Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Joe Krozel and Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: THUS— black square for the letters T, H, U, S. Clues are various "arrangement[s] of letters in this grid," thus (!?):

Theme answers:

1A: CABANAS (clue: HUTS)
21A: SEAL (clue: SHUT)
8D: REAR (clue: TUSH)
43D: ELSE (clue: THUS)

Word of the Day: ARECA (4D: Tropical palm) —

Areca is a genus of about 50 species of palms in the family Arecaceae, found in humid tropical forests from China and India, across Southeast Asia to Melanesia. The generic name Areca is derived from a name used locally on the Malabar Coast of India. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hi all. I'm away from home for a few days, spending some time with family. Rather than dump the entirety of my blogging workload in PuzzleGirl's lap … here I am. Blogging the Thursday puzzle. I haven't done a puzzle of any kind since Sunday night. Liberating. I should probably take such breaks more often, because even though, as I look on this grid now, in the cold light of analytical reflection, it is clearly pock-marked and awkward, I kinda liked it. I liked the idea of it. I liked anagramming the letters and sussing out the theme answers (though there were very few of them, covering very little grid space). I also loved the long Downs. They were so good that they actually effectively distracted me from some of the terrible short stuff (like EDIN, SSS, ITELL, IME, UNCA, RONAS). There's something GREEN PAINT-ish about GET EXERCISE, but I think it just passes the stand-alone smell test. I think it would be better clued in relation to "advice" or "doctor's advice," but no matter (side note—I quite enjoyed my initial stupid wrong answer: GYM EXERCISE, considering it a. isn't a verb phrase, which the clue clearly calls for, and b. contains the word "gym," which is already in the clue).

I forgot about Tom WOPAT. Until now (38A: Tom who played TV's Luke Duke). I rewrote US law and made CACTI illegal to import for a few minutes there (49A: Plants that are illegal to import => COCAS). I had just one MAN ON at first (25A: Favorable situation for sluggers => MEN ON). Otherwise, I found the rest of it pretty DENG easy. This one won me over by being *different* and by having fabulous *long* answers. Iffy short stuff eroded my affection, but not enough to turn me. Not an A-PLUS, but fine work nonetheless.

["Why don't you just make 10 louder…?]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Gordon's "Fireball Newsflash Crosswords" is open for 2015-16 subscriptions right now. These are right-up-to-the-minute, current-events-based puzzles. On the easy side. Great fun for solvers of all skill levels. Here's the info:

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"SICK" (24A: Onetime competitor of Mad magazine) —

Sick was a satirical-humor magazine published from 1960 to 1980, lasting 134 issues. It was created by comic-book writer-artist Joe Simon, who also edited the title until the late 1960s. Sick was published by Crestwood Publications until issue #62 (1968), when it was taken over by Hewfred Publications. Charlton Comics took over publishing the magazine in 1976 with issue #109.
Sick 's original mascot was a blank-faced little physician. He was later replaced by a mascot named Huckleberry Fink, whose design was similar to that of Mad 's Alfred E. Neuman, and whose motto, instead of Neuman's "What, me worry?", was "Why Try Harder?" (wikipedia)

• • •

Kind of distracted by family goings-on tonight, so can't write much. It's Patrick Berry, so, no shocker, the grid is great. Just great. I found this a good deal harder than the average Berry Friday, for a couple reasons. First, Britishness. I guess I've heard of MUSIC HALL … but, no, not as a vaudeville equivalent (14D: America : vaudeville :: England : ___). No idea. Inferable, but I had no idea. Also, BARMY, a word I recognize in retrospect, but couldn't come up w/ at all while solving (22A: Bonkers, in Britspeak). I had BAR-Y and went with BARGY. From Argy-Bargy, which may or may not be a Squeeze album. Hang on … yes, a Squeeze album. Also Britspeak (see!) for "argument." Then there were names I didn't know. W.C. HANDY is basically what N.C. WYETH used to be for me, i.e. a guy whose last name I know, but whose first two initials are a crapshoot (21D: Songwriter with the 1941 autobiography "Father of the Blues"). So that name crossing "SICK" (??!?) was not easy. Caused me to have serious trouble even getting into that damned NE corner. Also, MEDUSAS? (11D: Saucer-shaped jellyfish) … no clue. O'GRADY? (29D: "Sweet Rosie ___" (Betty Grable film)) No clue. None. And then there were a lot of "?" clues, it seemed, so I definitely had to work harder than usual for this one.

[1980]

NE was definitely the toughest. I was dead stuck. I guessed HILL (9D: Reason to downshift) and then CHUMP (8A: Sucker), and luckily they were both right, as I had zero up there before that. Guessed "SICK" from the SI-, which helped. I'm still kind of hung up on "SICK," especially considering how long it ran. It's true that I was a bit young for that magazine, but I have absolutely no memory of it, whereas "MAD" and "Cracked" are ultra-familiar. I probably started paying attention to those kinds of magazines in the late '70s, so I must've just missed "SICK." I stupidly put in AFRIKAANS for AFRIKANER at 33A: Charlize Theron, e.g., by birth. Clue calls for noun, not adjective. My bad. CONK OUT for SACK OUT held me up some as well. But overall, the struggle was well worth it. No big Wows, but solid and entertaining throughout.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Ned White

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SKID (24D: Freight platform) —

n.
1. The action 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 forsliding or rolling heavy 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 when unloading.
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. Informal
a. A period of sharp decline or repeated losses: Bad economic news sent the marketsinto a skid. The win ended the team's four-game skid.
b. skids A path to ruin or failure: His career hit the skids. Her life is now on the skids.(thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

This was a SUNNY, delightful puzzle, from start to finish, but it was pretty dang easy. Who knew the Saturday puzzle was going to be this easy? I'll tell you who knew—STEW KNEW:

Pretty good start, that, though I needed the SRAS / AVER crossing to really get going. Hard to know what to say about this. It's smooth. It's solid. It's good. It's got a very conventional structure, and none of the marquee answers are That memorable. But again, they're good. PLAY FOOTSIE is good (though I don't really know the definition in the clue—22D: Work together closely but covertly); KISS MY GRITS is good (old and good … good-old); K.O. PUNCH is good (41D: Flooring delivery) (I had the first two letters and took a flier on PUNCH, which was confirmed by PEAS). Only real issues were in and around SKID—again, not a definition I know, and I also don't know the Fabolous song "INTO YOU" (37A: 2003 top 5 hit for Fabolous), though it was highly inferable; and then in the SW, where I initially found the whole corner intractable. Weirdly (very weirdly), the words "Ibsen" and "opera" in 46D: Ibsen play parodying an opera made me think NORMA, but I have no idea why. I don't know what that work is about. At all. Anyway, confirmed NORMA with OVERT and that corner opened up. Looking at it now, I think I would've gotten "A VIEW From the Bridge" if I'd seen it first. Seems obvious. But that's it for difficulty. All else, cake.

Bullets:

1A: Congratulatory gestures (BACK SLAPS) — I wouldn't even call it a mini-theme, but still, nice parallel between clue on this first Across answer and the clue on the last one, 64A: Celebratory gesture (CHEST BUMP)
30A: Some joeys (KOALAS) — bit of an editing hiccup here I think; I *swear* I just saw this clue for KOALAS (if it was in some other puzzle, my apologies)
40A: Bad case of the blues (DEEP FUNK)— I just like the unintentional musical crossing of FUNK and SOUL(s) (31D: Persons)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: The Captain Goes Down With the Ship— Theme answers (which are all downs) consist of the names of captains and their ships.

Hey everyone. Happy Sunday to you. PuzzleGirl here with you on this beautiful day. Rex is traveling again so you're stuck with me. Let's just make the best of it, shall we? Today's puzzle is a little weird to me. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's different. The theme answers aren't real phrases and they're not even made-up phrases. They're just two (or three) words put together for effect. The words are related to each other, but they don't actually make up a phrase. That seems a little weird to me. That's all I'm saying.

Theme answers:

AHAB PEQUOD (2D: Example from classic American literature)
KIRK ENTERPRISE (5D: Example from television)
NEMO NAUTILUS (10D: Example from sci-fi literature)
BLIGH BOUNTY (14D: Example from 18th-century history)
HOOK JOLLY ROGER (52D: Example from fantasy literature)
SMITH TITANIC (60D: Example from 20th-century history)
CRUNCH GUPPY (63D: Example from advertising)
LINCOLN USA (75D: Metaphorical example from poetry)

You know what? Let's not talk about what's weird about the puzzle. Let's talk about what's good about the puzzle. But before we do that, I just want to say really quickly and with as little vitriol as possible that I initially thought RESEE (101D: Watch over) was the worst entry in the grid and then I came across FOVEA (69D: Point of sharpest vision). FOVEA. For real. Have any of your ever seen this word in your life? I know I haven't. That is one ugly entry. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Bullets:

1A: White's partner (SAJAK)— Raise your hand if, like me, you wanted STRUNK here. Such nerds.
22A: Asian wild ass (ONAGER)— I'm just not going to say a thing about that clue. Nope.
29A: Book that needs to be read word for word? (ROGET'S)— Cute clue for the thesaurus.
42A: 7/11 product? (QUOTIENT)— I got tricked recently by the clue "1/2" for DATE. And I was tricked by this one too. So I'm starting to get the idea that when there are numbers in the clue, I need to take a step back.
51A: Word of regret (SHOULDA)— With S**ULDA in place I thought this was going to be a foreign word. But it's just plain old SHOULDA, as in "shoulda, woulda, coulda."
65A: Baseball V.I.P.s (G.M.s)— Oh man I am so ready for baseball season. My team's G.M. has made some moves during the off season that I'm not 100% sure about but that's probably why he's the G.M. and I'm not. Well, that's one of the reasons anyway.
89A: Best-selling children's series "PERCY Jackson & the Olympians"— PuzzleSon loved these books. Recommended.
100A: Claymation dog (GROMIT)— Couldn't remember this guy's name at first and I also didn't know the name of Cap'n Crunch's ship. I had PUPPY at first, which, if you think about it, is a TERRIBLE name for a ship.
102A: Helpful household pets (RATTERS)— I don't know. If a ratter would be helpful to you in your house, maybe it's time to think about moving.
118A: "No, you really must!" ("I INSIST!")— For some reason this really tickled me. Probably by favorite answer.
7D: "ARE you even listening?"— Well? Are you?
13D: Big dos (AFROS)— Not a fan of this clue. #NotAllAfros
37D: Affix carelessly (SLAP ON)— Another interesting colloquial phrase.
44D: Game center? (TAC)— As in the "center" word of "tic tac toe." Took me a minute.
48D: "I got it!" ("AHA!") and 50D: "I *finally* got it!" ("DUH!")— Nice pair of clues to jazz up this so-so fill.
74D: Told (BLABBED)— BLABBED is a great word. I want to encourage all of you to use the word BLABBED in conversation today.
85D: British Invasion band (THEM)— Never heard of them. (See what I did there?)
87D: Kind of ceiling (DEBT)— I can't see this kind of clue/answer pair without being slightly annoyed since someone explained to me why it's just not right. You see, "debt" isn't a kind of ceiling. A "debt ceiling" is a kind of ceiling. And now that I've explained it to you, you can spend the rest of your solving years annoyed about it too. You're welcome.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. With any luck Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Challenging (*for a Monday*) (time: close to 4:00)

THEME: DAY BREAK (68A: First light … or a phenomenon suggested by this puzzle's seven sets of circled letters) — abrrevs. of days of the week (in circled squares) are "broken" (i.e. interrupted) by black squares.

Word of the Day:"The Last of SHEILA" (37D: "The Last of ___" (1973 murder mystery)) —

The Last of Sheila is a 1973 mystery film that was directed by Herbert Ross and written directly for the screen by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, It starred Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch.
The original music score was composed by Billy Goldenberg. The song "Friends," sung by Bette Midler, can be heard during the final scene of the film and the end credits. (wikipedia)

• • •

Bizarre. The theme is OK, but you get into some big trouble trying to make this thing a Monday. First, the theme is dense, so you end up with some tougher vocabulary. I'd put NEOLITH (39A: Stone Age tool) in that category. MOMBASA (54A: Second-largest city in Kenya) as well (though I'd heard of / seen both before). Also, grid is structured such that it has rather large stacks all over the place—very tough to pull off smoothly; or, rather, tough to pull off smoothly while still keeping yourself in Easy puzzle territory (which Mondays are supposed to be). Try to be clever in the cluing (as this puzzle does), and the difficulty ratchets up quickly. HOLLOW—Saturday clue (9D: Like jack-o'-lanterns or meaningless victories). HOT MIC—very unexpected answer (9A: Press conference danger of an unguarded comment). MWAH—unusual, never easy (54D: "Love ya!"). I like *all* those answers (incl. the clue on HOLLOW), but they aren't Monday-easy. You can be clever and smart and still stay Monday-easy. Monday is entry-level for many solvers, and that should be respected. This thing seems like a Wed. or Thu. that got brutally beaten into an ersatz Monday. As I told Finn just now, I wish this thing had been let loose to be a Wednesday. Puzzle feels like it's being forced to be something it's not.

The kind of weird no-man's-land this puzzle ends up in, identity-wise, is best exemplified by the clue on SHEILA (37D: "The Last of ___" (1973 murder mystery)). My solving joy was brought crashing down by this 40+-year-old *nothing* of a film. I teach crime fiction and can name a passel of '70s crime movies and this … isn't one of them. It's not my not knowing it that's the problem, however. It's simply a terrible, ridiculous, hyper-obscure way to clue SHEILA… I repeat: On. A. Monday. Seriously, I keep staring at this puzzle going "How did that clue pass?" It's Fill-in-the-blank, so you can't say it's good / imaginative / clever. Is it because it involves a scavenger hunt, so maybe puzzle people will like it? Is it because Sondheim was involved and he likes puzzles? Or puzzle solvers like Sondheim? (And please, Sondheim mafia, spare me your "How could you not know…?" stuff on this one). What kind of b.s. insidery nonsense allows this clue into existence on a Monday. This is an editorial issue. Even if constructor submits that clue, if it's Monday (and it is), that clue's gone. Gone. It's a Fri/Sat clue, and again, even then, not great. Worth something only as an obscurity-leavening agent.

Good things:

"LIFE OF PI" correctly offered w/o the def. article "THE," unlike in that train-wreck of a recent Sunday puzzle. Still shaking my head over that one (has SMH been in a puzzle? I like it).
Lively grid overall, with very little true junk. I just had a disagreement with Finn about MADEA v. MEDEA. He likes the freshness of MADEA, I prefer the classics. So I'm supporting MEDEA / MEL / PLANK, while Finn stands firmly by MADEA / MAR / PRANK. I think MAR / PRANKis better … but not better enough to justify the awkwardly-spelled (and less Monday-worthy) MADEA. We both agree that ENOTE / NEL / PLANK would've been terrible.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David J. Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: I think it's that the first word of all the theme answers ends "-OUGH," and the pronunciations of the vowel sound are all slightly different from one another. I think.

Theme answers:

COUGH MEDICINE (20A: Robitussin or Vicks product)
DOUGHNUT HOLE (28A: Petite sweet treat)
TOUGH ON CRIME (43A: Advocating long sentences, say)
PLOUGH THROUGH (53A: Complete without a break, as a labour)

Word of the Day: NANOGRAM (38D: One-trillionth of a kilo) —

noun
one billionth of a gram. (google)

• • •

Currently soliciting names for a puzzle that fails thematically, but that is so charming (in terms of overall content) that you don't really care. Someone suggested "Hudson Hawk," which I agree fails, but which I never found charming. So the search for the right term is still on. There are several puzzling things about this theme. The first: what is it? I think my above description is accurate, but that's phenomenally light, and weak, as themes go. When you say all those words (or, in case of DOUGHNUT, word parts), in a row, you don't really feel anything interesting going on. -GH is silent sometimes, pronounced "-FF" other times. This means that the (slight) change in vowel sounds really doesn't register. What you hear are the changing "-GH" sounds. I think the final themer there is supposed to contain a bonus "-OUGH" word in the second position. That is, I think THROUGH in PLOUGH THROUGH is part of the theme. But that answer leads me to yet another problem with this theme: who spells PLOUGH that way, particularly when writing that phrase? I see that the clue tries awkwardly to signal Britishness with the tacked-on "as a labour" [grimace], but thumbs down. "Plow through" out-googles the PLOUGH version something like 5 to 1, and Britishizing one of your themers feels cheap.

But the grid! It's great. What's amazing is that it's *this* lively (so many lovely long Downs) and *this* easy. I haven't finished a Tuesday in under 3 in a while, but I did today. And that's whilst having No Idea what a NANOGRAM was. (note: clue on that one was the puzzle's one other serious fault—you can't abbreviate "kilo" and then not have an abbr. as the answer, esp. on a Tuesday; that's crap). Love MALE MODEL and AÑO NUEVO and PIE CRUST and BEDEVILED (EGGS!), and nothing made me go "ick." OK, maybe VIET and OSE did, but they're so tiny! So, in sum, theme is inadequate, but the overall grid is kind of a hoot.

Now, back to more sports-watching. Great opening day for my Tigers (1-0), who shut out the Twins 4-0. Don't really care about the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, but I picked Wisconsin to win it all three weeks ago, so … go Wisconsin, I guess. Here's a couple baseball names I think you should know, largely because their 2014 seasons put their names in the realm of legit crossword fare. First, José ALTUVE, second baseman for the Houston (A)'STROS, who was the AL batting champion last year (.341). Second, Corey KLUBER, pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, who was last year's AL Cy Young Award winner. I saw them face each other earlier tonight, and wondered aloud about their crossword prospects. My dog, the only one who could hear me, had no answers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IT'S A TRAP (66A: Warning to the answers to the three starred clues regarding the word hidden in 17-, 34- and 43-Across) — Across answers all have the letter string "TRAP" buried in them, and then crossing each "TRAP" is a thing that can be trapped. So the BEAR (!?), the TOURIST, and the RAT are all caught (so to speak) in TRAPs.

Theme answers:

ATRA PLUS (crossing BEAR)
ORCHESTRA PIT (crossing TOURIST)
BEST RAP ALBUM (crossing RAT)

Word of the Day: TCI (55A: Cable co. acquired by AT&T in 1999) —

Tele-Communications, Inc. or TCI was a cable television provider in the United States, for much of its history controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone.
The company came into being in 1968, following the merger of Western Microwave, Inc. and Community Television, Inc. It was the largest cable operator in the United States at one time.
After going public in 1970, the company grew rapidly, and became the top cable provider in the United States. After a failed merger attempt with Bell Atlantic in 1994, it was purchased in 1999 by AT&T, whose cable television assets were later acquired by Charter Communications and then Comcast Corporation. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I finished this, I had no idea what the theme was, and my main feeling was one of minor annoyance at having to chase down an error, which turned to major annoyance when I discovered the error was (unsurprisingly) in a very ugly little corner of the grid—I've never heard of TCI. Wikipedia says "It was the largest cable operator in the United States at one time," but those three letters mean nothing to me in that order. I had cable in CA. I had cable in MI. It never came from TCI. I have never heard of TCI (actually, I've probably said these very words before, and will likely say them again, since constructors tend to think that if something's been used in the past it's OK to use it now, 16-years-defunct or no). So I had MCI at 55A: Cable co. acquired by AT&T in 1999, even though I know they were telecom, not cable. MCI simply had the virtue of being massively familiar. And RAM was a word—just not the word the clue wanted (RAT). Really puts a damper on joy when you a. make an error, and b. have never heard of the right answer. But the more I examined the theme (I honestly never saw the revealer clue while solving), the more I appreciated its complexity.

It's perhaps a bit too complex. That is, it's trying to do a lot, and there's a bit of absurdity involved. Is a rat really going to listen to the "warning""IT'S A TRAP!" A BEAR? The TOURIST, sure, she'll listen. But the conceit of "shout a warning in English at an animal that is not your dog" seems … mildly strained. Also, the revealer is a "warning," but the animals and tourist are (already?) "trapped," i.e. crossing the letters "TRAP." So your "warning" is useless. Never had a chance. What is a BEAR trap? Sounds horrific. Is it that spring-loaded maiming metal claw thing? Yeah, horrific. But there's a real attempt at craftsmanship here that I admire. Fill is subpar in far too many places, but it's a pretty complex theme, with a decent amount of wide open space to fill, so perhaps the list of junk (TCI, USRDA, ITAL ARR, ACS, EIS *and* EIN, SSR, OLD LATIN, and MAWR) is not long enough to warrant much censure given the theme demands. Nice stretching of TRAP across two words each time. I'm also a big fan of the juxtaposition of MWAH and PENELOPE, for entirely personal reasons.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: That "Who's on First" routine from a million years ago—maybe … Abbot and Costello?? [checking…] Yes, correct — Who's on first, what's on second, I don't know's on third (thus: "who""what" and "I don't know" are rebused in the Across squares, and "first""second" and "third" in the same squares, respectively, heading Down);

BASES (63A: Contents of three squares in this puzzle, per an old comedy routine)

Theme answers:

THE BOY [WHO] CRIED WOLF / HEAD [FIRST]
GUESS [WHAT]! / LEAP [SECOND]
TELL ME SOMETHING [I DON'T KNOW] / [THIRD] RAIL

Word of the Day: Frank LLOYD (15D: Frank ___, two-time Best Director Oscar winner) —

Frank William George Lloyd (2 February 1886 – 10 August 1960) was a Scottish Americanfilm director, scriptwriter and producer. Lloyd was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and its president between 1934 and 1935.
Lloyd was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a Scottish mother, Jane, and a Welsh father, Edmund Lloyd. He is Scotland's first Academy Award winner and is unique in film history having received three Oscar nominations in 1929 for his work on a silent film (The Divine Lady), a part-talkie (Weary River) and a full talkie (Drag). He won for The Divine Lady. He was nominated and won again in 1933 for his adaptation of Noël Coward's Cavalcade and received a further Best Director nomination in 1935 for perhaps his most successful film, Mutiny on the Bounty. (wikipedia)

• • •

"Old comedy routine"—three words to set the young solver's heart aflutter. The routine in question was, in fact, quite famous, but there's going to be a very clear generational divide today, with this thing likely titillating the retired set and likely proving somewhat of a drag (if not a total mystery) to younger solvers. I was stuck in a kind of no man's land, remembering very well "Who's on first …" but being less sure of "What's on second…" and not at all sure what the hell was on third (the fact that it's "I don't know" = apt!). Combine the tricky concept with the datedness of the concept (and fill) and the mostly hard cluing, and you've got a puzzle that, for me, was very challenging (as Thursdays go). Double my normal Thursday time. The whole middle threatened not to open up at all, partly because I stupidly thought the longer answer (which ended up being BLUE PENCIL), not the central answer, would be the themer. Also, I had ---IONARY and still couldn't figure out the [Roman soldier] (LEGIONARY). EASY TARGET, yeesh! (40A: It gets more than its fair share of jokes)—needed every cross and am still not sure I get how "gets" is being used there. Tortured cluing. Also, I've never ever ever heard of PETE ROUSE and am not even certain that his name's not PETER OUSE. Let me check... Hmm, looks like ROUSE, not OUSE. Also Looks Like He Was Only *Interim* Chief of Staff And Only For Three Months WTF!?!? The bar for crossworthiness is somewhere near floor-level today, I guess. Wow.

[Not first or second or third]

Ah, who can forget Frank LLOYD? I mean, besides me, who? He's 2/3 of an architect! He won Oscars for directing "The Divine Lady" and "Cavalcade". How could I, or anyone, not know that?! Those are (probably, to someone) classics! I'm feigning enthusiasm! Hurray, sarcasm! It's one thing to have your core concept be old—that's not a bad thing (though expecting current common knowledge of this particular routine to run deep might be a bad thing). But to have the rest of your puzzle run old and (often) clunky … that's a problem. There's nothing fresh about this puzzle. It's cultural center of gravity is decades and decades ago. There are some brave attempts to freshen things up with the clues on LATTE (18A: Iced ___) and OPTIC (6D: Part of FiOS), but it's pretty old-fashioned, overall. To be fair, though, the theme type is pretty contemporary—the split Across/Down square concept is not original, but this iteration is clever and conceptually up-to-date. There's just a combination of hard and stale that makes this one feel like a zombie puzzle, risen from the Maleska era. Again, some will enjoy that. I mean, the Andrews Sisters?! Come on, man. Why so aggressively olden? Can't you meet me halfway? You don't have to come all the way forward to Scissor Sisters. I'd settle for Pointer Sisters.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: MIDTERMS (56A: Some tests … or what's found literally in 17-, 24-, 30-, 39- and 44-Across) — letter string "TERM" appears in the "mid" section of each theme answer:

Theme answers:

"LATER, MAN" (17A: "Catch ya on the flip side")
UNDETERMINED (24A: Up in the air)
MASTERMIND (30A: Genius)
BUTTERMILK (39A: Ingredient in some pancake batter)
MONSTER MOVIE (44A: "Mothra vs. Godzilla," e.g.)

Word of the Day: AMAR'E Stoudemire (6D: Stoudemire of the N.B.A.) —

Amar'e Carsares Stoudemire (/əˈmɑreɪ ˈstɒdəmaɪər/; born November 16, 1982) is an American professional basketball player who currently plays for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). […] Listed at 6 feet 10 inches (208 cm) and 245 pounds (111 kg), the highly athletic Stoudemire has suffered from chronic knee problems, including undergoing microfracture surgery on his knees. In spite of this he won the 2003 NBA Rookie of the Year Award, made six appearances in the NBA All-Star Game, was a first-team All-NBA selection in 2007, and won a bronze medal with the United States men's national basketball team at the 2004 Olympic Games.
His off-court ventures include a record label, a clothing line, acting and a series of children's books for Scholastic Press. In addition, Stoudemire owns a significant share of the Hapoel Jerusalem Basketball Club.
Stoudemire's first name had previously been listed in the Phoenix Suns media guide as Amaréor Amare, but it was changed to Amar'e in October 2008. Stoudemire told NBA.com that his name had always been spelled Amar'e, but the media had been spelling it incorrectly since he joined the NBA. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this basic theme … seven years ago, when the NYT did it the first time. '08 puzzle was superior for a couple of reasons: fill quality and consistent breakage of "TERM" across two words / word parts. I liked BATGIRL (39D: Barbara Gordon's secret identity, in comics). That's about all I have to say about this one. Sorry. I can't work up the energy to do a new review if the NYT couldn't even work up the energy to publish a new puzzle. Please feel free to read the review of the '08 puzzle. I loved that thing. But then I was not the jaded husk of a man you see before you today. (Sincerely, though, constructors should do their due diligence—at least do a basic search of databases to see if your theme has been done) (But bigger fault lies with the editor, of course—I discovered the replication a. because of my memory, and b. through the simplest of searches)

(Of course, most solvers will not remember the '08 puzzle, so who cares, right? No. There are issues of craftsmanship and professionalism at play here—you don't redo an idea, except, perhaps, if you can bring something fresh and new. This puzzle does not do that. So either the constructor was lazy or the puzzle is a ripoff) (I'm told the constructor believes the placement of "TERM" at the *exact* center of the theme answers is what makes it new … I'll let you be the judge of that) (If you want to see a virtuosic variation on this theme (two-TERM answers!), go here—crazy.)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BEEHIVE (60A: Where to find the ends of 19-, 36- and 51-Across) — ends of theme answers are words that are also bee types:

Theme answers:

CARIBBEAN QUEEN (19A: 1984 #1 Billy Ocean hit)
DOMESTIC WORKERS (36A: Maids, butlers and au pairs)
PREDATOR DRONES (51A: Aircraft in modern airstrikes)

Word of the Day: ARAWAK (42A: Greater Antilles Native, once) —

The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America and historically of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, all of whom spoke related Arawakan languages. (wikipedia)

• • •

Started out very, very easy but then toughened up some toward the end. Theme phrases get increasingly interesting as the puzzle goes on, though the theme itself is thin, and not terribly interesting. Highly adequate. Placement of BEEHIVE is absurd—seems like something clever could've been done with a revealer: some kind of play on words … something. Needs an extra something. A little oomph. Fill is sufficiently vibrant, though I still refuse to believe a MONOSKI is a thing (18A: Relative of a snowboard). Even with BEEHIVE being a virtual gimme, that SE corner was the toughest one for me to put together. MHO… wouldn't come. I might've misspelled it as HMO, which is weird. MR. MET also didn't come easily, and I had a C v K crisis with ERIK, and I'm guessing a "rubber stamp" was a metaphor because I don't know of any stamps that just say "YES," and I haven't heard HOSER since "Strange Brew" was playing all the time on HBO 30+ years ago, and I really thought the "shower" in 44D: Something to put on before a shower was a bathroom shower, and I wouldn't put a PONCHO on under any circumstances anyway. Most of rest of the grid was simple.

Didn't like clue on EASY CHAIR at all (20D: Sit back and enjoy it), first because I hate the "it" clues (e.g. [Step on it] for STAIR or GAS, [Beat it] for THE RAP, etc.) and second because the addition of "enjoy" is just weird. Adds nothing. Distracts. I had EASY and needed almost every cross to get CHAIR. Also, what is an EASY CHAIR? Is it a recliner? Just a … comfortable chair? Harper's appears to have a regular column called "Easy Chair." I don't know what's conveyed by the phrase. No one I know uses the phrase. It's vaguely familiar, perhaps from song lyrics … ? I maybe be getting EASY CHAIR confused with "Chevy Van" or Bob Dylan's big brass bed. I also don't know where the Greater Antilles are (I'm guessing the CARIBBEAN QUEEN lives there?) or what an ARAWAK is. I'm slightly exaggerating, in that I suspected the Greater Antilles were in the Caribbean (correct) and that ARAWAK were native Americans (correct). I've only seen / heard of ARAWAK in crosswords. If you're wondering how I can be so ignorant and still solve crosswords so fast, join the club. I wonder this often.

Really disturbed by 32A: Overwhelmed police officer's request until I realized the answer was BACK-UP, not "BACK UP!" I think recent protests in Ferguson, New York, and elsewhere really colored my perception of what was happening in that clue and why the police officer felt "overwhelmed." Puzzle already has the deeply troubling PREDATOR DRONES in it. Police officer shouting "BACK UP!" would've been a little too much potentially violent state power for one puzzle. For my tastes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Todd Gross

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: imagined encyclopedia entries — theme answers are common phrases in the pattern "___ TO ___" where the second word starts with the same letter as, and alphabetically follows, the first:

Theme answers:

BACK TO BASICS (4D: Encyclopedia volume on education* reform?) *(EDU is in the grid (23D)—not cool)
MADE TO MEASURE (17D: Encyclopedia volume on tailoring?)
NEXT TO NOTHING (7D: Encyclopedia volume on poverty?)
RAGS TO RICHES (21D: Encyclopedia volume on wealth accumulation?)

Word of the Day: METACOMET (41A: Indian chief called King Philip) —

Metacomet was the second son of the sachem Massasoit. He became a chief in 1662 when his brother Wamsutta (or King Alexander) died shortly after his father Massasoit. Wamsutta's widow Weetamoo (d. 1676), sachem of the Pocasset, was Metacomet's ally and friend for the rest of her life. Metacom married Weetamoo's younger sister Wootonekanuske. No one knows how many children they had or what happened to them, but Wootonekanuske and one of their sons were sold to slavery in the West Indies.
At the beginning he sought to live in harmony with the colonists. As a sachem, he took the lead in much of his tribes' trade with the colonies. He adopted the European name of Philip, and bought his clothes in Boston, Massachusetts.
But the colonies continued to expand. To the west, the Iroquois Confederation also was fighting against neighboring tribes in the Beaver Wars, pushing them west and encroaching on his territory. Finally, in 1671 the colonial leaders of the Plymouth Colony forced major concessions from him. He surrendered much of his tribe's armament and ammunition, and agreed that they were subject to English law. The encroachment continued until hostilities broke out in 1675. Metacom led the opponents of the English, with the goal of stopping Puritan expansion. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's a cute idea at the core of this thing, but the execution just doesn't work. It just doesn't. Those imagined encyclopedia volumes are laughably short, and the whole point of encyclopedias is that they cover a variety of topics, in alphabetical order—and yet these imagined volumes are clued as if they are on a single topic. It all just doesn't work. On at least two levels. Nice (if possibly accidental) touch that the theme answers are themselves in alphabetical order. Also nice: some of the fill, namely JERUSALEM, "MY SHARONA," TIM BURTON. I'd add METACOMET, but honestly I've never seen that before in my life. I'm torn between calling an obscurity foul and embracing the weirdness of this new (to-me) name. It's a comet that comments on its own comet-ness. METACOMET!

The rest of the fill, however, is pretty poor. That NW corner is inexcusable, honestly. SELBY over ONEAD :( :( :( A little elbow grease and that corner could be a ton better. See also … lots of places. Yeesh, that western section. Just as the terminal "I" at 1D in the NW creates problems, so the terminal "U" starts a cascade of bad fill in the west. TABU INON ANYA BOSSA, all interlocking, none of it good. No reason these smallish areas should be so heavily laden with word parts and hackneyed fill. OHO YMA ASSNS IMET OLE OHO AHEM YMA AERO ODIE SELA TELE XII HIER… there's just a lot you have to endure in order to enjoy the good stuff.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: "AKU AKU" (32D: When repeated, Thor Heyerdahl book) —

Aku-Aku: the Secret of Easter Island is a 1958 book by Thor Heyerdahl.^[1] The book describes the 1955-56 Norwegian Archaeological Expedition's investigations of Polynesian history and culture at Easter Island, the Austral Islands of Rapa Iti and Raivavae, and the Marquesas Islands of Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa. Visits to Pitcairn Island, Mangareva and Tahiti are described as well. By far the greatest part of the book tells of the work on Easter Island, where the expedition investigated the giant stone statues (moai), the quarries at Rano Raraku and Puna Pau, the ceremonial village of Orongo on Rano Kau, as well as many other sites throughout the island. Much of the book's interest derives from the interaction of the expedition staff, from their base at Anakena beach, with the Easter Islanders themselves, who lived mainly in the village of Hanga Roa. (wikipedia)

• • •

Thor Heyerdahl. 1958. EBBETS Field. Demolished 1960. There's a pattern, or rather a center of gravity, and it is way, way back. I'm a big fan of mid-century aesthetics of various kinds. Jazz. Art. Interior design. I have 3000+ paperbacks from 1940-69 sitting just to my left here in my home office. So retro is, in theory, peachy. But this puzzle isn't retro. It's just old. Tired. Pleasant. Inoffensive. Like an uncle you think is OK. You know, you don't hate him. He's nice. Remembers your birthday. But you don't really *get* him, and he has a corny sense of humor and won't shut up about how great Johnny Unitas was. (Actually, I think I'm literally talking about Abe Simpson now, but anyway …). This is the puzzle equivalent of nostalgia. That one rap clue isn't fooling anyone. Even Lionel Richie looks too hip for this room. And even leaving age and time period aside, none of these answer has any snap crackle or pop. They are fine (at last in the center—the corners feel like half-baked afterthoughts). They get the job done. No one is going to complain about this thing. It's inoffensive in the extreme. But your SMARTYPANTS GRAND NEPHEW called and he wants his 2015 puzzle back. Please.

Hard to explain the sagging feeling I get when I fill in SENNA and LEYDEN and ARIAS and SAGER and OPIE and NIENTE and OILSEED and EASTLA and EENSY and RICER and AREEL. I pick all those because they aren't exactly bad (well, AREEL is close) … they're just, in the aggregate, indicative of the kind creaky, dated puzzle I can tell I'm gonna be dealing with. SEALER… LINEAL… lots of common letters, and the best you can say about those answers is "Fine. Sure. OK." The puzzle's highlight is clearly meant to be the mash-up of longer fill at the center of the puzzle, and yes, it's all relatively clean in there, and that deserves some praise. But the fill is all so whitebread. So Ward Cleaver. It's wearing its mid-century frame-of-reference on its sleeve, which would be OK if the answers from that period had some zip and zing. But no. This thing is all cardigan sweater.

A pediatrician acquaintance of mine says I can quote her re: the TEATS clue (6D: Nature's pacifiers?), so I will: "It's not an incorrect statement, but it's weird." This was in response to my saying I found it disturbing, first, because I couldn't tell if the frame of reference was human or barnyard animal (if the former, no one calls them TEATS for god's sake, and if the latter, that is some creepy/odd anthropomorphism you've got going on there). I know the phrase "fruit is nature's candy," but that means it's "candy" FOR HUMANS. TEATS are not for humans. They are for piglets. Unless, again, you are referring to human female breasts as TEATS, in which case, yikes. Clue on SNAIL is just stupid (25A: Appetizer served with a two-pronged fork). It's called "escargot" when you eat it in a restaurant. Everyone knows that. Cluing SNAIL as "Appetizer" is like cluing COW as "Sandwich meat." Trust me, if the restaurant bothers to provide you with the "two-pronged fork," it—is—escargot. Not SNAIL. When did you people start calling "dinosaurs""DINOs"? This feels like a post-"Jurassic Park" thing. I don't believe anyone actually calls them this. It's some kind of ploy to infantilize us all. I say, resist. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"SABOTEUR" (16A: 1942 Hitchcock thriller) —

Saboteur is a 1942 Universal spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings and Norman Lloyd.
This film should not be confused with an earlier Hitchcock film with a similar title, Sabotage(also known as The Woman Alone) from 1936. [too late] (wikipedia)

• • •

Grid seems competent enough, but there were too many long giveaways in this one, which made the whole solving experience a not-terribly-interesting walk in the park. One of those parks that maybe has a trail around a large pond. A few trees. Some old barbecues and park benches. And that's about it. Fine, if your needs are limited, but not somewhere you'd go to truly enjoy yourself. EDIE FALCO = massive gimme. IRENE CARA = same. You could've stopped the 36-Across clue at [Ricky Martin hit…] and I'd've gotten "LIVIN' LA VIDA LOCA." That's too much territory to just give away so easily. And it's not like the grid has any scintillating parts to recommend it. It handles its longish answers pretty smoothly, that's true, but no one's writing home about CONTESSAS and PERMALLOY (whatever that is).

I had this thing pegged as easy and overly straightforward from the beginning, when I guessed BASSO / OATER, and then filled in all the first Downs in the NW, in order, off of just their last letters—like so:

I like blowing through a Friday as much as the next person—makes you feel powerful!—but I like to at least have a few moments where I ooh and aah at the scenery, no matter how fast it's going by. Today, there was no real scenery (though the staggerstack of long Downs in the middle is quite nice). The only bumps in the road were entirely self-made. Presented with SABOT- I immediately wrote in "SABOTAGE" for the Hitchcock film. Not sure if this was an intentional trap, but it's a good one, as Hitchcock directed both "SABOTAGE" (1936) and (today's correct answer) "SABOTEUR" (1942). But I hung on to the wrong answer only briefly, as it was Clearly wrong. Took me longer than it ought to have to get MUHAMMAD ALI (14D: Who said "My only fault is that I don't realize how great I really am"). I even had the MUHA- and could think only of MUHA … TMA GHANDI? Hmmm, doesn't seem like something he'd say. MUHA… RAJAH? Not even sure that's a thing. Made things worse for myself by going with ELLES instead of MLLES at 26A: Misses in Marseille: Abbr. If I'd just stuck around long enough to read the end of that damned clue … but no matter. All this was worked out easily enough, and nothing else in the puzzle offered much resistance. Well, PERMALLOY, a little, but just a little.

Bullets:

21A: ___ Brickowski ("The Lego Movie" protagonist) (EMMET) — A reader tweeted at me that choosing this clue over sad hobo clown Kelly was very 21st century. I noted that their names are actually spelled differently (two Ts for Emmett Kelly). Not that many famous one-T Kellys. Just this guy, I think:

"Emmet Fox (July 30, 1886 – August 13, 1951) was a New Thought spiritual leader of the early 20th century, famous for his large Divine Science church services held in New York City during the Great Depression."

37D: 2019 Pan American Games site (LIMA) — I had them in LAOS. You develop certain reflexive tendencies when you solve a ton of puzzles over many decades. I knew LAOS felt a little too … large … to be a "site," but my fingers didn't care. In it went.
10D: Magnetizable nickel-iron combo (PERMALLOY) — Turns out you can pronounce it both ways, in case you're wondering, though perm-ALLoy seems to be preferred. I can't even believe "PERma-loy" is allowed. My guess is that people just couldn't stop themselves saying it (by analogy with permafrost, perma soft, perma shave, etc.), and it stuck as an acceptable variant.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS if you do the puzzle online right when it comes out, feel free to tell me what you think needs discussing (via Twitter @rexparker) (#heyrex)

Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty: Easy

[You can see where I wrote "CARAN…, up top, in my bid to parse CAR ANTENNA (5D: One getting the show on the road?)… you can also see that I wrote "Wow!" for that clue, as well as for 25D: Fitting entertainment at an arcade? (TETRIS)]

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Bandar SERI Begawan (35D: Bandar ___ Begawan (Brunei's capital)) —

Bandar Seri Begawan /ˌbaːndə sɨˌriː bɨˈɡaʊən/ ba(h)nd-ə sə-ree bə-gow-ən (Jawi: بندر سري بڬاوان ; Malay: [ˌbanda səˌri bəˈɡawan]) with an estimated population of more than 200,000 (in 2014), is the capital and largest city of the Sultanate of Brunei. (wikipedia)

[Not sure what red line indicates—cruise? pirate adventure?]

• • •

I always (and I mean Always) forget where Brunei is. So the map is for me than it is for you. I mean, you can look at it if you want, but my principal edification target is me. I solved on paper today for some reason. I think I just got sick of screens. Sometimes it's nice to be able to look back over a grid and really See where you screwed up (erasures, write-overs, etc.). Or where you got annoyed / aggrieved (note all the little :( faces and "?"s and what not on my grid). I missed the ACPT this year, so I haven't had to solve on paper in a long time, but I'm headed to The Indie 500 Tournament in D.C. on May 30, and since tournament solving is always done on paper, I kind of need to get back into paper-solving shape. It really is a different beast in a lot of ways, though the harder the puzzle gets, the less important the difference is between on-screen and paper—on-screen is much faster when you're dealing with easy puzzles. But ANYway… paper! I like making little marginal annotations as I go. I usually do this after I print out a completed puzzle, but it's kind of nice to record my notes as I solve, rather than retrospectively; more … authentic, somehow.

[18A: Like many 911 calls]

I thought this puzzle was fine. As quadstacks go, totally average. It has all the usual infelicities in the short fill, but somehow today these are not offset by charming / interesting stack-answers. BEATING A RETREAT has a bit of life, but the rest are common-letter-heavy snoozers. I thought SALES ASSISTANTS was a joke among constructors, as it is oft-used and saturated in 1-pt Scrabble tiles. Maybe I'm thinking of a different phrase, but SALES ASSISTANTS is close. *All* those "S"s enable soooo many plurals. Makes filling a grid like this soooo much easier (not easy—but easier). ALTERNATE ROUTES has about as much charm. NO INTEREST LOANS. Seriously, these are all phrases from a tedious business meeting where people sit around a conference table and vie to impress the CEO w/ business speak jargon. What did we NET? How do we lower our TAX liability? Do we still have that fleet of SSTS in Bandar SERI Begawan or did we sell those? CAN TEEN consumers get their parents to say YES to buying them this year's hottest fashion, "UTE RAGS"? Where's PAT? Get PAT in here. She'll want in on this."ETC.

Here's a recent New Yorker cartoon with (yet another) bullshit grid.

Have you noticed how incapable advertisers / cartoonists / all humans are of depicting American crossword grids accurately? Dear editors: here are the Basics: 1. all-over interlock (i.e. no unchecked squares) 2. no answers of fewer than three letters 3. rotational symmetry (or some kind of symmetry). Please share with any friends you have who are or might some day be responsible for the visual representation of American crossword grids. Thanks!

Here's another bad one:

["MYSTERY" is right …]

And another:

[Now *that* is a terrible theme]

So at this point, it looks like I'm a collector.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Look What Turned Up!" — theme answers are Down that bounce (or "turn") back up at the end. That is, the last four letters turn back on themselves—or, at least, you have to read them that way for the theme answers to make sense (turned-up part is in red, below):

Theme answers:

WISH YOU WERE H (2D: Postcard message)
TAKES THE TOPS (59D: Wins)
GLUTEN-FREE B (5D: Beverage brewed without barley or wheat)
ON A SCALE FROM ONE TO (22D: How things may be rated)
"NOW WHERE WER?" (70D: "What was I talking about before?")
REACHES LEGAL (11D: Becomes an adult)
DO EXACTLY AS I (63D: "Follow my command!")

Word of the Day: ECOTAGE (104A: Environmental terrorism) —

noun
sabotage carried out for ecological reasons. (google)

• • •

So the theme … I got it early and then … there it was. It's pretty joyless. Luckily, the phrases that got used were mostly delightful, but the bouncing back part? Shrug. The title made things too obvious. I was able to get it from the Obvious "WISH YOU WERE H." I mean, it didn't fit, so I looked at the title, and then all questions were answered. It's just not much of a trick, not much of a Thing to discover. But Jeff lays down a nice grid most every time out, so as a kind of oversized themeless, I was able to enjoy this one plenty. I'd prefer more humor / wordplay / cleverness in my Sunday theme, but I'll take this over plainer, cornier fare (the real danger on a Sunday).

Weird thing about this grid is the lack of longer answers (outside the themers). You got some 8s in the NE/SW corners, but they're not very remarkable (come on, ICE CANOE? What is that?). Outside of that, most of what you got in terms of longer fill is some stray 6s, 7s, and a couple 8s floating here and there. In that range, there's a number of good entries—stuff like FARMBOY, GUT BOMBS, I CHOKED, BAT PHONE, and DRY SPELL foremost among them. (Speaking of DRY SPELLs: I was on vacation last week in California. That drought stuff is for real. And snow packs are now at something like 6% of normal. It's terrible. Reassuringly, it ended up being not traumatic at all to commit to serious water stinginess. I wasn't a big "showering" fan to begin with, and under drought conditions, my slovenliness becomes a virtue. For me, and for the environment, it's a win-win.). I refuse to accept that ECOTAGE is a thing anyone has ever said. You can put ECOTAGE in your ICE CANOE and send them both right over the falls. But nothing else about the grid was grating. It's very nicely put together overall.

My favorite moment of the solve came early, when I hit 6D: Ones found in the closet? At that point, my grid looked like this:

I was pretty excited about the possibilities. But no: just MOTHS.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Just when you thought that April was going to be dark, gloomy, and woefully free from the sunshiny words of a certain guest blogger...

Constructor: Alex Silverman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Fab Four— Theme clues are about which types of people might like different Beatles songs.

Theme answers:

YELLOWSUBMARINE (14A: Navy captain's favorite Beatles song?)
SHESLEAVINGHOME (17A: Empty nester's favorite Beatles song?)
WHENIMSIXTYFOUR (35A: Sexagenarian's favorite Beatles song?)
PAPERBACKWRITER (55A: Author's favorite Beatles song?)
HERECOMESTHESUN (58A: Early riser's favorite Beatles song?)

Word of the Day: MAME (49D: "We Need A Little Christmas" musical)—

Mame is a musical with the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Originally titled My Best Girl, it is based on the 1955 novelAuntie Mame by Patrick Dennis and a 1956 Broadway play, by Lawrence and Lee, that starred Rosalind Russell. Set in New York and spanning the Great Depression and World War II, it focuses on eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis, whose famous motto is "Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."^[1] Her fabulous life with her wealthy friends is interrupted when the young son of her late brother arrives to live with her. They cope with the Depression in a series of adventures.

• • •
(Wikipedia)

So, last week you may have thought "SHESLEAVINGHOME," or "The only time I'm going to see Annabel again is WHENIMSIXTYFOUR," or even, um, okay I can't find a way to make PAPERBACKWRITER fit into this writeup. But no, I'm just on vacation (Buenos dias de Costa Rica!) and was on a plane at the TIME when I was supposed to be writing last week. But I'm here now. Hola!

http://www.mydisplay.ws/imagenes/hola-15.gif

I thought this was a pretty good Monday, all in all. Loved the frequent biology references (ERNS, NEUR, BIOTA, AMINO) and felt that rare words were pretty well peppered throughout the puzzle. Nice command to SLEEP SOON up top. Not a lot of combos to speak of otherwise, though - the words may have been interesting individually, but never really came together. Oh well. It's worth it for words like LISLE and ANCHO.

Themewise...well...did someone say music-related crossword puzzle where the music is actually good??? Okay, so as you can see, I got super excited about this theme...The Beatles are just classic, man. Perfect for a simple Monday theme. (And the 15-letter answers make the puzzle look awesome.)

Bullets:

UNMAN (12D: Deprive of courage)— Ahem. My Wellesley classmates will be hearing about this.
GRR(21A: Sound before a dog bites) — This was also the sound I was making a few minutes earlier this evening, when I accidentally did the wrong puzzle!! My electronic device had the Tuesday, March 24 one cued up for some bizarre reason, and in my folly, I spent half an hour on that instead. (The whole time, I was thinking, "Gee golly, this sure is hard, it should be a Tuesday puzzle!"
GALILEO(21D: Astronomer who discovered the main moons of Jupiter), GALILEO, GALILEO FIGARO, MAGNIFICO-O-O-O...

Signed, Annabel, tired high school student.

Constructor: Bruce Haight

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

THEME: EIGHT (36A: Total number of letters of the alphabet used in this puzzle) —

Word of the Day: GIRTHS (43D: Saddle straps) —

noun
plural noun: girths
1.
the measurement around the middle of something, especially a person's waist.
synonyms: circumference, perimeter; More

2.
a band attached to a saddle, used to secure it on a horse by being fastened around its belly.
synonyms: cinch
"a horse's girth"
(google)

• • •

So my first thought is "Dear lord, why is the fill so terrible? Like … Terrible. Like, so terrible that even people who only say nice things about puzzles would say it's terrible. Terrible." That was here:

[sheesh]

Actually, the moment came earlier, when I went on a SHISH / HIES / REES / AIRES / IRREG run, but SIEG… SIEG was the Hitler-esque cherry on the top. SIEG was when I stopped and said "I gotta take a picture of this." Unreal. I took another picture when I hit RAES, but who cares? It was at that moment that I thought "Where are the Os and Us…?" And then I tried desperately to predict what the conceit would be. Why would you do this? What's the hook? But the hook is … [drum roll] … EIGHT. An arbitrary number! OK, so when does the other shoe drop? EIGHT is important / interesting … why? It's April 14, so 4/14 so … [...carry the 7…] … nope nothing there.

So, let me get this straight (str-EIGHT!) … the grid has all the letters in EIGHT… plus SAR? And that anagrams to … something? AH, TIGERS! SHIT RAGE! How about SIGH RATE, as in "This puzzle will make your SIGH RATE high, as you encounter garbage fill over and over and over." Stunning. I give this puzzle EIGHT stars (out of a possible two thousand).

Seriously, I challenge you to find a worse puzzle than this one in recent NYT history. This is rock bottom. (Please let this be rock bottom.)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. now please read this cogent explanation of the real problem here: "It's All About the Fill" by Evan Birnholz.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: BILATERAL SYMMETRY (44A: With 46-Across, feature o fthe answers to this puzzle's six starred clues, in a sense) — theme answers are seven-letter words where first three letters are the same as last three letters:

Theme answers:

ALL Y'ALL (14A: *Southern pronoun)
GIORGIO (16A: *Designer Armani)
MADE MAD (15A: *Angered)
ILL WILL (59A: *Animus)
DINED IN (62A: *Enjoyed home cooking)
DO-SI-DOS (63A: *Square dance moves)

Then two other answers round out the symmetry theme:

24A: Landmark that exhibits 44-/46-Across (TAJ MAHAL)
28A: Insect that exhibits 44-/46-Across (BUTTERFLY)

Word of the Day: ODEUM (9D: Concert hall) —

noun
noun: odeum; plural noun: odea; plural noun: odeums; noun: odeon; plural noun: odeons
(especially in ancient Greece or Rome) a building used for musical performances. (google)

• • •

Theme didn't work for me, for one simple reason—the BILATERAL SYMMETRY of the words and the BILATERAL SYMMETRY of a BUTTERFLY and the TAJ MAHAL are different. The puzzle invites you to contemplate the question: "How are these words like a butterfly?" and the answer is: they aren't. The words don't have mirror symmetry, butterflies and taj mahals do. So the puzzle passes on a technicality (that is, BILATERAL SYMMETRY is indeed in play in all cases), but I hate technicalities. Boo. Also, BUTTERFLY and (esp.) TAJ MAHAL are pretty arbitrary examples of symmetry. Also, there's a "MAD" dupe, but don't think I care about that very much. I care much more about the fact that MADE MAD is terribly contrived fill than I care that it dupes the "MAD" in "MAD MEN" (my favorite 21st-century TV show). Now LON Nol (60D: With 60-Down reversed, 1970s dictator), *that* guy had some butterfly symmetry. Get that man in the game!

Fill is fun, mostly, so at least there's that. GIRD UP is weird. Clues seems to indicate GIRD. The "UP" part is mysterious to me. Not sure how you'd use that phrase. TO TERM is kind of weird as a stand-alone phrase. It doesn't have wide (or any?) application beyond the phrase "carry to term," so it really has no business pretending it can fly solo. I feel like "tough spot" is more spot-on than BAD SPOT, but close enough. I don't like Helmsley, but I like HELMSLEY. And right underneath TYRANT! Nice. I also like the colloquial verve of "UM, OKAY…" and even "HIYA" and especially "ALL Y'ALL." I had LENTIL soup yesterday and it was good so yay LENTIL. I am teaching "SAGA" this week (probably the greatest ongoing mainstream comic book series in the U.S. right now), so yay to that as well.

[Listen ALL Y'ALL!]

I had my poissons swimming in the MER, and I had HINDER before HAMPER. That's about it for flat-out screw-ups. Onward.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Michael Dewey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (for a Monday)

THEME: All The Rage — two-word phrases (mostly) where second word is a kind of public uproar:

Theme answers:

KLEPTOMANIA (17A: Compulsion to steal)
MARCH MADNESS (23A: What a bracketologist is caught up in)
"CAT SCRATCH FEVER" (37A: 1977 hard-rock hit by Ted Nugent)
FASHION CRAZE (48A: Miniskirts or oversize sunglasses, once)
MEDIA FRENZY (59A: What a major scandal results in)

Word of the Day: Ferdinand FOCH (26D: French W.W. I general Ferdinand ___) —

Marshal Ferdinand Foch (French pronunciation: [fɔʃ]), (2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French soldier, military theorist and the Allied Généralissime during the First World War. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme is somewhat timely, given that it's currently the season for MARCH MADNESS, and it's also (coincidentally) the day after I rewatched this 1980 classic for the first time in probably thirty years:

[This movie came out in 1980. MIT Mystery Hunt started in 1981. Coincidence? Ha.]

It's pretty straightforward, as themes go. Far more straightforward than most NYT themes. But Monday can be a good stepping-on point for tyros, so if the theme is excessively graspable, no big deal. The grid as a whole is sufficiently lively, so "easy" does not mean "dull" today. I really disliked FOCH in this grid, largely because he seems like a massive outlier, familiarity-wise (in that he lies outside my familiarity entirely, and is probably the least recognizable / generally known answer in this grid by a long shot … though ANYA Seton's fame is sustained almost entirely by crosswords, I think). But I ran my "FOCH sochs!" theory by constructor friends and no one had a problem with it, so it now seems entirely possible that I'm the one who's the outlier. Hmm. The tables are turned. Not sure I like this.

I flailed (!) a lot around the tail-end of FASHION CRAZE. FASHION didn't trigger any familiar phrases in my brain. I guess FASHION CRAZE is a thing. You gotta get to the "A" in "CRAZE" before google actually recommends the phrase FASHION CRAZE, but it seems familiar enough. Fill is a little crusty around the edges (EEK IBEAM ABATH ONA OKIE ETE USOFA CSINY MGT ANYA CZAR), but it holds up.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Challenging (***for a Tuesday***) (time = roughly 4 minutes)

THEME: NIGHT (71A: Word that can precede either part of 17-, 25-, 38-, 54- and 63-Across)

Theme answers:

SCHOOL CLUB (17A: Debate team or Model United Nations)
LIFELINE (25A: Aid on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire")
TIMETABLE (38A: Commuter's reference guide)
SKYLIGHT (54A: Atrium feature)
STICK SHIFT (63A: It's not an automatic feature)

Word of the Day: PARAPET (48A: Shooter's position in a fort) —

noun
a low protective wall along the edge of a roof, bridge, or balcony.
synonyms: balustrade, barrier, wall
"Marian leaned over the parapet"
a protective wall or earth defense along the top of a trench or other place of concealment for troops.
synonyms: barricade, rampart, bulwark, bank, embankment, fortification, defense, earthwork, breastwork, bastion
"the sandbags making up the parapet" (google)

• • •

I really thought the "word that can precede" theme-type had been retired, at least semi-officially. I realize that here we get the "both words!" variant of that theme, but even that is now a quite hackneyed concept, one that usually results in not terribly interesting theme answers, and a revealer that's more of a shrug than a revelation. This is a completely satisfactory example of this theme type. Biggish corners, with longish Downs, give the grid at least a little character. Fill is of average quality, and what junk there is (PIS, IAL, DELA, ADDL, etc.) is largely inoffensive. I think if you can somehow add a new twist to this theme type, it might become something more than just an old-fashioned place holder. When the revealer is just [the word in question], whatever that word is, the air kind of goes out of the whole thing.

Not sure why I was so slow today. SCHOOL CLUB (the least tight of the themers) required all the crosses before CLUB came into view. Couldn't remember how to spell PISTIL, or if PISTIL was even the right word (1D: Pollination part). Brain gave me "stamen and p- p- p- something." I don't think I know that definition of SLUICED (32A: Drenched with a sudden flow). For some reason I associate "sluicing" with a change of direction, not a soaking. My confusion could be the result of a deep aversion to the word "sluice" (it's in the same category as "moist" and "teats" for me…). I never remember that BAHAI is a religion (57D: Mideast religion), mostly because I know nothing about it, so that, combined with the TAX / SSN cross-referenced clues, combined with the somewhat tricky clue on STICK SHIFT (63A: It's not an automatic feature), managed to slow me down some more in the SE. Then the big sticking point was having SUNLIGHT instead of SKYLIGHT at 54A: Atrium feature. Started doubting PARAPET, which I'd been so proud to throw across the grid moments earlier (48A: Shooter's position in a fort). Anyway it wasn't difficult, just slower going (for me) than Tuesdays usually are.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter / Facebook]

Tom who played TV's Luke Duke / THU 4-2-15 / Latino Walk of Fame locale informally / Titular rock band whose film's IMDb rating goes up to 11 rather than 10 / Tiananmen Square demonstration suppressor / Order at rathskeller / Classic late-night comedy bit

Saucer-shaped jellyfish / FRI 4-3-15 / America vaudeville England / 1837 short story collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne / Onetime competitor of Mad magazine / Cartman's first name on South Park

2003 top 5 hit for Fabolous / SAT 4-4-15 / Title flora in Whitman poem / Ibsen play parodying opera / Ritter's co-star on TVs 8 simple rules

___ regni / SUN 4-5-15 / Home of Faa'a International Airport / Ayatollah's speech / Point of sharpest vision / Schlemiels / Burns's "To a Louse" / Sony video recorder

Last of 1973 murder mystery / MON 4-6-15 / Stone Age tool / Second-largest city in Kenya / Press conference danger for unguarded comment / Relatives of violas /

Anise-flavored liqueur / TUE 4-7-15 / Leader of Transcendentalism movement / Aquino's successor in Philippines / Parapsychologist's study

Miler Sebastian / WED 4-8-15 / Coiner of term doublethink / Frozen Wasser / Dweller along Mekong / Royal bride of 1981 / Some British jackets / Sound of air kiss / Mollusk on la carte

Psychiatry writer R.D. / THU 4-9-15 / Brown-eared comics character / Against a thing legally / They say it in Spain in old Andrews Sisters hit / Part of FIOS / Tryptophan leucine / Tiny adjustment to atomic clock / Andean article

Marshal at Battle of Waterloo / TUE 3-17-15 / Headwear for Scot / Sch with annual mystery hunt / Miserly Marner / Josh who played Dubya in W / Yelp contributors essentially

Greater Antilles native once / WED 3-18-15 / 1984 #1 Billy Ocean hit / Former conductance unit / Inscription on classic letter box / Friend of Squidward / Comic who said meal is not over when I'm full meal is over when I hate myself / February revolution target / Rival ascot of Phillie Phanatic

Actor David of Dark Shadows / THU 3-19-15 / Successor company to Northern Natural Gas / Republic founded in 1836 / Nestle chocolate bar since 1988 / Title ship in W.W. II film / 1979 #1 hit whose title is sung with stutter / Musicians Russell Redbone

Reese's field / FRI 3-20-15 / Mayberry moppet / Songwriter Carol Bayer / When repeated Thor Heyerdahl book / Title locale in 1987 Cheech Marin film / Staple of Hindustani music / Spaghetti western persona / Who wrote to Ptolemy I There is no royal road to geometry

Boito's Mefistofele eg / FRI 4-10-15 / Roman general who defeated Hannibal / City between Citrus Springs Silver Springs / Yogi's utterances / Locks Great Lakes connectors / Red Scare target / Rossini's final opera / Old Italian nobles / Movie genre parodied in 2011's Rango

Japanese for finger pressure / SAT 4-11-15 / He struck Caesar like a cur / Big letters in bowling alleys / Mauritian money / Rule ending in 1947 / Renowned 1920s raider / 1990s collectible

Environmental terrorism / SUN 4-12-15 / Eyes for emoticons / Line in Gotham / Tattooed toon / Bone whose name means clasp in Latin / Canyon creator / Musician who co-founded Nutopia / Skype annoyance / Big name in lean dieting

Valley, European steelmaking region / MON 4-13-2015 / St. Teresa of / Mexican chili pepper / Fine glove material

Country singer Clark / TUE 4-14-15 / Blue Moon lyricist / Dwarf planet discovered in 2005 / Old Turkish VIP / Art deco notable / Employee of paranoid king

Tylenol producer for short / WED 4-15-15 / Mammal with flexible nose / Businesswoman with nickname queen of mean / Auction house eponym / Ode title words / Whimsically odd

French WWI general Ferdinand / MON 3-23-15 / Old Russian autocrat / Hit TV drama starring Gary Sinise / Egyptian cobra / Boat with double-bladed paddle / 1977 hard-rock hit by Ted Nugent / Hajj destination / What bracketologist is caught up in

Queen of Chicago / TUE 3-24-15 / Newspaper publisher Adolph / Drenched with sudden flow / Vampire role for Tom Cruise / Mischievous Norse god / Country with kibbutzim / Downloaded video format / Xmas poem opener