Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor:Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:"Three-Peat"— theme answers are words where three-letter strings immediately repeat. In the grid ... they do not. So ... you have to imagine the three-letter string ... repeating.

Theme answers:

CONAN THE BAR[BAR]IAN (23A: 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film)
ENT[ENT]E CORDIALE (33A: Bringer of peace between nations)
CHIHUA[HUA], MEXICO (39A: State bordering Texas)
CIN[CIN]NATI REDS (57A: Rose buds?)
TRAINED ASS[ASS]INS (66A: Jason Bourne and others)
ALF[ALF]A SPROUTS (76A: Salad bar bowlful)
REPOSSE[SSE]D CARS (91A: Some auto auctions' inventory)
CHE[CHE]N REPUBLIC (100A: Land in the Caucasus)
MISS[ISS]IPPI MUD PIE (or maybe the "SSI" repeats, I don't know) (114A: Chocolaty Southern dessert)

Word of the Day:SEHNA knot(7D: ___ knot, rug feature) —

noun
1.
ahand-tiedknot,usedinrugweaving,inwhichtheendsofyarnloopedaroundawarpthreadappearateachoftheintersticesbetweenadjacentthreadsandproduceacompactandrelativelyevenpileeffect.
AlsocalledPersianknot. (dictionary.com)

• • •

This will be short, as I have nothing nice to say about this puzzle. I don't know whose idea of a good time this is. It's unfathomable to me that this seemed to anyone like it would be an entertaining / engaging / exciting concept. It's also unfathomable to me how a Sunday NYT ("world's best puzzle"!) grid, in 2015, can be this stale. Staleness is exponentially worse on a Sunday, as there's So Much More of it to wade through. I don't want to play the game where I list all the tired / iffy stuff, but AGNATE (ugh-nate) and OTARU (?!) and ODA and ELENI and ADITS and a million other things (OTOE crossing ESAI, say) put this is in the unappealingly retro category. Even the answers that at least Try to be interesting (EATEN RAW, USED POT) seem off, tin-eared, weird. I find this puzzle's very existence baffling. I can only infer that the NYT is *desperate* for Sunday puzzles. This is your marquee day—biggest solving day of the week, biggest audience, highest constructor pay by a long shot (more than 3x the amount paid for a daily). So the Sunday puzzle could at least have the decency to Show Up.

I would not put ASS (82D: Dunderhead) in a puzzle where one of the themers involves ASS repetition (TRAINED ASS[ASS]INS). But then I wouldn't do a lot of what has been done in this puzzle. I'm going to stop. You can let me know what you think.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SURPRISE ANNABEL MONDAY!!!! Sorry I was sick last week (don't worry, it wasn't that FOUL, I'm fine!) but I'm back.

Constructor: Pawel Fludzinski

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: QTs— Theme answers were two words, one starting with Q and the other starting with T.

Theme answers:

QUALITY TIME (18A: Period of undivided attention, as with a spouse or child)
QUANTUM THEORY (32A: Noted Max Planck contribution to physics)
QUICK THINKING (39A: Skill useful for handling an emergency)
QUARTER TONE (57A: 1/24 of an answer)
CUTIES (61A: Babies (aww...) ...or an aural hint to 18-, 32-, 39-, and 57-Across

Word of the Day: BOIS (56D: ____ de Boulogne (Parisian park) ) —

The lower lake in the Bois de Boulogne
The Bois de Boulogne (French pronunciation: [bwa.d(ə).bu.lɔɲ]) is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt andNeuilly-sur-Seine It was created between 1852 and 1858 during the reign of the Emperor Louis Napoleon.^[1]
It is the second-largest park in Paris, slightly smaller than the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern side of the city. It covers an area of 845 hectares (2090 acres)^[2] which is about two and a half times the area of Central Park in New York and slightly less (88%) than that of Richmond Park in London.

• • •
(Wikipedia)

So, what was it about the Across clues for this puzzle? I was afraid this puzzle would take me AGES, because I only got six of them at first. I'm guessing Down-only solvers had a good time this week; the Down clues weren't so bad. Fill was decent other than that initial difficulty; my only complaint was that, while I love Portman, they could've come up with a more original clue for NATALIE. I love when the puzzle seems like the constructor seemed like they had a few things in particular on their mind; in this case, music (ASSAI, QUARTER TONE, and INTROS) and French (GENET, BOIS, NÉE, and -ETTE). French music maybe? Like this classic piece:

The theme was, well, cute! It took me a couple clues to pick up on, which was nice. I think I'm not alone in first seeing QUARTER NOTE where I should have seen QUARTER TONE, which is a bummer because I've always thought about myself as knowing at least some things about music, as well as making me CONFUSED about the rest of the theme ("Maybe the T just has to be a part of the second word!"). I like looking back on the puzzle and seeing CUE and IQS. I think

Anyway, speaking of cuties, remember that dog my mom got to replace me? Well................

...........honestly can you blame her?

Bullets:

GIANT SQUID (3D: Creature that attacked the Nautilus in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea") — Can we just pause to talk about how cool giant squid are?!? Their eyes are the size of a human head, they grow up to 43 feet long, and in Googling them I just found out two years ago scientists actually captured video of a live one and basically I'm losing it right now here's the video!!!

EBENEZER (55A: Mr. Scrooge) — Did anyone else used to get absolutely terrified by A Christmas Carol? When I was little, every time it came on TV I would sort of pretend to be brave and enjoy the film when in actuality I was trembling because I knew the Ghost of Christmas Future could show up at any moment. He was so creepy! He didn't even have a face! What was he doing hanging out with the nice ghosts like the sweet young lady and the guy with the beard? You know what, I bet he didn't hang out with them. I bet he just sat off by himself somewhere, staring off into the distance and listening to sludge metal. What a jerk.
FRAU (21D: Mrs. in Munich) — No words, just:

NASA (10A: Curiosity rover launcher) — Alright I'm ending this article now after seeing this clue because I can feel a geeky pagelong tirade about how much I loved The Martian coming on. (Maybe I'll leave one in the comments later? It's just a really good movie please watch it)

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Constructor:Will Treece

Relative difficulty:Medium (normal Tuesday)

THEME: names that belong to two different famous people—

Theme answers:

ANNE HATHAWAY (19A: "Les Misérables" actress [or] Wife of the Bard)
GRAHAM GREENE (32A: "Dances With Wolves" actor [or] "The Third Man" author)
MATTHEW PERRY (39A: "Friends" actor [or] Naval officer who sailed to Japan in 1853)
STEVE MCQUEEN (53A: "The Great Escape" actor [or] "12 Years a Slave" director)

Word of the Day:MATTHEW PERRY—

Matthew Calbraith Perry (April 10, 1794 – March 4, 1858) was a Commodore of the United States Navy and commanded a number of ships. He served in several wars, most notably in the Mexican–American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Perry was very concerned with the education of naval officers and helped develop an apprentice system that helped establish the curriculum at the United States Naval Academy. With the advent of the steam engine, he became a leading advocate of modernizing the US Navy and came to be considered The Father of the Steam Navy in the United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

Trivia theme. Not the most exciting. Theme clues are so straightforward that there's no real pleasure there for the solver, beyond the "oh, right ... those people have the same name" moment. Just not much interesting going on. No cleverness. Then there's the very odd grid construction, with these double stacks of 9s running parallel to the themers. On the one hand, they're the only interesting part of the grid. On the other, they create some disastrous fill situations (most notably that banks of 3s NE corner, yikes). And 74 words on a Tuesday? Would've enjoyed a higher word count and cleaner grid, I think (with less of stuff like GITS and ENDO and ASNO and RTE and OLEOLE and ATA etc.). Also, I prefer my long non-themers running Down rather than Across. There's nothing illegal about having them go Across; it just feels awkward. They're really long and running Across, so they feel like they could/should be themers, but they're not. But mainly I just wish the fill were cleaner. I don't think AIR INTAKE is good enough to justify the 9 stacks. Better to lose one of the 9s in each corner, release pressure on the grid, and fill it better.

Why is the cluing so incredibly straightforward and dull? I know it's Tuesday, so you want to be easy, but gah! Liven it up a bit. The clue on ECKŌ (54D: Clothing brand with a long vowel mark in its name) was the most interesting but also the most bizarre—accurate enough (the "long vowel mark" is also known as a "macron," btw), but ECKŌ is already the least well known thing in the grid, and that clue doesn't bring people any closer to it. It's not definitive / distinctive enough of a feature to really make a cluing difference. But again, I'll take weirdness over the painful ploddingness of the rest of the clues. My only hesitation today came at 1D: Muslim's headscarves (HIJABS), where I thought maybe NIQABS, and then tested the "Q" cross at 17A: Tilters' contest (JOUST) and briefly thought "... QUEST?" But I didn't end up stuck in that hole for long. Pretty easy Tuesday overall.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:David Steinberg

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:FORTY-NINE "R"S (62A: Old rush participants ... or a three-part hint to what can be found in this puzzle's grid or clues) — forty-nine "R"s in the grid ... and clues, apparently

Word of the Day:RWE(44D: "Nature" essayist's inits.) —

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

First of all, if you think I'm going to count the number of "R" in the *clues*, you are *&%^ing high. Second, this is a long, long, long way to go for a reparsing gag. You know what putting 49 "R"s in your grid gets you? A mediocre-to-cruddy grid. No one ever—and I mean Ever—said, "Hey, you know what this puzzle needs? More "R"s." I kept wondering, as I was solving, "How did a Steinberg grid get this fuddy-duddy and weak? (GRRS? RMONTHS? ROOS? ERI? UAR? ARMA? RWE!? etc.)" And then I got to the revealer. "Oh ... yeah, that'll do it." Baffling. I did enjoy BAD PERM, though (53A: Bungled salon job).

[RIGHT AS RAIN]

If I'd been concentrating and really trying, I think I'd've set a Wednesday time record with this one .I hesitated nowhere. But then I know my crossword history, so MARGART FARRAR was a gimme, and I was once a hardcore Grace Kelly fan, so I've actually seen "Mogambo"—got AVA GARDNER from just the "V" (28D: "Mogambo" co-star). I am also a huge Leigh Brackett fan, and she wrote the screenplay for "RIO LOBO" (39A: 1970 John Wayne western) (Brackett wrote mainly sci-fi, but she also wrote crime fiction, at least one western, and many important screenplays, including Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (1973) and Hawks'"The Big Sleep (1946) (co-written with some guy named William Faulkner, as well as Jules Furthman)). I also collected postage stamps as a kid, so "MAGYAR Posta" is a familiar, Hungary-related phrase to me. I went to school in Ann ARBOR. And ORRERIES ... why do I know that word? I never see it in real life, but somehow it has stuck. Anyway, I felt uniquely poised to crush this crossword. It surely wasn't that easy for everyone. But it was pretty easy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I co-constructed today's BuzzFeed crossword puzzle with Lena Webb. You can get it here. Thank you for your consideration.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:David Kwong

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:P AND A (40A: Popular zoo attraction ... or a hint to 11 squares in this puzzle) — 11 "PA" squares, just like the clue suggests

Word of the Day:The KNOW-NOTHING PARTY(32A: 19th-century nativist group) —

The Native American Party, renamed in 1855 as the American Party, and commonly named Know Nothing movement, was an American political party that operated on a national basis during the mid-1850s. It promised to purify American politics by limiting or ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativism and anti-Catholic sentiment. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, whom they saw as hostile to republican values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, but met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant men. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. // The most prominent leaders were U.S. Representative Nathaniel P. Banks, and former U.S. Representative Lewis C. Levin. The American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in 1856. He was never a member, nor a nativist. (wikipedia)

• • •

Once I figured out I was dealing with a rebus (always the tricky part), my first thought was "buncha PA squares, so what?" But the clever grid architecture—revealer dangling there in the middle, with both the P and A apparently (but not, ultimately) "unchecked"—and the often sparkling fill won me over. Seriously, that is an A+ handling of the rebus revealer, and how the hell can anyone be mad at a puzzle that puts SAM PECKINPAH on top of the KNOW-NOTHING PARTY? (32A: 19th-century nativist group) OKAY, maybe the fill gets a little dicey in the corners (see esp. the SE corner), but there's too much delightful stuff for that short stuff to have much of an effect on solving pleasure. Also, the "PA" hunt keeps you on your toes in such a way that an ENSE here and an OPE there isn't likely to distract you. "PA"s are scattershot, which I like—makes grid more of a minefield. Feels a bit weird to crave a minefield, but I feel what I feel. I think what I really crave / enjoy is the Unexpected, and the delight that can come with it. For instance, the triple-PAPAPA in PAPAL PALACE: that was a pleasure to uncover.

I knew something insane was going on in the NW, where I started, when I couldn't get the stupid traditional German band to play anything I recognized. Me, "Well, it's OOMPAH ... but the "H" from THO is f*%&ing things up, and even then the answer is too long ..." So I had this empty sandwich: SCIATIC and IMPLODE were the bread, and in-between—mostly air. It was only after I allowed myself to drift down the grid a bit, to the out-and-out gimme SAM PECKINPAH, that I realized "Oh ... PA." Then the German band started playing nicely.

The only real Danger Zone for me was the very last corner: the SW. I didn't immediately get what kind of DEPARTMENTS I was dealing with (58A: Ones getting the business?), so the front end was blank, and the [Portmanteau legally recognized since 1977] was not nearly specific enough for me to get it quickly, even with the -MONY part in place ("Is ALIMONY a portmaneau...?"), and my first pass at the short stuff was not fruitful, so I had a wee moment of "uh oh."

But then I tested SPAY (60A: Fix) and got SALES and it all came together without Too much difficulty. SALES DEPARTMENTS is yuck for a marquee answer. Kind of a let-down after the more explosive and impressive upper half of the grid. And yet even there, things stayed interesting, as the fill was solid and the "PA"s were still peskily hiding. This puzzle was fun to solve. This Is All I Ask.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. ICYMI, here's my BuzzFeed crossword from yesterday (co-constructed with Lena Webb). Give it a shot if you've got time. Thanks.

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Constructor:Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:none

Word of the Day:FILLIP(9D: Nice extra) —

noun
noun: fillip; plural noun: fillips
1.
something that acts as a stimulus or boost to an activity.

"the halving of the automobile tax would provide a fillip to sales"

synonyms: stimulus, stimulation, boost, incentive, impetus; More
tonic, spur, push, aid, help;
informalshot in the arm

"their support provided a fillip to her campaign"
2.
archaic
a movement made by bending the last joint of a finger against the thumb and suddenly releasing it; a flick of the finger.

"the Prince, by a fillip, made some of the wine fly in Oglethorpe's face"
a slight smart stroke or tap.

"she began to give him dainty fillips on the nose with a soft forepaw"
verb
archaic
verb: fillip; 3rd person present: fillips; past tense: filliped; past participle: filliped; gerund or present participle: filliping
1.
propel (a small object) with a flick of the finger.

"our aforesaid merchant filliped a nut sharply against his bullying giant" (wikipedia)

• • •

Does the term "flip off" come from "FILLIP"—the whole "bending the last joint of a finger ... and suddenly releasing it" bit? I've gonna start FILLIPing people off. Much more sophisticated way to do it. This puzzle is vintage Berry—wide open, Ridiculously smooth, accessible, varied in subject content ... just wonderful. He makes it look too easy here. Also, the puzzle itself *is* too easy. Hesitations were very few, and always easily overcome. I wrote ONION instead of ANISE (7D: Ingredient in five-spice powder), CLOP instead of CLAP (5A: Flamenco sound), HORSE TEAM instead of HORSE WHIP (27D: Coachman's handful) ... van Gogh's starry night was over the RHINE before it was over the RHÔNE ... stuff like that. Minor stuff. Otherwise, zoom. The one reason I want a Little more difficulty in a puzzle like this is so that I have more of a chance to appreciate its beauty. I want that feeling of having to work a little to break through, and then that "wow" feeling when you uncover something lovely. Here, it was just bam bam bam. Still lovely, but kind of like driving down Christmas Tree Lane, where the houses are all elaborately decorated and lit up, at 60 mph.

I started out by naming the Snowman in 2013's "Frozen" IGOR (I'll have grandchildren before I see that damn movie!) but then look who came to the rescue—our old/new friend Orrery!! She was just in the puzzle (plurally) a few days back, which caused me to reflect on how I knew the word, which caused me to look up the word ... anyway, I am now super-familiar with "Orrery" so ORBS (1D: Orrery components) was a gimme, which made it obvious that I needed to supplant IGOR with OLAF. My proudest moment was getting RICE-A-RONI from just the initial "R" (14A: Product whose jingle was based on the 1923 hit "Barney Google"). That absurd old boxed rice product that they used to give away life supplies of on game shows, the one with the cable car ads from the late '70s/early '80s—this is exclusively how I know RICE-A-RONI. No idea why it popped into my head immediately, off just the "R," but once I sang "BAR-ney Google, the SAN FranCISco Treat!" in my head, I knew it was right.

Read 18A: Green-hatted Nintendo character as "green-haired," but the -U--I pattern meant I go the right answer instantly anyway (LUIGI). Favorite revelation of the puzzle was probably looking at 30D: Metropolis misidentification, looking at my grid (which had --SAPLANE in place!) and having no idea how it could be right. DISAPLANE? Then I got the N.B.A. on TNT and realized that I was supposed to be thinking about "Superman"! "It's a bird, IT'S A PLANE..." Very nice cluing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy birthday, mom

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Constructor:Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day:GIAN Lorenzo Bernini, designer of St. Peter's Square(20A) —

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒan loˈrɛntso berˈniːni]; also Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect who worked principally in Rome. A major figure in the world of architecture, he was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented, 'What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful...' In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), also designing stage sets and theatrical machinery, as well as a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches. As architect and city planner, he designed both secular buildings and churches and chapels, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle might be perfect. I'm not sure. It's pretty close. It's also explosively, powerfully, self-evidently different from almost all the puzzles the NYT publishes. It's alive and kicking and slangy and lowbrow *and* highbrow and CLEAN (dead center! show-off...) and professional as hell. It's got personality. It's young and gay and black and politically conscious and still accessible to a general audience. This is a statement puzzle, as well as just being a flat-out great puzzle. I happen to know the white editors changed the black constructor's clue for CORN ROWS (to his chagrin) (32D: Do for the African-American community?)—why you would do that, I do not know. But props to the NYT for publishing a puzzle that probably *felt* risky but really isn't. It's just opening out onto a world Not composed entirely of white people over 60. And that is a good thing. The BuzzFeed crosswords have been much better than the NYT about opening up the puzzle to a younger and less white demographic, but they have also tended to err on the side of shallow poppiness and youthful smugness. THIS puzzle ... this is everything I want a puzzle to be, no matter the venue. Hits a kind of youthful sweet spot. Manages to make me feel included rather than excluded, despite my being a couple decades older than the constructor. I can see SPITS GAME, HIS AIRNESS, OLIVIA POPE, and maybe (maybe?) even "ICE, ICE, BABY" being beyond the ken of some constant solvers. But 3/4 of those answers are well and truly mainstream, and all of them seem gettable from crosses. This is the third good-to-great puzzle In A Row from the NYT. This feels like a streak worth celebrating.

Trouble spots:

SUMOS (29A: See 25-Across)—I had THONG and everything. And then SU-O-. Still wasn't computing. Partly because I couldn't see the plural. Partly because I would call them "sumo wrestlers," probably.
BLO (30A: Slo-___ fuse)—I feel like I want to pretend this answer doesn't exist, as it's easily the junkiest thing here. But in the spirit of fairness, I'm pointing at it w/ a "J'accuse" look on my face.
GIBED (36A: Like players on opposing teams, often)—could not make sense of this. Had GIB-, didn't help. The passive voice is killing me. "HIS AIRNESS hath been GIBED! To arms!"
LANATE (38D: Woolly)—I had GUNMAN instead of GUNNER (42A: Artillery operator), so this woolly adjective (which I can never remember) stayed hidden for a bit.
"TIN-TIN" (11D: Animated Spielberg hero)—as a fan of the comic, I like to pretend that movie doesn't exist, so ... my pretending worked: I needed many crosses to get it.
PINT (23A: Little capacity)—if you put a PINT of Tabasco on your burrito ... not so "little." Also, beer-wise, PINT's a pretty good amount.
GAYBORHOOD (1A: Place like Chicago's Boystown or San Francisco's Castro, in modern lingo)—well, I knew GAY was in there somewhere, so I just led with it, and that ended up working out. I've never heard GAYBORHOOD. I want to go to one and sing a slightly revised version of the "Mister Rogers" theme song.

I wish this puzzle had not had the ill fortune of coming out immediately after the worst terrorist attacks in the history of post-war France. It's hard to feel anything but tremendous sorrow right now. But I needed to say that This Puzzle Is Great. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS if you enjoyed today's puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins, you should really sign up for his 2x/month themeless puzzle, [HIGH:low]. It's free, straight to your in-box. I did the first one and it was (predictably) fantastic.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:"Having Aspirations"— W- words changed to WH- words, to wacky (and hacky) effect

Theme answers:

THE WHIRLED SERIES (23A: "So You Think You Can Dance," say?)
THE ROYAL WHEE (41A: Roller coaster shout from Queen Elizabeth?)
GET OUT OF MY WHEY (17D: "That milky liquid belongs to me!"?)
WHICH DOCTOR (68A: "Did you mean Doom or Dolittle?"?)
PRINCE OF WHALES (48D: One in line to rule the ocean?)
WHACKS MUSEUM (89A: Mob Boss Hall of Fame?)
WHINING AND DINING (113A: Making a complaint at a restaurant?)

Word of the Day:TAMIAMI Trail(66D: ___ Trail (Everglades highway)) —

The Tamiami Trail/ˈtæ.mi.ˌæ.miˈtreɪl/ is the southernmost 275 miles (443 km) of U.S. Highway 41 (US 41) from State Road 60 (SR 60) in Tampa to US 1 in Miami. A portion of the road also has the hidden designation of State Road 90 (SR 90).
The 275-mile (443 km) north–south section (hidden SR 45) extends to Naples, whereupon it becomes an east–west road (hidden SR 90) crossing the Everglades (and forming part of the northern border of Everglades National Park). It becomes South Eighth Street in Miami-Dade County, famous as Calle Ocho in the Little Havana section of Miami, before ending east of Miami Avenue at Brickell Avenue in Brickell, Downtown Miami.

• • •

After a nice streak of three wonderful puzzles, we come ... well, perhaps not crashing back to earth, but certainly rough-landing back to earth. This should please the STODGES of the SUNBELT, for sure, but the gimmick feels worn, and once you get it ... you've got it. I kind of found GET OUT OF MY WHEY and THE ROYAL WHEE amusing, but otherwise, this is just another, increasingly typical, bloated and wearisome Sunday. The fill suffers by contrast with recent puzzles. It's creaky with crosswordese and common short stuff (KENL? ITHE? OCAT?) and it's aggressively old-fashioned in its cultural frame of reference. ENSE! IMARI! NEH! OCH, make it stop. Looks like Will's assistant gave SWAG a decent, recent clue (78A: Coolness, in modern slang), but otherwise ... this thing's as modern as a TINTYPE (65A: Antique photo). Oh, except for the clue on NEAL (106A: Sci-fi/historical fiction writer Stephenson). That's quite up-to-date. Got his "Seveneves" sitting here on the "To Be Read" pile.

Speaking of TINTYPE, that second "T" was the last thing in the grid because TAMIAMI was a gigantic !?!!?!?! for me. You don't put TAMIAMI in a puzzle unless you're pretty desperate for vowels. I do think, however, that the crosses were fair, and TAMIAMI seems at least vaguely crossworthy, so no foul. Where there *is* a foul, however—a manifest foul—is at the absurd crossing of GUARE (110A: John ___, "The House of Blue Leaves" playwright) and ERDOS (104D: Mathematician who was the subject of the book "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers"). Two proper nouns of Not Great fame crossing at an unguessable letter—that's a Natick, for sure. You can't do that. As my mathematician / constructor friend just said, the fact that you happen to know an answer doesn't necessarily mean it's a good answer: "I knew ERDOS, but holy cow that crossing is bad." Empirically bad. There will be a decent-sized group of people for whom that square will be a total guess. That ... is a design flaw. And an obvious one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Jim Holland

Relative difficulty:Somewhat tougher than usual Monday (30 seconds tougher)

THEME:THREE IN A ROW (59A: Tic-tac-toe win ... or hint to the starts of the answers to the starred clues) —three theme answers begin with three consecutive letters of the alphabet

Theme answers:

ABC ANCHOR (10D: *David Muir ... or Peter Jennings, once)
KLM AIRLINES (19A: *Carrier to Amsterdam)
XYZ AFFAIR (33D: *Diplomatic contretemps during John Adams's administration)

Word of the Day:MAUD Adams(14A: Bond girl Adams) —

Maud Solveig Christina Wikström (born 12 February 1945), known professionally as Maud Adams, is a Swedish actress, known for her roles as two different Bond girls: in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and as the eponymous character in Octopussy (1983) as well as making a brief uncredited appearance in A View to a Kill (1985). (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't think this works too well, thematically. It might, if there were better theme answers available. For instance, XYZ AFFAIR is aces. First-rate. But the others are less so. KLM AIRLINES is legit enough, though it's a bit dull, the AIRLINES part being pretty redundant, in common parlance. I've only ever heard it as just KLM. Answer here is acceptable, but not interesting. And then there's ABC ANCHOR, which feels slightly awkward and forced. It doesn't google well. When I put "news" into the middel of the phrase and then re-google search, the number of hits balloons to something like 5x the number of hits for ["ABC ANCHOR"] alone. It's a contrived answer—defensible, but not sharp. Light years away from XYZ AFFAIR. And with only three theme answers in the whole thing, you really want them all to land. Perfectly. The fill on this one is not fantastic, even with the 4 cheater squares added, presumably, to make filling the grid easier (black squares above MAR / below ION, and above AYE / below ONT). There's no excuse for having RELEE in an early-week puzzle that's this easy to fill, to say nothing of the longish abomination that is ASATEAM. But it's clean-ish. The real issue for me was the wobbly theme execution.

Bullets:

1D: Uses for all it's worth (MILKS)— this was the first of many missteps and rewrites. I think I wrote in MAXES.
17A: The good dinosaur in Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur" (ARLO)— I have never heard of this movie, so, needless to say, I've never heard of the answer. This and MAUD (where I drew another blank) added to my relative slowness today. Can you add to slowness? Sure. Why not?
51A: Full-length movie (FEATURE)— is "The Good Dinosaur" a FEATURE??? Oh, would you look at that: It. Hasn't. Even. Come. Out. Yet. (due out Nov. 25) I'm trying to understand how I'm supposed to know a character in a movie that hasn't been released yet. And on a Monday? Weird. Anyway, FEATURE helped me change MELEE to RELEE. I had written in that "M" when I noticed I had -ELEE and figured "What else could it be...?" Blargh.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:INNER / EAR (63A: With 60-Down, what the answer to each starred clue has) — "EAR" embedded in six answers:

Theme answers:

EDDIE ARCARO (17A: *Hall-of-Fame jockey who won the Triple Crown twice)
SURFACE AREA (30A: *Six times the length of one side squared, for a cube)
HORSE AROUND (44A: *Engage in in boisterous play)
FALSE ARREST (58A: *Unauthorized detention)
FINE ARTS (11D: *Painting, music, dance, etc.)
BAREARMS (37D: *What wearers of sleeveless garments have)

Word of the Day:ANGUILLA(18D: Caribbean island whose name means "eel") —

Anguilla (/æŋˈɡwɪlə/ang-GWIL-ə) is a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin. The territory consists of the main island of Anguilla itself, approximately 16 miles (26 km) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The island's capital is The Valley. The total land area of the territory is 35 square miles (90 km²), with a population of approximately 13,500 (2006 estimate). // Anguilla has become a popular tax haven, having no capital gains, estate, profit or other forms of direct taxation on either individuals or corporations. In April 2011, faced with a mounting deficit, it introduced a 3% "Interim Stabilisation Levy", Anguilla's first form of income tax. (wikipedia)

• • •

Been done. In fact, it's such a basic concept, I'm surprised that it hasn't been done *more* than once before (I could find only one example—an LAT crossword from '09). Basic cruciverb search of INNEREAR could've told you it's been done. But that's not the main issue here. So your concept is hackneyed, so what? Not everyone will know that. But it's just ... so basic. EAR is not tough to embed. So none of the answers end up being that interesting. It's just a very low bar for an embedded word, and so the theme is just dull. And the way INNER / EAR is awkwardly split up like that—really inelegant. Also, the fill is subpar, for sure. All DAHS and ECUS and SDS and what not. Really ancient stuff. ICK and GUNK. I think I like ANGUILLA; it stands out against a lot of otherwise dull fill, and it's also the only answer besides ROC (WTF?) (7D: Miami Beach's Eden ___ resort) that put up any fight. I couldn't remember ANGUILLA at all. Still, seems like something I should know, so I'm left in the weird position of liking one of only two answers in the grid that I *didn't* know.

I don't believe ACID HEAD is really a thing (12D: Certain druggie). POTHEAD, sure. DEADHEAD, yes. ACIDHEAD??? Sounds dated and/or made-up. Also really hate the word "druggie." What are you, in high school? There's not much else to say. Tomorrow is another day. Hopefully not a D-DAY. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Zachary Spitz

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (slow for me)

THEME:it's wonderful— [It's ___!] clues are transformed from idiomatic / colloquial to literal

Theme answers:

LIGHTNING BOLT (20A: It's strking!)
BALD-FACED LIE (33A: It's unbelievable!)
ASTHMA ATTACK (43A: It's breathtaking!)
DRY ERASE BOARD (59A: It's remarkable!)

Word of the Day:TYE Sheridan(48A: Actor Sheridan) —

Tye Kayle Sheridan (born November 11, 1996) is an American actor.^[1]^[2]^[3] Sheridan made his feature film debut in Terrence Malick's experimental drama filmThe Tree of Life (2011) and had his first leading role in the coming-of-age film Mud (2012). He co-starred in the drama Joe (2013). In 2015, he starred in the drama The Stanford Prison Experiment. Sheridan will play the role of the young Cyclops in the 2016 film X-Men: Apocalypse. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme is cute. Slight and forgettable, but cute. Tight enough. Fine. Maybe it's because I just woke up after a long, long sleep, but I had all kinds of problems filling this grid in correctly. Started with wanting AIR-something for 1D: A 747 has two of them (AISLES) and then got especially bad in the middle of the grid, where I wrote in DDAY at 35D: When the Battle of Normandy started, but then tore it out for the [Actor Sheridan], which I was sure was ANN. I then changed DDAY to DAWN (!?), but then kept putting in LOATHE and taking out LOATHE etc. (34D: Can't stomach). The problem was clearly [Actor Sheridan]. What other actor Sheridan is there. When I was finally done, I had the letters T and Y and E there ... and apparently that is some kid who just turned 19 and is in movies I haven't seen. OK. Great. Star in all the movies you want, kid, TYE is never going to be good fill, and you will never be ANN Sheridan! Also never good: LOD, which didn't even get its own clue (it was cross-referenced with TEL AVIV in a way that gave no specific geographical info about either place). So the whole LOD / TYE area, coupled with my inability to come up with whatever ATTACK was happening in the middle, slowed me down.

["Got a cigarette?"]
Also slowing me down: the clue on TARO (47A: ___ cake (Chinese New Year delicacy)). Baffling. I associate TARO with the Pacific Islands, so ... I was like "TACO cake? Do the Chinese like that for some reason? What *is* that?" But overall, the fill on this one is OK. I mean, yes, "EEK, it's ESME!" but most areas are pretty clean. The one thing that really marred the puzzle, though, was that clue on MEN (71A: Exasperated comment from a feminist). Sigh. OK, as someone who has spent his entire life surrounded by feminists, let me say, resoundingly, no. You are confusing feminists with decidedly NOT-feminist sitcom ladies who grouse about their shlubby husbands. Also, you are confusing feminism with anti-man sentiment (a common, pernicious mistake). "MEN!" is not something an exasperated feminist says. "MEN!" is something someone who believes in the essential *in*equality of the sexes says, someone who believes all that Mars/Venus crap, and is just mad that her husband bought her the wrong kind of birthday gift or got soup on his tie or won't stop watching football and clean out the gutters. Not. Feminist. Not not not. This is another (another!) tin-eared clumsy clue that highlights how puzzle makers are a monoculture of (mostly) white (mostly) men. "Sure, baby, we'll let 'feminist' in to the puzzle, but here's the deal: you gotta look pretty and make a funny face into the camera and go 'MEN!' and roll your eyes like 'whaddyagonnado?', OK? OK. That's a good girl."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a feminist is someone who doesn't blink at writing in a woman's name for the clue [Actor Sheridan].

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Constructor:Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME: AUTOCOMPLETE (48A: Search engine feature ... or what you literally need to do to answer the six starred clues) — theme answers are missing their final parts, all of which are makes OR models of cars

Theme answers:

KATHIE LEE GIF(FORD) (20A: *TV celebrity who has owned both a clothing line and a wine brand)
SOLAR P(LEXUS) (27A: *Never center in the abdomen that's strongly affected by a punch)
"HELP ME R(HONDA)" (30A: *1965 #1 Beach Boys hit)
BELON(G TO) (37A: *Have membership in)
STRING T(RIO) (42A: *Classical ensemble)
ANNO DO(MINI) (44A: *In the year of our Lord)

Word of the Day:HOLI(58A: Hindu festival of colors) —

Holi (pronunciation:/ˈhoʊliː/; Sanskrit: होलीHolī) is a spring festival, also known as the festival of colours or the festival of love. It is an ancient Hindu religious festival which has become popular with non-Hindus in many parts of South Asia, as well as people of other communities outside Asia. // It is primarily observed in India, Nepal, and other regions of the world with significant populations of Hindus or people of Indian origin. In recent years the festival has spread to parts of Europe and North America as a spring celebration of love, frolic, and colours.

• • •

Gibberish in the grid is never Great, but this could've been a pretty decent puzzle if the theme execution had been consistent. All makes, no models—that's what it should've been. I was like "Oh, OK, Ford, Lexus, Honda, interesting ... and then ... GTO? Rio? What?" I was also like "EELED? What?" But that was a different kind of consternation. Concept is intriguing, but the execution just felt off because of the two models mixed in with all the makes. Also, all theme answers are weirdly crammed toward center of the grid, with all themers (except the revealer) appearing between the 5th and 10th row, inclusive. This isn't a flaw, exactly, but it seems like maybe a different grid design could've allowed some breathing room. Oddly, some of the cruddiest fill in the grid appears down where the theme pressures *aren't* that tight. ECARD alongside NOYES? ETES / ENTS / ASSES? ILE crossing HOLI? Probably should've been cleaner down there.

KATHIE LEE GIF(FORD) was tough for me, as the spelling of KATHIE is odd and I just ... don't think about her at all any more. I was thinking maybe Kathy Ireland or Katherine Heigl or something at first. I see now that the "wine" part of the clue was supposed to tip me off, but ... it didn't. Also not registering: EMILIO Barzini (24D: ___ Barzini, 'The Godfather" don). That could've been any Italian name. Is that character famous? Verdict: no. Here's how I know. Start googling EMILIO and check out the predictive searches. Here, allow me:

It's not til you get to [emilio barz...] that google offers up the right one. That's bananas. The only EMILIO I recognize on that entire list (above) is Estevez. EMILIO Aguinaldo was a Filipino revolutionary and first president of the Philippines. EMILIO Bonifacio is a utility infielder, most recently with the Chicago White Sox. EMILIO Barbarigo is a character in the Assassin's Creed video game universe. Thus concludes today's EMILIO lesson. I liked the (tough) clue on TOPIARY (5D: Clip art?). There wasn't much else I really Liked. I did learn the word [Sigmatism] (LISP), and I like knowing it, but I'm promptly going to forget it. I know me—I just will.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hey, check out the minor media coverage of that terrible, stupid clue on MEN yesterday. Both Jezebel and Mashable went after it (as did many, many solvers on Twitter). I have no expectation that the NYT is listening or cares, but I'm happy anytime these issues make it into the wider press.

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Constructor:Mary Lou Guizzo

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day:EROS(13D: Destination of NASA's NEAR) —

433 Eros is an S-type near-Earth asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 kilometres (21.4×7.0×7.0 mi) in size, the second-largest near-Earth asteroid after 1036 Ganymed. It was discovered in 1898 and was the first near-Earth asteroid discovered. It was the first asteroid orbited by an Earth probe (in 2000). It belongs to the Amor group. // Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid, the first known to come within the orbit of Mars. Objects in such an orbit can remain there for only a few hundred million years before the orbit is perturbed by gravitational interactions. Dynamical integrations suggest that Eros may evolve into an Earth-crosser within as short an interval as two million years, and has a roughly 50% chance of doing so over a time scale of 10⁸–10⁹ years.^[5] It is a potential Earth impactor,^[5] comparable in size to the impactor that created Chicxulub crater and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. // The NEAR Shoemaker probe visited Eros twice, first with a 1998 flyby, and then by orbiting it in 2000 when it extensively photographed its surface. On February 12, 2001, at the end of its mission, it landed on the asteroid's surface using its maneuvering jets. (wikipedia)

• • •

There is some really nice stuff in here. The banks of Acrosses in the NW and SE are solid, and GABRIELLE / GIFFORDS is a great, current, important name that I don't think I've seen in the grid before—certainly not in full-name form. It's a *little* weird to have her name broken up so oddly (last name "first," i.e. farthest left, and then with the two name parts in totally different areas of the grid); normally you'd handle a marquee name like that a little more ... elegantly? I did enjoy seeing it, though. I also loved the nose-thumbing at [Fossils] (OLD FOGIES)—it would be simplistic to see that answer as ageist, since it describes a type of older person (with a certain stodgy "In my day..." mindset) rather than older people in general. The same way that BRAT or IMP is not anti-child. I would never have thought of NEWS as an ACROSTIC (11D: NEWS for the four directions, and others => ACROSTICS). I would've said "acronym." Are all acronyms ACROSTICS? If "An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message" (wikipedia), then ... it would seem so. I think of ACROSTICS as puzzles or poems, not just ... a group of letters like we have in NEWS. But it seems I'm wrong. OK.

There's some not-great stuff in here, notably the double-improbably RE-words (RELAP, REICE), and the truly abominable LAICS (6D: Flock members). Wow. "'Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the LAICS our love"??? No. It's LAITY. The word is LAITY. The word will never not be LAITY. LAIC is a decent adjective, but it's an abysmal noun. Beyond that, though, I don't have many fill complaints. I'm not in love with P-TRAP (the "P" seems to have migrated from DIDDY to TRAP...), but it's crossed fairly enough by PELOSI. And MUS is gross and we've had ILE two days in a row now, but these are tiny things compared the overall solidity of the puzzle.

IT'S A SHAME (27D: "So sad") that the puzzle ended on such a sour note for me, though. If you'd just cold asked me what a prefix for "Croatian" was, I'd've said "SERBO" (18A: Croatian head?). However ... because of the cluing on 13D: Destination of NASA's NEAR, I had no choice but to write in ERIS, since until just now I did not know that EROS (actually "433 EROS") was a celestial object of any sort. I knew very well, however, that, like CERES (20D: Destination of Dawn), ERIS is a dwarf planet. So I couldn't very well go with EROS, despite SERBO-'s sounding *so* much better than SERBI-. The NASA-related CERES clue made me virtually certain that the the other NASA clue had to have another dwarf planet as its answer. But no. It's some asteroid I didn't know existed. Irksome, as a. the only reason for this anomalous clue on EROS is that someone wanted to get cute with the parallel clues, and b. SERBO- is manifestly bad fill—always hurts to crash and burn on the grid's ugliest part. Well, second-ugliest. I mean LAICS, come on ...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Natan Last

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:general awesomeness

Word of the Day:THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G.(5D: "Mo Money Mo Problems" rapper) —

Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), better known by his stage names The Notorious B.I.G, Biggie, or Biggie Smalls, was an American rapper. Wallace is consistently ranked as one of the greatest rappers ever and one of the most influential rappers of all time. // Wallace was raised in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. When he released his debut album Ready to Die in 1994, he became a central figure in the East Coast hip hop scene and increased New York's visibility in the genre at a time when West Coast hip hop was dominant in the mainstream. The following year, Wallace led his childhood friends to chart success through his protégé group, Junior M.A.F.I.A. While recording his second album, Wallace was heavily involved in the growing East Coast–West Coast hip hop feud. On March 9, 1997, Wallace was killed by an unknown assailant in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. His double-disc set Life After Death, released 16 days later, rose to No. 1 on the U.S. album charts and was certified Diamond in 2000, one of the few hip hop albums to receive this certification.Wallace was noted for his "loose, easy flow", dark semi-autobiographical lyrics and storytelling abilities. Two more albums have been released since his death. He has certified sales of 17 million units in the United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

The only thing wrong with this puzzle is that it's over. I haven't had this much fun solving a Saturday in ... I want to say ages, but K. Cameron Collins' gem was just last week, so ... I haven't had this much fun in a week. Before *that*, who knows how long. I wish (as I wished last week) that the puzzle had been harder; I was 2+ minutes faster than yesterday, and that's including taking the time to stop and get screenshots mid-solve. As I was solving, I couldn't believe how much great stuff he was managing to cram in here. I stopped at THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. to take a screenshot, little knowing that the rest of that stack (pillar?) of 15s was going to fill out so beautifully. I was still oohing at Biggie when bam, HATERS GONNA HATE! That is a sick one-two punch. And then AMERICAN APPAREL, which is also young-skewing, and also timely, in that they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just last month.

[HATERS GONNA HATE]

Often, with stacks (columns!?!) OF 15s, that's where All the action is, or most of it, anyway. Here, pfft, it's just the flashiest part of a great overall show. BOLLYWOOD! THAT'S NICE! CLUB OWNER! SHAKE ON IT! ROSIE'S BAR! And I DON'T BITE, which was the site of one of my few miscues, as I figured it was I WON'T BITE. I feel like the latter is more common. Is it? Nah, looks like DON'T googles twice as well (though both are perfectly in-the-language). Anyway... when you're not digging the ART SCENE, dig the solid answers that flesh out the grid: PACKERSand ETERNALLY and HAMPSHIRE (nice clue, 14A: First US college to divest from apartheid South Africa) and SIDEKICKS. This grid makes HOP ON POP and YO-YO MA look a little on the dull side (hard to do!). Even the stuff that made me initially squint and go "What?" ended up having me going "... yep, that works." Couldn't remember my Spanish 101, possibly because I never took it, but once the GUAPOS finally showed up, I recognized them and they seemed just fine. Welcome, GUAPOS. Then there was 55A: Like some hockey passes, and I had UP--- and thought "What made-up crap is this...?" Then ICE fell into place and then I imagined a hockey play-by-play commentator's voice and...yep, UPICE is totally a thing. The equivalent of "upfield" in (U.S.) football. I mean, damn, this thing even managed to make EWE look good with the a fancy mythological clue (25A: Animal that Poseidon turned Theophane into, in myth).

[Please watch, for intro as well as performance]
OK, ESNE is never good, but the puzzle totally knows that and is winking at you like "come on, you know you're gonna forgive this" (9D: A slave to crosswords?). And I did. And do.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. MEN! (58A: "Luxuries," not "necessities," per Cher)

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Constructor:Samuel A. Donaldson and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:"Right On, Right On!"— theme answers turn right (i.e. drop Down) when they reach a word which can also mean (when preceded by the phrase "Right on...") [Exact]

Theme answers:

TIPPING / POINT (25A: Threshold of major change)
SHOW ME / THE MONEY (39A: Catchphrase from "Jerry Maguire")
PAID THROUGH / THE NOSE (65A: Was a victim of price gouging)
RACE AGAINST / TIME (75A: Rush to beat a deadline)
MOVING / TARGET (101A: Mark that's hard to hit)
SNOOKER / CUE (117A: British pool stick)

Word of the Day:KIVA(118D: Big name in microloans) —

noun
noun: kiva; plural noun: kivas
a chamber, built wholly or partly underground, used by male Pueblo Indians for religious rites. (google)

Nah, it's probably this one:

Kiva Microfunds (commonly known by its domain name, Kiva.org) is a 501(c)(3)non-profit organization that allows people to lend money via the Internet to low-income / underserved entrepreneurs and students in 82 countries. Kiva's mission is “to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.” // Since 2005, Kiva has crowd-funded more than 1 million loans, totaling more than a half a billion dollars, at a repayment rate of 99 percent. As of November 2013, Kiva was raising about $1 million every three days. The Kiva platform has attracted a community of more than 1 million lenders from around the world. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've seen this answer-dropping-type theme a bunch. Did this one bring a new twist to it? Sort of. It's not a very tight theme. Seems scattered in a bunch of different directions. There's the turning right part (which is really a turning Down part) and then there's the part where you have to prepend "Right on" ... I guess the first "Right on" (of the title) refers to the direction change and the second to the phrase that has to follow the Down part for the [Exact] clue to make sense. Seems conceptually messy. Mainly, it just wasn't that fun to solve. There was some initial scrambling to get the concept under my feet, but then the theme answers ended up being both easy and kind of forgettable. Also, [Exact] doesn't feel like a very exact clue for all those "Right on ___" answers. Right on the money, sure, but right on cue? Tough to swap out "Exact" there. I am sure you could lawyer up an example, but it seems like a stretch.

The puzzle was memorable much more for a bunch of (to me) tough crosses, rather than for the theme. I'll start with KIVA, which I needed every cross to get because WTF? It's new fill ... is it good? This is how I felt the other day about HOLI, which is clearly a valid answer, but ... actually, now that I think about it, HOLI > KIVA for sure. One is an ancient festival, the other is a company. HOLI has the advantage of being (worldwide, anyway, I would think) far far better known. It does not surprise me that HOLI would be in the grid. It does surprise me that KIVA is. Its fame feels marginal. But I learned a new thing *and* the crosses were all fine, so no problem.

I had real trouble, though, in the NE with the crossing capitals. I never remember ASMARA (28A: Eritrea's capital), and HARARE (12D: Zimbabwe's capital) ... well, it came to me, eventually, but I had LAHORE there at first, which isn't even the right continent, let alone the right country. When you add in the inExact clue of [Rap] for HIP-HOP and then the unexpected price/earnings or P.E. RATIO (17D: Equity valuation stat), that corner was trouble. Also a lot of trouble: SWELLS (54A: Puffs) / WARHEADS (55D: Sour candy brand). I just don't know the latter. No hope there. And then [Puffs] for SWELLS ... that took me a while to see (though I see it now). Then there was MANCALA (35D: Board game popular throughout Africa), which I've seen before but never remember, crossing PALISH (?) (43A: A little light), which I didn't get even after having it down to P-LISH. That's more scary crosses than I'm used to facing, but they all fell into place, eventually. Fill overall seems fine, though it can get pretty rough in the short stuff, here and there (AST B'NAI ... HRH AGAL ... REECE SSS ... TAVI AMOI, etc.). AZTECAN and UTAHN and RUMBAED aren't prettifying the grid much either. Still, overall, it seemed no worse than average.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Parker Lewis

Relative difficulty:Medium Mondayish level

THEME:fractions— a fraction progression where the numerator remains "1" throughout but the denominator moves from "5" to "1"; so one FIFTH, one FOURTH, one THIRD, one HALF, and finally one WHOLE

Theme answers:

FIFTH ELEMENT (17A: 1997 Bruce Willis sci-fi film, with "The")
FOURTH ESTATE (23A: Journalistic profession)
THIRD TIMES A CHARM (38A: Saying about persistence paying off)
HALF MARATHON (48A: Race just over 13 miles long)
WHOLE SHEBANG (60A: Entirety, informally)

Word of the Day:OCULUS Rift(54A: ___ Rift (virtual reality product owned by Facebook)) —

The Rift is a virtual reality head-mounted display developed by Oculus VR. It was initially proposed in a Kickstarter campaign, during which Oculus VR (at the time an independent company) raised US$2.5 million for the development of the product. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme has definitely been done over and over again where FIFTH, FOURTH etc. are ordinals, but I guess the surprise fraction twist is new. It's also mildly awkward, in that you have to imagine "a" or "one" in front of the first words for the progression to really make sense, and WHOLE is not really the correct finale. Should probably be ONE something. And why is this 16 wide—totally unnecessary. All that having THIRD TIMES A CHARM in here does is open up the classic THIRD TIME'S A CHARM vs. THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM debate, and no one wants to open up that can of worms. That controversy tends to get real ugly, real fast. I'm definitely team THE, but I've learned to live with my A neighbors. Coexist, man. But seriously, THIRD BASE? THIRD DEGREE? You're going 16 wide ... why? I'm not a fan of breaking the rules for no good and possibly even bad reasons. But I guess I did get about 20 extra seconds of Monday puzzle today. Maybe that was worth it.

Puzzle gets pretty chock full o' crosswordese at times, especially over there in the east where "ERNO and the T-MAN"® climb Mt. ETNA in search of the fabled ODEON of Apolo (Ohno). It's a pretty epic adventure—they even wrote a SESTET about it. But I guess most of the fill is OK. I messed up my Biblical verb and wrote DOEST instead of DOETH. I also totally blanked on the MASAI, even though I did this whole report on them in 7th grade Geography (27A: Native Kenyans). Actually, the report was on Tanzania, but they were in there. Sorry, Mrs. Stevens. Got very confused by [Center of a place setting], especially when I got it down to PLA-E and was like "... uh ... PLACE?" I think that's all I have to say about this puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Gary Cee

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:SPIN CYCLE (60A: Washer action ... or a hint to four consecutive letters inside 18-, 23-, 38- and 49-Across) — SPIN "cycles" through four different formations within the theme answers:

Theme answers:

UP IN SMOKE (18A: 1978 Cheech & Chong comedy)
KEVIN SPACEY (23A: Academy Award winner for "American Beauty")
STEVEN SPIELBERG (38A: Besides Charlie Chaplin, only film director on Time's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century)
HMS PINAFORE (49A: Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set on a ship)

Word of the Day:OLETA Adams(14A: Soul singer Adams) —

Oleta Adams (born May 4, 1953, Seattle, Washington) is an American soul, jazz, and gospel singer and pianist. [...] // In 1985, Adams was discovered by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, founders of the English band Tears for Fears, while she was performing in a hotel bar in Kansas City, Missouri whilst they were on a US tour. Two years later, they contacted her to invite her to join their band as a singer and pianist on their next album, The Seeds of Love. // In 1989, the album was released and the single"Woman in Chains"—sung as a duet by Adams and Orzabal and with Phil Collins on drums—became her first hit.
Adams embarked on a world tour with Tears For Fears in 1990, performing by herself as the supporting artist at the start of each show, and remaining onstage throughout the Tears For Fears set where she would provide piano and vocals. // Following her work with Tears For Fears, Adams was offered a recording contract by their label Fontana Records and restarted her solo career in 1990, assisted by Orzabal who co-produced her new album, Circle of One. The album received much critical acclaim and (after a slow start) eventually peaked at no.1 in the UK in 1991 after she scored her biggest hit to date with her Grammy nominated cover of Brenda Russell's "Get Here". The song reached the UK and US Top 5 and became popular during the 1991 Gulf War conflict as families of deployed troops in the region embraced the tune as a theme song. 1991 also saw Adams sign to independent music publisher Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd. and contribute to the Elton John/Bernie Taupin tribute album, Two Rooms, on which appeared her version of John's 1974 hit "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me". Adams' version became another top 40 hit in the UK.// Her next album, Evolution (1993), was also a commercial success, making the UK top 10. It also featured her self-penned adult contemporary single "Window of Hope". Her 1995 release, Moving On, saw Adams move more in the direction of R&B, and she also reunited with Roland Orzabal for the duet"Me and my Big Ideas" on the Tears For Fears album Raoul and the Kings of Spain the same year. Two years later she released the Christian themed album Come Walk with Me. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme feels like it must've been done a million times, but I could find just one. Sadly, it was very recent (2013) and had 3/4 of the same theme answers:

[IS IT SAFE?]

There's no way anyone could've expected today's constructor to know about this puzzle, as it's (somehow?) not in the (poorly updated) cruciverb database, and it was an LAT puzzle, not an NYT. You can see how a. SPIN CYCLE might lead you to just this idea, and b. this idea would lead you to these exact theme answers. Once SPIN CYCLE clicks in as a possible revealer, the number of roads and possibilities narrows considerable. Thus two constructors working completely independently arrive at virtually the same place with their themers. It happens. As for the puzzle's quality: fine. Mildly entertaining. The fill is decidedly OLD TIMES (59A: Days of yore), a bit stale. That NW corner for sure should've been redone, as the POTOK (1D: Chaim who wrote "The Chosen") / OLETA (14A: Soul singer Adams) crossing is something only a constructor's mother could love, and will Natick at least a small handful of people who have not been doing crossword puzzles every day for 20 years. ASSAI OMANI ESTEE ASSES ASPS NOES YSL ... none of it terrible, but when you pile up the over-familiar like that, it gets a bit suffocating.

MASH NOTE (5D: Love letter) and OVER HERE! (20A: Helpful cry during a rescue mission) are wonderful, as is SLURPS (6D: Eats noisily). Embarrassingly, I barely remember what a PET SCAN is (45A: 3-D image in medical diagnoses), and my father was a radiologist (sorry, dad). The scans that leap most readily to mind are CAT and MRI. But PET came back to me, eventually. It stands for "Positron Emission Tomography," only one word of which I can actually define. Sigh. I was only a mildly APT science pupil (36D: Perceptive, as a pupil) (meanwhile—non-humble brag—my daughter's report card just arrived and she got 115 in AP Physics. 115!? I am both proud and mildly embarrassed by the goofy fictional inflated "weighted" numbers they give students these days) (Oh, and let me undo the non-humble brag somewhat by telling you that her lowest grade, by far, was in ... English. [... crickets ...] If this is what passes for teen rebellion, I guess I'll take it.). Please give at least a smattering of polite applause for the TOKE / SMOKE crossing, which is adorable.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Duncan Kimmel and Clara Williamson

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: Somewhat literal TV shows— I think the deal is that theme answers reimagine famous TV show titles as (mostly) straightforward descriptions of things:

Theme answers:

16A: "Mad Men"? (PSYCHOPATHS) (that one's pretty literal)
22A: "House of Cards"? (HALLMARK STORE) (also pretty literal)
46A: "Game of Thrones"? (MUSICAL CHAIRS) (see, this is less literal ... a "throne" is a ridiculous way to refer to a simple "chair," so ... this clue probably needs two question marks)
57A: "The Walking Dead"? (PALLBEARERS) (I'm not sure I even understand this one—PALLBEARERS"walk" while also *carrying* the "dead," so ... I ... yeah, I don't see how this one works. Maybe, uh, "those walking the dead" ... like ... taking them for a walk? I want this to work, but syntax and grammar matter in crossword cluing, and you'd have to torture the English language pretty hard to get it to agree that this clue/answer pairing makes any sense.

Word of the Day:SMALL SLAM(31D: "All but one" win, in bridge) —

(google)

• • •

There's a germ of a good idea here. But the theme answers gets less precise and more figurative and by the end, the theme appears to have fallen apart entirely. I can't get PALLBEARERS to work without hiring a very talented theme lobbyist and paying her a lot of money. If I carry a dead body, I am a pallbearer. So ... I am walking, but not dead. I am walking THE dead. But the title is "The Walking Dead," so ... how is PALLBEARERS a literal answer (in a way that is parallel to "Mad Men" / PSYCHOPATHS)??? I thought maybe we had entered the realm of the super-figurative, and "The Walking Dead" were zombies, who of course "bear" a "pall," in the sense that their complexion is the opposite of ruddy, but ... then I realized I was thinking of "pallid," not "pall," and besides, that kind of a wordplay stretch just isn't in keeping with the more straightforward literalizing that is going on with the other themers. I want this theme to work, but I just don't think it does. "The Golden Girls"? (EMMY AWARDS) ... I think that works. Am I doing it right? I honestly don't know. It just seems like there must've been many, many more TV shows that you could do this with, with better results. I will say that these shows are all very recent and non-network, so they have a kind of consistency. Which is nice ... if you can stick the landing.

One of my friends just remarked on Twitter that "I've never seen 37-Across (i.e. AMUCK) spelled that way." I replied, "No one has." That's god-awful. How you get yourself stuck with AMUCK, I don't know, but you need to rethink your choices. In fact, the grid seems really oddly built. Huge gaps between theme answers in the middle, with these intervening longer Acrosses that have nothing to do with the theme but that somehow result in our getting stuck with AMUCK. And also stuck with singular SCAD, which, jeez louise, no. No no. Stop it. Back to the drawing board. SES and MEI are also yucky in a super-undemanding grid. Ditto ETUI. The puzzle felt easy, but sussing out the themers actually took some work. I forgot that HALLMARK had STOREs, so getting the STORE part took an odd lot of work. And PALLBEARERS ... well, you can see why that took work. I also struggle with GANGSTERS, largely because that seemed a very anti-climactic answer for 33D: Capone and Corleone. Those aren't just GANGSTERS. Those are crime bosses, crime lords, kingpins. So after GANG- I was looking for something signifying Big Cheeses ... but all I got was -STERS. Not inaccurate, but kind of a letdown.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:TEN (71A: Number of mispelled [sic] words in this puzzle's clues (oh, by the way, watch out for those tricky circled squares!) — circled squares are areas in common words that are often misspelled. Today, the common misspellings will actually give you a *correct* answer in the Downs/crosses. Hence the "watch out" admonition in the revealer clue:

Theme answers:

OCCURRENCE / DREW (not DRAW!)
SEPARATE / PATS (not PETS!)
PHARAOH / BALD and OHS (not BOLD and AHS!)
CALENDAR / GRAY (not GREY!)
DEFINITELY / CLICK (not CLACK!)

Word of the Day:PELHAM(45A: New York's ___ Bay Park) —

Pelham Bay Park is a public park located in the northeast corner of the New York City borough of the Bronx and extending partially into Westchester County. It is, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha), the largest public park in New York City. The section of the park within New York City's borders is more than three times the size of Manhattan's Central Park. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. (wikipedia)

• • •

I actually liked how this one started out. There were lots of snappy little words like CHOKED and DOCILE and BAD COP, and the clue on UNZIP was especially nice (18D: Drop, like flies?). But after POP TAB (which I enjoyed), the bottom started falling out of this thing. The fill started to deteriorate badly, and when you first themer is the horribly dull OCCURRENCE, well, that doesn't promise good things. As I went along, I saw that the random circles were filled with random vowels, vowels that didn't appear to anagram to anything or form any kind of pattern ... and I'm wondering what kind of dumb post-solve puzzle I'm going to have to solve. And then after enduring TARARA and PSAT and RELO and ATAP and IFAT and SSRS and ILA and All Of It (please let constructing software help you ... please!) I got to the revealer clue. My first two thoughts were negative: "Who cares if words in the *clues* are misspelled?" and "Who cares that people often misspell those words? How many people a. solve the NYT crossword and b. somehow *don't* know how to spell PHARAOH or DEFINITELY? If you are a reasonably good speller, this puzzle will go right by you." OK, I'm not sure that second thought was so coherent at the time, but that's the gist of it. It was only after a few moments, after I considered the implications of misspelling the words in the grid, that I noticed that, technically, all the crosses would *work* with the misspellings. *This* made me admire the puzzle, conceptually, a heck of a lot more, even though the only one of these misspellings with any hope of tripping me is "SEPERATE," which even now looks correct to my eyes. So though it wasn't terribly fun to solve and is way, way too chock full o' junk, the theme had real cleverness to it.

Why does the puzzle think I will want to count things in the clues? It tried to get me to count 49 "R"s a while back, and now it wants me to count misspelled words? No. Pass. Also, all hail the arrival of the new Stupidest E-Word Ever: EBATE!! I went initially with ESALE, as that seemed equally stupid but no less plausible. With each new dumb E-word, I e-love ECIG more. Let's see, what else? I think PELHAM is probably the hardest thing in the grid (for non-New Yorkers), and I definitely would've clued that thing ["The Taking of ___ 1, 2, 3" (1974 thriller set on a New York City subway car)], but the crosses all seem fair—unless, somehow, you've never heard of a DACHA, which seems slightly possible (25D: Accomodations [sic] along the Black Sea) (oh, look, I unintentionally found one of the misspellings!). Since the puzzle was so easy, I didn't make many mistakes. TAB SETS (is that a thing?) instead of TAB KEYS at first (44D: Computer cursor advancers). CERUS for CETUS (36A: Whale constellation). I think CERUS has to do with wax." Oh, ha ha, I quickly wrote in EVITA before fully reading the clue at 23A: Musical character who sings "Wouldn't it be loverly?" (ELIZA). Else, no problems.

["Let's not split at Thanksgiving / That would be too rough"]

Happy Thanksgiving, which is also my birthday. Just FYI—the proper way to give thanks for me is with bourbon and pie, though regional traditions do vary.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty:Medium (tilting toward Easy)

THEME:none

Word of the Day:PETARD(40D: Small bomb used for breaking down gates) —

• • •

Started out crushing it, as I often do with Wentz freestyles, but then got repeatedly stymied, sometimes by my own mistakes, sometimes by genuinely puzzling / tough stuff. Maybe it's the alcohol or the pie or the seconds I had of both alcohol and pie. Maybe the puzzle is actually very easy and my brain was just in a feast-induced fog. But I don't think so. Thanksgiving dinner already feels like it happened a million years ago. Or yesterday, at least. The whole early eating thing is lovely when it's happening, but disconcerting later. All night, I kept wondering how it could be as early as the clock was telling me it was. I've been falling asleep early lately, it's true, but ... 7pm? My body was like "Yes!" but my brain was like "Bad idea." And my brain won. Anyhow, eating and drinking are both far enough in the past that I don't think they played a role in any solving slowness. Plus, I've had a Ton of coffee, so alertness is not an issue. No, I think this one was a pretty normal Friday, difficulty-wise. Quality-wise, I think it was solidly above average.

I was a bit clunky out of the gate, as I wrote in ZINS for CABS (1A: Napa options, informally), and had trouble convincing myself that Sublime were really SKA. But once I got LURK (15A: Browse without comment) and changed ZINS to CABS, those Downs started to drop and after just a minute or so I was already here:

It probably helped that I'm a huge John O'HARA fan and that I'd seen that exact clue on M.I.A. very recently (19A: "Bad Girls" rapper) and that I eat BOK CHOY with reasonable frequency (22A: Chinese cabbage). From here, it looked like I was going to sail easily into the NE—SNAP ON, in, TODAY, in, and then ... 7D: "Goodness!" I had ---Y and went with "OH, MY!" And that, right there, was probably the difference between Easy-Medium and Medium for me. A dumb little four-letter answer, but it kept me from getting Any of those Acrosses up there. Total stymification. So I went down and got RESPECTS and followed it further down into the SW corner, which seemed pretty easy until I got to AVERAGE ... what? I wrote in JOE at first, but there are multiple reasons why *that* was obviously wrong (51A: Regular joes). I wrote in MEN but took it out because AVERAGE MEN is not a phrase. And yet ... there it is. That is easily the most disappointing thing in the grid. I wrote in "AVERAGE JOE" for a reason—because that's the phrase. I'd also accept AVERAGE GUY. But MEN? Blargh.

I managed to crawl up the central passage to the NW, where I finally got OH, MY changed to I SAY!, and then that just left the SE, which was weirdly full of pitfalls. Dropped ENGINE ROOM no problem (28D: Scotty's domain on "Star Trek"), but other stuff proved harder. Got vocabbed to death there with both "stola" and "halluces" being huge WTFs for me. Even with -OG- in place at 35A: Stola : woman :: ___ : man (TOGA), my only thought was "... DOGE?" And [Halluces] had me thinking (perhaps not surprisingly) "hallucinates." Wrong. Also, the (awesome) clue on TEXT was tough to see through (35D: Exchange between cell mates?). Finally ended it all by conceding that the MEN in AVERAGE MEN had to be right. Is BAKER part of some radio alphabet or something. "Able, BAKER ... Candlestickmaker?" Who knows? All I know is that I got the Happy Pencil. Game over. Had a great birthday/Thanksgiving. Looking forward to a long weekend of leftovers and lollygagging.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Concubine's chamber / SUN 11-8-15 / Hokkaido port / Paternally related / Chiwere speaking tribe / Hokkaido port / Tarzan's simian sidekick / Second-largest dwarf planet / Costner Russo golf flick / Phishing lures / Vinland explorer circa AD 1000

Mae (government leader) / MON 11-9-15 / Campus in Troy, N.Y. / Band aide / Disgorges / Chaney of chillers

Clothing brand with long vowel mark in its name / TUE 11-10-15 / Jazz combo's cue / Venom conduit / Sitcom equine of 60s / New Left org of 60s

1970 John Wayne western / WED 11-11-15 / 1921 play that ends with extinction of human race / Talking TV palomino / Bungled salon job

Portmanteau legally recognized since 1977 / THU 11-12-15 / 19th-century nativist group / Three-time NHL All-Star Kovalchuk / Boomers of old in brief / Oscar-winning role for Hattie McDaniel

Orrery components / FRI 11-13-15 / Green-hatted Nintendo character / Product whose jingle was based on 1923 hit Barney Google / Metropolis misidentification / Wine of palomino grape

Heroine of ABC's Scandal / SAT 11-14-15 / Jordan to worshipers / Grammy alternatives voted on by public for short / Democratic talking point beginning in 2010 / 1990 #1 hit that starts Yo VIP let's kick it / Latin American seafood dish with citrusy kick / Uses pick-up lines in slang

Good dinosaur in Pixar's Good Dinosaur / MON 11-16-15 / Diplomatic contretemps during John Adams's administration / Carrier to Amsterdam / Captain Hook's henchman

Caribbean island whose name means eel / TUE 11-17-15 / Old French coins / Miami Beach's Eden resort / Style of sleeve

Actor Sheridan / WED 11-18-15 / Nazi cipher machine broken by allies / Close-up magician's prop / Rwandan president Paul Kagame's ethnicity / Math term usually followed by a subscript number / Former Obama adviser David

Hindu festival of colors / THU 11-19-15 / 1946 creation originally intended to calculate ballistics tables / Pair on ketch / sibs sigs maybe / Zine distributors / Mario Puzo sequel / 2003 Lopez/Affleck flop / Christian Grey's specialty / Language akin to Tahitian

Croatian head / FRI 11-20-15 / Kind of butter used in lip gloss / Canoodle in Canterbury / Rapper with 2006 #1 album Press Play / Accessory for Che / Player of new girl on sitcom New Girl / Exuberant Mexican exclamation / Congresswoman in 2011 news / Joe of Eagles

Handsome hombres / SAT 11-21-15 / Luxuries not necessities per Cher / Dramatist Thomas who was contemporary of Shakespeare / Glamis Shakespearean epithet / First US college to divest from apartheid South Africa / People visited by Captain Cook 1769 / Biblical character who lived 912 years

Equity valuation stat / SUN 11-22-15 / Board game popular throughout Africa / Big name in microloans / Site of King Rudolf's imprisonment in fiction / Small body of medical research / Dweller along Wasatch Range / Danced to Xavier Cugat say

1997 Bruce Willis sci-fi film / MON 11-23-15 / Lyft competitor / Repeating film snippet online / Cube maker Rubik / Journalistic profession

Soul singer Adams / TUE 11-24-15 / 3-D image in medical diagnoses / It's thing 1981 hit by Whispers / 1978 Cheech & Chong comedy

Hogwarts fifth-year exams for short / WED 11-25-15 / Style is option clean is not sloganeer / Disney subsidiary / Disappearing conveniences / Latin word shared by mottoes of Yale Tufts

Whale constellation / THU 11-26-15 / Trans-Siberian Railway hub / Fluid-filled sac near joint / Computer cursor advancers / Accommodations along Black Sea / Lead in to boom de ay

Stola woman / FRI 11-27-15 / Halluces / Follower of Able / Supports for gypsum boards / Adventurer in Grouchland in 1999 film / Onetime Ice Cube collaborator informally