Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: György LIGETI (62A: Composer György whose music was featured in Kubrick films) —

György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor [ˈliɡɛti ˈɟørɟ ˈʃaːndor]; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time".
Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very hard, but a weird kind of hard. The kind of hard that was mostly easy but then dead-stop. Then medium and then Dead-Stop 2: The Revenge. The dead-stops came, not surprisingly, in the dead-end alleys in the NE and SW. Those were like completely separate, self-contained, wholly different experiences from the broad swath of puzzle from NW to SE. Just brutal. And things started out so well. Here's what my puzzle looked like just 5 seconds in:

OK, yes, it's SKRILLEX, not SKRILLAX (1A: Leader in electronic music with multiple Grammys), but the fact that I was 87.5% right on that answer right out of the gate meant that I had traction galore. I figured this would just be one of those days where the constructor and I were on the same pop culture wavelength, and I would sea voyage to victory. This was before I enter chamber of horrors 1: the NE. I had the bottom part of that section from STRATEGO and SAME-SEX, but DFW clue (12D: Notable features of David Foster Wallace books) meant nothing to me and -AGE was zero help with 'ROID RAGE and … something BOX. I wanted SMALL. I then wanted SWEAT, but couldn't convince myself that was a thing, or a metaphor based on a thing. But the real super duper horrible problem for me up there was the horrible quicksand I fell into with a pair of wrong answers: LODGES for 9A: Elks and others (ORDERS) and LOP for 9D: Cockeyed (OFF). Yes, it's ALOP (if it's anything). I see that now. But it *really* felt right. So I sat a long time. Keep in mind that LODGES got me the "D" for DROOP, which only hardened my commitment to LODGES. Gah. Finally tore everything out and tried END NOTES for the DFW clue. From there, I brought back SWEAT BOX and everything worked out. Sigh.

Back to the fun middle! Sailed almost too easily around the bend in the SE and over to the entrance to the SW corner, which, like the NE, didn't want to let me in. Here, I have to quibble with the clues on the gateway answers (i.e. those Acrosses across the top of the SW section). [Space racers] is screaming for a "?" The U.S. and the SOVIETS were indeed involved in a Space Race, but no one in the world, let alone outer space, would call either party a "racer." Come on. That's nuts. And bananas. Banana nut bread, that is, without the deliciousness. And then "CHOCOLAT" (42A: 2000 film set in France that was nominated for five Academy Awards) … oh, actually "CHOCOLAT" is fair. Arcane, to me, but fair. It's the clue on ATLAS that irked me—34D: Global superpower? How? I get that it contains maps, which makes it kin to a globe, but what is this "superpower" of which you speak? It's a big book. It can't fly and doesn't have heat vision. In fact, it has no powers, beyond the powers that any books have. "?" is not saving that one [Ed.: Whoops. My bad. It's ATLAS the guy mythologically holding the "globe" on his back … clue is fine, brain is not. Carry on].

Even after I got the top part of the SW: trouble. If it hadn't been for the outright gimmes of AYN (45A: First name in Objectivism) and VONNEGUT (39D: Author who created the fatalistic optometrist Billy Pilgrim), I'd never have finished. Even with them: trouble. A bygone Secretary of Energy? A bygone movie music composer? A SCAPULAR?! And AD UNIT? Nixon memoir? I really wish the payoffs had been stronger in these tough spots. Instead of the exhilaration I felt early on, I ended up feeling exhausted. It was also unfortunate to finish up in the weakest part of the grid (which wasn't terribly weak, but still—no joy but VONNEGUT down there). I love the buzz and energy (and relative cleanness) of most of this puzzle, but ultimately found it slightly too proper-noun heavy overall. Still, it's only truly faulty in the SW. There are different kinds of hard. NE was Hard-Good. SW, Hard-Mean.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Should "notable" be in the clue for an answer that contains the word "NOTES?"

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Which is Wish"— Wacky "ch"-to-"sh" sound changes:

Theme answers:

LAST DISH EFFORT (23A: Valiant attempt to finish off a seven-course meal?)
LAWN SHARES (30A: What an investor in golf courses might buy?)
SHEEP THRILLS (36A: Grazing in a meadow and jumping fences, for two?)
YOU BETTER WASH OUT (48A: "Be sure to lose!"?)
MIX AND MASH (64A: Two blender settings?)
KARATE SHOP (68A: Dojo Mart, e.g.?)
MUSH TO MY SURPRISE (82A: What I unexpectedly had for breakfast?)
MARSH MADNESS (92A: Swamp fever?)
POKER SHIPS (100A: Floating casinos?)
SHEAF INSPECTOR (112A: Reviewer of the paperwork?)

Word of the Day: HYOID (57A: ___ bone (U-shaped bone above the larynx)) —

The hyoid bone (lingual bone) (/ˈhaɪɔɪd/; Latin os hyoideum) is a horseshoe-shaped bonesituated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. At rest, it lies at the level of the base of the mandible in the front and the third cervical vertebra (C3) behind.
Unlike other bones, the hyoid is only distantly articulated to other bones by muscles or ligaments. The hyoid is anchored by muscles from the anterior, posterior and inferior directions, and aids in tongue movement and swallowing. The hyoid bone provides attachment to the muscles of the floor of the mouth and the tongue above, the larynx below, and the epiglottis and pharynx behind.
Its name is derived from Greek hyoeides, meaning "shaped like the letter upsilon (υ)". (wikipedia)

• • •

After my last two less-than-stellar outings, I came into this one itching for a fight, but … this thing is a pussycat. It's cute and has no fight in it at all. While this was probably simpler and more easily solvable than I like my Sundays to be, sometimes I think you gotta lower the bar and give up-and-comers and neophytes a taste of Sunday success. This puzzle seems designed for just that purpose. Theme couldn't be much simpler, conceptually, and the fill is virtually without obscurity—smooth in a way that is completely characteristic of Patrick Berry grids. Would've been nice if the theme answers / and clues had been funnier, or at least zanier, on the whole. The whole set got just two mid-solve smiles out of me—a little one for SHEEP THRILLS (the incongruity here is great … if you've ever been around sheep, the idea that anything "thrills" them is pretty hilarious), and a big one for the big winner of the day: MUSH, TO MY SURPRISE. That's the kind of bizarre, nutso answer that can make an easy, straightforward puzzle tolerable and even enjoyable to solvers who generally like their puzzles tougher. In general, I kept wanting the theme clues to Go Bigger, Bolder, Weirder. You could've done more gruesome stuff with MARSH MADNESS than simply 92A: Swamp fever? (though as two-word clues go, that's a good one).

Only struggle for me today was in and around HYOID, which I either didn't know or forgot. Vague cluing on KEYCASES (45D: Ring alternatives), as well as my not really knowing what KEYCASES are (except, you know, by retrospective inference), made that center area rocky, at least for a bit. I misspelled SAGAL, as per usual, and I took some time to solve the KEA / LOA issue (side note: the KEA / LOA issue is my least favorite cluing conundrum of all time … write in "A" in third position and check crosses … zzzz). Oh, also had to work a bit for 49D: Worrier's farewell (BE SAFE), both because I couldn't understand the connection between the two words in the clue, and because I had UTEP for UTES (61A: Pac-12 team) (not a fun hole to fall into), and therefore had BEPA-- sitting there. Note: UTEP is in Conference USA … maybe I'll remember that next time. I put in ILSA for INGA (76D: "Young Frankenstein" character) and MASS (?) for MENU (67D: Preprandial reading), but otherwise, no trouble. I burned the whole SE half of the puzzle to the ground so fast I thought I might've beat my Sunday record. No. Not close. But still easy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. What is up with the title? Is that … what is that? Usually there's some play on words or joke or something. I see the CH-to-SH change, but that phrase is meaningless and without clear referent. [Note: yes, of course, the base phrase is "which is which," and it's changed to "which is wish," but that is not clever. That is simply an arrow pointing right at the theme—not suggesting or hinting at the theme. Pointing. Directly. It's also nonsense. Grammatically impossible. Gibberish. But maybe the title is part of the puzzle's overall orientation toward easiness.]

P.P.S. SHE'S DANISH … missed opportunity right there.

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Constructor: Gene Newman

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: Tom Swifties— "A Tom Swifty (or Tom Swiftie) is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed." (wikipedia) — one of the oldest "joke"-types (or pun-types, I guess) in the book. Huge lists of them all over the internet. (See ... well, you have google, just see. For instance, #2, here) (or look under "U"here for "unwillingly") (or find "shiftlessly" on this page) (or "witheringly" on this page)

Theme answers:

WITHERINGLY (18A: "You forgot to water the plants," Tom said ___)
UNWILLINGLY (3D: "As much as I'd like, you're not getting any of my estate," Tom said ___)
SHIFTLESSLY (28D: "Being a bit lazy, I prefer automatic," Tom said ___)
OFFHANDEDLY (61A: "Oh, I just fed the alligator," Tom said ___)

Word of the Day:"ANNIE"(69A: Hit 1977 musical with the song "It's the Hard-Knock Life") —

Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic stripLittle Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years, setting a record for the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre). It spawned numerous productions in many countries, as well as national tours, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical's songs "Tomorrow" and "It's the Hard Knock Life" are among its most popular musical numbers. (wikipedia)

• • •

If this is the first time you've ever encountered a Tom Swifty, well now that milestone in your life has passed. I hope you enjoyed that. This particular pun form is old as dirt. I will say one good thing about this puzzle—the fill is pretty darned clean. Now if only we could get clean fill and Reasonably Decent Theme to show up on the same day. Today's theme ("theme") is out of a box. Canned. Stale. Conceptually bankrupt. Ridiculous. Not NYT-worthy—not by a long shot. When your theme is, essentially, four adverbs (honestly, you could remake this grid infinitely, with symmetrically placed adverbs), you don't have a theme.

I will continue writing about puzzles when they return to some semblance of worthiness. This is now back-to-back I-Can't-Believe-This-Got-Accepted puzzles. Unreal. I understand why the best constructors are producing for their own sites or other outlets now, I really do. But days like this I almost want to beg them to come back. Almost.

To be clear, these are all *fine* Tom Swifties. But Tom Swifties do not a puzzle theme make. No. No they don't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Allan E. Parrish

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday)

THEME: anagrams of GLEAN—

Theme answers:

FALLEN ANGEL (17A: Lucifer, notably)
OBLIQUE ANGLE (27A: It's not right)
JESSICA LANGE (48A: Oscar-winning actress for "Blue Sky")
CONRAD NAGEL (63A: Greta Garbo's "The Mysterious Lady" co-star)

Word of the Day:"YAYA"(36A: 1961 #1 R&B hit for Lee Dorsey) —

"Ya Ya" is a song by Lee Dorsey. The song was written by Lee Dorsey, Clarence Lewis, Morgan Robinson and Morris Levy. Levy’s participation in the writing has been previously called into question. In fact, the Flashback release of the single (image) lists only Dorsey and Lewis as writers, as do the liner notes to the American Graffiti soundtrack. // The song was inspired by a children’s nursery rhyme. (wikipedia)

• • •

An ancient theme type. Not as ancient as GALEN, but close. Theme doesn't hit all the possible anagrams, but it can't / shouldn't—the point is that they're all at the ends of names / phrases, so GALEN and GLEAN wouldn't really work. Most everything about this puzzle is dated. BRANDI Chastain brings us close to the 21st century, but not quite, and only briefly (6D: Soccer's Chastain). Mostly, our cultural center of gravity is somewhere back around Lee Dorsey's time. At least that song is entertaining. Fill is stale, but has its moments (most notable "LET'S DANCE" and REDHEAD). Sadly, another dated thing about the puzzle is its desperate attempt to achieve pangram status, as if that were an actual accomplishment anymore. Today at least provides me a Textbook example of the Scrabble-f*cking required to get the whole alphabet in there. Is there anyone, anywhere, who thinks the puzzle is improved by the answer OOX? Because that's the cost of the pangram—that ridiculous non-answer (64D: Losing tic-tac-toe row). OOXTEPLERNON* is well pleased. Others ... well, others are probably so acclimated to that kind of junk that they've come to accept it as normal. You should accept bad fill when it gets you something in return. You should not accept it when it's there just so a constructor can accomplish an imaginary feat that most people won't even notice. Embarrassing.

I nearly got stopped cold by PON- (23D: Ride at a kids' fair) / "-A YA" (36A: 1961 #1 R&B hit for Lee Dorsey). I've never seen a PONY at a kids' fair. Honestly, I don't even think I know what a "kids' fair" is. I've only been to real fairs, where there is kids' fare and adult fare in fairly close proximity to one another. My point is that I considered POND and PONG (?) before I got to PONY. PONY as "ride" is accurate, but ... when "ride" is paired with "fair," different, more mechanical rides come to mind. So that was oddly tough for me. I know the song "YA YA" well from my years of oldies-listening in high school, but I didn't know the song's name or the artist's name, so for all I knew it was "MAYA" or something else. Otherwise, the grid was of a pretty typical difficulty level (not difficult). I had DRAM for DOSE (33D: 5 milliliters of medicine) and ANT (?) for TNT (42A: What can make molehills out of a mountain?).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*OOXTEPLERNON is the God of Bad Short Fill. He made his first appearance, like Jesus in a tortilla, as the central row in this puzzle from Oct. 30, 2009.

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: four-letter word repeated 3 times...— but clued in a wacky way that requires creative parsing, thus:

Theme answers:

VISAVISAVISA (actually "vis-a-vis a visa") (20A: In relation to someone's travel document?)
ABELABELABEL (actually "Abe, label Abel") (33A: "Grampa Simpson, describe a Genesis figure"?)
RIDERIDERIDE (actually "rider I deride") (41A: Jockey who's jeered by me?)
PIESPIESPIES (actually "P.I. espies pies") (57A: Detective catches sight of bakery wares?)

Word of the Day: MundoFox (31A: Many a MundoFox watcher = LATINO) —

MundoFox (sometimes stylized, particularly on-air, as MundoFOX) is an American Spanish language broadcast television network that is operated as a joint venture between the Fox International Channels subsidiary of 21st Century Fox and Colombian private broadcaster RCN Televisión SA (both companies own 50% of the network).^[2]^[3] The network carries a broad mix of serials (consisting of both telenovelas and teleseries), theatrically released and made-for-home-video films and variety programs, as well as limited news and sports programming. // MundoFox is headquartered with 21st Century Fox's other U.S. television operations in Los Angeles, California. The network is headed by its president Ibra Morales, who replaced original president Emiliano Saccone in January 2014. (wikipedia)

• • •

The "humor" of the puzzle continues to be very old-fashioned, but there's a cleverness here that's admirable, and a cleanness of grid that is sweet-jesus merciful. I don't think I went "yuck" once. Well, there's SPUME, which is inherently "yuck," but in that way that MOIST is "yuck," id est it's a very real word that just gives me very real heebie jeebies. No dings against it, crossword-wise. And no dings against the grid as a whole. No, wait: IRAE/BAAS? What the heck is up with that? That's a sore-thumb crossing. You could get rid of it without too much trouble. You'd have to tear the grid back a bit, but not much. Still, I really wish all easy puzzles were this cleanly filled. Why can't all MTWs (i.e. early/mid-week puzzles) do this? Notice what you don't see: a *#$&#$ing "Q" (for instance). Constructor is going for Best Grid, not Most Damned Letters Checked Off The Stupid 26-Letter Checklist. And see how much nicer? Nicer. The clues on some of the themers are contrived as hell, but that's sort of the nature of the beast today. This puzzle is solid, and solid feels like a Huge win, given the way things have been going of late.

Not much to say about the fill beyond praising its smoothness. PRIORY and MARSHAL are interesting words. CLASSY is a word that is kind of ruined now. I can only imagine two kinds of people using it: either a. someone who is being deeply ironic (sarcastic, even) and actually means the opposite, or b. Donald Trump (i.e. someone whose sense of "class" is maybe possibly questionable). It's the kind of word that would be quite at home 70 years ago, just before the word "dame." I like the word fine, in a retro kind of way. I just can't imagine using it unironically. All right, I'm gonna POST this and get to bed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: RAISED THE BAR (52A: Elevated expectations ... or what this puzzle's maker did to five answers in this puzzle?) — initial letter string "BAR" in theme answers is "raised," i.e. placed atop the first three letters of the remaining letters in the answer. "BAR" thus becomes part of the Across answer above the themer:

Theme answers:

BARGE
RELOFMONKEYS (20A: Metaphor for fun)
BARK
OQUE (16A: Scarlatti's style)
BARE
RIERREEF (36A: Shoreline protector)
BARO
TSIMPSON (42A: Perpetual 10-year-old of TV)
BARNSTORM
BIES(64A: Line of Mattel dolls)

Word of the Day: Blue Moon ODOM (30D: Blue Moon of 1960s-'70s baseball) —

Johnny Lee "Blue Moon" Odom (born May 29, 1945) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who won three consecutive World Series championships with the Oakland Athletics in 1972, 1973 and 1974. [...] Odom had a 3-1 career record in the post-season with a 1.13 ERA and 27 strikeouts. (wikipedia)

• • •

Had one of those fall-asleep-hard nights last night. Out at 9—missed Letterman's finale :( So it's morning solving for me today, like most of the rest of you normals. My initial experience with this puzzle was not good. Comically so. My first two answers were:

That is not what you'd call an auspicious beginning. I literally laughed and thought "well, the theme sure as hell better have something to do with this." Fill in that section actually got worse, or at least the same (ABBR! BRAGH!), before I eventually backed into (BAR)REL OF MONKEYS and saw what was going on. When you raise the "BAR" this way, you put a lot of stress on the grid, and so the bar for fill quality actually dips a bit. Notice that things tend to get dicey in and around the "BAR" sections. Totally understandable. The "BAR" isn't just raised in this grid, it's raised and then shifted over to sit atop the remaining letters in the answer. But I'm not sure how else you'd do this trick. I feel like I've seen this theme concept before (I know I've seen parts of answers dropped and/or lifted before), but as an easy, straightforward example of this theme type, this puzzle seems pretty good (crummy short fill notwithstanding).

I encountered one tough spot: the NE. But that's only because I did *not* expect to see theme material way the hell and gone up there. You expect the long Across (here, EARTH SIGN) to be involved, but no—fake out! It's the two answers aboveEARTH SIGN that are in on the game. I didn't realize that Air Quality Index (AQI) was the ABBR. I wanted up there and so ended up with A-I / O-UE. After a few seconds, I was like "Oh, right, the BAR thing." I had a little trouble also with the west, which was where I finished. Couldn't get in from the top or bottom of that section, but then (BAR)T SIMPSON came to my rescue and that section fell immediately thereafter.

Bullets:

5D: A place of prominence (THE FORE)— normally not big on "THE ___" answers, and I probably shouldn't like this one, but I do. I had trouble figuring it out. But then I moved the C-section from the ER to the OR, and there it was: THE FORE. I also like MRS. DASH, a "seasoning brand" I haven't seen advertised since the early '90s. I genuinely like it, despite / because of its retro-ness (which may be only in my mind, but that's the only place it needs to be). MRS. DASH starts with four consonants and is 7/8 consonants. Cool.
51D: Darrin Stephens's co-workers on "Bewitched" (ADMEN)— Love this. Everyone's all "Don Draper this" and "Don Draper that," but what about "Darrin Stephens this" and "Endora that." The puzzle needs more "Bewitched," is what I'm saying.
45D: Business end of a chopper (AXE HEAD)— first, I just like the phrase "business end." Second, I enjoyed figuring out what followed AXE. I could think only of BLADE (not a fit). You could do a whole theme, say, "corporate mergers," where ordinary phrases are clued as if they were a mash-up of two different brands—in this case, a body spray (AXE) / tennis equipment (HEAD) merger. Etc. I need breakfast.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Woolf

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Fela KUTI (23A: Fela ___, Afrobeat music pioneer) —

Fela Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti;^[1] 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997), also known as Fela Anikulapo Kuti or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, human rights activist, and political maverick. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sleep nearly took me out early again tonight, but I had to be up late because my daughter was getting back from a trip to NYC at close to midnight, so ha, sleep, you lose. Still awake. OK, I might've rested my eyes there for a little, but I'm awake now, which is the point. This puzzle was weird for me, perhaps because of the heretofore mentioned "resting of the eyes." I started in on this puzzle as I usually do with such stack-oriented puzzles: I went for all the Downs up top, one after the other, without even looking at the Acrosses until I'd made my way all the way across the top of the grid. This may not actually be the most efficient solving method—perhaps one ought to at least glance at the long Across clues—but it feels efficient to me, and usually yields great results once I've traversed the grid and finally look at the Acrosses. Even if several of the Downs are wrong (they usually are), I'm often able to see the correct answers through all the muck. Pattern recognition! Anyway, my first pass through the Downs up top yielded very little, so I ended up getting my first real start in the grid at a very odd place—sort of ENE, starting around KUTI (a gimme) and working down toward the middle. Like so:

["A CUPS in T TOPS!" Coming soon to Cinemax.]

You can see that my northern grid is a pathetic combination of empty and wrong, with a smattering of right. Don't speak Spanish, so just had the first two letters of SABADO there. I was wrong about KIA; I knew there was a KIA with a short model name (it's the RIO), so I just wrote in KIA and waited. I see now that I could also easily have gone with the equally wrong answer, HYUNDAI. Interesting. I'd be surprised if I was the only one who dropped ADESTE in there without hesitation. As six-letter carol starters go, none ranks higher, grid frequency-wise, than ADESTE (of "Adeste Fideles" fame). IT CAME ... would not have occurred to me (it's by far the most terrible answer in the grid, one of the dumbest 6+ partials I've ever encountered). But KUTI got me going, and then all that failure up top turned quickly to success when I noticed 15D: Many an Instagram had to be SELFIE. With those last three Downs in place up top, the long Acrosses went down fast. Despite the wrong answers I had in place, I saw ALL OVER THE PLACE almost instantly after SELFIE dropped. The -ISS at the end of 1A: Message accompanied by red lips suggested KISS, which then suggested the rest of the answer. And then it was just a matter of LUGGAGE or BAGGAGE CAROUSEL (the latter, it turned out). So after a terrible first trip across the top of the grid, I caught fire and ended up here in what felt like no time:

As for the bottom of the grid, it might as well not have existed. I've never finished that much of a late-week puzzle that quickly. With the first three letters of the long Acrosses in place, I got ONHANDS AND KNEES and then TRACTOR TRAILERS. With one more cross (the "S" from 51D: CSA), I got RUSSIAN ROULETTE. The Downs were helpless at that point. I picked them off methodically without even seeing the shorter Across clues toward the middle there. You're welcome for GALEN, by the way (46D: Ancient medical researcher). (I jokingly brought him up in the write-up of that ANGEL anagram puzzle earlier this week, and now, several days later, he materializes, like some kind of slow-to-respond genie).

Despite some iffiness here and there in the fill, this seemed an entirely acceptable puzzle. Too too easy down below, and with no real killer answers, but solid nonetheless.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Medium (leaning toward the easier side)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: STEM fields (31D: ___ fields) —

STEM is an acronym referring to the academic disciplines of science,^{[note 1]}technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used when addressing education policy and curriculum choices in schools to improve competitiveness in science and technology development. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy. The acronym arose in common use shortly after an interagency meeting on science education held at the National Science Foundation chaired by the then NSF director Rita Colwell. A director from the Office of Science division of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists suggested the change from the older acronym SMET to STEM. Dr. Colwell, expressing some dislike for the older acronym, responded by suggesting NSF to institute the change. (wikipedia)

• • •

Nice work from Mr. Wentz, full of all kinds of traps and potholes, but ultimately very solvable. Fill is fantastically polished (except ONEHR, wth?), and the grid is teeming with good-to-great longer answers. It was a light workout, but I'll get my heavy workout (probably) tomorrow with the Newsday Stumper. This one fought me hard enough. I made many mistakes, but none of them fatal. I like a scrappy puzzle that isn't dickishly hard or full of rank obscurities. Here's what my opening gambit looked like:

[Me, after getting 17A: "Is that racist?" Answer: "No, not really"]

Solving this puzzle felt a bit like solving a maze, where I kept going down routes that turned out to be dead ends, then backing out and finding the right way again. Lather rinse repeat. It was a strange experience, being so often wrong but never having the feeling of being frustratingly stuck. How many mistakes did I make? Let's count. So ... I wrote in THIEF for 1D: Member of a den (HYENA). At some point I wrote in ARIA for 19A: "O Sanctissima," e.g. (NOEL). Had YEAH, I'LL BET for YEAH, I'M SURE (15A: "A likely story ..."). Then ENTIRE for EN BLOC (25A: All together). Further, EBAY for ETSY (30D: Modern collection of vendors). Must've had several varieties of wrong answer just trying to find the correct plural at 51A: Swedish coins (KRONOR). I moved over EXIT RAMPS before EXIT LANES (33D: You might move over for them on the highway). And between RAMPS and LANES, I made my last and greatest mistake—a twofer that involved SCARFS for SNARFS (46D: Gobbles) *and* MERCER forLERNER (48A: "My Fair Lady" lyricist). So, how many genuine mistakes is that? [1, 2, 3 ...]. I count nine. Nope, whoops, left one out. I had AGA and ALY before A LA (62D: Lead-in to a chef's name) because I misread the clue. Can you guess *how* I misread it? Yeah, you probably can.

Hardest answer for me to get was, oddly, OINK (39D: Word repeated before "here," in song) ("SONG" is in the grid (14D) ... but we'll just let that slide). This is partially because I misread the clue (yet again), and was thinking not "repeated before" but "before and after. Wanted OVER here... then thought maybe O, I AM here ... you gotta get pretty deep into "Old MacDonald" before you hit "with an OINK OINK here ..." It's not exactly a definitive lyric. Hence my struggle. So, yes, many traps, but still not too much difficulty. Fine weekend fare.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. we're just one week away from the inaugural Indie 500 Crossword Tournament in lovely downtown Washington, D.C. Solve six puzzles by some of the top young constructors in the country! Hang out with dorks just like you! Realize you have no hope of winning and realize also that you don't care because that's not why you go to crossword tournaments! (That last one applies especially to me). Also, there will be pie. I have been promised. The puzzles will be good and the vibe will be loose and fun and if you've ever been tourney-curious, this will be a good place to start. All the info you need is here. Hope to see you there: Saturday, May 30, D.C.

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Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"A Tale of Many Cities"— celebrating the 142nd anniversary of the publication of JULES / VERNE's "Around the World in Eighty Days"; puzzle note reads:

Circled letters form a circuitous path around the grid ("world") starting at the "A" in KCAR (93A) and going east, off the grid, and back around to the west side of the grid, ending almost exactly where we began (at the "S" in RAYS (79A)). The circles spell out "AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS"; further, each long Down clue has an appended clue—a country, followed by word lengths for the city you're supposed to find hidden (in not-always-consecutive letters) in that answer; thus, in the clue 3D: Brooklyn Heights school [U.S.; 3, 9], the [U.S.; 3, 9] part indicates that the hidden city in SAINT FRANCIS COLLEGE is in the US and is two words, 3 and 9 letters long, respectively (i.e. SAN FRANCISCO)

Theme answers:

SAINT FRANCIS COLLEGE (San Francisco)
THE NEW YANKEE WORKSHOP (New York)
LETTING ONE'S HAIR DOWN (London)
LEMON SQUEEZER (Suez)
BORN TO BE MY BABY (Bombay)
SPECIAL COURT MARTIAL (Calcutta)
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (Hong Kong)
YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING? (Yokohama)

Word of the Day:"THE NEW YANKEE WORKSHOP"(31D: PBS craft show for 21 seasons [U.S. 3, 4]) —

The New Yankee Workshop is a woodworking program produced by WGBH Boston, which aired on PBS. Created in 1989 by Russell Morash, the program is hosted by Norm Abram, a regular fixture on Morash's This Old House. The series aired for 21 seasons before broadcasting its final episode on June 27, 2009. (wikipedia)

• • •

Epic.

I got the gist of the theme very early—if you get 1D, you get 141D, and very quickly you're down to a finite number of books this puzzle can be about. Here's what my grid looked like less than a minute in:

[So ... Journey to the Center of the Earth?]

My philosophy on puzzles with "Notes" is "Ignore Them." I like the challenge of figuring out what's going on for myself. So I just plowed forward and had faith that the gimmick would reveal itself to me. And quickly I could see that the letters were spelling out "Around the World in Eighty Days." I didn't stop to see how, exactly, or what the pattern was, but I could tell that's the book I was dealing with. The only question that nagged at the back of my mind for the entirety of the solve was "What do those secondary clues mean?" But I didn't stop to think about it much, because the puzzle seemed to be coming together just fine without my knowing. And indeed, I finished the whole thing and got the Happy Pencil sign and everything and still didn't know what the secondary clues were all about. But shortly after I started thinking about it in earnest, I got it. The numbers had to be word lengths, and the countries had to be places that Phileas Fogg visited ... so, cities. Aha, there's NEW YORK, there's SAN FRANCISCO ... got it. Pretty dang cool. And of course the path of the circled letters, like Fogg's journey, starts and ends in "London" (i.e. 6D), and follows Fogg's globe-circling itinerary—an eastward voyage through SUEZ, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, HONG KONG, YOKOHAMA, SAN FRANCISCO, NEW YORK, in order—precisely.

It's an oversized grid, so if it seemed to take you longer than usual, that could have something to do with it. Also, perhaps you're like me and you've Never Heard Of several of the theme answers. SAINT FRANCIS COLLEGE? Mystery. Inferable mystery, but still, mystery. "THE NEW YANKEE WORKSHOP"? This is literally the first I'm hearing of it. I know a lot of Bon Jovi songs, but not "BORN TO BE MY BABY." As for SPECIAL COURT MARTIAL ... I'm sure it's a thing, but it's an adjective attached to COURT MARTIAL, as far as I know. And "THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT" ... well, I confess I knew that one. But I don't know how. In my mind, it co-starred Chow Yun-Fat, but that's "The Replacement Killers," a 1998 movie with Mira Sorvino. "THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT" co-starred Samuel L. Jackson. I don't think I've seen it, despite the fact that the title is so close to the title of my favorite novel I probably should've seen it now, if only by accident.

Ambition and cleverness will get you everywhere, and it will certainly excuse some infelicities in the fill (ATRI is comically crosswordesish, and a few other things are less than lovely, but they just don't seem that significant when the Big Picture is this grand. Wait, what's an UDE ??? (60A: Ulan-___ (capital of a Russian republic)). That and OSH and EROO and TEA OR and the like are of course unideal, but I still say those hiccups are too small to significantly diminish my enjoyment and admiration today. Sundays have been ... not great, of late. This, *this*, is the level of artistry and complexity the Sunday should be aiming for most if not all of the time. Haven't seen much from Kevin Der lately. If he can make one of these fantastic Sundays only about once per year ... fine. I can wait. Now we just need 51 more like-minded, like-talented constructors to step up.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Constructor: Jennifer Nutt

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME:"I NAILED IT" (57A: Appropriate exclamation upon solving this puzzle?) — last words of theme answers describe a manicure (I think): first CLIP, then FILE, then BUFF, then SHINE, then POLISH. I hope I have this right.

Theme answers:

VIDEO CLIP (17A: Excerpt shown on TV)
CIRCULAR FILE (23A: Wastebasket, jocularly)
TRAIN BUFF (33A: Visitor at a railroad museum, say)
MOONSHINE (39A: Product of a backwoods still)
SOCIAL POLISH (45A: What a boor sorely lacks)

Word of the Day: BABYLON (9D: Ancient Hanging Gardens city) —

Babylon [...] was a significant city in ancient Mesopotamia, in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates, and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods. // Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c. 2300 BC. The town attained independence as part of a small city state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Claiming to be the successor of the more ancient Sumero-Akkadian city of Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the "holy city" of Mesopotamia around the time Amorite king Hammurabi created the first short lived Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia. // The empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabi's death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires. // It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c. 1770 to 1670 BC, and again between c. 612 and 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares (2,200 acres). // The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know nothing about manicures, but this theme strikes me as both clever and tight. I don't think I know what "SHINE" means. I mean, of course I know what that word means, but the difference between "SHINE" and "POLISH" is lost on me. Maybe there's some clear stuff that goes on before the "POLISH." If my daughter were nearby right now, I could ask. But she's not, so I'm 'just going to trust that this puzzle has the whole manicure verb progression right. Speaking of polish—the fill on this thing looks great. It's not what you'd call zippy, but that's understandable, given that the grid's trying to keep *six* long themers in place without having the rest of the grid go to hell. Failing to go to hell is all the non-theme parts of the grid had to do, and they did that admirably. All in all, a promising start to the work week ... only it's Memorial Day, so nobody's working, so ... just "week."

There were a couple things I didn't understand. One is technical—why are there cheater squares* (black squares before 31A and after 41A, respectively? Those sections should've been awfully easy to fill without having to add the cheaters. But I assume the constructor tried that, and just couldn't get the fill to come out clean enough, and so added the cheaters and got the job done. It's a very minor thing. I'm not even complaining—just wondering aloud, from a constructor's standpoint, why one would resort to cheaters *there*. The other thing I don't understand—why TRAIN BUFF?? I mean ... trains? If you needed "train" for your theme to work, OK, but "train" has nothing to do with the theme, so why not go with the much more familiar MOVIE BUFF? There are millions of MOVIE BUFFs and, like, seven TRAIN BUFFs in the world, so ... that choice mystifies me. Again, not complaining. Just standing here, baffled.

I got slowed down a bit by TRAIN BUFF (had TRAIN and had no idea what could come after). I also took a while to come up with SOCIAL POLISH, since it's not a phrase that stands alone that well. "Social graces" googles about 25 times better, for instance. It's an actual phrase, it's just not snappy or self-evident, hence the delay in my figuring it out. I also hesitated at SEIZE because I Swear To God I never know the I/E order there. SIEGE, I then E, SEIZE, E then I. I can tell myself that now, but in the heat of solving, that knowledge just isn't accessible and I end up guessing / checking crosses.

Lastly, sadly, Anne Meara died yesterday. I should say Anne MEARA, since her last name has been common crossword fare for decades now. She was also a crossword buff (!) herself, and a nice person to boot. Oh, and a comedy legend, obviously, but I just took it for granted that you all knew that. I hope someone's making a (good) tribute puzzle for her right now. She deserves it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*cheater squares = black squares that don't add to the word count (generally added by constructors solely for the purpose of making the grid easier to fill)

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Constructor: Gareth Bain

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Tuesday)

THEME:"ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE" (39A: Beatles hit that's a hint to both parts of the answer to each starred clue) — "LOVE" can precede both parts of theme answers in familiar phrases:

Theme answers:

CHILD SEAT (18A: *Removable car safety feature)
BIRD'S NEST (22A: *Asian soup ingredient)
MATCH GAME (54A: *Classic daytime show hosted by Gene Rayburn)
LIFE STORY (61A: *Biography)

Word of the Day:"MATCH GAME"—

Match Game is an American television panel game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions. The precise format of the show varied through five runs on American television: 1962 to 1969 (on NBC), 1973 to 1982 (on CBS and later in syndication), 1983 to 1984 (again on NBC as part of the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour), 1990 to 1991 (on ABC) and 1998 to 1999 (in syndication). Most American incarnations of the show have been hosted by Gene Rayburn.
The most famous versions of the 1970s and 1980s, starting with Match Game '73 (renumbered by year until 1979), are remembered for their bawdy and sometimes rowdy humor involving contestants trying to match six celebrities. The series has been franchised around the world, often under the name Blankety Blanks.
In 2013, TV Guide ranked it #4 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, some weird combo of Firefox (my new most hated browser) and Blogger and me just managed to permanently (it seems) erase 2/3 of my completed write-up, and I just can't bear to do it again. It was fantastic, I assure you. Short version: puzzle is an old concept, well executed. Clean fill. I made many, many errors and missteps (for a Tuesday). I had these listed for you in bullet points (formatting these was where things went very wrong from a technical standpoint). Here's what remains of that list:

Had -OG at 62D: Confused state and could think only of GOG. I don't understand, either.
The clue on "MATCH GAME" was totally confusing, but now I understand it. It's a game show. Clue it as game show, and I got it. Clue it as "daytime show" (which could be anything), and you lost me (I'm figuring it's something *else* Gene Rayburn did that I didn't know about). But you can't clue it as "game show" because GAME is in the answer. Thus, ironically, I struggled to get my favorite game show of all time.

[Meara + Dawson = peak TV]

57D: Title for a jeune fille: Abbr. (MLLE)— I wrote in ELLE, which is not, obviously, an Abbr. This error contributed mightily to my "MATCH GAME" woes.

But I'm exaggerating the amount of real struggle. This was still a pretty easy puzzle, and a competently put-together one at that.

***

So, yeah. There you go. You get Partial Blog today. Gonna go crush my computer with a mallet now. Eight+ years and I've never lost a write-up. First!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Contraction/negation — Ordinary words / phrases the end with letter strings that sound like ordinary verbs (e.g. CAN, DID, etc.) have a negative contraction (e.g. "N'T") added to the end and are reclued in a fittingly wacky way:

Theme answers:

ANI MUSTN'T (18A: Singer DiFranco should heed a warning) (no "?" on these clues?)
CATS CAN'T (23A: Jazz players are incapable)
BUSH WASN'T (35A: W. never existed)
MATH ISN'T (49A: Calculus disappears)
KATY DIDN'T (55A: Singer Perry opted out)

Word of the Day: BUSHWA —

noun
NORTH AMERICANinformal
rubbish; nonsense. (google)

• • •

This is bizarre, but not without charm. The concept is creative, but the execution's a bit wobbly. ANI MUSTN'T takes the theme off the rails a bit, as ANIMUS requires the addition of T + N'T to get to wackiness. That is, ANIMUS doesn't end in "MUST," while CAT SCAN *does* end in CAN, MATHIS *does* end in IS, etc. There's the appearance of a verb at the end of all the other theme answers. Further, BUSHWAS—in the plural—is exceedingly rare. It's just not word you'd ever see pluralized. If you google it in quotation marks, you get words lists, and only 7000 or so hit total. FATWAS works better, though it would be pretty hard to clue FAT WASN'T in a plausible way (though it couldn't be much less plausible than the clue for MATH ISN'T). My point is that this puzzle's wacky ambition is adorable, but the assembled themers are not all ready for prime time. Still, I'll take the creative concept that doesn't *quite* come off over a tired concept with all its papers in order.

There are come cool juxtapositions in this grid. I like that the A-TRAIN has pulled up to the STAtion, and that VAN GOGH sits ambivalently between highbrow museum ART and lowbrow museum gift-shop TOTE BAG. I still can't bring myself to accept that a SKIBOB is a thing. I've tried. It's not taking. I had no idea who that AKIM guy was. I had him as an ARAM (8D: Tamiroff of "Anastasia"). My QUITS started out as RESTS. Beyond that, I had zero trouble with this puzzle, which was both smooth and easy. I see that there are some stray not-great answers (CDL, OLA, ITE, AKIM), but they really don't get in the way of puzzle pleasure. If suboptimal stuff is fairly rare and easily dealt with, then I don't care. So this week has started with three puzzles in a row where the fill has been acceptable or better. I have this weird feeling of optimism. I'm sure it's unfounded, but I'm going to enjoy it while it's here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ALTERNATION (54A: Duke's ride + slowly = this puzzle's theme) — theme clues refer to three different answers: the first + second answers alternate letters in the grid, combining to create a third answer, which is what's clued on the other side of the "=" sign; actually, I guess the theme is EVEN / ODDS (33A: With 34-Across, 50-50 chance … or a hint to answering six equations in this puzzle). It's really more ODD / EVENS, since the first addend starts with square 1, then square 3, etc., but whatever:

Theme answers:

CELLO SUITES (16A: Hits hard + famed spokescow = some Bach compositions)
RAIL PASS (20A: Rends + word of regret = commuter's purchase)
CIA SPIES (22A: Cloak + Egyptian deity = some spooks)
BLUETITS (48A: Rear + floral rings = colorful birds)
FREE MEAL (50A: Relief org. + stagger = soup kitchen offering)

Word of the Day: CLERISY (1D: Intelligentsia) —

noun
a distinct class of learned or literary people.
"the clerisy are those who read for pleasure" (google)

• • •

This theme is a kind of curiosity, but it's not very compelling. It has no personality. The theme answers have nothing to do with each other. Answers occasionally feel contrived (CIA SPIES) or highly arbitrary (BLUE TITS). Needs another level of … something … to be good. The theme is both the easiest and least interesting part of the puzzle. Honestly, the theme is like one of those one-star (difficulty) Games magazines puzzles, shoe-horned into a grid. Diverting little bits of wordplay, but not worth building a whole Thursday puzzle around. The theme is dense, but because it does not take much thought to figure out, and because it's not funny or otherwise engaging, our attention turns more to the fill, which sputters. What's worse, it sputters *and* it's made tougher than usual (to make up for the easy themers), so you have to work harder, but the results are the results, and they include ATTA ETTA CUEIN AYS NSC UAE ARTOO … the justly reviled two-H version of AHH … and the horrid-masquerading-as-hip E-INK (28A: Technology inside Kindles). There were some entertaining bits, and it certainly had enough bite for a Thursday, but no cleverness, no humor, no real cohesion, so not much to be gladdened by. Plus (side note) how does no one, from the constructor to the editor(s) to the proofreaders, pick up the REAR dupe (it's the answer to 42A *and* the clue for half of 48A)?!

Here's where I figured out the basic gag:

Here are some things that I thought might need explaining:

5D: Good name for an R.V. inhabitant? (STU) — STU = the letter string between "R" and "V"… so STU"inhabits" an "R.V." question mark? Get it!? Yeah, you get it.
17D: No longer available, as a book: Abbr. (OOP)— this stands for "Out of Print." How could you not know this, you illiterate jerk? A gimme for all the members of the CLERISY, no doubt.
39A: Jumper line (HEM)— I know "jumper" as a sweater (Brit.) (also NZ), but here it's a collarless, sleeveless dress typically worn over a blouse.
24D: Writer Osnos or the New Yorker (EVAN)— like you, I have no idea who this is. And I subscribe. :(

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. two days til this!:

Go here for more info!

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium or Brutal, depending

THEME: none

Word of the Day: EYE RHYMES (36A: Four-hour tour features?) —

eye rhyme
noun
a similarity between words in spelling but not in pronunciation, e.g., love and move. (google)

• • •

Wow, this did not end well for me. I have not come that close to not being able to finish an NYT puzzle in a long, long time. I can't remember how long. I was cruising along just fine—felt like a pretty normal Friday, difficulty-wise—and I was thinking, "well, it's not the greatest Patrick Berry puzzle I've ever done, but it's pretty good." So all was right with the world. And then, just as I was closing in on the finish line: disaster. Specifically, this:

Actually, when I took this picture, I had already gone forward and come back a few times. I actually had (the correct) GOT TO (34A: Really affected) and (the correct) HATCHES (37D: Sub entries) written in initially, but since I ended up utterly unable to solve any of the remaining answers with those answers in place, I pulled them. Now, as you can see, I should've (as I eventually did) pulled back even further. ASS is wrong. It's APE. And that's part of what is completely brutal about this little patch of answers there in the west-center. If you are familiar with the term EYE RHYMES, then there's a good chance that none of the surrounding stuff gives you any trouble. But if EYE RHYMES is an utter unknown to you (as it was to me—I've been teaching poetry for twenty years and cannot ever remember learning or seeing the term), then all those crosses become lethal. Cluing -SOME an "adjective-forming suffix"!? That's sadism. Cluing GYPSIES as "Broadway chorus dancers"? What? Why would you call them that? I can't even reconcile the image in my head when I see GYPSIES with the image in my head when I see "Broadway chorus dancers." Throw in the easy-to-mess-up APE/ASS issue, and you've got a near knockout punch.

[Busta Rhymes]
I honestly thought I was dead. EYER- couldn't be right … and yet there was no way around it. And EYERH- … that just looked like crazy talk. Weirdly, the *only* way I managed to pull out of it all was to imagine suffixes (staring with "S"?!?!?) that could make adjectives. I just stumbled into -SOME. Tested it … it worked with GOT TO… and then ASS became APE and I was done. The "?" clue on EYE RHYMES … that's the most obscure term in the grid (even if you don't think it's obscure, there's nothing in the grid that's obscurer), and you put a "?" on it? Talk about your Unsatisfying Experiences. How can I know how clever the "?" is if the term itself is meaningless to me?

But perhaps the moral of the story is: "don't give up" or "be patient" or "hang in there, baby." I was done for. I was so done for, I stopped to tweet about how done-for I was. But I waited the puzzle out and scratched and clawed my way up from an F to, like, a D. Good enough!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DUXELLES (17A: Mushroom layer of a beef Wellington) —

Duxelles is a finely chopped (minced) mixture of mushrooms or mushroom stems, onions, shallots and herbs sautéed in butter, and reduced to a paste (sometimes cream is used, as well). It is a basic preparation used in stuffings and sauces (notably, beef Wellington) or as a garnish. Duxelles can also be filled into a pocket of raw pastry and baked as a savory tart (similar to a hand-held pie). (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello from outside of D.C. I'm solving this puzzle from the living room of my friend Angela (aka PuzzleGirl). Angela and Doug Peterson and my wife and I all solved it individually but simultaneously. The constructors are friends of ours, so it was like they were here too at our virtual reunion. I thought there might be more cursing or cooperative solving, but it was all over much too fast. Too fast because it should've been harder because it's a Saturday and too fast because it was really entertaining and I wish it lasted longer. The first thing we want to say is LESTERS is terrible. As I wrote it in, I said, "Oh, Brad and Sam are gonna hear about this." And now they have. My wife and Angela also expressed deep dissatisfaction with LETTUCES. I pointed out that the LESTERS had to eat *something*, but that was not a satisfying response to them.

Both Doug and I thought MOCS at first for 1D: Footwear donned on camera by Mr. Rogers (KEDS) and both of us figured out our mistake because of EMINENCE (15A: Prestige). It was interesting to solve sitting next to Doug, who is a legit speed solver. He solved on paper and beat me, but not by much. It was nice to commiserate in real time about great stuff. I kept saying stuff like "Oh, good clue on 36-Across (or 9-Down)" or "Oh, man, 27-Down (or 30-Down) is great." Puzzle is solid and (for a Saturday) light. DUXELLES seemed a strong outlier, in terms of general familiarity. I had DUXELLE- and didn't know, so Doug showed me his grid and I was like "Just an 'S'… huh." (I would've got it two seconds later from LESTERS). On the opposite end of the spectrum from DUXELLES is SNERT, which was, I think, all of our first answer. Actually, I went MOCS (wrong) SPIRE (right) SNERT (right) FETE (right). I had KIDS MENU at first, but then 7D: TV honor last presented in 1997 started "NC-" and unless there was an NC WYETH award of some sort, that wasn't going to work. Quickly changed it to KIDS MEAL. What else?

Bullets:

25A: Danger in stories of Sinbad the sailor (ROC)— I thought this was a gimme. Angela went with ORC. Wrong book.
45A: Annual Vancouver event, familiarly (TED) — None of us were certain what this referred to. We assume it's TED Talks. None of us knew it was "annual" or that it was based in Vancouver.
9A: Like TV's Dr. Richard Kimble, famously (FRAMED)— wife had the best wrong answer (or answer idea) here: PRE-MED.
16A: Spectator who got a standing O at Wimbledon in 1981 (LADY DI) — Doug said, "That's a total Brad clue: it's tennis, it's trivia … and he's got the 'O' there so you know the answer's gonna be a shortened form."
40D: "The Principles of Mathematics" philosopher (RUSSELL)— I had the RUSS- and still didn't know. Doug and I were both thrown by the "Mathematics" part. I know him as an atheist.
38A: Trademark Isaac Asimov accessory (BOLO TIE) — Great clue. This answer made me think that a ROBO-TIE would be a great thing.
1A: It may facilitate playing with one's food (KIDS MEAL) — if only KIDS MEAT was a term, we could've avoided LESTERS entirely. [Chicken nugget, e.g..] => KIDS MEAT? We are all now halfway convinced that KIDS MEAT is a thing. Or could be.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Making Projections"— theme answers "project" one letter above and below, and when you read the "projected" letters clockwise, starting with the top center letter, the letters spell out "SORE THUMB."

Theme answers:

[S]HARKFIN (9D: Seafood soup base)
[O]LD FAITHFUL (12D: Attraction that operates under its own steam?)
[R]ADIO ANTENNA (15D: Catcher of some waves)
SUNSHINE STAT[E] (59D: Words below a orange on a license plate)
VAMPIRE BA[T] (72D: Hematophagous creature)
OCEAN TRENC[H] (67D: Mariana, e.g.)
DROP-DOWN MEN[U] (62D: It might contain a list of postal abbreviations)
[M]OUNT MCKINLEY (4D: Peak that's known as "The Great One")
[B]EAN SPROUT (6D: Crisp bit in a stir-fry)

Word of the Day: OBOL (36D: Coin to pay for passage across the River Styx) —

Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth^[1]of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity." (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to assess this puzzle adequately, as I did it very late, after a very full day of crossword tournamenting (about which more next week, when I have time to do it justice—short version: astonishingly good, especially for an inaugural run. Oh, and Joon Pahk won.). We were out to dinner at the world's slowest restaurant (my friend Finn timed my wine order: 55 minutes … to pour and deliver a glass of wine … but I digress), so Erin pulled out her phone and started looking at the puzzle and told us the title and we guessed the trick pretty quickly, without doing much of the grid. Then we went back to eating and drinking. Actually, we probably went back to waiting. Once I got my wine, I didn't really care. It was a gorgeous night in D.C. and we were eating out on the deck and the tournament had been really inspiring and impressive in everywhere, so Bring My Flatbread Pizza Whenever, Lady. I'm good.

[Crossword blogger Amy Reynaldo, giving attitude and taking home hardware]

I should say that we got the premise early, but not the Big Reveal, which I'd say is the one thing about this puzzle that is special—playing, as it does, on the expression "to stick out like a sore thumb." But the easy-to-grok premise and easy-to-solve themers made the solve less-than-scintillating. The cluing was pretty tough, though (in a good way), so at least the puzzle put up a reasonable Sunday-fight. I didn't have many interesting *moments* while solving, though I do have some disparate observations, and here they are:

Bullets:

OBOL!— I remembered this. As you know, when you don't know something, and then you learn it from crosswords, and then you remember it in a subsequent crossword, you feel a huge onrush of victory in your veins.
EKE BY!— The longer I look at this, the more ridiculous it seems. You eke out or you scrape by. EKE BY can eke on by, as far as I'm concerned.
HELENA! — crossword constructor Doug Peterson was born there. Also, HELENA is the name of the best character on "Orphan Black." So there's some double-trivia for you.
MOREL!— I did not know these were "seasonal." (19D: Seasonal linguine topper)
REORGS!— this answer can also eke on by.
SUH-WEET!— far and away the greatest thing in this grid. I was sort of psyched when I thought the answer was going to be "SWEEEET!" But "SUH-WEET" is DEF. better.

I think I'm done for the evening. Gonna see a game at Camden Yards tomorrow (if it doesn't get rained out) and then trek home. Annabel has the Monday tomorrow, so I'll see all y'all on Tuesday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS here is a link to my wife's public (Facebook) album of photos from Saturday's Indie 500 Crossword Tournament, in case you're interested.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

When is a door not a door? When it's AJAR! When is Rex Parker not Rex Parker? When he's GUEST BLOGGER ANNABEL THOMPSON!

Constructor: David Woolf

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Chicken Soup for the Crossword Lover's SOUL/SOL/SOLE/SEOUL"— Theme answers feature homophones of "soul."

Theme answers:

SOL CERVEZA (17A: Popular Mexican brew)
SOLE BENEFICIARY (27A: The only trustworthy one?)
SEOUL SOUTH KOREA (48A: Where Kia and Hyundai are headquartered)
SOUL SISTER (63A: Woman's closest female friend)

Word of the Day: LOVE-IN (6D: Groovy 1960s event) —

A love-in is a peaceful public gathering focused on meditation, love, music, and/or use of psychedelic drugs. The term was coined by Los Angeles radio comedian Peter Bergman, who also hosted the first one in March or April 1967 (sources disagree) in Elysian Park.^[1]^[2] It has been interpreted in different ways by different organizations, but is often connected to protesting local, social or environmental issues.^[3]^[4] Such protests were held in opposition to the Vietnam War.^[5]

• • •

This puzzle was a SNAP for me, actually; I got at least half the across clues on my first round, and I don't expect down-only people had much trouble today either. The fill was just OK, honestly, didn't learn a lot of new words and there weren't any neat arrangements. I did like all the Spanish words peppered throughout! ESOS...PESO...SOL CERVEZA...even DOS although it's supposed to be talking about hair arrangements. But I never took Spanish. Ay caramba!

The theme was...a Monday theme. Not much to say here. Except that I had GIRLFRIENDS in 63A for the longest time and was driving myself nuts wondering why nothing would work with it. (I briefly considered "gal pals," but it obviously wouldn't fit.) Until I realized "duh, that's a theme answer."

Wow, that really wasn't a very glowing review of this puzzle at all. Am I turning into Rex??? I͓͚̞̳͝ͅs̕ ͕̰ṭ̦h̨e̟̥̖̮͔̬̲ ̷͚̣̖t͖̱͖͔r̷͎͇͓a͍̲̙̥͕͈͕n̗͇͍̠ş͎̼̠̠f͉̕o͕̰͝ṟ̣͟ͅm̻ͅa̦t͕͍̗͎i͙̻͎̫̫͉͡ọ̸n ̴̼̞̰̫͇s̭͈̙̣͉ṯ̼̰͓͞a̴r̦̙͚̪͙͍͓͝t҉̼̮i̴͖̘̭̣̼̩n҉̯̗̝̹̙̭g̵͓?͉̤̟̘͕͢?͎̭̖͇ͅ?̭̺͙̪̮ͅ?̫̤

Bullets:

LIQUORED UP (29D: Three sheets to the wind) — I have never once heard this expression used in my life. Maybe that's just how the kids don't talk these days?
OPAL (15A: Milky gem)— I'm at the point where I can't see the name of a gemstone without thinking of Steven Universe. So, here you go!

IN HEELS (22A: Wearing party shoes)— Please give credit to anyone who wears heels, ever. Prom happened the other weekend, and let's just say that I got way more blisters from my stilettos than I did from six days hiking the Appalachian Trail, even when I fell over a rock and, later, almost got bitten by a snake. And we're expected to dance in heels? Next time there's a formal dance, I swear I'm going in combat boots.

And finally, y'know, some guys just can't hold their ARSENIC..

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired high school student - and that's the last time I'll be writing that. Get ready for Annabel Thompson, tired RISING COLLEGE STUDENT, to start blogging!!!

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: I don't know. I kept stopping to sigh and shake my head and take pictures of my grid. Medium?

THEME: HERO SANDWICH (57A: Sub … or a literal hint to 20-, 34- and 43-Across) — "HERO" is "sandwiched" inside three theme answers:

Theme answers:

BEACH EROSION (20A: Problem cause by ocean storms)
PITCHER OF BEER (34A: Bar order for the whole table)
LEARN THE ROPES (43A: Pick up basics)

Word of the Day: EZIO Pinza (65A: Opera singer Pinza) —

Ezio Pinza (May 18, 1892 – May 9, 1957) was an Italian opera singer. A bass with a rich, smooth and sonorous voice, he spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. At the San Francisco Opera, Pinza sang 26 roles during 20 seasons from 1927 to 1948. Pinza also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
After retiring from the Met in 1948, Pinza enjoyed a fresh career on Broadway in the musical theatre and also appeared in several Hollywood films. (wikipedia)

• • •

This isn't just bad, it's comically bad. It's like someone set out to write a bad puzzle. It's like a parody of a bad puzzle. In fact … is it a parody? … [checking] … I don't see parody. I just see atrocity. And the thing is, so do you. None of you think this is good enough for the NYT. Even if your favorite thing is disagreeing with me, I don't believe you can defend this puzzle with a straight face. No, I see your face, and it is decidedly not straight. The fill is a 1 out of 10 (if we exclude the longer fill, it's a 0). The theme might have worked if the execution had been anything like interesting or competent, but it is neither. Sandwiches have two pieces of bread, and the filling touches the bread. So for the theme to work, you need two-word phrases, with letter string "HERO" shared between them. Only one of the themers does this (BEACH EROSION). In the others, BEER and LEARN just stick out there on the ends of their respective answers, like one of those colored toothpicks that sometimes get stuck in sandwiches. Or like a piece of fluff that really doesn't belong on a sandwich at all and isn't really edible. But the sad theme is just a sad theme. A kind of run-of-the-mill sad theme. Unacceptable for a puzzle of the NYT's stature, but not, in and of itself, a crime against humanity. It's the shamelessly terrible fill that's the real issue here. Did you see the NW corner? Did you? Here, let me refresh:

This is where I thought the puzzle was trolling me. Why is the fill this bad? It must be theme-related. Last time this constructor published a puzzle, the fill was also terrible, but there, at least, there was a thematic reason (severely limited letter bank). Here … dear lord, Why? And then there's EZIO over EZER, which is like some kind of terrible crosswordese joke. I could list many, many more total bummer answers. Probably a dozen Bad, another dozen Less-Than-Good. I nearly made RUER the Word of the Day because that is what I am. I rue that I solved this at all, rue that I had to write about it. Mostly, I resent that the position of editor of the NYT Crossword puzzle has become such a sinecure that stuff like this gets published, and will continue to get published, with absolutely no repercussions. Every single puzzle at the Indie 500 Crossword Tournament this past Saturday put the average NYT puzzle to shame—difficulty levels varied, but conceptual brilliance and overall polish did *not*. My fellow crossword critics (the two who were in attendance) agreed—almost zero scowling. Just joy. You'd think the self-described "Best Puzzle in the World" (!?) could at least come close to meeting that kind of quality standard. You'd think. And to think, I kept telling people this past weekend, "You know, last week's Times' puzzles were almost all really solid … I think things might be looking up." LOL.

The fault, once again, lies entirely with the editor, who a. never should've accepted this puzzle, and b. once he'd accepted it, should've … what's the word? … right, *edited* the damned thing to make it far less ABBR-ABRA-BAABAA-Bominable. An assiduous editor would've rejected it with a note indicating that the theme concept was indeed solid, but that the execution (including theme answer choice and overall fill) needed to be considerably improved. Then maybe you end up teaching a novice constructor something about professional standards. And maybe the puzzle he later resubmits to you is good. And we are all the better off for it. But this is not the puzzle world we live in. I thought this was a CHER tribute puzzle half way in. I think I might've liked it *slightly* better if it had been.

Go buy the Indie 500 puzzles ($10 for Play-at-Home option, under "Register"). You won't rue it. Oh, and the clue on NATE (44D: Silver of fivethirtyeight.com) reminds me—there is a World-Class Nate Silver-related clue in one of the Indie 500 puzzles (don't worry, he's in the clue, not the answer, so nothing's been spoiled). So good, I said "wow" out loud while solving (much to the annoyance, I'm sure, of the competitors in my vicinity).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Herre Schouwerwou

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: [Pickup line?] — same clue for all themers …

Theme answers:

17A: "NEED A LIFT?"
24A: "CLEAN YOUR ROOM!"
39A: F-SERIES
52A: "SO WHERE WERE WE …?"
63A: "IT'S FOR YOU"

Word of the Day: IRENE RYAN (35D: Granny player on "The Beverly Hillbillies") —

Irene Ryan (October 17, 1902 – April 26, 1973) was an American actress, one of the few entertainers who found success in vaudeville, radio, film, television and Broadway.
Ryan is most widely known for her portrayal of "Granny," the mother-in-law of Buddy Ebsen's character, on the long-running TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971), for which she was nominated for Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1963 and 1964. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Note: a version of this theme has been done before, with two of the same theme answers, back on Aug. 22, 2007, by Patrick Blindauer. Check out my (now-vintage) write-up.]

This works pretty well. It's a bit of a victim of poor timing, from my perspective, because there was a phenomenal "line"-related puzzle in the Indie 500 tournament in D.C. on Saturday—but that's an unfair comparison, on several levels. This one is, in most ways, different from that way, and this isn't meant to be a marquee puzzle; it's a mid-week puzzle, and it's doing its job just fine. The core concept works. All of the lines seem like actual lines, not forced or roll-your-own type dealies that you often see when a concept is stretched to its limits. Ironically, or aptly, or both, or neither, the one answer that isn't a (spoken) line is the one that I liked the best—the one that I struggled with, and that (pleasantly) surprised me: F-SERIES. Sometimes, inconsistency works. It's the shortest, it sits in the center with no symmetrical counterpart, and it's like "screw all y'all, i'ma do what I wanna do." I like its attitude. You be you, F-SERIES!

Fill is not great today, but it's up from yesterday, so I'm gonna keep comments to myself on that front, for once. I think of BEEFCAKE as a general category. I do not think of male models as individual cakes of beef (3D: Hunky guys). Speaking of oddly individual thing, we saw an individually (plastic-)wrapped pickle at a Sheetz yesterday. Speaking of SHEETZ, I wish it (they?) were less regional (I've only ever seen them in PA and MD). It would make a nifty crossword answer. (Sheetz is a gas station / food store chain, for those who aren't familiar.) … SO WHERE WERE WE? Ah yes, BEEFCAKES. Also, ENDALLS. That is not a plural I believe in.

Bullets:

59D: State made up of two state postal abbreviations (COMA) — I love this clue, but it felt Friday/Saturday tough. That "state" meaning switch, mid-clue, is hard / impossible to see.
13D: Manhole emanation (STEAM)— for reasons I'm not sure I can articulate, I'm finding the clue [Manhole emanation] … disturbing. Upsetting, even. I have to stop thinking about it now.
14A: Israeli conductor Daniel ___ (OREN)— Whoa. That's new to me. Terrible fill, but interesting trivia. I tried and tried to get BARENBOIM to fit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: CAVERN— Note: "This puzzle seemingly as more than one solution … but only one is 'correct.'"

Theme answers:

CAVERN (1A: Location containing 10-Downs and 25-Downs)
STALACTITE (10D: 1-Across sight)
STALAGMITE (25D: 1-Across sight)

The gimmick: the crosses for the "C" and "T" in STALACTITE seem correct if you write in STALAGMITE, and vice versa with the "G" and "M" in STALAGMITE. Thus

28A: *Features of some front teeth = CAPS (but GAPS works)
34A: *Work hard = TOIL (but MOIL works)
44A: *Undermine, as a government program = GUT (but CUT works)
48A: *Plural suffix with organ = ISMS (but ISTS works)

Word of the Day: John SIRICA (57A: Judge John who was Time's 1973 Man of the Year) —

John Joseph Sirica (March 19, 1904 – August 14, 1992) was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the Watergate scandal. He rose to national prominence during the Watergate scandal when he ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over his recordings of White House conversations.
Sirica's involvement in the case began when he presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars. He did not believe the claim that they had acted alone, and persuaded or coerced most of them to implicate the men who had arranged the break-in (G. Gordon Liddyremained silent). For his role in Watergate the judge was named TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1973. (wikipedia)

• • •

The core idea here is interesting, but the fact that the joke/trick can't land w/o the note is a bit of a problem. I am curious if anyone out there (like me) failed and/or refused to read the "Note" ahead of time, and if so, if you had any trouble at all placing the STALACTITE and STALAGMITE in their correct places. Once I had STALA- at 10D: 1-Across site, I knew the answer was STALACTITE. Everyone knows that STALACTITEs stick "tight" to the roof of caverns, while STALAGMITEs rise up from the ground. So I wrote in STALACTITE and STALAGMITE in their visually appropriate places, bam bam, one two, the -TITE up top, the -MITE down below, without ever, for one second, considering that they could've been switched. Why would they be switched? Who would make a puzzle with a STALAGMITE up top—not plausible. Sooooo…. yeah, then I finished and wondered what the big deal was. Only then did I read the "Note" and see that, in theory, you could've swapped the -TITE and the -MITE and had the crosses work. The note starts, "This puzzle seemingly has more than one solution," but it never "seemed" that way to me at all. The Note is the only thing that called my attention to it. I think reading the Note ahead of time would've confused me. Again, I think this concept is interesting, but the puzzle just didn't play right. The gimmick is a post-solve curiosity, not a mid-solve challenge.

Also, the either/or concept here (where either of two different letters "works" in both the Across and Down) is not new, or, in this case, very taxing. The effected words are these weak little things, and there are just four of them. Who would guess MOIL over TOIL? Also, the "choice" between "-ISTS" and "-ISMS" is a profoundly ugly and largely meaningless one. I generally love puzzles that can pull the either/or thing off—the most famous example of the type is, of course, the rightly legendary BOBDOLE / CLINTON crossword of Election Day, 1996. But this one just didn't bring much new or delightful to the gimmick.

At 1-Across, I had -AVERN / -AMP and not idea what could go there; or, rather, I couldn't conceive of anything but "T" going there, but TAMP made no sense as clued (1D: Overly theatrical, maybe). The fill has some pretty terrible moments, most notably ADELES, some crossing Roman numerals (MCCI vs. ACTIII!?), DOSO, ENOL, both TSEandTSETSE (!!??), NEY, ROBT, AOLER (dear lord, still!?), and then a bunch of mediocre stuff. But several of the longer Acrosses were nice, if you can call DIRT STAINS nice. Can't believe COMEDY TEAM wasn't clued via Stiller & Meara. Really, really can't believe it, considering her recent death, and her crossword-common name, and her having been a crossword aficionado in real life. Missed opportunity.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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U-shaped bone above larynx / SUN 4-26-15 / Racoonlike animal / Worrier's farewell / Mother of Levi Judah / Relative of Cerulean / Viola's love in Twelfth night / WWII Dambusters for short / Franz's partner in old SNL sketches

Ben Canaan of Exodus / MON 5-18-15 / Savory filled pastries / Hit 1977 musical with song It's Hard-Knock Life

City between Boston Gloucester / TUE 5-19-15 / HIV-treating drug / 1961 #1 R&B hit for Lee Dorsey / Hit David Bowie single album 1983 / Minneapolis radio station that carries lot of news, appropriately / Automne preceder / Greta Garbo's mysterious lady co-star / Small freshwater fish / 1990s GM make

Mark twain measure / WED 5-20-15 / Turkish currency unit / Role for Costner Stack / What barbers lower / Grampa simpson describe genesis figure / detective catches sight of bakery wares

Kilim Kirman / THU 5-21-15 / Blue Moon of 60s 70s baseball / Hill by loch / Art Deco icon / Velvet add-on / Darrin Stephens' co-workers on Bewitched / Dada pioneer Max

1950s Reds star Ted for short / FRI 5-22-15 / Longoria with two Gold Gloves / Message accompanied by red lips / Peak in eurozone / Saturday in Seville / He partnered with Bear in 1923 / Ancient medical researcher

Maude's cousin on 1970s TV / SAT 5-23-15 / to the stars autobiographer / Mork's supervisor on Mork & Mindy / Led Zeppelin's final studio album appropriately / County of Lewis Carroll's birth / Hollowed out comedic prop / It's not for me to say crooner / Form of xeriscaping

Kyrgyz province / SUN 5-24-15 / PBS craft show for 21 seasons / Sci-fi narcotic / AI woman in 2015's Ex Machina / Bariton in Mikado / Local theater slangily / Warrior in Discworld fantasy books / Former Jets coach Ewbank / Speed-skating champion Kramer / Sun's 10th planet once /

Mountain Dew alternative / MON 5-25-15 / Polynesian carvings / Island nation for which distinctive cat is named

One who's fluent in both JavaScript Klingon say / TUE 5-26-15 / Foes of Saruman in Two Towers / Mexico's national flower / Cabot murder she wrote setting / Dhaka dress

Tamiroff of Anastasia / WED 5-27-15 / Jazz players are incapable / Transport in Ellington tune / Singer Perry opted out / Drying-out woe for short / Female producer of lanolin / Ipana competitor / Often-punted comics character

Writer Osnos of New Yorker / THU 5-28-15 / Technology inside Kindles / Savoriness in Japanese / Palo Alto-based car company / Duke's ride / Star Wars whistler

Heckelphone lookalike / FRI 5-29-15 / Steel brackets with two flanges / 1998 coming-of-age novel by Nick Hornby / Setting for hawthorne's marble faun / Ben who played wizard in wicked / First high priest of Israelites / Broadway chorus dancers informally / Arabian port home to Sinbad Island

Mushroom layer of beef Wellington / SAT 5-30-15 / Trademark Isaac Asimov accessory / Footwear donned on camera by Mr. Rogers / Onetime Strom Thurmond designation / Noted employee of Slate / Spectator who got standing O at Wimbledon in 1981

Coin to pay for passage across River Styx / SUN 5-31-15 / Anti-revolutionary of 1776 / Seasonal linguine topper / Choco Klondike treat / Park opened in 1964 / Chocolate mint brand with peaks in its logo / Hematophagous creature

Milky gem / MON 6-1-15 / Online periodical / Wife portrayed in 2005's "Walk The Line" / Greek letter after phi

Fashion designer Jacobs / TUE 6-2-15 / Opera singer Pinza / Weizman 1990s Israeli president / Arlo's partner in funnies / Coveted late-night gig

Israeli conductor Daniel / WED 6-3-15 / Granny player on "The Beverly Hillbillies" / Skull island beast for short / Dreads sporter / Deion onetime nickname in NFL /

Judge John who was Time's 1973 Man of Year / THU 6-4-15 / 1998 Sarah McLachlan hit / Girlfriend group 2002 / Many early internet adopter / Schoolmaster in Washington Irving tale / Mythical huntress / Morris signature on Declaration of Independence / Singer with 1994 double-platinum album Under Pink