Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Kurt Krauss

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: AGES of man -- Each theme answer begins with one planetary age

Theme answers:

STONEHENGE (17A: *English rock group?)
ICE BREAKERS (24A: *Many party games)
IRON HORSE (37A: *Railroad engine, in old lingo)
SPACE NEEDLE (52A: *Seattle tourist attraction)
BRONZE STAR (62A: *Medal for bravery, maybe)
AGES (69A: A very long time... or a hint to the starts of the answers to the five starred clues)

Word of the Day: MESABI (Minnesota range known for its mining of metal)

The Mesabi Iron Range is a vast deposit of iron ore and the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. Discovered in 1866, it is the chief deposit of iron ore in the United States. The deposit is located in northeast Minnesota, largely in Itasca and Saint Louis counties. It was extensively worked in the earlier part of the 20th century. Extraction operations declined throughout the mid-1970s but rebounded in 2005. China's growing demand for iron, along with the falling value of the U.S. dollar versus other world currencies, have made taconite production profitable again, and some mines that had closed have been reopened, while current mines have been expanded. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hi, my name is Ben Johnston, and I'm your guest blogger today. Unlike the people who have been ably filling in for the past few days, I have zero experience with crossword construction. I'm a high school English teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, and my only crossword connection is that I got hooked on them last year and solve a lot of them. It's EERIE... almost like there weren't a lot of volunteers to blog a Tuesday puzzle, am I right...?

Actually, this isn't bad for a Tuesday puzzle. As has been noted here before, the problem with Tuesdays is that while they're supposed to combine the cleanliness of a Monday puzzle with the higher challenge of a Wednesday puzzle, AS A RULE they tend to be puzzles that aren't clean enough to be Mondays and aren't interesting enough to be Wednesdays. In this case, the theme works well enough... the answers are nicely varied, they're all real things, and I didn't spot the connection until I got to the revealer. It might have been more elegant to have the ages appear in actual chronological order, but otherwise it works nicely.

Unfortunately, while the theme is fine, the fill is weak. This is a very choppy grid -- except for the themers, there's nothing longer than seven letters. I was honestly surprised to discover that there were only 76 words here, because it sure felt like more when I was solving. I guess once you've settled on IRON HORSE as your only nine-letter theme answer, you're pretty much splitting the grid in half across the middle. And the accompanying string of 3-letter downs (IF I, ENG, SHE, SOO, EON) made for a pretty unpleasant midpoint in the solve.

I don't recognize the constructor's name, but there's an assortment of bad fill: random foreign words (CHERE, TRES, MES, NUEVO), abbreviations (SRS, BVD, RDA, OSS, USMA), and iffy partials (KEPT OUT, URGE ON [which I keep wanting to pronounce like STURGEON], COLOR IN). That last one is almost saved by its clue -- 25D: Fill with a Crayola, say. I'm torn on DOOR ONE (3D: "Let's Make a Deal" choice)... somewhat against my better judgment, I think I like it.

Bullets:

48A: Minnesota range known for its mining of metal (MESABI) — By far the most obscure thing in the grid (at least from my Canadian perspective). And it crosses the terrible ACE TEN (49D: Sure winner in blackjack). Side note: I was in Vegas for the first time this summer, did the math wrong on an ACE, and accidentally hit on 21. And I drew a TEN, so I won anyway. What can I say, I'm not used to drinking free screwdrivers...
40D: Mornings, for short (AMS) & 61D: Evenings, for short (PMS) — Yeah, putting these right next to each other doesn't save them. None of the grid is what you would call clean, but that whole SW section is particularly brutal.
30A: ___ Joe's (supermarket chain) (TRADER) — We don't have these in Canada, but we were at one in Vegas and it's great!
66A: Dillon or Damon (MATT) — What a lovely excuse to include this excellent trailer for the upcoming film version of The Martian.

10D: Denali's home (ALASKA) — Timely!
54D: Lyric poem (EPODE)— I wanted ELEGY.
1D: One checking you out (CASHIER) — Great clue.
26D: Like some truths and flames (ETERNAL) — Another good one. In fact the cluing in this puzzle is solid across the board.

I think that's it. I don't know how to make the right date show up at the top of the post, but hopefully Rex will come along and fix it. Thanks for reading!

Signed, Ben Johnston, Tutor of CrossWorld

[Follow Ben Johnston on Twitter]

Constructor: Freddie Cheng

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:BREAKABLES (62A: Extra-care items for movers ... or a hint to the starts of 17-, 24-, 28-, 44- and 49-Across) — first words of themers are things that can you can break...

Theme answers:

FEVER PITCH (17A: High excitement)
RECORD DEAL (24A: Desire of one submitting a demo CD)
LEG WARMERS (28A: Workout attire that became a 1980s fad)
SWEAT PANTS (44A: Bottom of a gym?)
FALL SEASON (49A: Debut time for many TV shows)

Word of the Day: OWLET MOTH (59A: Flying nocturnal insect) —

The Noctuidae or owlet moths are a family of robustly built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a bit of a wreck. Let's start with the theme, which is a standard FWC (first words can...) type theme, a very very basic and old type of theme that we don't see so much any more, for a reason. It's a bit played out, unless there is some great concept or revealer or theme-binding element of some kind (today, there decidedly is not). But OK, so the theme type is stale—let's just roll with it, see where it takes us. Well the first problem is that the concept is so broad that the answers all seem ridiculously arbitrary. How broad is the concept? Well, several answer parts that *aren't* first words in theme answers would seem to qualify as BREAKABLES. You can break a DEAL as sure as you can break a RECORD. You can also breakDANCE—true FIRE DANCE is not a themer, but it's sure as hell photo-bombing the themers, so since I can't help but notice it, I'm talking about it. I mean, yesterday's puzzle had ICEBREAKERS *in it*. Where's ICE today? Well, nowhere, just like a seemingly endless number of "BREAKABLES" because "break" creates a rubric so vast that it's virtually meaningless. I thought maybe the category was supposed to be narrower—that perhaps the first word of the theme answers had to be able to complete the phrase "break a ___"; even so, if that were the case, then you'd probably put PROMISE and DATE and other things in there before FEVER and FALL. The category simply isn't tight enough, and cramming lots of answers (6 today) into the grid doesn't make it any tighter.

Also, BREAKABLES is limp as revealers go. The more I think about it, it makes sense only if there is supposed be a kind of wordplay where the "BREAK A" part of BREAKABLES is the thing you put in front of the first words of themers to get phrases. That seems awfully iffy, conceptually. Further, those fake-themers (FIRE DANCE and OWLET MOTH) are annoyingly distracting. Grid seems like it could've used a redesign, if only to help iron out some (occasionally) very rough fill. I wish I could unsee virtually every Down in the northern section. RARES is an abomination (24D: Hardest-to-find items for a collector) (I say this as a serious collector of at least one thing). Ditto EMBAR. Not a huge fan of ARECA. The clue (12D: Betel nut-yielding tree) just reeks of the kind of musty ar(e)cana that crosswords have been and should continue to be drifting away from.

I was gonna rag on OWLET MOTH, which seemed like a real Hail Mary answer to me while I was solving (esp. crossing FOGEL) (?). But finding out that they're the largest family of lepidoptera, with 35K known species, forces me to grudgingly accept the thingness of OWLET MOTHs. Speaking of grudgingly accepting thingness. I railed against ECIG recently and several of my friends called me out on it, claiming that it was very much a real thing. Not EMAIL real, but definitely more real than, say, ECASH. Somehow someone ended up sending me google image search proof from some ECIG place in Temecula, CA, and then my friend and ECIG defender, crossword constructor Finn Vigeland, said he was going to be in Temecula for work, and I told him that if he sent me ocular proof (in the form of a selfie) that he had visited these Temecula ECIG establishments, I would publicly apologize to both him and ECIG for every maligning ECIG. And so of course ...

... and ...

Sadly, even before I'd received the pics, I knew I would have to concede. We took this pic just a few blocks from where we were staying this past weekend in Minneapolis:

So look for EJUICE, I guess, coming soon to a crossword near you. And Finn, ECIG, I'm sorry.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS if you want to see a crossword with a similar theme type, but executed with a much greater degree of technical skill, check on the Livengood/Chen production in today's WSJ ("Au Pair").

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: word ladder ... in rebus form—from WARM to COLD in five boxes:

Theme answers:

WARM (___ BODY / ___ UP)
WORM (EAR ___ / ___'S EYE VIEW)
WORD (PASS___ HINT / S___S)
CORD (FOR THE RE___ / ___IAL)
COLD (HEAD ___ / GO ___)

Word of the Day: AZOTH (37D: Mercury, in alchemy) —

noun
1.
mercury,regardedbyalchemistsastheassumedfirstprincipleofallmetals.
2.
theuniversalremedyofParacelsus. (dictionary.com)

• • •

Very uneven. Unusual and ambitious, but also, at heart, just a boring old word ladder. From WARM to COLD. Why? And why in tiny boxes? Don't know. It definitely required some effort to piece together, that's for sure. Couldn't see the theme at all, or even fill in all the rebus squares properly, until the grid was completed, and I could work backward from COLD—CORD—WORD. Some of the rebus answer clues were almost no help. [Renaissance fair props] for SWORDS??? Ha, no. I could've guessed all day long and not solved S-S. Further, I had no idea what kind of BODY was called for at [Any old person], and I was convinced that ___UP was CUE UP (1D: Get ready to play). I've heard of BIRD'S EYE VIEW, but never ever WORM'S, and EAR ___ made me think only of EAR CANDY. Even after I figured out it was EAR WORM, I thought there was something going on with BIRD'S EYE VIEW and EAR WORM, i.e. a rebus where the crossing elements ... act out adages? The early BIRD catches the WORM? Honestly, I was giving this serious consideration for a while. So I had to work for it, which is great. It's just that figuring out that it was all for the sake of ... a word ladder? That was something of a let-down.

The fill was also uneven, with a bunch of stuff giving me great joy (INFERNO! OTTO DIX! BESTIARIES! SCREEN SHOT!) and some stuff leaving me wondering "what?"AZOTH? NITRILE? (41D: Latex-like glove material). Those two and TRASK (7D: "East of Eden" family name) I would've tried desperately to ditch if this had been my puzzle. Still, overall, I think the good outweighs the bad. It was important that the non-rebus fill be pretty gettable, because you need it to fill in the areas around and eventually *find* the rebus squares. It was pretty clear early on that a rebus was in play. Here's what my grid looked like a couple minutes in:

At this point I've located the first two rebus squares, but still have no idea what goes in them, how many there are going to be, etc. Once you know they're out there, you end up looking for them everywhere, including places they're not (which, today, included the NE and SW corners). I just noticed that the rebus squares today are symmetrical. I generally don't think much of symmetrical rebuses—too easy to find. Better to make people really look, and let maximal grid smoothness dictate where the rebus square goes (rather than forcing the grid to accommodate a fixed rebus square). But today I clearly didn't even notice the symmetry, and the grid doesn't seem to have suffered too much. So symmetry seems neither plus nor minus.

Bullets:

5D: The P.L.O.'s Arafat (YASSER)— Spelled it YASSIR, one of a string of misspellings today that included PADMA for PADMÉ (56D: "Star Wars" queen) and WOPNER for WAPNER (55A: Judge of 1980s-'90s TV)
38D: "___ the light!" ("I SAW")— I went with "I SEE." I'm not sure what context is intended in either case.
14D: 2003 OutKast hit that was #1 for nine weeks ("HEY YA")— I'm happy to be reminded of this catchy song. Given its popularity and its five-letterness (i.e. shortness) and its vowel-endingness, I'm kind of surprised I don't see it in puzzles more often. I'm kind of horrified by how the old the song is now. Still feels current to me :(

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:none

Word of the Day: NED Land (18D: Land in a nautical adventure) —

"Canadian whaler and master harpoonist Ned Land," a character in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (wikipedia)

• • •

Wide open, smooth, and wicked easy (except for the NW, which I finished last and which gave me brief but discernible fits). It started oddly, with ALOU being the only thing I could muster in the NW. And then there was the out-and-out, absolute, I-can't-believe-anyone-doesn't-think-this-is-a *gimme* at 29A: Breakfast dish with hollandaise sauce (EGGS BENEDICT). I had crab cake benedict just last weekend in Minneapolis, but I think I would've nailed this regardless. So after a little bit, my grid looked very, very strange:

I usually build on the answers I already have, and I almost never get a long answer with no crosses in place. So the above grid is freakish-looking to me. Then it gets slightly weirder, as I manage to drop BIERCE (gimme) (30D: "The Devil's Dictionary" author) and LENTIL SOUP (gimme) (28D: Food that Esau sold his birthright for) and then move straight into the SE. So ... strike out in the NW, and then *torch* the puzzle from the middle, down, and over.

[I am pretty PASTY. I am not (I hope) "cadaverous"]

You can see how WENCES got me quickly into that SW corner. That is a gimme for those who are Xers or older, probably, but just as probably baffling and arcane to younger folk. An answer like that can probably be the difference between breezing through a corner and struggling a little. Also, WENCES is never going to look right to you if you don't know it. But I knew it, so ... hurray? Got the brilliant L'ETAT, C'EST MOI and moved easily up the grid and into the NE. That left just the NW, which, as I said, was a totally different puzzle for me. Those two "?" clues side by side meant that I had to work much harder up there, despite having ALOU, and EGGS-, and correctly guessing ERRED and MEDLEY (though I kept doubting the latter). I had the back end of STAGNATION, but couldn't find the front. [Threads] looks plural, though even after guessing it referred to clothing, I could think only of WEAR (?). [Material problem] is exceedingly vague clue for TEAR. Wasn't sure what "Base" meant in [Base players], or what "bill" meant in [It's read for a bill]. But the real toughies were the "?" clues, 2D: You again? (ALTER EGO) and 3D: Fits on a hard drive? (ROAD RAGE), good and great clues, respectively. Good way to slow me down is to bunch up your "?" clues. Drives me mad. With Rage. Of the non-road variety. But the puzzle was undeniably lovely overall.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Barry C. Silk

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for me)

THEME:none

Word of the Day: OYES (57A: Cry for silence and attention) —

• • •

Almost impossible for me to finish. Tough overall, but that's what I expect on a Saturday. Whole puzzle skews before my time, but that also happens. I mean, NYNEX? I can never remember that. The Dells? I listen to lots of old music, still didn't know that. LE CAR? More oldeyness. Silk's puzzles tend to be anchored in the '60s ('60s music, '60s TV, '60s Oswald), when I wasn't yet born, so I routinely find it hard to find footing in his puzzles. But this wasn't what made this puzzle miserable to solve. It all ended up coming down to OYES, which I can't remember ever seeing, and DRIER, which I still don't understand (56A: Oil or ink additive). Secondary problems were NO BET, which I now get but which I had no hope of seeing even with NO-E- in place (I wanted NOTED), and DELOS, which I had has DOLOZ and then DOLOR and then (after I attempted the horrendous but correct OYES) DOLOS, and then I finally realized that the answer to 47A: "Aha!" wasn't "I KNOW IT!" but "I KNEW IT!" And that's where it ended: with a could-be-either vowel crossing a minor Greek island crossing whatever alternate olde-timey junk OYES is. I like challenges! I don't like (at all) when the challenge ends up at the gunkiest, worst-conceived part of the puzzle.

As for DRIER? I just don't know. You add DRIER to oil? DRIER is an additive? My language skills just break down here, as they broke down trying to understand what the hell "provision" meant in 46D: Password provision (ENTRY), as they broke down trying to understand both "Metro" and "line" in 44A: Metro line: Abbr. (RTE). I was staring at this for so long, wishing I could just make the '60s TV sidekick be TONTO, which was the only sidekick I could think of:

I think the only way I pulled out of this was to just start forcing the issue, typing in random things that seemed right but weren't working, and then somehow I shoved ENTRY into 46D and it all came together. The only one I felt bad about not getting more quickly was ROBIN. But man, DRIER. Man. That was the real killer. Still means nothing to me. So that clue on DRIER I really don't like, but I guess I can forgive. The whole I KNEW IT / DELOS / OYES (!?!?) thing. No. That's just bad. DELOS / OYES is bad, and having the mystery vowel in I KNEW IT be inside DELOS is bad. Everything boils down to OYES, which is supremely bad. I think you all are imagining that DELOS is a *lot* more famous than it is. I mean, I recognize it. Now. But ugh. And OYES. Seriously, imagine you struggle with a puzzle only to find out that what you were snagged on was OYES, a terrible, bottom-barrel piece of fill (problem one) that you thought could be spelled only two ways: OYEZ (yes) and OYER (which is, in fact, a part of a legal term—oyer and terminer—but which doesn't, apparently, apply here). OYES? ONO. Boo. I don't really even care about or remember the rest of the puzzle, except COFFEE RUSH is not a thing and QUADRUPLE PLAY is not a thing (even though it is the one thing that broke my puzzle wide open, finally):

From LSTS to OYES. That was my puzzle. LSTS and OYES: appropriately ugly bookends for a puzzle I am happy to put behind me.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Sound Argument"— ["SOUND" is in the grid at 42D, but we'll just pretend that isn't true] ... "childish debate" (represented by "IS NOT" and "IS TOO") is represented aurally in the wacky theme answers, where the "IS" sound is either added to or subtracted from familiar names and phrases...

Theme answers:

FICKLE THERAPIST (21A: *Shrink who's always changing his diagnosis?) (physical therapist minus "IS") (i.e. "physical" with no "IS" sound = "fickle")
DANCING CUISINE (26A: **What ballet patrons dine on?) ("Dancing Queen" + "IS") (i.e. "queen" with an added "IS" sound = "cuisine")
BEA AS A BEAVER (40A: *Oregon State's mascot played by actress Arthur?) (busy as a beaver minus "IS")
BUY ONE GET ONE FRIZZY (54A: **A deal on Afro wigs?) (buy one get one free + "IS")
MURRAY LOVES COMPANY (80A: *How actor Bill feels about houseguests?) (misery loves company minus "IS")
DIG UP DESSERT (95A: **Find cake or Jell-O in the back of the fridge?) (dig up dirt + "IS")
AUTUMN SPECTRUM (113A: *Fall colors?) (autism spectrum minus "IS")
ARE YOU FOR ISRAEL? (121A: **Question from El Al security?) ("are you for real?" + "IS")

Word of the Day: O'SHEAS (15D: Vegas casino with the mascot Lucky the Leprechaun) —

O'Sheas Casino is a casino located within The Linq Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. As part of The Linq, it is owned by Caesars Entertainment and is connected on the exterior to a shopping/dining promenade, also owned by Caesars. The revitalized O'Sheas has three bars - the main Dublin Up Bar, the Lucky Bar and the exterior-facing Blarney Bar. The casino includes beer pong tables, a stage, a dance floor and a pit with games including blackjack, roulette and craps. (wikipedia)

• • •

I definitely enjoyed this theme. I am a sucker for repurposed crosswordese. Why not make something pretty out of something terrible. The whole [Playground retort] genre is played right out, but here it's been made into an interesting theme concept. The argument doesn't quite work, because it would seem to be about whether there is or isn't an "IS" (sound), but what happens is the addition of one when it's not there, or the elimination of one when it is, so the two arguers are not arguing about the same thing ... but taken literally, removed from the "childish" argument context, the theme works fine. IS NOT = "IS" sound removed. IS TOO = "IS" sound added. My only issue with the theme is that the last two answers made me wince a little. "ARE YOU FOR ISRAEL?" clued as a security question from El Al just felt creepy and militaristic and ick. Conjured up interrogations and loyalty oaths and all kinds of other crap. In short, tonally, that clue sucked. The autism pun bugged me more, though. HA ha, autism ... is not a juxtaposition I'm comfortable with. I have no problem with AUTISM being an answer, but something about punning on it for your wacky theme answer felt yuck to me. I realize these are just personal feelings. I'm not particularly offended. Just saying the vibe was kinda wrecked for me there at the end. As I say, I enjoyed the puzzle overall.

It's a bit heavy on junk in places, though. It would be great if it had about half as many of these answers: ABORC, ODILE, OSHEAS, NOBU, ALB, SSS, ANYA, SSR, LON (esp. as clued, wtf?), ETALIA, and SATIVA, which is the worst of them all. You can think it's cool and hip because it's pot and all, but a Latin partial is a Latin partial, i.e. boo.

I supposed you could clue with the (re-)pronunciation in a few of these themers, but they seem close enough for government work to me. I had only a slight amount of trouble solving this, and most of that came in the NE, which had a casino I didn't know (ugh to today's poker STU, ugh to casinos), and an abbr. pop star w/o an abbr. clue, and SSS, and a (for me) tough clue on JUJITSU (13D: It has a variety of locks and pins), and what I thought was a comparative but what ended up being a superlative adjective in LEANEST (14D: Like buffalo meat vis-à-vis beef and pork). Oh, also, I couldn't get into the bottom of that section for a while because I couldn't see DECK OUT from DEC- (47A: Festoon). Kept wanting DECORATE or the like, and it kept not working. Had to do a late change of TODDER to DODDER (17A: Move unsteadily). Otherwise, no real issues.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

It's an Annabel Monday!!! Hooray!!!

Constructor: Mike Buckley

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CHANGE IS GOOD — Theme answers included coins.

Theme answers:

7D: Lightest coins ever minted by the U.S., used in the late 19th century (THREE-CENT PIECES)
20A: Showtime series named after an old fiction genre (PENNY DREADFUL)
38A: Charging for every little extra (NICKEL AND DIMING)
52A: Mounts for cowboys (QUARTER HORSES)

Word of the Day: ARLO (18D: Guthrie of Rising Sun Records) —

Arlo Davy Guthrie (born July 10, 1947) is an American folk singer.^[1] Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo is known for singing songs of protest against social injustice. Guthrie's best-known work is "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", a satirical talking blues song about 18 minutes in length. His song "Massachusetts" was named the official folk song of the state in which he has lived most of his adult life.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi!!! I'm so excited to be back, especially since it's only been two days since my eighteenth birthday!!! I celebrated by getting tea at the campus cafe with my friends. We go very wild and crazy here at Wellesley. However, the anniversary of my birth isn't the only anniversary I'm celebrating...it's also been exactly a year and ONE day since I officially started blogging for Rex!!!!!!!!!!

Have I learned a lot about myself, grew and changed as a person, discovered all I CANDO as a blogger? Yes. Have I figured out how to solve a crossword puzzle in under 20 minutes?.....These things take time.

This was probably the easiest puzzle I've done so far. I've never gotten so many Acrosses (does...does Across have a plural that actually works?) on my first try! So, perfect for a Monday, IMO. NESS/NEST, RHEA/AMENRA, and ADEN/OPEN were nice little touches.

Theme was a Monday thing, not a lot more to say for it except that I loved THREECENTPIECE. This was the first puzzle that I've blogged with a Down clue in the theme.

Bullets:

TECHNIQUES (35D: Ways to do things) — TECHNIQUE? TECHNIQUE?!??!?! TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE!!!

(That part at the end is definitely still Spongebob.)

HOWTO (14A: Do-it-yourselfer's book genre) — Speaking of which, I have been learning HOWTO play rugby! Yep. I went to a random open rugby practice, loved it, and joined the team totally on a whim. It's so much fun, I get to tackle and maul people!!! No, seriously, "mauling" is an actual rugby thing. I love my sport. <3
NESS (65A: Loch ____ Monster) — also the name of an "Earthbound" character. Since ATARI was also in the puzzle (even though Earthbound is Nintendo), have some awesome music!

RHEAS (33A: Cousins of ostriches) — I was done with my writeup but then I was like, look at this bird.
LOOK AT THIS RHEA FLOOF ITS WINGS OUT

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium+ (normal Tuesday "plus" I just woke up)

THEME:SINKING FEELING (6D: With 44-Down, an "uh-oh" sensation ... or an apt title for this puzzle) — "feelings" are hidden (in circles) inside long theme answers that run Down, and are thus, visually, "sinking":

Theme answers:

FRENCH OPEN (3D: Tennis tournament played on red clay)
TENDER AGE (34D: What 15, say, would be for leaving home)
DROOL OVER (9D: Find incredibly desirable)
CARLO SSLIM (30D: Mexican once ranked as the world's richest man)

Word of the Day: CARLOS SLIM —

Carlos Slim Helú [...] (born January 28, 1940) is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world. Known as the "Warren Buffett of Mexico"

Slim oversees a vast business empire that is influential in every sector of the Mexican economy and accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange. He derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso. The conglomerate comprises a diverse portfolio of businesses from a wide array of industries that include telecommunications, education, health care, industrial manufacturing, food and beverages, real estate, airlines, media, mining, oil, hospitality, entertainment, technology, retail, sports and financial services. Currently, Slim is the chairman and chief executive of telecommunications companies Telmex and América Móvil. América Móvil, which was Latin America's largest mobile-phone carrier in 2010, accounted for around $49 billion of Slim's wealth by the end of that year. As of August 2015 he is #4 on Forbes list of billionaires, and his net worth is estimated at $65.6 billion. His net worth is nearly equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product. (wikiepdia)

• • •

I have come to realize that if I solve first thing in the morning, I have to adjust my difficulty rating considerably, as it takes me half as long again to solve crosswords as it does if I solve at night. I had almost no difficulty with this one, and yet I was a good 30 seconds north of my normal Tuesday time (a significant amount of time when it take you only four minutes to solve a puzzle). Anyway, I liked this one, mostly. I certainly liked it more than I like most Tuesdays. It follows the Patrick Berry Rule (PBR) for "hidden" words, in that the "hidden" word involves / touches all of the words in the answer. No strays. And the theme answers are solid and/or vivid, and the revealer is cool and apt. LOSS seemed like a bit of an odd man out, in that I recognize the other "Feelings" instantly as emotions, whereas LOSS feels rather non-specific / nebulous. Certainly one can have a feeling of loss, but one can have a feeling of lots of things (for instance, I currently have a feeling of hunger, and of mild leg and shoulder soreness). LOSS just seems like a slightly wobbly fourth wheel. But the grid is fresh and clean (CSIS notwithstanding). Ms. Burnikel is prolific, and her puzzles seem to be getting stronger, which is nice to see. HOPE for the future!

You know where I got "stuck," oddly? BUXOM. And with the "X" in place. That is really ... surprising to me, somehow. I mean, you land the "X" (the only letter I had at first), and you figure, "that answer is Mine." And then I got to picture Rubenesque women, which was nice, but BUXOM ... not the thing that was coming to me. Full-bodied, yes. Is that the same thing. I think of BUXOM as more ... chest-related, specifically, so that word did not arrive until late. I also foundered a bit around CSIS, which remains a truly terrible answer, and one I swear I had never seen before last month and now have seen twice. At least this time it wasn't trying to pass itself off as multiple versions of a TV series. I also forgot CARLOS SLIM. I recognize the name, in retrospect. But Mexican + CARLOS and I had "the Jackal" and "Mencia" and that was pretty much it. Santana? Fuentes? SLIM feels like a parody of a rich guy's name. Like some guy who had a lot of money and watched a lot of westerns and thought "yeah ... that's it." So I had to get the SLIM part entirely from crosses, which likely slowed me down a little.

[I know you won't believe me, but I picked this song (which I love) for the "Feeling" part; the BUXOM connection only just dawned on me. Dolly rules! Dolly forever!]

Bullets:

26D: Desert bloomer (AGAVE)— Had just the "A." First thought was ASTER (perhaps because they're [Autumn bloomers] and it's currently autumn, perhaps because I just do a lot of crosswords). Anyway, always weird when you want an answer, it's the wrong answer, and then bam, there it is, in a different part of the grid (31D: Traditional flower for a 20th wedding anniversary).
19A: Comedian with the double-platinum album "Retaliation" (DANE COOK)— very popular (at one time). Also very divisive. The episode of "Louie" that featured Cook was fantastic:

14D: Number of times the Twins have won the World Series, appropriately (TWO)— little shout-out to Ms. Burnikel's home town here. Nothing wrong with that. The Twins won't be winning another World Series this year. But then, neither will my Tigers, who swept the Twins to open the season ... and then finished with the second-worst record in the AL. Sigh. I will enjoy the postseason, though. My friend Rob Ford is the radio play-by-play guy for the Houston Astros, so I'm psyched for tonight's one-game Wild Card playoff at Yankee Stadium. In the Wild Card games, I'm rooting for the Astros and (in the NL) the Cubs, so, if history is any indication, put all your money on the other guys.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty:Very very easy

THEME: Mononymous singers— familiar phrases that contain words that are also the names of one-named singers; answers are clued wackily, as if they had something to do w/ said singers...

Theme answers:

TICKLED PINK (17A: Amused the singer of "Raise Your Glass"?) (I do not know that song)
PRINCE CHARMING (25A: Enchantment of the singer of "Raspberry Beret"?)
PRO BONO (35A: Favoring the singer of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"?)
STING OPERATION (42A: Medical procedure for the singer of "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free"?)
TRAINED SEAL (57A: Coached the singer of "Kiss From a Rose"?)

Word of the Day: Kevin DURANT (5A: Kevin who was the 2014 N.B.A. M.V.P.) —

Kevin Wayne Durant (born September 29, 1988) is an American professional basketball player who currently plays with the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He has played the small forward position for the Thunder, formerly the Seattle SuperSonics. Durant has won an NBA Most Valuable Player Award, four NBA scoring titles, the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, and an Olympic gold medal. He has also been selected to five All-NBA teams and six All-Star teams. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solved this faster than both the Tuesday and the Monday puzzles, so ... not sure what happened there, but I think this one's clued Much too easily. I was getting theme answers just by looking at the answers w/ a handful of crosses in place. Never saw clue for DYNAMIC DUO because I had the tail end and just wrote in the rest—what else was ...-ICD-O gonna be? I like Chagall's work so MARC = gimme. I watched a lot of "Friends" so MATT = gimme. I do a lot of crosswords so TEK = gimme. Etc. This thing didn't push back At All. Took me a little while to see exactly what the theme was, but that's just because I didn't have much time to think about it—I was too busy filling in answers as fast as I could type them. I wrote in DARN for DAMN (23D: "Aw, hell!"). I think that is literally the only "mistake" I made all puzzle. I'm kind of on the fence about the theme. It's just one-named singers whose names are in familiar phrases. That doesn't strike me as that interesting or ambitious. But it's probably just playful enough to pass muster. But (but!) the fill was a little south of good. My mood never quite recovered after I got DIETRC :( and LRON :( :( one after the other. ABMS OOP ORSO ALGA ULAN. It's just a bit clanky. First rate Scrabble-f*cking in the SW. So it's a mild negative from me today, I think. But very, very mild.

Gotta get back to baseball now. When I came up here, it was the 6th inning and Houston was up 2-0 on the Yankees. Let's see what it is now ... whoa, looks like Houston increased its lead to 3-0. Still, that could disappear in a hurry. Gotta get back to watching it live. I've got picture from ESPN and audio from Astros radio. Best of both worlds (if I mute the commercials). Later...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Stu Ockman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Longest common word in the English language ... that does stuff"— [sigh] some kind of word trivia thing, I guess...

Theme answers:

SPOONFEED (17A: ... that has its letters in reverse alphabetical order)
DESSERTS (21A: ... that forms another word when read backward)
UNCOPYRIGHTABLE (39A: ... that has no repeated letters)
QUEUEING (54A: ... that has five consecutive vowels)
TORTUROUS (62A: ... that is spelled entirely from the last dozen letters of the alphabet) [dozen??? that is ... arbitrary]

Word of the Day: ROSE TOPAZ (10D: Pink gem) —

1.
arose-pinkformoftopazproducedbyheatingyellow-browntopaz
(???) (dictionary.com)

• • •

TORTUROUS pretty much says it all. This was a dismal, joy-killing puzzle. "Who ****ing cares?" was the only thing running through my head as I tried to put this thing together. This isn't wordplay. This isn't knowledge. This is trivia from some word website, and it's a very, very poor excuse for a crossword puzzle theme. As if the theme weren't depressing enough, the fill was laugh-and/or-cry-out-loud terrible in places. So, here's an unwritten cross-referencing rule: don't cross-reference crap answers that no one but no one is going to be happy to see under normal, non-cross-referenced circumstances. Cross-referencing foreign crosswordese ... that's the work of someone who hates fun, or cares not at all what a solver's solving experience is like. You should be ashamed that you had to resort to both OTROS and ESOS in your grid, but the fact that you're highlighting this colossal failure suggests you don't know that it is, in fact, a colossal failure. Yipes. And someone needs to lose their job over that SW corner, specifically over USLTA, the single worst crossword answer I've seen in months, if not all year. Was there a Lesbian Tennis Association? What did I miss? When your (5-letter!) abbr. is a. *bygone*, b. hasn't been seen in *any* puzzle in 6 years, c. is in the cruciverb database only four times *total*, and d. isn't even holding anything good together (you've still got USMA and ELHI in there!) ... man. Man oh man OMOO. "Tin ear" is a generous term for what's happening here.

I gotta get back to the baseball game. The sooner we all forget this thing, the better. . . dammit! The baseball game's over. Oh well, I still gotta go. I just ... can't ... with this puzzle. Good day/night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day: SAR (35A: Patriotic org. founded in 1889) —

The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Inc. is a Federally Chartered Corporation located in Louisville, Kentucky. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that describes its purpose as "maintaining and extending the institutions of American freedom, an appreciation for true patriotism, a respect for our national symbols, the value of American citizenship, and the unifying force of e pluribus unum that has created, from the people of many nations, one nation and one people." Sons of the American Revolution is a patriotic organization. Its members are male descendants of people who served in the Revolutionary War, or who contributed to establishing the independence of the United States. The society is dedicated to perpetuating American ideals and traditions, and to protecting the Constitution. Constitution Day, Flag Day, and Bill of Rights Day were established through its efforts. The society was founded on April 30, 1889. Its official name is the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. It has members in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico,. Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Its national headquarters are in Louisville, Kentucky. // The organization should not be confused with the Sons of the Revolution (SR), a separate organization founded on February 22, 1876 by businessman John Austin Stevens and members of The Society of the Cincinnati. SAR Founder William Osborn McDowell disagreed with the Sons of the Revolution requirement at that time that all societies were to be subordinate to the New York society. (wikipedia)

• • •

I haven't disliked a Steinberg puzzle in a long time, but this one made me wince a lot more than it made me smile. First, it feels like a major step backwards in fill quality. Grid seemed both dullish (with a few notable exceptions in the longer answers) and shaky. When 1-A was RATA, I thought "???" and then when I hit EDH before I even got out of the NW, I knew something was just off. OOHLALA is tired as longer fill goes—especially in a non-themed puzzle, where you have so much latitude. Nothing is locking you in. There's no theme to restrict you, so you can keep at it til you have a super-smooth, super-interesting grid. But here, today, many concessions were made. Too many. There's nothing particularly horrific going on; it's just ho-hum.

I've never heard of SATSUMA—total unknown, making that answer seems like a very strong outlier, familiarity-wise. Not surprisingly, the area around that answer provided the only real difficulty of the day. Specifically, I could not make any sense of 43A: Spray source. This is partly because I wasn't certain of the "U" from SATSUMA, and partly because I had DINGS for 44D: Sharp knocks (ZINGS). No one says "ZINGS." ZINGERS, maybe? I would've clued ZINGS as a verb—certainly makes more sense that way. But no matter; once I took out the "D" in DINGS, the "Z" eventually became clear. [Spray source] is accurate enough as a clue for UZI, but something about instruments of mass killing makes me find jokey clues not so welcome. I guess [Spray source] isn't really a joke ... but it's got that misdirection/wordplay thing going on ... and I'm in no mood for violence dressed up as "clever."

[Huh. Reallllly looks like an orange. Or maybe a clementine]

See also (much moreso) the outright jokey clue on OSAMA (29D: Former cave dweller, informally); to me, OSAMA is where this puzzle pretty much comes apart. There's a major construction fail there. Clearly that answer should be OBAMA (BAR > SAR by a country mile), but BAR is already in the puzzle at GENIUS BAR, and so we get ... SAR (the worst answer in the puzzle, esp. as clued) (yes, worse than EDH). When that happens—when you opt for terrorist + stupid abbr. over president + actual word simply because of a dupe (in this case, BAR), then the only reasonable thing to do is tear down your SW corner and start again. The combination of crappy fill, terrorist fill, and jokey clue on terrorist fill, makes that little section an out-and-out disaster. I don't understand how that corner wasn't torn out and rebuilt. It's fine if you don't share all my objections there, but OSAMA/SAR is indisputably, objectively worse than OBAMA/BAR, and on the basis of that alone, the grid should not have been allowed to stand as is. It calls attention to its own substandardness in a pretty loud voice.

Here's what my path through the grid looked like. Easy enough opening in the NW:

From there, I hopped right over to the N and just ran the Downs, getting most of them—more than enough to fill in the long Acrosses with no trouble at all.

As you can see, I used that POEM cross-reference clue to go down and pick up an easy IDYLL. But I didn't build off it. Instead, I went back up top and just worked my way down. Here you can see how I went with SATSUMI at first, making it hard to see the TOPLESS DANCERS:

After that, the only thing that awaited me was the ugly OSAMA / SAR cross. That "S" was the very last letter I put in the grid. Not a great way to wrap it up.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day:"ARA Vos Prec"(20A: Eliot's "___ Vos Prec") —

[it appears to be an early volume of poetry by T.S. Eliot, though it's virtually impossible to tell exactly what it is via google, as it doesn't have a wikipedia page, and where it is mentioned, it's not described; the wikipedia entry for "Gerotion" describes "ARA Vos Prec" as "a limited printed work that collected his early poems," so ... yeah ... wow.]

• • •

Painful at every turn. This is the weakest fill I've seen in a NYT themeless in what seems like a Long long time. Makes yesterday's semi-misogynist OSAMA/SAR dumpster fire look downright lovely. There is a mild playfulness to the center of the grid, a sing-songy quality to the central crossing of OKEYDOKEY RINGDINGS, a rhyming quality to WEENIES NANNIES, an alliterative assonance in SENECA GECKOS, and near-anagramitude to STING SIGNS. It's a little bananas, but none of it (except ARA, dear lord) is painful or annoying. But the corners, the little mini-puzzles, all sequestered off in their own private idahos—yikes. The NE has icky ILA, but otherwise seems reasonably sane. The others, however, don't fare so well. They're drowning in gunk. Just chock full of the stuff. First, there's just no marquee material. Nothing truly sparkly. Second, whatever good there is in those corners is held together with cut-rate spackle, and lots of it. In the NW, all Acrosses from REDDEER down to AES, inclusive are blah (we'll just ignore EEE hiding in the corner). In the SW, we have the never-welcome ALIENEE (wide shoe spec for E.T.?) crossing yucko TER, and then the atrocity that is the ASO (?) / ROSALIE (!?!?) crossing. ASO may be one of the biggest volcanoes in the world, but it's still terrible fill. And "Twilight" vampire Hale??? Is that this puzzle's concession to modernity? Sigh. Was a little worried I'd get Naticked there, but the "O" was the only thing that made sense. Phew. But just one "phew." Because, I mean, how many PHEWS can you have?

Yeah, so, that SE corner. I wrote in NOT LIVE and immediately threw down the pencil I wasn't holding and said "No. No way. Not a thing. I'm out." Then I picked up same pencil and finished. Luckily, that corner was the last thing to fall: the PHILE PHEWS PKWY. Truly, the end of the line.

Here's the grid progression: I opened in the NE with DASANI (gimme) and ILA (ditto). That corner was pretty tractable, and I went from there into the middle of the grid, where things were choppy, but eventually came together (note the DING DONGS mistake, as well as the wrong double-letter in 31-Across):

Managed to get STRATEGY, and between that and HERE I AM, I brought the NW under control. Then I sent all possible tentacles into the remaining two corners and hoped for the best:

After that, a tale of two corners. Well, both corners were not great, but they played very differently. On the one hand, an ASO / ROSALIE disaster in the SW, on the other, a cakewalk to gunky town in the SE. He SED, she SED, we all SED. I do love NEW WAVE ODYSSEY juxtaposition. Gonna go put on Duran Duran's "Rio" and have me one of them odysseys myself.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. DING dupe (8A, 21D)

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Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"For Variety's Sake"— An SNL-themed puzzle, where names of former stars are hidden in the theme answers, inside (mostly non-contiguous) circles. Grid also contains frequent guest hosts STEVE MARTIN and ALEC BALDWIN, as well as the famous introductory line, "LIVE FROM NEW YORK / IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT" (102A: With 120-Across, intro heard every week on 56-Across):

Theme answers:

SAFELY (Tina FEY) (4D: One way to get home (2000-06))
PORTABLE SHELTERS (Amy POEHLER) (23A: Tents and the like (2001-08))
"MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY" (Eddie MURPHY) (37A: 1964 Charlie Chaplin book (1980-84))
GRANDSTANDER (Gilda RADNER) (58A: Show-off (1975-80))
HANDWARMER (Bill HADER) (68A: Muff, e.g. (2005-13))
CARROT CAKE (Chris ROCK) (71A: Dessert often topped with cream cheese (1990-93))
EASTER PARADE (David SPADE) (81A: Berlin standard (1990-96))
WINING (Kristen WIIG) (108D: Dining partner? (2005-12)

Word of the Day: GIOTTO (39D: Designer of the Florence Cathedral bell tower) —

Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337), known as Giotto (Italian: [ˈdʒɔtto]), was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance. // Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence." // The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years." // Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Comune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and his burial place. (wikipedia)

• • •

Tribute puzzle. When I saw David J. Kahn's name, I should've known. He's famous for these things. Whenever anyone famous dies, the joke among constructors (well, those I know) is always "and cue David Kahn tribute puzzle in 3, 2, 1..." I'm not even sure how many NYT tribute puzzles he's published, in reality, but reputation-wise, that is his thing. One of his things. He's also a veteran constructor who has had many puzzles in the NYT, at the ACPT, etc. I have a book of his baseball crosswords here on my shelf. His puzzles feel a little old-school, both theme-wise and fill-wise, but they're usually very well done. And even though I am on the record as being a non-fan of things "hidden" in randomly placed, non-consecutive circles, I thought that as tribute puzzles go, this was fine. The longer theme answers were at least odd / unusual, i.e. not dull. And you got the whole intro line in there, plus the two famous recurring co-hosts (whose names are the same length, serendipity!). There's a bunch of fill I don't really like, but DJK probably hand-filled this baby, and that's the price you pay. MILNER (37D: John ___, greaser in "American Graffiti")—the price you pay is MILNER. And SO FREE. And NEI. And especially REPARK. But honestly, the junky answers are few and far between. There's nothing earth-shattering or amazing here, but as commemorative puzzles go, this is just fine.

The one issue I have is the arbitrariness of the hidden names, i.e. scores of well-known people, out and out stars, have been part of the cast of "SNL," so how you arrive at this particular set of names, I don't know. It's a good sampling. But everyone who has ever watched "SNL" can name at least a dozen other names of cast members famous enough to warrant inclusion. True (very true), you can't include everyone, and there probably really is no way to create an internal rationale. Still, part of my brain goes, "What about Chase and Farley and Murray and Morris and Curtin and Belushi on and on?" But as I say, this is fine. And it's a *true* anniversary puzzle, running on the exact day, so hurray for that!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: Easy (under 2:30, and w/o the pictures!)

THEME:a spoonerism letter-switch thing, with pictures— so I guess there is some NURSERY RHYME that contains the phrase "A POCKET FULL OF RYE" (which is depicted in Picture A) and then if you switch the "P" and "R" you get (sound-wise) ROCKET FULL OF PIE (which is depicted in Picture B):

Word of the Day:"STARGATE"(5D: 1994 sci-fi film turned into a series on Showtime) —

Stargate (French: Stargate, la porte des étoiles) is a 1994 French-American^[3]adventure science fiction film released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Carolco Pictures. Created by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the film is the first release in the Stargate franchise. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the film stars Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Alexis Cruz, Mili Avital, and Viveca Lindfors. The plot centers on the premise of a "Stargate", an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole enabling travel to a similar device elsewhere in the universe. The film's central plot explores the theory of extraterrestrial beings having an influence upon human civilization. // The film had a mixed initial critical reception, earning both praise and criticism for its atmosphere, story, characters, and graphic content. Nevertheless, Stargate became a commercial success worldwide. Devlin and Emmerich gave the rights to the franchise to MGM when they were working on their 1996 film Independence Day, and MGM retains the domestic television rights. The rights to the Stargate film are owned by StudioCanal, with Lions Gate Entertainment handling most distribution in international theatrical and worldwide home video releases, although Rialto Pictures handles domestic distribution under license from StudioCanal. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well I blithely downloaded and solved this and had no idea what "Picture A" meant. I figured it would be explained in some later clue. I went on to solve the puzzle in 2:28. That is only a few seconds away from my record—and this grid is 16 wide!? I never even saw the other theme clues. I just wrecked this thing. I am always happy to be superfast because it makes me feel like Hercules, but I probably shouldn't be able to lay waste to an extra-wide puzzle without even looking at the theme clues, let alone grasping the theme. A more visible note on the homepage would've been nice. I finally noticed there was a little yellow "note" symbol in my AcrossLite program, so I clicked on it and saw that I was supposed to go to a different URL to download a .PDF or something. I just went back to the NYT puzzle page and got the official grid from the applet there. My feeling is that this is some wordplay and Patrick is a good cartoonist, but it's just a very tiny bit of wordplay and you can't really tell how good a cartoonist Patrick is from the equally tiny pictures (here: go buy his wonderful cartoon / puzzle book, "Zep, in the Curse of the Evil Dr. Sumac Who Lives Next Door"). Further, the rest of the puzzle was barely there. It's clean and smooth (LOL on the entirely accurate LOSER clue, 64A: Put-down from Donald Trump), but it felt slight, and my lightning time suggests that the "New Idea" here (this is the NYT's "New Ideas Week," I'm told...) was not really integral. More superficial / decorative. I can see how adding pictures to the grid could be cool, though. I'm all for it, if a. they seem to matter, and b. I get a better heads-up that the downloaded puzzle isn't going to be able to handle the pictures.

One question: why is the grid 16 wide? It's not like POCKET FULL OF RYE (the "A"-less version) would've been excessively opaque. Maybe there just needed to be more white space, since the pictures took up so much real estate. Just wondering out loud ... anyway, gotta go work on a new crossword project that I'll be unveiling later today. A group project. It's gonna be fun.

Later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Solve the debut BuzzFeed crossword by Neville Fogarty
P.P.S. Read about BuzzFeed crossword, and indie crosswords, every day at the new blog, "New Grids on the Block." (Core Contributors: Lena Webb, Ben Johnston, Peter Broda, Erin Milligan-Milburn, and me)

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:— both words of two-part names and phrases occupy same space in grid (so you have to read the Across twice to get the full answer). The two parts mostly share letters, and where they don't, two letters share the same square, with the letter from the first part coming first in the Down cross, and the letter in the second part coming second. So with HERMAN'S HERMITS, the answer is HERM--S ... then just write "A" and "N" in the top halves of the remaining two boxes, respectively, and "I" and "T" in the bottom halves. This will make the Downs make sense.

Theme answers:

CRAYOLA / CRAYONS (17A: Art supplies since 1903)
FOGHORN / LEGHORN (18A: Looney Tunes character with a strong Southern accent)
CHARLIE / CHAPLIN (39A: Director with three films on A.F.I.'s list of 100 greatest movies, all of them silent)
HERMAN'S / HERMITS (41A: "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" band)
LILLIAN / HELLMAN (63A: "The Little Foxes" playwright)
WASHING / MACHINE (66A: Laundromat feature)

Word of the Day: LILILAN HELLMAN (63A: "The Little Foxes" playwright) —

Lillian Florence "Lilly" Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism. She famously was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a precipitous decline in her income during which time she had to work outside her chosen profession. [...] Hellman's reputation suffered after her veracity was attacked by Mary McCarthy during a 1980 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Hellman sued McCarthy for libel. It was revealed that Hellman's popular memoirs such as Pentimento were rife with errors, but that the "Julia" section of Pentimento, which had been the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 movie of the same name, likely was a fabrication based on the life of Muriel Gardiner. Martha Gellhorn joined McCarthy in the attack on Hellman's veracity, showing that Hellman's remembrances of Gellhorn's ex-husband Ernest Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War were wrong. Tagged with the onus of being an unrepentant Stalinist by the staunchly anti-Stalinist McCarthy and others, Hellman remains a divisive figure of American letters. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is wonderful, but it doesn't feel like a "New Idea." It feels like a nice Thursday puzzle that is dressed up in kids' clothes. Words are all really easy and common, so that's Tuesday, but the concept ... isn't. Nice to introduce early-week solvers to the idea of the wacky rebus-type puzzle. But if the idea is to do things that have "never been done before" (and it is), then it's hard to see how this puzzle, good as it is, fits.

This is definitely a puzzle that works better if you solve on paper. My sofware can put both letters in the same square, but it can't put one on top of the other. That is possibly the most interesting thing I have to say about this puzzle. The difficulty was *entirely* in figuring out how to write in the Downs that crossed the double-letter squares. Everything else was vanilla. I always pause at DO-SES because I can't remember if it's "W" or "U." I thought MANETS might be MONETS, of course. Uh ... yeah, honestly, that's all I got. It's a very clever concept, but once you've explained it, there's not much else to say. Non-theme stuff is just too plain. If anyone gets stuck in this thing, it'll probably be in the tiny latter section of HERMAN'S HERMITS. I know them, but did Not know they sang "I'm Henry VIII, I Am," so until I figured out that that was a theme answer, I didn't know what to do there. BOAT seemed like a reasonable answer to [36D: Fisherman's purchase] (BAIT). But ultimately, all was gettable.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Noone once wrote me hate mail. He thought I had slagged on him and his band. He'd confused me with one of my commenters. Surprise.

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Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:HANGMAN— theme answers are HANGMAN letter guesses, and the answers to the guesses (which are, ironically, in the clues ... not the answers) enable you to guess the HANGMAN answer, which is HANGMAN (see unchecked letters at bottom of the grid)

Theme answers:

"DOES IT HAVE AN 'N'?" (24A: Q: ___ / A: There are two, in the third and seventh squares below)
"IS THERE A 'G'?" (26A: Q: ___ / A: Indeed, in the fourth square)
"I GUESS 'M'" (36A: Q: ___ / A: There's one in the fifth square)
"HOW ABOUT 'H'?" (47A: Q: ___ / A: Correct! In the first square)
"ANY 'A'S?" (54A: Q: ___ / A: Yes, two, in the second and sixth squares)

Word of the Day: WELFARISM (8D: Policy of widespread government social programs) —

noun
noun: welfarism
the principles or policies associated with a welfare state. (google)

• • •

Well, it's definitely "New" (at least to me) so I'll give it that much. I pretty much always hate instructions-as-answers puzzles, and while I don't hate this puzzle, by any means, I also didn't enjoy filling in instructions. In part, because of inherent instruction aversion, and in part because those instructions (here, actually, imagined "questions" from a HANGMAN player) were so contrived, with a whole bunch of ways of asking said "questions," thus essentially imagining a HANGMAN game as no one would actually play it. Worst of all, for me, one of the "questions" was Not A Question At All. You can't put "Q: ___" in your puzzle, and then have the answer Not Be A Q. "I GUESS 'M'" is not not not not not a "Q." It's not. I do admire the concept, in the abstract, and yes, you get to play a little bonus game of HANGMAN with your crossword. But figuring out the phrasing on all the "Q"s was mostly irksome.

Biggest stall for me was confidently writing in ON THE QT at 20A: Hush-hush (ON THE DL). My obsession with mid-century noir, or at least my fandom of "L.A. Confidential," led me astray here. That stupid "QT" kept me from moving easily through that whole upper section. I had trouble in a few other sections. Went with IDES instead of DDAY (57D: Make-or-break date). Baffled by clue for AREA (28D: Science or humanities, in college requirements), largely because there is almost nothing "college"-y about AREAs. "What AREA are you in?" Not a question I can imagine. I get that a general field is called an AREA, fine, but why is there this long "college"-related clue when it isn't even particularly apt? Strange. I think I thought SCHUSS was a general word for "ski" and not a particular word for "ski straight and fast as opposed to slalom, moguls, etc" (38D: Go downhill fast). So SCHUSS and speed were not associated in my head before now. Despite MCENROE's being my second-favorite tennis player growing up, I could hear only Dick Vitale's voice when I read 43A: Sporting great with the book "You Cannot Be Serious!" Weird.

Lastly, I really wish the NYT crossword would stop trafficking in "homies" (33D: Place with homies). There's something so tin-eared and condescending about it. The word you're cluing is HOOD. There are a jillion ways to clue that. Since the NYT crossword has generally demonstrated little to no awareness of black lives, it's weird to have "homies" keep coming up—it means that black people are visible in the puzzle, for the most part, only via some street slang that white people picked up 20+ years ago. Maybe if the puzzle were more inclusive, generally, this stuff wouldn't bug me. But it's not, so it does.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:spirals— theme answers are things that spiral, and also there is a chain of double-letter squares (the circled squares pictured above) that spirals clockwise from the NW into the center of the grid...

Theme answers:

SNAIL SHELL (18A: Home that's never left?)
YULE LOG (24A: Christmas edible?)
WHIRLPOOL (41A: Big name in appliances)
MILKY WAY (55A: Our place in the universe)
GUGGENHEIM (63A: Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, with "the")

Word of the Day: OTHO (2D: Roman emperor who overthrew Galba) —

Otho (/ˈoʊθoʊ/; Latin: Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus;^[2]^[3] 28 April 32^[4]– 16 April 69), was Roman Emperor for three months, from 15 January to 16 April 69. He was the second emperor of the Year of the Four Emperors. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was weird. Basically had two solving experiences, the first was a boring, easy puzzle that seemed themeless except for all this 2-letter square stuff. The second actually didn't involve solving. It involved looking at the grid and wondering what the 2-letter square pattern was all about. Then I noticed GUGGENHEIM and SNAIL SHELL, and I got it. *Then* I notice WHIRLPOOL. Then YULE LOG and MILKY WAY. That's a lot of theme material. So a two-tiered theme like this—very impressive. Solving it—very very easy, kind of plodding. The spiral effect doesn't quite come off because the circled (or shaded) squares a. don't really spiral, since they turn on right angles, and b. conflict visually with the black square pattern. So the grid just doesn't scream "spiral" at you. It barely whispers it. I've seen the shaded-square version at the NYT site. There, you've got white squares and gray squares and black squares and you have to really Want to see the spiral. Anyway, I'm impressed by the architecture, even if it wasn't a delight to solve.

Speaking of architecture, all I could think of after grasping the theme was Liz Gorski's masterful Guggenheim museum puzzle from 2009 (commemorating the museum's 50th birthday).

Here, the grid really evokes the museum's unique shape. Other constructors have used spiraling to interesting effect. Matt Jones had a puzzle called "I'm Getting Dizzy" with some great themers:

And Merl had an asymmetrial hurricane puzzle, I'm told, but I can't find it at the moment. Anyway, this particular version of spiraliness is a "New Idea," I guess. But both rebus squares and spirals have been done. This week should be named "Commissioned Thursday Puzzles" week; also "Why Aren't We This Innovative More Often?" week. Seriously, even having "New Ideas" week is a pretty serious indictment of your other 51 weeks. You're the "best puzzle in the world" (self-styled). You should have "New Ideas" all the time.

Not much to say about the solving experience besides the fact that it was easy, even though my time was much longer than usual because of all the extra keying I had to do to get the two letters into each square. How long did it take for me to pick up the double-letter gimmick? I'd say under 10 seconds. Here's where I got it:

It helped that the circled squares were, well, circled, and that HOED (1A: Did some gardening) was a gimme and that I then wanted HINT straight off (1D: Help for the flummoxed). From there it was just a matter of "What if 'IN' goes in that first circle." After that, it was a simple matter of writing answers in as soon as I read their clues, except in that tiny northern patch where PLINTH (6D: Bust supporter) crosses THRACIAN (22A: Orpheus and Spartacus by birth) and there's a "?" clue for SNAIL SHELL. Throw in all the circled squares involved up there, and I had a little bit of a struggle on my hands. But not much of one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:unchecked squares along the borders = every letter of the alphabet

Word of the Day: NIPA (45A: Long-leaved palm) —

Nypa fruticans, commonly known as the nipa palm, is a species of palm native to the coastlines and estuarine habitats of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the only palm considered adapted to the mangrove biome. This species is the only member of the genusNypa and the subfamily Nypoideae, forming monotypic taxa.
(wikipedia)

• • •

Well at least this pangram makes sense, i.e. it's part of the internal logic of the theme and not some stupid, grid-hampering "accomplishment" that someone has tried to force on a early-week themed puzzle. I actually used the theme to solve the theme, i.e. I was able to narrow down possibilities by looking at what letters had Not shown up yet in the border squares. In this way, the apparently unchecked squares actually are, in their way, checked—by the finitude of letters of the alphabet. I relied on that finitude in part to get the "X" in SIX (23A: Big roll?) (not sure why the "?"—the clue is literally true for a six-sided die) and to get the very last edge piece, the "K" in what turned out to be PEAK (46D: Where people are drawn to scale?) (that one definitely needed the "?"). Tough clue, good clue. Too bad the "P" crossed NIPA (!?!), probably the worst thing in the grid. That "P" was my last letter. I had to run the alphabet to get it.

The longer answers are occasionally a bit odd or ungainly. It's PROCEDURES MANUAL way way way more often than PROCEDURE MANUAL (unless your office has just the one procedure, I guess). The indefinite article in the verb phrase ROLLOVER AN IRA is awkward. That answer describes a thing people do, but it is not very tight, as stand-alone phrases go. QUEENS OF ENGLAND, as a plural, also a bit outside the bullseye. But there's nothing jarring there. Just some iffiness.

Today I learned the word VISCID (11D: Sticky). I knew "viscous."VISCID, I just had to infer. I made a few mistakes along the way. OPEN ELECTIONS for OPEN PRIMARIES. . . actually, that may be it. This was pretty easy overall.

Was this a "New Idea"? Maybe. I don't think I've seen anything like it before. But on the whole "New Ideas" week has been a fraud. All the "New" ideas are variations on ideas that have been seen before, though usually in venues less popular than the NYT. So maybe "New-To-You Ideas, Probably" Week would've been more accurate. My issue is with the week and its pomposity (and inaccuracy), not w/ the puzzles per se, which have been decent-to-great. For god's sake, even the little "note" accompanying the puzzles is deceitful. It reads:

"We asked some favorite Times crossword contributors, "What would you like to do in a daily Times crossword that has never been done before?" This week's puzzles, Monday to Saturday, are the result."

But here are yesterday's constructor's notes about his own puzzle. Kevin Der wrote: "I submitted this puzzle about a year and half ago, and fortunately it ended up fitting into this special week." So ... ignore the (astonishing) part about how that puzzle sat around for a year and a half (!?) ... and just focus on the fact that yesterday's puzzle was not not not not the result of anyone's "asking" Kevin anything. He made it of his own accord because he is awesome. The scenario laid out in the note from the NYT is simply a fiction. I won't say "lie." But you can if you want.

What happens Monday. Do we revert to tedium interspersed with occasionally good/great puzzles? Let's see.

Have a nice Friday. TGIF! MAS TACOS!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium, once you get the gimmick. No telling how long that will take you...

THEME:OUTER / SPACE (25A: With 39-Across, region beyond the Kármán line ... or a literal hint to what this puzzle has) — all the edge answers are BLANKS and are represented by just a series of blank squares. Oh, and four intersecting 13s all relate to OUTER / SPACE:

Theme answers:

LUNAR ECLIPSES (19A: Sun blocks?)
USS ENTERPRISE (11D: Setting for many sci-fi stories)
ALIEN INVASION (49A: Recurrent "Twilight Zone" plot device)
CONSTELLATION (4D: Hercules or Perseus)

Word of the Day: LAPUTA (16A: Floating island visited in "Gulliver's Travels") —

Laputa is a flying island described in the 1726 book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. It is about 4.5 miles in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can maneuver in any direction using magnetic levitation. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I finished this, I thought the "New Idea" was just a 13x13 themeless of no great distinction stuffed inside a kind of April Fools shell. But then I noticed that the long answers all relate to the theme of OUTER / SPACE, and my appreciation for the puzzle went up a few notches. It's a pretty loose grouping of OUTER / SPACE-y things, but it's OK. Also explains why the rest of the grid wasn't more interesting. Themelesses should be sparkly, but this one had a bunch of themers (it turns out!) so the mere acceptableness of the rest of the fill makes sense (theme answers, depending theme on density, really really restrict what you're able to do w/ the rest of the grid). Interesting choice to make those outer answers [BLANKS]. Kind of goes away from the whole astronomical theme, but gives an interesting, new, literal dimension to the OUTER / SPACE theme.

["And so you're back..."]
I got very lucky in solving this puzzle. I did the usual initial flailing one does when one wades into a tricky grid. Had some tentative answers (none of them ultimately correct). And then I scanned the clues for the revealer. Found it! But had no idea at all what the "Kármán line" was supposed to be. Something Asian? NORTH / KOREA fit. So did SOUTH. But couldn't get crosses to work. Then, miracle of miracles, I saw the 26D: W.W. II poster girl, which I think I would've gotten immediately no matter what, but which was Particularly easy for me because I had just watched "The Life and Times of ROSIE the Riveter" earlier in the evening. It's an important and astonishing documentary made in 1980 about women who worked in factories and shipyards during W.W. II. It tells this important part of U.S. history through interviews with five women: three black, two white, all unbelievably charming and insightful about their own experiences. I DVR'd it from TCM, which is focusing on women in film all month ("Life and Times..." was directed by Connie Field). ANYway ... ROSIE went right in, and instantly I knew the revealer was OUTER / SPACE (just from having both of those words' last letters). Once I put in OREOS, I found myself in the very unlikely position of having the revealer worked out ... but nothing else:

I mean, look at the sad wrong answers I've got at this point. That central square of answers is (besides the sad, lone "S" in the 23 box) literally the only correctly solved part at this point. Weird. Just weird. From here, I quickly guess that something will be happening in the edge answers, and pretty quickly after that, I see that it's BLANKS, all around. Very anti-climactic. I mean, I guess I got a little feeling of "aha," but I honestly didn't even read the clues for the outer answers. So I thought it was cute but not thrilling ... and then I saw that the longers answers were space-related, and I was slightly more thrilled. Other things that gave me minor thrills—Three Fs!:

Minor thrills:

FAIN (37D: Willingly, once)— [from Sidney's "Astrophil & Stella" 1]: "Loving in truth, and FAIN in verse my love to show / That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain; / Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, / Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain." It goes on for 10 more lines. This is one of only three poems I have memorized cold. *And* I just taught it on Thursday. *So*, like ROSIE, FAIN was on my mind.
FLIER (37A: Take a ___)— I say this all the time. I don't know where I got it. I don't if other people I know say it. I just like the expression. A lot.
FALCO (36A: Singer with the 1986 #1 hit "Rock Me Amadeus")— I have been on something of a '70s/'80s Top 40 kick lately. Mildly obsessed, actually. I name-checked Bryan Adams in my Renaissance poetry class, that's how bad it's gotten. Seriously. I found myself saying, and then nearly singing, the phrase "Straight from the Heart" when I was discussing the aforementioned Sidney poem, which ends, semi-famously, "Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write." This is all to say that I have heard "Rock Me Amadeus" (probably several times) in the past few weeks, as Casey Kasem's American Top 40 (the '70s/'80s) is kind of my default work music at the moment. (Stream it here.)

Couple more things.

Caleb Madison (ed. of the new BuzzFeed crossword, which debuted this past Monday) and I did a radio interview with the great Emily Jo Cureton yesterday about the state of contemporary crosswords. I really enjoyed it. You can listen here (roughly 20 min.).
The BuzzFeed puzzles are very much worth checking out (Friday's themeless by 15-year-old phenom Paolo Pasco was particularly impressive) (get it here) (read about it here). Another puzzle debuted this week too—HIGH:low, a biweekly (free!) themeless puzzle by the super-talented K. Austin Collins (currently Ph.D.-ing at Princeton). The main idea is low word-count, high quality. Sign up to have the puzzle delivered right to your inbox on the 1st and 15th of every month. I solved (and wrote about) HIGH:low #1, and it was really entertaining.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Dan Schoenholz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Big Names in E-Tail"— familiar phrases have "E" added to end of one part, changing that part into a famous person's name. Wacky "?" clues for wacky answers.

Theme answers:

I DON'T KNOW HOWE (22A: Admission of a lack of familiarity with Mr. Hockey?)
LONE WOLFE (4D: Single copy of "The Bonfire of the Vanities"?)
LIGHT GREENE (33A: Less serious works by the author of "Brighton Rock"?)
BUNS OF STEELE (52A: Reason for Brosnan fans to watch 1980s TV?)
SHOPPING MALLE (65A: Trying to sell one's "Au Revoir les Enfants" video?)
VOLCANIC ASHE (82A: Explosive side of a former tennis great?)
JOKER'S WILDE (96A: Comic's copy of "The Importance of Being Earnest"?)
LAY IT ON THICKE (113A: Assign blame to the singer of "Blurred Lines"?)
BACK PAINE (81D: Buy into "Common Sense"?)

Word of the Day: TROPHIC (51D: Nutrition-related) —

(google)

• • •

And so, jarringly, we come back to Old Ideas week. Add an "E"! There is nothing "wrong" with this puzzle. The grid is quite clean / polished, and the theme has a certain consistency—added "E" never changes the pronunciation of the base word, which, if you've ever tried adding "E"s to things, isn't easy to do. It's also pretty dense, what with those extra Down themers in the NW and SE. But adding an "E" is definitely an old idea, and a slight one, and after the experimental fare of the past week, all I'm left with is this sense that the typical fare is stale, stuck, moribund. True, there is something comfy and familiar about this kind of theme. Mild wordplay, light wackiness. Looks like hundreds of others of puzzles before it. And the title at least gives it a little bit of playfulness, as the godawful "E-Tail" gets put to good use, for once in its life. But ... I guess if the way things have always been done is what suits you best, then by gum, you've got your puzzle here. But there are ways to remain faithful to certain old ways while adjusting to the times and keeping things fresh. There's only one Thursday a week, and only one Sunday, and if those aren't days for Ambition, then pfft. What's the point of it all? Disappointing. Again, this puzzle is super-competent. It's just of a type that's the opposite of "New."

No problems at all today except with TROPHIC, which ... ??? Took me a bit to sort out the whole TROPHIC / KOOL / KHZ area. Also took me a while to figure out which Brosnan incarnation I was supposed to care about. Sadly, the only 80s TV that I could think of that seemed to fit was "Scarecrow & Mrs King." In my head, it's the same as "Remington STEELE." I didn't watch either, so I can make that equivalency without any problem. Anyway, BUNS OF STEELE was definitely the hardest themer to come up with (several of them were near-gimmes), and OAXACAN didn't make matters easier (54D: Resident of southern Mexico). Very tough to parse. But that section was an anomaly. Mostly, this was cake.

Bullets:

55A: "Home, ___" (JAMES)— Uh ... OK. I wanted JEEVES. I don't know who JAMES is. A chauffeur, no doubt.
103D: First year in Constantine's reign (CCCVI)— I actually knew it was 3-something. That didn't make me like this long RRN any better.
91A: "Smack!" ("POW!")— I had POP. Made sense at the time. Also made NEWSROOM (83D: Post office?) hard to see for a bit.

Reposting these items from yesterday, since many of you won't have seen them:

Caleb Madison (ed. of the new BuzzFeed crossword, which debuted this past Monday) and I did a radio interview with the great Emily Jo Cureton yesterday about the state of contemporary crosswords. I really enjoyed it. You can listen here (roughly 20 min.).
The BuzzFeed puzzles are very much worth checking out (Friday's themeless by 15-year-old phenom Paolo Pasco was particularly impressive) (get it here) (read about it here). Another puzzle debuted this week too—HIGH:low, a biweekly (free!) themeless puzzle by the super-talented K. Austin Collins (currently Ph.D.-ing at Princeton). The main idea is low word-count, high quality. Sign up to have the puzzle delivered right to your inbox on the 1st and 15th of every month. I solved (and wrote about) HIGH:low #1, and it was really entertaining.

And adding this:

American Values Crossword Puzzle is looking to add a new constructor to their rotation. Please see the job listing here for details.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Like some truths and flames / TUE 9-29-15 / Railroad engine, in old lingo / Minnesota range known for its mining of metal / Sure winner in blackjack

1993 Economics co-Nobelist Robert / WED 9-30-15 / US women's soccer star Kelley / Trucker's toll factor / Online game annoyance / Libidinous god / Workout attire that became 1980s fad / Cafe specification

Plantation owner in Cat on Hot Tin Roof / FRI 10-2-15 / Sun King's infamous declaration / Cattle drive destination in Lonesome Dove / Senor seen on Ed Sullivan Show / 1930s film canine / Typical bulldogs fan / Promiscuous guy in slang / Dogpatch yell

Odette's counterpart in Swan Lake / SUN 10-4-15 / Half classic Mad magazine feature / Vegas casino with mascot Lucky Leprechaun / Piece in early Indian chess sets / Pop star with fragrance Miami Glow

Mario with the 1951 #1 hit "Be My Love" / MON 10-5-15 / Part of the eye / Mounts for cowboys / Lightest coins ever minted in the U.S., used in the 19th century / Greeting in Rio

World on Time courier / TUE 10-6-15 / Mexican once ranked as world's richest man / Soccer superstar Messi / Old West transport / Ooky family cousin

Four of 12 imams of Shia / WED 6-7-15 / Red Lobster freebie / Amused singer of Raise Your Glass / Coke Zero alternative / Nickname for high-achieving couple

Bluesman Willie / Talker-upper maybe / THU 10-8-15 / Old court org / Old company whose logo featured torch / Carrots lettuce humorously / 1980s social policy / Alchemist's quest

Citrus fruit from Japan / FRI 10-9-15 / Old English letter / Former NBA coach Kruger / Candy bar with crown logo / Former cave dweller informally / Subject of XXL magazine / Risk territory west of Siberia / Automaker that originally sold sewing machines

Eliot's Vos Prec / SAT 10-10-15 / Highland lowland / Alternative to Ho Hos / Skylane maker / Japan's largest active volcano / Alberta city named after quadruped / 1950s runners inits / Hadean was earth's first / Oxymoronic lead-in to then /

1953 biblical movie / SUN 10-11-15 / Designer of Florence Cathedral bell tower / Readhead on kids tv / How you make me feel in van morrison song / O'Hara 2015 Tony winner for King I / Title girl in 2002 Disney movie

Where Picture A might be found / MON 10-12-15 / 1994 sci-fi film turned into series on Showtime / Wrinkle-reducing injection / Navy's gridiron rival

Art supplies since 1903 / TUE 10-13-15 / Looney Tunes character with strong Southern accent / Ali G portrayer Baron Cohen / Back to Future hero Marty

Place with homies / WED 10-14-15 / Cowboy in poker slang / Goddess involved in Hercules labors

Roman emperor who overthrew Galba / THU 10-15-15 / Financial guru Suze / Orpheus Spartacus by birth / Follower of roger to radioer / Yuri's love in Dr Zhivago / Companion of Quasimodo

Vaccine letters / FRI 10-16-15 / One of officemates on Office / John of old sitcoms / Frontiersman Boone informally

Floating island visited in Gulliver's Travels / SAT 10-17-15 / Region beyond Karman line / Lilliputian informally / Exotic Now Voyager setting / Irish equivalent of Jane / Old English county court sessions / French metropolis near Belgian border

Home of Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars / SUN 10-18-15 / Modern-day home of Ashanti empire / Kyoto concurrence / Reason for Brosnan fans to watch 1980s TV / Brand name whose middle two letters are linked in its logo / Brazilian berry