossword is going to start offering crossword constructors more money than the NYT currently does. And they probably won't be alone. I expect yet another daily to do the same in the near future. This means the NYT will (at a minimum) keep pace, or else watch its talent brain-drain (already well underway) speed up alarmingly.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: geographical puns— three answers all have symmetrical pun equivalents:

Theme answers:

CRY ME A RIVER (17A: 1955 Julie London hit) / CRIMEA RIVER (62A: Certain waterway to the Black Sea?)
GO-BETWEEN (33A: Intermediary) / GOBI TWEEN (44A: 11- or 12-year-old Mongolian desert dweller?)
PARASAIL (21A: Glide, in a way) / PARIS ALE (55A: Left Bank quaff?)

Word of the Day:"CRY ME A RIVER" (17A: 1955 Julie London hit) —

• • •

1955 Julie London hit!!? This clue alone says everything about why this puzzle skewed hard for me. You know, there was a much bigger (and *much* more recent) song with this same title. It hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2002. But I guess 1955 is closer to the typical NYT solver's comfort zone. Still. Somehow.

[2009 Justin Timberlake hit]

Between not knowing Julie London's work and having MAJOR for MACRO and the tough clue on TIME (4D: Cons do it) and the so-horrid-I-didn't-trust-it APAIR, that NW corner was a bit of a bear for me. Also, I had no real idea what the theme was until near the very end. Actually, I had half this puzzle filled in before I had a single theme answer (I mean, before I had a single "?" theme answer in). I don't know what a NATAL chart is. EPEE relates to sign language? No idea. I actually think the theme is kind of cute, but virtually everything about this puzzle skewed older and well out of my wheelhouse.

The fill here is less than strong. The Scrabble-****ing (in NE, SW) is mysterious. I don't really understand it. I mean, I do, but I don't. Actually, the SE corner almost makes me wish there'd been some Scrabble-****ing over there. It looks like a bunch of anagrams of the same word, over and over. Lots of subpar stuff here = OOLA, APAIR, ARIP, ENEROS (!), QEII, NOBIS, the SITON / SETON crossing … it was all a bit of a slog. But I did kind of dig the geographical puns, in retrospect.

Gotta go because my computer is gonna die and I don't have my charger :(

Happy Christmas Eve.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'd've liked APAIR if the clue had been ["Grow ___!"]

Constructor: Xan Vongsathorn

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging? Does that sound right? I was live-tweeting and drinking, so I have no idea ...

THEME: MIXED[NUT]S — all six permutations of "NUT," rebusized

Theme answers:

AMO[UNT] / G[UNT]OTING
WE[TNU]RSE / OU[TNU]MBER
CH[UTN]EY / SP[UTN]IK
RO[TUN]DA / PE[TUN]IA
DOW[NTU]RN / TARA[NTU]LA
[NUT]MEG / MIXED[NUT]S

Word of the Day: Joe Quimby (46A: Joe Quimby on "The Simpsons," e.g. => MAYOR) —

Mayor Joseph "Joe" Quimby, nicknamed "Diamond Joe," is a recurring character from the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, and first appeared in the episode "Bart Gets an F". A member of the Democratic Party, Quimby is the mayor of Springfield, and is a composite parody of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and certain other members of the Kennedy family who have entered politics. (wikipedia)

• • •

Merry Christmas. This will be one of my TERSEST write-ups ever, as it is late on Christmas Eve and everyone is heading off to bed in their new Christmas pajamas and I want to do same, asap. I was excited to see Xan's name as constructor today, as I haven't seen it for a while, and I like his work. I found this one quite hard at first, and then much less so, which is pretty standard with rebuses—they're brutal, then you pick up the gimmick, then they're not brutal. This grid doesn't even have an unusual name or term in it—I know, I looked. The fill is remarkably straightforward, though (mostly) not in a bad way. Outside the theme stuff, OPEN PIT is about as outré as it gets.

Nutmeg from Jacob Wild on Vimeo.
Fill in this one gets pretty rough in places, most notably in ETCHA / EHS / HAHAS territory. Yipes. But considering the theme density and the amount of very short fill, this thing's reasonably clean overall. My first thought on hitting the revealer was "I know I've seen this theme before." In fact, MIXED NUTS has been the revealer two other times since I started blogging, but one simply had rearranged "NUTS" hidden inside various theme answers, and the other rearranged specific nuts (i.e. CASHEW, PECAN, etc.) in the same fashion, and neither one of them was a rebus that worked in both directions and took all anagram permutations into account, so … I think this one wins. And to all a good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: WESSEX (42D: Alfred the Great's kingdom) —

Wessex (/ˈwɛsɨks/; Old English: Westseaxna rīce, "kingdom of the West Saxons") was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from 519 until the emergence of a unified English state during the early 10th century. (wikipedia)

• • •

Just over 6 minutes, and that's with maximum family post-dinner distraction all around me. My nephew got like half a dozen nerf … swords? Just an arsenal of brightly colored cutlery. Anyway, there's barely been a minute all day long when those weren't being sliced, thrown, balanced on one finger, etc. all over the house. Two kids are watching "Twilight Zone" right now, and even now, both have "knives" in their hands and are swinging them, balancing them, tapping them. Honestly, it's a ****ing nightmare. And still: 6 minutes. I didn't even bother to remove myself to a private place to solve. Full chaos all around me: 6 minutes. That's how I know this was Easy. There were some sticking points. ROMANO for ASIAGO (1D: Often-grated cheese). BOMB (?) for SLOB (4D: Home wrecker?). And then two words that I just can't accept. CONKERS (!??) (why would anyone know this? Is this in Dickens novels or something?), and LONGIES (oh no. no no. no. I'm wearing them right now, I wear them virtually every day from November to April, and no. "Long johns," yes. LONGIES? Yuck ugh and hell no. This is a beautiful grid, generally, but CONKERS and LONGIES made me grimace. Also, no abbr. hint anywhere in the MAYO clue, which I also deeply dislike (29D: Ingredient in Marie Rose sauce). I also simply have never ever ever heard of Marie Rose sauce.

Gimmes were reasonably plentiful, though: GENA, USA, GRAMOPHONES, ESPN. Then, with just the initial letter in place: AKIMBO, SWEPT, "ANGIE," NOVELLA. And one I got going, there was traction everywhere. NW and SE were hardest to get into, given the limited access routes. But GRAMOPHONES and MR. DEEDS got me out of the NW, and NOVELLA (38D: Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," e.g.) got me into the SE, so there just weren't any scary parts. It was just nice. A nice way to come down from a pretty massive Christmas meal. I've said it before and I'll say it again, to get a middle section like that, with answers from 6 to 14 letters long all running through each other, to come out that smoothly takes incredible talent and artistry. Berry, as usual, makes it look easy. Nothing flashy. Just clean, unforced fill. Nice.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ADAK (56D: Alaskan island or its principal town) —

Adak Island (Aleut: Adaax) is an island near the western extent of the Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Alaska's southernmost town, Adak, is located on the island. The island has a land area of 274.59 square miles (711.18 km²), measuring 33.9 miles (54.5 km) on length and 22 miles (35 km) on width, making it the 25th largest island in the United States.
Due to harsh winds, frequent cloud cover, and cold temperatures, vegetation is mostly tundra (grasses, mosses, berries, low-lying flowering plants) at lower elevations. The highest point is Mt. Moffett, near the northwest end of the island, at an elevation of 3,924 feet (1,196 m). It is snow covered the greater part of the year. Adak, Alaska is its largest and principal city.
The word Adak is from the Aleut word adaq, which means "father". (wikipedia)

• • •

NYT hasn't touched ADAK in 11 years, and no major puzzle outlet has touched it in 10. And you thought NDAK and SDAK were terrible. Yikes. I lead with this sub-tolerable bit of fill because it's at the heart of this puzzle's tragic flaw—a flaw I encountered only at the very end of what was to that point a very pleasurable solve. That SE corner was like … running a great race and being in sight of the finish line and then tripping over your laces, falling on your face, and being knocked unconscious. It's *so* much worse than every other part of the grid, that I have no idea why a. the constructor didn't sense that and fix that whole section, or b. the editor didn't insist upon a rewrite. It's the editor's responsibility, in the end, to get this stuff right. And ATARAXY (?) and ADAK (all the "?"s in the world) crossing a brand (?) of "pop-up preventer" that I've never heard of—that, that ain't right. If the pop-ups are being blocked, shouldn't I be AD-*UN*AWARE? Or is it ADA-WARE (made specially for dentists)? I figured -WARE was a suffix, as it so often is in internet contexts (e.g. malware, spyware, ADWARE!!!). Yeesh and yikes. In the end, I got the -DA- in ADAWARE from guess/inference. It was the best guess I had, despite the fact that ADAK in particularly looked absolutely nutso. Implausible in the extreme. But there it is. ADAK.

If the rest of the puzzle hadn't been so good, I wouldn't have cared nearly as much. It's the sore thumb quality of that quadrant that makes me mourn the Great puzzle this could have been. I mean … MALTHUS! (8A: Economist who wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population," 1798). I was like "whoa, highbrow!" Nice contrast to the super-lowbrow MTV MOVIE AWARDS, ADULT SWIM, SKYMALL, and GRAND THEFT AUTO / III! I mean, you could see only scant evidence of grid strain before the SE corner came along. MORIA is not great. ETAIL and KLOSS (?), also kind of yuck. But otherwise, everything was pretty shiny and nice.

Bullets:

1A: Clichéd sequel catchphrase ("HE'S BACK!") — This *feels* right, but quick googling is turning up nothing specific. The phrase must be used plenty in ads for, say, Ace Venture sequels or Terminator sequels or, I don't know, Ernest sequels or Benji sequels. But the only "___ Back!" phrase that sticks in my mind is this one:

44A: Ascension Isl. setting (ATL.)— had the "A" and thought "probably ATL" but held off for fear it would be a time zone (AST?) or even possibly a continent (AFR.). The island, it turns out, is in the Dead Middle of the Atlantic between South America and Africa.
6D: Quaint stage dancing accessory (CANE) — my first thought was BOA, which is inapt on several levels.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Fill-in-the-Blanks"— Clues are words with letter strings removed. Answers are common phrases that describe the removed parts. Thus:

Theme answers:

MISSING PERSON (26A: Su___ic)
DELETED SCENE (32A: Ob___ly)
UNUSED MINUTES (50A: ___t)
DROPPED CALL (71A: Lo___y)
FORFEITED GAME (91A: Li___nt)
STRIPPED BARE (105A: Ca___t)
ABANDONED SHIP (114A: Wor___er)
STOLEN ART (46D: E___hen)

Word of the Day: TIP ROAST (88D: Sirloin cut) —

Round Tip Roast or Tip Roast or Sirloin Tip Roast or Tip Sirloin Roast: A cut away from the sirloin section, this roast is tender enough to be oven roasted or used as kabobs. When trimmed it's called a trimmed tip roast or ball tip roast. (food.com)

• • •

There are two levels on which this theme operates—clue and answer. Now that I write that out, it sounds like the levels at which all crosswords operate, but hear me out. What I mean is that there's the question of how well (cleverly) the omitted letter string / word is represented in the clue, and then there's the solidity of the answer phrase. I point this out mainly because I found myself feeling like some part of every theme clue/answer kept failing. Clue choices often seemed ridiculous. Why is there a "ly" in 32A: Ob___ly? That's a terribly hidden "scene" with a totally gratuitous adverbial ending. And don't even get me started on 50A: ___t. What the hell is that? I look at a clue like 71A: Lo___y and think, yes, that works. CALL is hard to infer, the adverbial quality of the base word is hidden … and the answer phrase, DROPPED CALL, is spot on. Perfect. A real thing. But many of the remaining clues/answers did not live up to this standard. FORFEITED felt like the wrong word in the first place, and FORFEITED GAME is total green paint (i.e. something someone might say, but not solid enough to be a stand-alone answer). See also ABANDONED SHIP. One might shout "Abandon ship!" But ABANDONED SHIP = green paint. You could put a ton of different nouns after ABANDONED and they would be just as crossworthy. Also see also STOLEN ART (?!?!). KISS, CAR, MOMENT … all more real than ART in that phrase. And 114A: Wor___er again has that gratuitous additional letter thing going on, i.e. We Don't Need The "-er". You could've claimed "need" if the idea was that in all cases the missing part would be removed from the center of the clue word. But 50A: ___t screwed up that rationale big time. So … I feel like there is a good idea somewhere underneath all this, but the execution shows a real lack of artistry. It's clunktastic. Also, the title = terrible. Reeks of "I give up."

And EATEN RAW… how is that legal? Seriously. Are we just stringing together words now and calling them legit answers. EATEN RAW seems about as legit as APPLIEDGENTLY or COOKEDONLOW. THE TOP is almost but not quite as bad (1A: Where it's lonely, it's said). I know the expression "It's lonely at the top," but THE TOP doesn't hold up well on its own. What about THEBOTTOM? [Worst barrel part]? THESIDE? [What you might get dressing on]? Why not? It's a free-for-all. Anything goes. CURST BOPIN NONONO. Sigh. Actually, the overall fill quality is decentish. Ish.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Pretty Mondayish

THEME: Spell It Out — Theme answers are familiar phrases, the first words of which spell the letters "IT OUT."

Theme answers:

17A: *What a good speaker maintains with the audience (EYE CONTACT)
25A: *Golfers' bookings (TEE TIMES)
30A: *"Man!" ("OH BROTHER")
45A: *"Wait, wait ... go back" ("YOU LOST ME")
51A: *Bit of Boston Harbor debris in 1773 (TEA CHEST)
64A: Leave no room for misinterpretation ... or what the first words of the answers to the five starred clues do, literally (SPELL IT OUT)

Hi, everybody. PuzzleGirl here with your Monday puzzle while You-Know-Who is traveling. I hope you all are enjoying the holidays. We had a very low-key Christmas here at the PuzzleHouse. I spent most of Christmas Day backing up computers and phones and upgrading software on various computers and phones. You know, Christmas stuff. PuzzleHusband and I also completely geeked out on a jigsaw puzzle. Can't remember the last time I put one together, but I grabbed one at Target last week thinking the kids might enjoy it. Well, they had no use for it but it got done anyway due do our addictive personalities.

But hey, what about this puzzle? Nice little Monday jaunt, I'd say, until I got down to the Texas area of the grid. I had ELLE for MLLE.(61D: Fr. girl) and SAPPY for SOPPY(53D: Maudlin) so I just couldn't figure out what was wrong. I decided it wasn't worth fretting over so I just had Across Lite tell me the problem. I'm sure I would have eventually figured it out but I knew I needed to blog so didn't want to spend the time. I'm eager to know if that spot caused problems for anyone else.

Bullets:

1A: Titanic victim John Jacob ASTOR. Way to start us off on a light note.
21A: LITCHI nut (Chinese fruit). Do people know what these are? I'm pretty sure I've never heard of this.
29A: Fox News anchor Smith (SHEP). Not sure how he can stand to work at Fox News. He doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of them.
69A: Letters between jays and ells (KAYS). I can't decide if I hate this because spelling out letters is lame or if I like it because it kind of matches the theme.
3D: October 31 option (TREAT). Tricky. (See what I did there?)
6D: Glam rock band MOTT the Hoople. As it turns out I don't know any Mott the Hoople songs. At first I thought I'd use "Flirtin' With Disaster," but that's Molly Hatchet. Totally different band.
10D: Thwarts (STYMIES). Both good words.
13D: Enjoys Joyce, Carroll or Oates (READS). Cute clue. I've read several Joyce Carol Oates books, but gave up on reading her when I tried "Missing Mom" back in 2005. I believe Ms. Oates must have fallen on her head and lost the ability to write a complete sentence. I could not follow (or finish) that book.
30D: Like integers of the form 2n + 1 (ODD). So now we need to do math. Great. Just great.
37D: Juillet's season (ÉTÉ). French!

And with that, I must take my leave. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a T)

THEME: LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP (41A: Maneuver for slot car racers or stunt pilots, as suggested by this puzzle's circled letters) — circled letters spell "LOOP," and "loop" (i.e. the letters rotate positions) two full times as you follow the circled square pattern around the grid...

Word of the Day: RED TOP (32D: Common grass variety named for its color) —

Agrostis gigantea, known by its common names Black Bent and Redtop, is a perennial grass of the Agrostis genus.
It is native to Europe, but in the cooler areas of North America was widely used as a pasture grass until the 1940s. Although it has largely been replaced by soybeans and more palatable grasses, it still gets some use in poor soils. It was one of the grasses planted in areas disturbed by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It generally does well in response to fires, due to survival of rhizomes and seeds.

It can be found in open woodland, rough grassland, hedgerows, roadsides and waste ground, and as a weed on arable land. (wikipedia)

[ALSO]

noun
BRITISHinformal
noun: redtop
a tabloid. (google)

• • •

There is one great thing about this puzzle, which is that if you start with any circled area and go in any direction every subsequent iteration involves a one-click rotation of the letters, resulting in two full rotations (LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP) once you've completely circumnavigated the grid. That, I like. I like literally nothing else. Nope, wait: CANOODLE. CANOODLE, I like. But OMG the fill. Also, the phrase LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP is not a thing. LOOP DE LOOP, yes. Extra DE LOOP, wtf? You invented a phrase so that you could do your little loop acrobatics (you also expanded the grid to 16 wide, which is fine, actually). I winced when I filled in the revealer, but it's just this side of tolerable. What's intolerable, however, is the fill. Like, everywhere, it is very poor.

SHOT PAR is an ironic entry, in that this puzzle didn't. But also apt, in that it is a poor entry, and therefore nicely represents the overall quality of the grid. The short stuff is a train wreck. I'm not kidding you when I say that I was dubious about this thing before I'd even left the tiny NW corner. The APOLO went up and I kind of looked at the grid sideways. Then ERDE went in and I literally stopped and doubled over. And sighed. REDTOP? SOLI? ALLA? ALOES plural. Just on and on and on w/ the non-Tuesday, keep-it-to-a-minimum fill. SESE CEELO APOLO OCELO— all crutch names. The punchy line of it all was HERAT. Looks like this is my third time ever seeing this [Western Afghan city] (?), and unshockingly, both other times were On A Saturday. I'm floored that the constructor couldn't get HERAT out of there. Stunned. Any constructor worth his/her salt isn't going to let that **** stand. You could do a million things w/ that section and you go with HERAT? What's that holding up, exactly? ACELA (again, ugh)? The now-embarrassingly-dated SNOOKI? RECOPY? I guess you can write it all off to "theme density," but that's a cop-out. This is just poorly filled. If you can't execute the stunt to perfection, don't perform the stunt.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Woolf

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: PRNDL (68A: Quintet representing the ends of the answers to the five starred clues) — theme answers end in PARK, REVERSE, NEUTRAL, DRIVE, and LOW

Theme answers:

THEME PARK (18A: *Legoland, for one)
DOUBLE REVERSE (29A: *Tricky football play)
GENDER NEUTRAL (34A: *Like you or me?)
INTERNAL DRIVE (44A: *Essential feature of a PC)
SWEET 'N' LOW (57A: *Equal rival)

Word of the Day: EYRA (41A: South American wildcat) —

The jaguarundi or eyra cat (Puma yagouaroundi), is a small, wild cat native to Central and South America. In 2002, the IUCN classified the jaguarundi as Least Concern, although they considered it likely that no conservation units beyond the megareserves of the Amazon Basin could sustain long-term viable populations. Its presence in Uruguay is uncertain.
In some Spanish-speaking countries, the jaguarundi is also called gato colorado, gato moro, león brenero, onza, tigrillo, and leoncillo. The Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation of its common English and Portuguese name is IPA: [ʒɐɡwɐɾũˈdʒi]. It is also called gato-mourisco, eirá, gato-preto, and maracajá-preto in Portuguese. Jaguarundi comes from Old Tupi yawaum'di. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a simple, almost retro theme—a "last words"-type theme that is pretty well executed. Theme answers are solid, interesting, nicely chosen. My only real criticism today is that the puzzle is overly ambitious at 74 words. What I mean is, the fill might've come out a lot cleaner and more pleasing if the grid had been a more generous and forgiving 76 words. Sounds like a minor distinction, but the difference between driving one eight-letter word down through three (!) themers and driving two (!!)? It's major. In the NE, the long Downs are OK, and the resulting surrounding fill consequences really aren't terrible; only ARRAN and ETH rate as sub-optimal (from my POV). In the SW (the other area with 2 eights crossing 3 themers), things are quite a bit worse, starting with RRR (never good) and EYRA (an answer that has never been in a Shortz-era puzzle before, and has, per cruciverb.com, been in only one crossword from a major publisher … ever. One.). O'MARA and PLAT are mildly wobbly, and then there's NAWAB (50D: Muslim princely title), another answer of EYRA-like obscurity (it's been in only one NYT puzzle since I started blogging 8+ years ago). On the plus side, I actually like those parallel 8s in the SW (DETECTOR and EYES ON ME). But I think the puzzle would've been better overall with a higher-word-count grid that allowed the themers to breathe a little, and took some of the pressure off the short stuff.

Bullets:

37D: School basics, in a manner of speaking (RRR)— Should've put this in right away, but resisted, both because I had PUMA for EYRA (grrr…), and because I felt sure there was some other expression that would've fit that I was forgetting. But I think I was thinking of ABCS, which, of course, wouldn't fit.
40D: Big name in jeans (LEVI) — wrote in LEE'S. Then, as if to taunt me, LEE showed up with the same clue (47D).
49A: Art house showings (INDIES)— I love that this answer is over MALL COP, since it makes me think of "Paul Blart: MALL COP" and "Paul Blart: MALL COP 2" (!!?), which are, let's say, not INDIES.
1A: Manual (STICK) — I guess this is a theme answer too, now that I think of it. Or an anti-answer, since PRNDL really applies only to cars with automatic (non-STICK!) transmission.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jill Denny and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: PAR FOR THE COURSE (53A: Average … or a literal hint to 17-, 26- and 42-Across)— well-know phrases containing words that are slang for golf scores; instead of the word, we get the golf score, represented literally (i.e. as a number that is situated over or under PAR in the grid)

Theme answers:

THE TWO HAS LANDED ("TWO" is under the "PAR" in CAR PARTS) (because an "eagle" is two under par)
THE ONE MAN ("ONE" is over the "PAR" in POOL PARTY) (because a "bogey" is one over par)
"BYE BYE, ONE" ("ONE" is under the "PAR" in WATER PARK) (because a "birdie" is one under par)

Word of the Day: Jule STYNE (37A: "Funny Girl" composer) —

Jule Styne (/ˈdʒuːli staɪn/; December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was an English-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which include several very well known and frequently revived shows.
Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", cowritten with Sammy Cahn in 1945. (wikipedia)

• • •

Feels like a theme type I've seen before, but I could very easily be imagining that. It's nicely executed, at any rate. The grid has been skillfully constructed to isolate problem areas, minimize theme-density damage, and maximize smoothness. This is why it's a bit unorthodox-looking, with those low-lying, long NW and SE corners, and totally walled-off E and W parts. Gotta contain and manage the "over PAR" parts. Result: the fill in this is highly untortured. Not an obscurity in sight. Almost *too* over-the-plate. Well done. My only significant criticism is that … do people say "bogeyman"? I see that it's spelled that way in wikipedia's primary entry for the term, but I have only ever heard a pronunciation like "boogie." This meant that the golf-term replacement for THE ONE MAN just didn't land. Aurally speaking. For me. The boogeyman is gonna get you. The bogeyman is going to get you only if you fail to sink that putt.

Bullets:

36A: Part of a spanish explorer's name (DE LEON)— as in PONCE. This took me too long. I kept trying to think of a name that was on the tip of my tongue, but when I got it … it was DE GAMA :(
32D: Wallop (PASTE)— Had the "P" and went with the obvious-yet-wrong answer.
56D: New Year's ___ (EVE)— semi-topical!
34D: Canned food made by Nestlé (ALPO) — nice attempt at misdirection there, w/ Nestlé really making you think human food.

Hope you survived New Year's Eve and are chock full of hope and resolutions. Thanks for your readership and support.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Lakers commentator Lantz / SAT 12-13-14 / Mackerel variety on Hawaiian menus / 1958 #1 hit whose only lyric is its title word / Title girl in literature's Prairie Trilogy / Fashion designer Knowles mother of Beyoncé / Anderson of sitcomdom / Kebabs sold curbside

Title hunter of 1922 film / SUN 12-14-14 / Full complement for Quidditch team / Closest friend slangily / Korda who directed Sahara / Flux 2005 sci-fi film

Actor Jack of Great Dictator / MON 12-15-14 / Shaw of 1930s-'40s swing / Setting for Meatballs Friday 13th / Trash-talking muppet / Sports car with spider model / Seinfeld's ex / diet early 2000s fad

French army headwear / TUE 12-16-14 / Cab Calloway phrase / TV network once called Pax / Jane who won 1931 Nobel Peace Prize / Robert De Niro spy thriller / Children's author illustrator with National Medal of Honor / R&B singer backed by Love Unlimited Orchestra / Canterbury saint

Leakes of reality TV / WED 12-17-14 / Litotes for beauty / Hairy son of Isaac / Ebenezer's ghostly ex-partner / Ancestor of Gaelic Manx / Reporter's question collectively

Defunct G.M. division / THU 12-18-14 / Ingolstadt-based automaker / Pharaonic symbol / Stannite cassiterite / TV channel with slogan Get Smarter Now / Dialect in ancient Greece /

Major media event of '95 / FRI 12-19-14 / Almost any character in Jon Stewart's Rosewater / Never-seen neighbor on Mary Tyler Moore / Novel subtitled Parish Boy's Progress / Scimitar-horned creature / Fictional school bully with henchmen named Crabbe Goyle / Dr. Watson portrayer on CBS's elementary

NOUN

Literary/film critic Janet / SAT 12-20-14 / Plato portrayer in Rebel without Cause / Flying female fighters in WWII / Dr archenemy of Fantastic Four / Jazz/funk fusion genre / Faddish food regimen / Practice with Book of Shadows

Actress Strahovski of 2000s TV / SUN 12-21-14 / Computerdom informally / Roy Rogers's real last name / Risky chess move / Zion National park material / Tree whose pods have sweet pulp

Dadaist Max / MON 12-22-14 / Ugly Middle-earth characters / Title cop played by Al Pacino / Hidalgo home / Repeated word in Banana boat song

Puppeteer Tony / TUE 12-23-14 / Former FBI chief Louis / Fireside chat prez / Bake in dish / Rapper with 1991 hit Rico Suave / British rule in old india

1955 Julie London hit / WED 12-24-14 / Old New Yorker cartoonist William / Return of Jedi dancing girl / Maserati competitor

Startling newsmaker of 10/4/1957 / THU 12-25-14 / Cassava lookalike / Backdrop for Chamonix / Duck Hunt console for short / Aquarium giant / Samosa topping /

Punic war agitator / FRI 12-26-14 / Game played by British schoolkids / Acronymic weapon name / Tanyard sight / Love ballad from 1973 album Goats Head Soup / Vessels of Napoleonic war

Mrs King on TV's Scarecrow Mrs. King / SUN 12-28-14 / Bad-tempered in Shakespeare / Antimalarial agent / hawaii five-0 crime-fighter informally / Jefferson Airplane genre / 1976 hit for Hall & Oates / Anne Hathaway's persona in 2012's Dark Knight Rises / Arrive casually informally

Article 0

Western Afghan city / TUE 12-30-14 / Zairean president Mobutu Seko / Film producer Carlo / Toon Chihuahua / Green who was on four seasons of voice / Our planet to Germans / Victims of farmer's wife / Jersey shore housemate / Socialist disparagingly

Home of Team Coco / WED 12-31-14 / Muslim princely title / Firth of Clyde island / Pioneering sci-fi play / Actor with movie line Me I always tell truth even when I lie

Canned food made by Nestle / THU 1-1-15 / Organlike legume / Taxi eschewer for short / 1961 Tony winner for best musical / Site of 1953 CIA directed coup / Neil Armstrong declaration