Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Challenging (despite the whole middle being a virtual gimme)

THEME:DOCTORS / WITHOUT / BORDERS (34A: With 36- and 40-Across, organization whose name hints at some missing letters in this puzzle) — four "doctors" are found outside (or "without") the "borders" of the puzzle ...

Theme answers:

OREO (9D: Chocolaty goodie) / ZEROS (10D: Round numbers?) (Dr. OZ)
CHEW(37A) / BOOTH(41A) / BRANDO(45A) (Dr. WHO)
SAGAN (50D) / LENO (57D) (Dr. NO)
DROVES (29A) / ROPED (33A) / EDEN (35A) (Dr. DRE)

Word of the Day:"Juno and the Paycock"(11D: "Juno and the Paycock" setting => DUBLIN) —

Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and is highly regarded and often performed in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924. It is set in the working class tenements of Dublin in the early 1920s, during the Irish Civil War period. // It is the second of his "Dublin Trilogy"– the other two being The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). (wikipedia)

• • •

Andrew Ries has this week's Fireball too, and both that puzzle and this were (in parts) the kind of "challenging" that I find more annoying than bracing, with attempts at cleverness in cluing that feel more strained than truly clever. (Note: the Fireball is both harder and better) Here, I think there must have been some urgency to toughen things up in the cluing, since the middle mostly just fills itself in once you get a cross or two (I needed only the crosses MR. T and LOGOS, i.e. three total squares, to fill in all of the "revealer"). I realize now that when talking about the difficulty, I'm talking almost exclusively about the NW. Other parts were toughish, but up there I just had empty space for what felt like a long time. Couldn't make any of the Acrosses or Downs work except UNSHAVEN. I had a sense of the org. that was supposed to go at 2D: Pirate-fighting org., but I also knew it was one of those crap pieces of fill I can never remember because I never see it outside of crosswords and don't know what it stands for (RIAA? Recording ... something something? Yes, Recording Industry Association of America. Why not American Recording Industry Association? Now that's a proper (and apt) acronym, that is).

The "cousin" in the TWIN clue threw me (1D: King's little cousin). RIAA ... was RIAA. ESS is somehow "Un-P.C." despite the fact that The Bloggess is a feminist blogger (a million ughs to every part of that clue) (4D: Non-P.C. add-on?). AMMAN I couldn't get from its back end. TRUE DAT already feels about as dated as BLING or GETTING JIGGY WITH IT, and it just didn't occur to me. WINSOME is a *great* word (14A: Appealing in appearance), but with no crosses, no hope. So, that corner was a nightmare. I might've been less hostile to the puzzle's precious cluing if I hadn't seen this theme before. Twice, in fact, in just the past year. Here's a Fireball contest puzzle from last March (by Dave Sullivan):

[photo courtesy of Diary of a Crossword Fiend]

And here's a Buzzfeed version from just a couple months ago (by Mary Lou Guizzo):

[photo courtesy of New Grids on the Block]

This puzzle has the interesting twist of having the incomplete words (the ones that extend beyond the borders) also be words in their own right, i.e. the grid looks fine as is. REO and EROS are both words on their own. So it appears that there's been some kind of cluing error—what does EROS have to do with [Round numbers?]. It's only when you get the theme (probably) that you understand letters are missing. The other versions of this theme (above) have grids with answers that look like nonsense until you supply the outside-the-borders stuff. Does anyone use the singular COAT TAIL? I should say that I really liked POP-UP STORE (8D: Short-term retail location, nowadays), which feels about as fresh as TRUE DAT ... isn't. I'm not convinced THOUS is a thing. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day: ARGOS (48A: Old Peloponnesian power) —

Argos (/ˈɑrɡɒs, -ɡəs/; Modern Greek: Άργος [ˈarɣos]; Ancient Greek: Ἄργος [árɡos]) is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it has been part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres (7 miles) from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour. A settlement of great antiquity, Argos has been continuously inhabited as at least a substantial village for the past 7,000 years. The city is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network. // A resident of the city of Argos is considered an Argive (pronounced /ˈɑːrɡaɪv/, "AHR-gahyv"). However, this term is most often used to refer to those ancient Greeks generally who assaulted the city of Troy during the Trojan War, many of whom came from Argos. // At a strategic location on the fertile plain of Argolis, Argos was a major stronghold during the Mycenaean era. In classical times Argos was a powerful rival of Sparta for dominance over the Peloponnese, but was eventually shunned by other Greek city-states after remaining neutral during the Greco-Persian Wars. Numerous ancient monuments can be found in the city today, the most famous of which is the Heraion of Argos, though agriculture (particularly citrus production) is the mainstay of the local economy. // In 700 BC there were at least 5,000 people living in the city. In the fourth century BC, the city was home to as many as 30,000 people. (wikipedia)

• • •

I seem to have missed "DREAMGIRLS" both times, in both its stage and movie incarnations. I mean, I am familiar with the musical, vaguely, but I have no memory of its existing in 1981 (for which I can forgive my stuck-in-central-California 11-year-old self), and no memory of its being a movie in 2006. Was Jennifer Hudson in that? Whoa. Yes. Looks like that's the movie she won her Oscar for. Playing a character named EFFIE White. That's cool—the only other EFFIE I know is Perine, Sam Spade's secretary / Girl Friday in "The Maltese Falcon." Anyway, I had to pepper that 1-Across answer with crosses before I realized what I was dealing with. Luckily, the peppering didn't take too long, as DDAY and RONA dropped early, and then ANOINTINGS, and then RONDO, SRS, GET. Oh, and AGINCOURT, which was a gimme (4D: "Henry V" battle setting). After that, it was a pretty normal Friday *except* for everything in and around SHORT O (24A: Plot element?). Never pleased when the answer that gives me fits is one of these literal (letter-al) clues, referring to a long or short vowel, or a silent letter, or a "hard" G or C, etc. It's tricksiness in a can. My principle of "don't put the difficulty in the ugliest part of your grid" applies here. SHORTO (inherently not great) is up there rubbing elbows with a bad element: SSR and WSW and the unpleasant crossing of ASTO and PASTO. By contrast, the SE was cleaner and STURDY-er, but it also far, far easier.

Had to ask a friend what the "Stock" referred to in 9D: Stock to be split? (LOGS). My suspicions were confirmed: it's just a general word meaning "supply." That isn't log-specific enough for my taste. I get that the misdirection here is stock market-oriented, but that bit of wordplay wasn't worth it. It took me forever to get ABSORPTION, despite thinking "paper towels" immediately. Perhaps that's because even now, looking at the word ABSORPTION ... it just looks so awkward and wrong. Zorption. Orption. Something about the way the letters collide in the middle just feels terribly unnatural to both my eye and my mouth. I have no excuse. Just couldn't process it. I have no idea what a HEAT ENGINE is (26D: Combustion contraption), and PHONEY ... looks it. I have trouble believing in the singular DREG. I prefer my EGONs to be Schiele.

I had SLIM for TRIM at first (54A: Slender). No other issues of note.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Yes, I see that the 60A clue mirrors the 1A clue, and no, I don't consider that a theme, or even a mini-theme. Also, been done. As an *actual* theme. Long ago and far away ... (actually not that far: Patrick Blindauer, NY Sun, 2008: DREAM GIRLS, JERSEY BOYS, A FEW GOOD MEN, LITTLE WOMEN)

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Constructor: Jason Flinn

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BEA Benaderet (48A: Actress Benaderet who voiced Betty Rubble) —

Beatrice “Bea” Benaderet (April 4, 1906 – October 13, 1968) was an American actress born in New York City and reared in San Francisco, California. Her major breaks in radio came on The Jack Benny Program and as a member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre repertory company. She appeared in a wide variety of television work, which included a starring role in the 1960s television series Petticoat Junction and Green Acres as Shady Rest Hotel owner Kate Bradley, supporting roles as Blanche Morton in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and as the original voice of Betty Rubble during the first four seasons of The Flintstones, and in The Beverly Hillbillies as Pearl Bodine. She did a great deal of voice work in Warner Bros. animated cartoons of the 1940s and early 1950s, most famously as Granny. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't get and will never get quad stacks. They appear to be a challenge the constructor sets himself (I would say "him/herself," but ... honestly, this is exclusively, tellingly, a guy thing), with little to no regard for the greatness of the 15s themselves, and usually even less regard for the solver's experience. Martin Ashwood-Smith pretty much owns the quadstack as a form, and he's virtually the only person capable of making a tolerable one because he's had So Much Practice. While both stacks today appear to be made up completely of solid, real names and phrases, none of the 15s is what you'd call a winner. Seriously, who is breathless with excitement at the sight of UPPER PALATINATE (17A: Bavarian region that the Danube passes through)? I liked ROSIE THE RIVETER fine (16A: One saying "We can do it!), but it's been done, and recently, *and* I got it with zero crosses—just look:

So if the 15s don't (at least in part) sizzle, what else is left in a quadstack but the death march of tolerable-to-intolerable short crosses. Actually, things could've been worse. I've seen things worse. But it's hard to get worse than SORB (50A: Take up and hold, chemically). Or ENSILES (37D: Stores on a farm). And I won't be the only one who needed water (or possibly something stronger) to wash down MENES and ETATISM (the latter being particularly galling, as it is literally the same thing as STATISM, just spelled ... Frenchly) (later we get STATE ASSISTANCE; my THESIS STATEMENT is that this is all a sad state of affairs). Anyway, it was all doable, but it was never fun. Where is the damn joy in a puzzle like this? There should be joy.

I can't begin to imagine what nursery rhyme TOM is repeated in. I've got "James, James said to his mother / Mother he said, said he / You must never go down to the end of town / If you don't go down with me" running interference in my head—curse you, A.A. Milne. Also, curse you E.A. POE, whom I love as a writer but whom I hate in EAPOE form. Although I shouldn't be too hard on good ole EAPOE, as that answer provided the occasion for my awesomest wrong answer of the day. Faced with ---OE at 37A: Subject of a museum in Richmond, Va., for short, I quickly wrote in ... G.I. JOE! I figure a "real American hero" might live in Va. ... maybe working for the C.I.A now, I don't know. What I do know is G.I. JOE > EAPOE, at least where crossword fill is concerned.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS it looks like "TOM, TOM the Piper's Son" is a nursery rhyme ... in England? This is the first I'm hearing of it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Political Promises"— Clues are common promises that politicians make on the campaign trail. Answers are funny / ironic / undercutting:

Theme answers:

23A: "Unemployment will be a thing of the past! ("... FOR ME IF I'M ELECTED!")
35A: "No new taxes!" ("JUST MORE OF THE OLD ONES")
54A: "I will maintain a strong defense!" ("WHEN OPPONENTS ATTACK ME")
77A: "Deficit spending must stop!" ("DONATE TO MY CAMPAIGN NOW")
93A: "I'll slow this country's spread of drugs!" ("EXPECT CUTS IN MEDICARE")
113A: "Education will be my top priority!" ("I'VE GOT A LOT TO LEARN")

Highlights:

NEOPHYTES (79D: Novices)
"WHO, YOU?" (63D: Question of surprise to a volunteer)
"I'M IT!" (33A: "You're looking at the whole department")

Trouble fill:

IHS (113D: Monogram on Christian crosses)
SAE (56D: Coll. fraternity)

Word of the Day: I.H.S. (113D: Monogram on Christian crosses) —

A Christogram is a monogram or combination of letters that forms an abbreviation for the name of Jesus Christ, traditionally used as a Christian symbol. As in the case of Chrismon, the term Christogram comes from the Latin phrase "Christi Monogramma", meaning "monogram of Christ". // Different types of Christograms are associated with the various traditions of Christianity, e.g. the IHS monogram referring to the Holy Name of Jesus or ΙϹΧϹ referring to Christ. [...] In the Latin-speaking Christianity of medieval Western Europe (and so among Catholics and many Protestants today), the most common Christogram became "IHS" or "IHC", denoting the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, IHΣΟΥΣ, iota-eta-sigma, or ΙΗΣ. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, solvers. Somehow, it is January again, which means it's time for my once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. This year is special, as it will mark the 10th anniversary of Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, and despite my not-infrequent grumblings about less-than-stellar puzzles, I've actually never been so excited to be thinking and writing about crosswords. I have no way of knowing what's coming from the NYT, but the broader world of crosswords looks very bright, and that is sustaining. Whatever happens, this blog will remain an outpost of the Old Internet: no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no whistles and bells. Just the singular, personal voice of someone talking passionately about a topic he loves. As I have said in years past, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

For people who send me actual, honest-to-god (i.e. "snail") mail (I love snail mail!), this year my thank-you cards are "Sibley Backyard Birding Postcards"—each card a different watercolor illustration by ornithologist David Sibley. You could get a Black PHOEBE. A California TOWHEE. Or maybe even a picture of some fabled SCARLET TANAGERS (15). Or give via PayPal and get a thank-you email. That's cool too. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD. As I say in every thank-you card (and email), I'm so grateful for your readership and support. So thanks, not A TAD, but A TON (partial fill! coming in useful!). Now on to the puzzle …

• • •

A cute puzzle for the upcoming (and current, and eternal) political season—one we can all get behind. Throw the bums out, am I right? Let's just not say who, exactly, we think the "bums" are, and we'll all get along swimmingly. I enjoyed the lighthearted cynicism of this theme, and because I had to really work for the front end of the first themer, the "FOR ME" part of "FOR ME, IF I AM ELECTED" came as a sudden, genuine surprise and made me legit-LOL. All the themers are at least marginally funny, and I really like the self-aware closer: "I'VE GOT A LOT TO LEARN." Apt in an age when ignorance seems to be a virtue. Although maybe not apt, as an actual politician would likely not be inclined to acknowledge, let alone confront, their own ignorance. (I used singular "their" there in honor of the 2015 Word of the Year (as determined by the American Dialect Society): the singular "they").

Back to the puzzle—the theme has just six answers, but they're all monsters (i.e. 20+ letters in length), so I don't mind that there aren't more of them. I do wish there were more flashy, interesting, somewhat longer non-theme fill. Lots and lots and lots of the short stuff. It's actually surprising the fill isn't worse, given how much 3-4-letter stuff there is. I only really choked on two answers: SAE (56D: Coll. fraternity) and IHS(113D: Monogram on Christian crosses). In both cases, I had no idea what the letters stood for. With SAE, I can at least guess (Sigma Alpha Epsilon? ... yes, that is correct). With IHS, wow, no. No no. I thought the only cross inscription I had to know was INRI. I've been doing these things How long and never seen IHS??? I should admit that I finished with an error there, one that I tracked down only after minutes of searching. In my defense, MEAT SENSOR is not completely inaccurate. Plus, it has the added virtue of being semi-hilarious.

Are you wondering who John ST. AMOS is? I hope so, because that amuses me. It's just John STAMOS, of "Full House" fame. I've never heard of Fox's "Grandfathered," so I guess I'm not as pop culturally hip as I'd imagined (if a show called "Grandfathered" can be said to be "hip," which seems unlikely). Most of the rest of the grid was pretty familiar. I hesitated over the spelling of Billy ELLIOT (one L two Ts? ... two Ls one T ... ?). I had ENBALM until the impossible SNU forced the change at 44A: Dallas sch. (SMU). Had UNTAME for 96D: Wild (INSANE). Then I had UNSAFE (?). Right next door, I had SPURNS for 95D: Treats vengefully (SPITES). So I guess that whole MEAT SENSOR area was rough for me. This puzzle deserves some kind of "Bad Fill Redemption" medal for cluing "I'M IT" in plausible, believable, snappy way (33A: "You're looking at the whole department"), thus rescuing it from the "Improbable things one might say while playing tag" and "Abbr." categories.

One last thing: just five more days left to enter the Indie 500 Constructor Contest for 2016 (details here). If you are a novice constructor (10 or fewer published puzzles), you are eligible. Winner's puzzle will be used in this year's Indie 500 crossword tournament (Sat. Jun. 4, in Washington, D.C.). Prize also includes cash and, you know, glory, so ... get on it, you up-and-comers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Howard Barkin

Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy, even for Monday

THEME:ERODED (50D: Eaten away, like the first words of 17-, 31-, 48- and 65-Across) — first words of theme answers are progressively smaller stones (so the process of erosion takes you from BOULDER to DUST):

Theme answers:

BOULDER DAM (17A: Colorado River landmark dedicated by F.D.R.)
ROCK LOBSTER (31A: Novelty B-52's song with the lyric "Watch out for that piranha")
PEBBLE BEACH (48A: California locale of several golf U.S. Opens)
DUST JACKET (65A: One covering a big story?)

Important crosswordese:

OPEL (10A: European automaker)
IDES (71A: ___ of March)
Ron ELY (53A: Ron who played Tarzan) (man, when you don't know this guy, and then you get his full name in a grid, it is Confusing ... "Who the hell is this RONELY guy?")

Word of the Day: Ron ELY (53A: Ron who played Tarzan) —

Ronald Pierce "Ron" Ely (born June 2, 1938) is an American actor and novelist born in Hereford, Texas. Ely is best known for having portrayed Tarzan in the 1966 NBC series Tarzan and for playing the lead role in the 1975 film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, solvers. Somehow, it is January again, which means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. This year is special, as it will mark the 10th anniversary of Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, and despite my not-infrequent grumblings about less-than-stellar puzzles, I've actually never been so excited to be thinking and writing about crosswords. I have no way of knowing what's coming from the NYT, but the broader world of crosswords looks very bright, and that is sustaining. Whatever happens, this blog will remain an outpost of the Old Internet: no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no whistles and bells. Just the singular, personal voice of someone talking passionately about a topic he loves. As I have said in years past, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

I always think of Howard Barkin as the Nicest Guy In Crosswords, and I don't think I'm alone in that. He is a speed-solver of the highest order—always in contention at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament—and just a joy to be around. I've known him for the better part of a decade, and when I saw his name on the puzzle I thought, "Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen a Howard puzzle." But it turns out, I've never seen a Howard puzzle; not in the NYT, anyway. Turns out I missed his NYT debut (must've been on vacation). So how delightful that I get to congratulate a legitimately great human being on his first (to me) NYT puzzle, and I get to tell him that I thought the theme was perfect for a Monday. Simple, but original, with colorful themers throughout. Puzzle's got its share of crosswordese, but it never felt irksome, and besides, there are too many cool answers for the shorter stuff to make much of a difference today, one way or the other. A PAPER TRAIL of SMACKERS, a LONESOME bird with a giant WINGSPAN that you KNOW BY NAME (because you invent names for all the birds you see; you're a little odd). . . this puzzle was a delicious little treat. And even if the puzzle were none of the things I've said so far ... it has this, and this makes everything A-OK (OK?):

So, I finished this one in 2:45, which is somewhat fast for me, for a Monday—average is about ten seconds slower, and you wouldn't think those ten seconds would matter much, but the lower those numbers get, the harder it is to get them any lower. So every second is a big deal, and ten seconds is the difference between Medium and Easy-Medium. I've gotta be under 2:40 on Monday for me to call it "Easy." Even at that speed, I am very aware of the answers that "slow" me down. Today, the dreaded 24D: Ignoramus, 4 letters, starting with "D." DODO? DOLT? Nope, it's DOPE, you DOPE. I guessed DOLT. I also forgot the difference between LESSOR and LESSEE, so I had to fix that. The last themer (DUST JACKET) had a "?" clue on it, so even with "-ACKET" in place, I didn't get it at first glance. BEMUSE also eluded me until I had most of the crosses. And then, for reasons I don't quite remember, the ELY / ELOPED part made me sputter. Maybe I just read the ELOPED clue too fast and couldn't process it. The placement of the revealer was odd—not bad, just random-seeming. If daily puzzles had titles (like the Sunday puzzle) then some of this need for revealers would be obviated, and you wouldn't have to shoehorn one in like this (Newsday has titles, as does Fireball, and American Values Club; I like titles—it's your kid, why not give it a name?). But it's actually kind of cool that ERODED runs right through DUST like that. Kind of an emphatic, final statement. Ashes to ashes.

[R.I.P.]

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (normal Tuesday time, but it's 16 wide, so ... must've been easier than normal, by a bit)

THEME: INTERIOR DESIGNER (41A: Elle Decor reader ... or any of the names hidden in 18-, 28-, 52- and 66-Across) —there are *fashion* DESIGNERs in the INTERIOR of every theme answer:

Theme answers:

FARM ANIMALS (18A: Most of the leading characters in "Babe")
SNOW ANGELS (28A: Things kids make in the winter)
RADIO RANGE (52A: Aerial navigation beacon)
ANKLE INJURY (66A: Serious setback for a kicker)

Important crossword vocabulary:

Ernie ELS (10D: 1994 P.G.A. Tour Rookie of the Year)
Alex Rodriguez aka A-ROD (69A: Youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs, familiarly)
STU Ungar (43D: Poker great Ungar)

Word of the Day: RADIO RANGE—

(Merriam-Webster)

• • •

SPECIAL MESSAGEfor the week of January 10-January 17, 2016

Hello, solvers. Somehow, it is January again, which means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. This year is special, as it will mark the 10th anniversary of Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, and despite my not-infrequent grumblings about less-than-stellar puzzles, I've actually never been so excited to be thinking and writing about crosswords. I have no way of knowing what's coming from the NYT, but the broader world of crosswords looks very bright, and that is sustaining. Whatever happens, this blog will remain an outpost of the Old Internet: no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no whistles and bells. Just the singular, personal voice of someone talking passionately about a topic he loves. As I have said in years past, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

Yeow, this one was bumpy. Once I fully grasped what the theme was (well after I completed the puzzle and finished surveying the wreckage), I gained some appreciation for what the puzzle was trying to do. It's a nice repurposing of the phrase INTERIOR DESIGNER, and it can't have been easy to embed that many *well-known* designers names inside two-word phrases. However, there are several problems. Minor: somehow INTERIOR DESIGNER does not seem repurposed enough; that is, we're still talking about designers, and what with Vera WANG getting into home furnishings (maybe she's been there a long time already; I wouldn't know), somehow the distance between the revealer phrase and the concept of a fashion designer isn't stark enough to make the reveal really snap. This is to say that the revealer doesn't have the snappy wow factor that comes when we are forced to really reconceive what a phrase means, to think of it in a completely different way. Yes, we do have to think of it literally (designer's name physically situated in the "interior" of the theme phrase), and that is different, but we stay firmly in the realm of fashion / design. Moving from interior design to fashion design ... just doesn't have pop. There's also the obscurity / strangeness RADIO RANGE (which I would've thought meant how far a radio signal reaches) and the utter green paint* of ANKLE INJURY. I might accept HEAD or NECK or BRAIN INJURY as a stand-alone "body part INJURY" phrase, but all other body parts feel arbitrary. EYE INJURYs are real, but would you really buy EYE INJURY in your puzzle? (hint: you would not).

But ... BUT ... the biggest problem here is the fill, which is painful in many, many places. I winced my way through this one, from beginning to end. From the LO FAT TAE BO of the NORTE to the KOI of the IONIAN ISLA in the south. And those aren't even the nadir. SES!?!? SSTAR??! ITI!?!?!?!?!?!?!? It's an easy Tuesday puzzle; we shouldn't be seeing even one of those answers, let alone all of them. Over and over again, the fill made me shake my head and grimace. You gotta do better than this. And can we please, please, in the name of all that is holy, retire TAE BO. Just put it in a crosswordese retirement community with ERLE Stanley Gardner and Perle MESTA and other fine people who shouldn't be allowed near crosswords any more. I hear Florida's nice. Lastly, [Scalp] does not equal RESELL. It. Does. Not. "Scalp" specifically implies massive mark-up. Also, illegality. The word RESELL has No Such Connotation. This is like cluing HOUSE as [Igloo].

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*green paint (n.)— in crosswords, a two-word phrase that one can imagine using in conversation, but that is too arbitrary to stand on its own as a crossword answer (e.g. SOFT SWEATER, NICE CURTAINS, CHILI STAIN, etc.)

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Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:THREE R'S (39A: Elementary education ... or feature of the last words punned upon in 17-, 29, 49- and 66-Across) —last words in theme answers are supposed to be puns (!?!?!) on words -ending in RR(O)R:

Theme answers:

ROCKY HOAR (17A: Frost mixed with pebbles?)
CLERICAL HEIR (29A: Priest getting what's coming to him?)
REARVIEW MERE (49A: Pond admired from the back porch?)
SHEER TEAR (66A: Chiffon mishap?)

Word of the Day: MERE—

• • •

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

This was the hardest Wednesday I've done in a long, long time. Comically hard for a Wednesday. My time was Friday ... maybe a little north of Friday. What in the world? Several things made this thing much tougher than your average Wednesday fare. Well, two things: structural issues and really, really hard cluing. So, structurally, this puzzle has that horrible quality where non-theme Acrosses are as long as theme Acrosses: in this case, they are right on top of one another (CHINA SHOP + ROCKY HOAR) , and *both* have "?" cluing, so, having done a billion puzzles, I see stacked, long "?" clues, naturally I think "they're both themers." The fact that the *next* long Answer (PEN NAMES) *also* had a "?", and was *also* (like CHINA SHOP) not a themer, made the whole top part seem like some kind of cruel joke: all the long answers have "?" clues, but only half of them are themers somehow? Yuck. In a well-made grid, you'd ditch the "S" in CHINA SHOP (or, rather, you'd ditch that white square, before you even filled the grid). But here, the puzzle is already at 78 words and can't go higher, so we get the awkward non-theme on top of theme thing. Then there's the matter of "What is the theme?" The revealer points to words being punned *on*. So ... it points to words that aren't here? The original words? This is a long, long way to go for a "joke." Further, those aren't "puns" so much as "mispronunciations." Lastly, MERE? As a "pond"? I see that it's "literary," and maybe I've seen it before, like in, I don't know, "Faerie Queene" or something, back in grad school, but holy mackerel.

More problems: SIDE TWO? Yikes. I am so used to A-SIDE SIDE A B-SIDE SIDE B that SIDE TWO looks bonkers (26D: "Hello Goodbye" to "All You Need Is Love" on the Beatles'"Magical Mystery Tour" album). Also, the phrasing on that clue makes it sound like it's cluing the relationship between the two songs (that is, what "Hello Goodbye" is "to""All You Need Is Love"), rather than describing a gamut of songs running *from* one song "to" the other. Rough rough rough. Hard clues everywhere. Some of them are quite good, but man, save something for Friday / Saturday. The ZIT clue, for instance (23A: Bad spot for taking prom pictures). There's not even a "?" on that thing to let you know you're being had. That's at least the third trick clue in the upper third, and that's not counting themers. Then there's non-tricky, simply tough stuff. [PX patron] in three letters? Couldn't that be like a million different military abbrs., in theory? I've never heard of "Grand TIER" (opera house section). Again, WTF? I wrote in LOGE at first, I think. And does this puzzle really have Hitler in it? Really? Really? Hitler? *The* Hitler? I assume ADOLF is not the [First name in infamy] because Coors sucks. (Oh, sorry, that's ADOLPH Coors, not ADOLF ... I guess you're pretty limited if you're gonna *insist* on going with ADOLF in your grid) (it's not like you *need* ADOLF Hitler down there, so I have no idea what the rationale was for including him). In conclusion, this wasn't a Wednesday, and the revealer was just strange, and the puns aren't. Not really. Some of the cluing in this puzzle is quite clever. But this should've been a Thursday, for sure. It's tricky enough, and definitely Challenging enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:THE BEATLES (53A: Group whose songs get spoonerized in 18-, 23-, 32- and 46-Across) — just what it says:

Theme answers:

"TRAY DIPPER" (18A: One who might cause a spill at a cafeteria?)
"PAPER RACK BITER" (23A: Dog attacking a newsstand?)
"SHE'S HEAVING LOAM" (32A: Answer to "What's her job in the garden supply store"?)
"LEIGH SHOVES YOU" (46A: What happens after getting in Vivien's way on a movie set?)

Word of the Day: HALON (47D: Fire-suppressing compound) —

anyofaclassofchemicalcompoundsderivedfromhydrocarbonsbyreplacingoneormorehydrogenatomsbybromineatomsandotherhydrogenatomsbyotherhalogenatoms(chlorine,fluorine,oriodine).Halonsarestablecompoundsthatareusedinfireextinguishers,althoughtheymaycontributetodepletionoftheozonelayer (dictionary.com)

[cruciverb.com database]

• • •

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

OK, it's hard not to laugh a little, or at least smile, at the last two themers, particularly "LEIGH SHOVES YOU," which is the clear winner of the day. Was "She's Leaving Home" a single? The other songs are very, very famous. That one, by comparison ... less so. But there really aren't that many Beatles songs that will spoonerize well, so I think it's fine. There's only one really good Beatles spoonerism that this puzzle missed (or just couldn't accommodate): [Competitive sunbather's goal?] => MAX TAN! You could also go with [Sensation experienced by one solving a corny crossword?] => PUNNY HIGH, [Casino exhortation to actor Marvin?] => "BET IT, LEE!", or [Nickname of Comedian Bruce, back when he was a mob enforcer?] => LENNY PAIN. But I think MAX TAN is the one you could actually get away with. There are some unfortunate aspects to this puzzle. One big problem is the flat, dull revealer—my kingdom for a puzzle title (which obviate the need for space-hogging, cruddy revealers like this). When I first encountered trouble up top with the themers, I just went looking for the revealer clue (usually the last long answer), saw "Group..." and just filled it in instantly. Your revealer should never be that transparent. There's also the issue of this puzzle's less-than-great fill. HALON is of course bananas, but the bigger issues are ICER and DEYS and both ERSandORS and EVO, AINTI, ELY, LAPP, STE. And there's no color in those big banks of Downs. MISUSERS? Side-eye + frowny face there. If you always start explanations with "SO...", you have SOITIS. That's how I'm reading that answer, at any rate.

[the only acceptable clue for BLING in 2016]

Always nice to see crossword constructor Tony ORBACH's dad in the puzzle (41A: Longtime "Law & Order actor), and I really like the misdirection on the RAPPER clue (11D: Drake, e.g.) and the punny (!) clue on BERRA (6D: The catcher in the wry?). Get it? 'Cause he played catcher. And his humor was ... wry? I guess? Sure. I need to go to bed now, as I've been up since 4:15am due to screeching carbon monoxide alarm (malfunctioning battery, said the team of firemen in our house before sunrise). So, yeah, that's all, folks.

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: HARROW (11D: School attended by Churchill) —

Harrow School/ˈhæroʊ/, commonly referred to as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243, but the Harrow School of today was formally founded in 1572 by John Lyon under a Royal Charter of Elizabeth I. Harrow is one of the original ten public schools that were regulated by the Public Schools Act 1868. (wikipedia)

• • •

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

Today: one minute faster than yesterday, three minutes faster than Wednesday. Weird, weird week. What happened in this puzzle? I barely remember. I had a little trouble with 23A: Number of letters (ZIP CODE), because that clue is wicked. I somehow rendered the HOMESTEAD ACT as the COMSTEAD ACT—hmm, let's see ... there was the Comstock Law regulating the traffic in obscenity (which included contraception!). Maybe I was thinking of that. It passed in 1873, which is *close* to 1862, at any rate. But otherwise ... there was virtually no resistance today. Maybe I had a little trouble finishing off SISTERS-IN-LAW (wanted SISTER WIVES ??), and ONLINE POKER (wanted ONLINE ... nothing, actually). First thought for [Eight-footer?] involved octopuses, after which I Could Not Think Of Another 8-Footed Animal. Sigh. But crosses came quickly, so no big deal. The APENNINES clue was very tricky / clever (2D: Boot hills?) (get it? 'cause Italy is shaped like a "boot"?). But again, all surrounding material was so easy that I just waited it out.

First footing in the grid was PERU (1D: Major quinoa exporter). I've weirdly read a number of articles about quinoa, but even if I hadn't, there aren't that many four-letter South American countries. There's one. Is there another? I don't think so. After that, EPEE and RENO were transparent. UNCLOGS SWIG TANS, bang bang bang. I wish this sounded more heroic—it was really pretty rudimentary. The grid is gorgeous, if not exactly contemporary—which is to say, very very Berry. I almost went to college in WALLA WALLA. Well, I applied to college in WALLA WALLA. And got in. I think "almost went" is an exaggeration. But my family's from the NW and Whitman's a good regional liberal arts school. This is all to say that with WA- in place, WALLA WALLA was a gimme, onions or no onions. I'm about to relearn pre-NEOLATIN, i.e. classical Latin. My classicist friend has given me the textbooks. Seriously, I'm starting this week. Self-directed. I had Latin back in grad school, and loved it, but like my old concert t-shirts and my love for the podcast "Serial," it has faded. So I'm pretty excited to get back at it (the nerdiest version of a midlife crisis you're ever apt to see). The RAMS are headed back to L.A. as of this week, where they were located when they were [Merlin Olsen's team] (before he became a TV star on "Little House" and ... other things, I assume).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Sean Dobbin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day: Bobby TROUP (54A: Bobby who wrote "Route 66") —

Robert Wesley"Bobby"Troup Jr. (October 18, 1918 – February 7, 1999) was an American actor, jazz pianist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for writing the popular standard "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66", and for his role as Dr. Joe Early, opposite his real-life wife Julie London's character, in the 1970s US TV series, Emergency! (wikipedia)

• • •

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
There. Hope that helps.

• • •

This one played kind of STAID. It's got PHOTOBOMB (1A: Drop-in shot?) right out front, which is fantastic, but nothing else in the grid is anywhere near that interesting. What we get instead is a mostly (though not always) clean grid designed to please that segment of the solving population that doesn't like sports and doesn't like brand names and doesn't like contemporary pop culture anywhere near their puzzles. It's worth noting that this segment of the solving population is still pretty sizable. I actually thought most of this puzzle was solid, if workmanlike. It's loaded with tough-but-fair clues, many of them playful in a non-irritating way. But there were three areas that gave me a slight case of the grimaces, and so my feeling upon wrapping it up (in the SE) was not a terribly satisfied one—although if I play "LIP SERVICE" in my head, my mood does improve considerably.

Things started very, very badly. I actually took two screenshots documenting each of my first two answers. The first shot is titled "inauspicious," and the second "ReallyInauspicious":

Now MTAPO was a gimme for me, and those few of you who have been reading me for most of the past decade will (maybe) remember why: I completely crashed and burned on that answer once at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (in 2009), and was so traumatized by the event that I brought it up in one of my crossword write-ups. In the tourney, I guessed at an answer for the Philippine peak and it ... wasn't right. If you google [rex parker moapo], you'll see. So now when I see MTAPO (which is almost never, because it's terrible fill), I have some minor PTSD symptoms. It's very, very weird, for me, to open with MTAPO. Fills me with bad memories and dread of what I'm in for. To then cross it with OENO? ... oh, no. Now, eventually, that quadrant ended up cleaning up real nice, to the point where I almost forgave the junk. And then the NE corner was ... fine. Easy. Uneventful.

[gratuitous cat picture]

But then I got into the SW corner. Seemed like no problem—nailed all the long Downs without too much trouble, so it was just a matter of finishing off all that little stuff at the bottom and ... then ... TROU-??? This was the point that I realized the cultural center of gravity for this puzzle was at least two decades before my own. ROB REINER was hard enough to come up with (I was a child). Bobby TROUP?? LOL, no. And you cross TROUP ('60s/'70s) with "S*P*Y*S" (1974)!? Now, despite never having seen "S*P*Y*S" and not even knowing stars were supposed to go in here, I figured out that "P." I'd *heard* of "S*P*Y*S." I have to think some younger (than 46) solvers (and some older) will not have. And since "S*P*Y*S" is a misspelled plural ... I don't know how inferrable it is. I am now imagining an animated movie about pigs called "S*T*Y*S" (PIG IT! ... Summer 2018). Gotta give credit to the "M*A*S*H" misdirection in the clue, though (51D: 1974 film witih three stars in its title)—"M*A*S*H" was four years early, but you'd be forgiven for not remember that. Also, turns out that the two movies have the Same Two Stars:

And who the hell knows what an ERGOMETER is? Does it measure how often you make logical connections. I've heard of ERGONOMIC furniture, but that is the extent of my ergoknowledge. And AD INITIUM, yikes! (55A: At the beginning) I had my face in a Latin textbook just yesterday and that one still took work. AB OVO ... is how I would say "at the beginning" Latinly. It's how the crossword usually says it. AD INFINITUM is of course wrong, but it kept running around my brain anyway. So that SE corner was kind of hard to get into. I knew RENE RUSSO, but she didn't help much. Ironically, Julie TAYMOR was the one who bailed me out (I've never seen her work; just know her name somehow) (45D: Julie with two Tonys for "The Lion King"). Actually, TUBA was the real hero—the first thing I managed to throw down in that largely empty section (48A: It has a solo near the end of "An American in Paris"). Thanks, TUBA.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:"Twisting One's Words"— eight Down answers loop around a black square before continuing down—counterclockwise in the north, clockwise in the south, per the CORIOLIS FORCE (33D: What causes storms to swirl in opposite directions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres)

Theme answers:

"IS THIS THING ON?" (4D: Question asked while tapping a microphone)
HAS THE LIMELIGHT (6D: Experiences fame)
CREME DE MENTHE (13D: Drink for Hercule Poirot)
MANIFEST DESTINY (14D: Spreading belief?)
BATTERY TERMINAL (66D: Plus or minus thing)
DRAMATIZATION (84D: [This is how it might have happened])
ON HANDS AND KNEES (69D: Crawling, say)
LONE STAR STATE (88D: Texas)

Word of the Day: ARYL (126A: Benzene derivative, for one) —

In the context of organic molecules, aryl is any functional group or substituent derived from an aromatic ring, be it phenyl, naphthyl, thienyl, indolyl, etc. (see IUPAC nomenclature). "Aryl" is used for the sake of abbreviation or generalization, and "Ar" is used as a placeholder for the aryl group in chemical structure diagrams. // A simple aryl group is phenyl, C₆H₅; it is derived from benzene. The tolyl group, CH₃C₆H₄, is derived from toluene (methylbenzene). The xylyl group, (CH₃)₂C₆H₃, is derived from xylene (dimethylbenzene), while the naphthyl group, C₁₀H₇, is derived from naphthalene. // Arylation is a chemical process in which an aryl group is attached to a substrate. (wikipedia)

• • •

THANK-YOU MESSAGEfor the week ending January 17, 2016

Hello, solvers. Just wanted to thank everyone who made a financial contribution to the blog this week. It's been a joy to hear from solvers all over the world, some of whom have wonderful solving stories to tell (some of which I'll be sharing), but most of whom simply wanted to offer kind words of appreciation. Thank-you cards are, of course, forthcoming for those of you who sent me snail mail (and emails for everyone else). You are, of course, free to contribute at any time during the year. The mailing address...

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

And the Paypal button...
... live full-time in the sidebar of the blog. But this is the last direct pitch you'll hear from me for 51 weeks. It's been a lovely week. I'm terribly grateful. (PS we got shore bird stamps to go with the bird postcards, so, snail mail people, prepare to get super-birded)

• • •

There is much to admire here. It's an ambitious theme, worthy of the Sunday (so many Sunday themes, of late, are lacking the dazzle a Sunday needs to have). The theme is also dense, and neatly represents its core concept. There is one theme answer that clunks like a clunky thing clunks (HAS THE LIMELIGHT), but 7/8 solid is solid. The primary defect of this puzzle, thematically, is that everyone knows the phrase (if they know it) as the "Coriolis EFFECT":

You can type in all of "coriolis" and Google *still* won't suggest "force." If you look up "coriolis effect," you will see "CORIOLIS FORCE" listed as a synonym. But ... on a puzzle like this, you really want to stick the landing with your revealer phrase, and that landing is not stuck. I'll confess I wasn't sure how spell "Coriolis"—I was like "corona Coriolanus borealis ... I know it's in there somewhere."

The fill in this thing, not surprisingly, gets strained at times. There's just so much theme material here, the rough fill is probably inevitable. In fact, given the thematic constraint, you'd probably have to say the fill came out pretty smooth, all things considered. STPAULMN is so bizarre I almost like it. If the puzzle had gone whole hog with STPAULMNUSA, then I might've stood up and clapped. I don't think just tacking a state abbr. on the end of a city is particularly advisable or otherwise, uh, good (I'm looking at you again, ERIEPA!) (to its credit, ERIE appears today PA-free) but I'd rather have a crazy improvised long answer than the TZE spelling of TSE or whatever ARYL is or LAR (?) or DAVI SDS HUA ARRS EHS REFIS YGOR or several other things in this grid. But I still think this puzzle wins more than it loses. Also, while I don't love SATNAV (105D: GPS, e.g.), I do love that I keep misreading it as "SATAN V" ("Look Who's Satan Now"?).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kathy Wienberg

Relative difficulty: Slightly tougher than usual Monday...

THEME: POETRY IN MOTION (49A: Sublime physical performance ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — the letters in "POETRY" are rearranged (i.e. put IN MOTION) contiguously inside three theme answers:

Theme answers:

"MINORITY REPORT" (20A: 2002 Tom Cruise sci-fi film)
PYROTECHNIC (24A: Related to fireworks)
PARTY PEOPLE (44A: They know how to have a good time)

Word of the Day: OUZO (36A: Greek liqueur) —

Ouzo (Greek: ούζο, IPA: [ˈuzo]) is an anise-flavoured aperitif that is widely consumed in Greece and Cyprus. (wikipedia)

• • •

Is this a debut? It's not bad, as debuts go. Very common theme type, but this incarnation is new to me, and kind of creative. PYROTECHNIC violates the usual policy of breaking the "hidden" (or "circled" or "whatever") part across two words in the themer, but when you're dealing with this many letters, it's probably not easy to find good themers that do that, and PYROTECHNIC is nothing if not, uh, sparkly. Fill is not fancy, but it's polished like mad. I mean, this thing has been well and truly scrubbed. Lots of common short answers, but nothing that makes my face do that thing it does when things are really off. The one part that slowed me down today did involve crosswordese. You just don't see the CZAR spelling much at all anymore (unless it's related to a "Drug CZAR" or some other Americanized phrase like that) (5A: Ivan the Terrible, for one). So since it's clued as your standard Russian leader-type person, I went with TSAR. Easily corrected, of course, but seconds are seconds when it's a Monday, and all that scrambling to fix a mistake cost me. Also had OVERLORD instead of OVERSEER at first (40A: Boss)—another repair required, more time lost. Couldn't remember Jack SPARROW (41D: Fictional pirate who shares his name with a bird) and didn't know at first what was being shot out of the slingshot (STONE), so just getting into that SW corner required more work than I was expecting. Stupidly went with SKID over SLID (64A: Lost traction) (tense of SKID doesn't match clue, hence "stupidly").

I've got "ANT-Man" sitting here on Blu-ray, courtesy of Netflix, so maybe I'll go take a peek at that. Or else I'll just go read. See you all tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. please enjoy this refrigerator magnet that a couple of my readers made for me. Slightly hyperbolic, but basically fair.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Byron Walden

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (both oversized *and* harder than usual)

THEME:GONE FISHING (59A: Classic out-of-office sign ... or what this puzzle's author has done?) — theme answers are all past-tense verbs that follow the pattern [some kind of fish]-ED:

Theme answers:

CARPED ABOUT (19A: Criticized nigglingly)
PERCHED ATOP (21A: Roosted on)
FLOUNDERED AROUND (36A: Struggled to make progress)
SKATED ALONG (56A: Proceeded without trying very hard)

Word of the Day:GINO Torretta, 1992 Heisman Trophy winner(27D) —

Gino Louis Torretta (born August 10, 1970) is a former American college and professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for five seasons. He played college football for the University of Miami, won the Heisman Trophy in 1992, and was a member of the Miami Hurricanes'national championship teams of 1989 and 1991. A seventh-round pick in the 1993 NFL Draft, he was a member of several NFL teams, but never became a regular starter as a pro. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2010. (wikipedia)

• • •

This felt like it took forever, but considering that it's oversized (16x15), my pace managed to come out somewhere within normal range (albeit high-normal). Not sure how that happened, given how I often I hit walls. Never saw the theme—not sure how I got GONE FISHING without noticing it was a revealer, but I did. Without the revealer, those theme-answer phrases all seem a little wobbly. The second words in the phrases (all of which, interestingly, start with "A") had a tendency to make the answers seem not quite stand-alone. Actually, this is only true in the top half, where the phrases end with prepositions that require objects to make full sense. You can flounder around and skate along just fine, but you have to perch atop ... something, and carp about ... something. So up top, the themers felt weak when I first encountered them. I think the revealer ties everything together nicely, though.

What's weirdest to me about this puzzle is how it managed to have so many way-harder-than-Tuesday-level clues / answers and still come out plausibly Tuesday-level (for me). BADPR was a nightmare to parse (9D: Celeb's arrest report, to the celeb, say). I paid no attention to college sports when I was in college, so GINO Torretta (!?!?) is a name I only just learned today. The only GINO I know is Vannelli (I thought quarterback GENO Smith was a Gino, but ... no). Getting to PIECE from [Gun, slangily], not easy. I had OLD BLOOD before I had OLD MONEY (38D: Aristocratic ancestry), but I realize now I was conflating the answer with BLUE BLOOD, so that struggle's all my fault. EMO POP is dodgy as hell and not a convincing answer at all (48D: Fall Out Boy genre). I'll buy EMO, but POP shmop, man. Still, the hardest answer, for my money, was TAX DODGES. That clue was bananas (35D: Sneaky shelters). I just kept wondering "How can a shelter be sneaky?" I was picturing tents that somehow became animated, a la the brooms in "Fantastia," and then crept around the campsite at night. TAX DODGES! Great answer, but yikes on a Tuesday. Luckily SIR GALAHAD KEPT IT REAL and there were enough easy things for me to keep from fluking up the puzzle too bad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Herre Schouwerwou

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME: DRY MARTINI (49A: Cocktail made by combining the ends of 17-, 26- and 38-Across) — theme answers end in GIN, VERMOUTH, and ICE ... there's also a tacked-on answer that's supposed to be a martini-related pun: OLIVER TWIST (60A: Dickens classic ... and, phonetically, two garnishes for a 49-Across)

Theme answers:

EXTRA VIRGIN (17A: Like some top-quality kitchen oil)
RIVER MOUTH (26A: Delta locale)
DIAPER SERVICE (38A: Exchange program for preschoolers?)

Word of the Day:Joe ORTON(29A: "Loot" playwright Joe) —

John Kingsley"Joe"Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967) was an English playwright and author. His public career was short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is sometimes used to refer to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. (wikipedia)

• • •

I drink martinis from time to time, so I like the way this puzzle thinks. I just ... don't like the way this puzzle executes. At all. First of all, there is nothing, nada, zero about this particular set of ingredients (GIN, VERMOUTH, ICE) that makes a *DRY* MARTINI. It's just a martini. Those are the basic ingredients of a martini. A martini martini. There is nothing—I repeat, Nothing—"DRY" about the martini recipe hidden at the ends of the theme answers. "DRY"ness has to do with the amount of vermouth. The less vermouth, the more "DRY" (you use "dry" vermouth, but more vermouth actually means a wetter martini ...) But, again, without ratios to guide us, who knows what kind of martini we're dealing with? So the whole puzzle is a lie, or at least a misrepresentation. It's important to get these things straight. Your ingredients say martini, your revealer says a specific kind of martini. Boo. Second, that OLIVER TWIST pun, yikes. Tacked-on and groan-worthy. Also, it's clued Terribly. "Olive or twist?" is a question, not "two garnishes." The "or" makes the clue flat-out wrong. "Olive or twist" is, grammatically, one garnish. "I can't decide if an olive or twist works best in this drink." See, singular. Then there's the ICE answer. I mean ... All the gin in the world won't make the taste of diaper go away. Was there no other ICE-ending answer? A diaper-free one? (A: there were, and are, millions).

The fill has its moments—the one I liked best was the POP MUSIC / AUTOTUNE juxtaposition. Nice. Apt. Other places, not so great. I was grimacing and kind of listing to one side as I worked through the IEVER / NAE / READE section down there. Nothing says "I give up" quite like that clue on PART V (7D: Fifth installment of a miniseries). And when's the last time anyone drank Sanka, let alone multiple SANKAS (!?!)? A couple answers stunned me, though not in bad ways. I would not have thought MORAINES a common enough word to be in a Wednesday puzzle (23D: Deposits of glacial debris). Can't remember why I know it. Maybe some scary documentary about the impending end of the planet due to ice melt-off? I was also surprised to see AMA, as clued (59A: Online Q&A session). Are there AMAs outside of Reddit? And what does it even stand for? Ask ... Me ... Another? Hang on, I'll look it up... ah, it's Ask Me Anything, and the internet is telling me it's basically *exclusive* to Reddit, so ugh to that. I mean ugh to "online" when you mean "Reddit and only Reddit.""Online" does not equal Reddit, though Reddit is a subset of "Online." This is basically my point about martini / DRY MARTINI, by the way.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:David Phillips

Relative difficulty:Beyond Easy

THEME: SIDE / BARS (35A: With 44-Across, off-the-record discussions ... or 12 answers in this puzzle?)— the two columns running along either SIDE of the grid contain words that must be followed by "BAR" to make sense of their clues:

Theme answers:

SNACK / DIVE / SAND
POWER / OPEN / TACO
TOOL / CLAM / SPACE
MARS / TIKI / SALAD

Word of the Day:Nick FALDO(21D: Golf Channel analyst Nick) —

Sir Nicholas Alexander FaldoMBE (born 18 July 1957) is an English professional golfer on the European Tour, now mainly an on-air golf analyst. A top player of his era, renowned for his single-minded dedication to the game, he was ranked No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks. His 40 professional wins include 30 victories on the European Tour and six major championships: three Open Championships (1987, 1990, 1992) and three Masters (1989, 1990, 1996). // Faldo has since become a television pundit for major golf championships. In 2006, he became the lead golf analyst for CBS Sports. In 2012, Faldo joined the BBC Sport on-air team for coverage of the Open Championship. (wikipedia)

• • •

This took me less than five minutes, and I don't have much interest in spending much more time than that writing it up. It's a theme, and it makes a kind of sense. It doesn't seem NYT-worthy, and it certainly doesn't seem very well conceived, in terms of delivering some kind of pleasurable experience to the solver. At core, there's wordplay, as there often is. SIDE BARS becomes (somewhat) literal, as the left and right sides of the grid have words that must be followed (in your mind) by BAR in order to make sense. SIDE BARS. Fine. But there are three main problems here. One, this is boring. Two, your definition of "side" is pretty arbitrary. Once you move in one column on either side (to 2 and 14, as opposed to just 1 and 15), and you make those Downs "BAR" answer as well, you are stuck in no-man's land, "side"-wise. You've left the true "side" behind, but in every case you've got banks of *three* Downs on the "side" (all of the same length), but you've only decided to "BAR" two of them? This makes your definition of "side" seem particularly arbitrary. Structurally defective, this grid is. One column (along the "side") would make sense. Three would also make sense (since the three columns on either side are *exactly* the same in terms of dimensions). Two ... is ridiculous. Neither here nor there.

Third, and this is the worst part: once you tumble to the gimmick, the grid just fills itself in. Yawn. Here, I'll show you. I pieced together the NW, lucking into PASTA as my wrong answer at 2D: High-carb bite, which gave me the "P" that got me SPLICE that eventually got me Everything. Once SNACK went in, I saw what was going on. Adjacent POWER, same thing. And ... the rest is history. This is what my grid looked like after about a minute:

This is far too much territory to just give away. Far far too much. An absurd amount. The only place I even had to work a tiny bit to get the "SIDE" answers was in the NE, where TOOL bar took me a second. Otherwise ... just fill those answers in. Twitter agrees (well, this random unscientific sampling of three agrees):

And it's not like the rest of the grid was spectacular, fill-wise. This whole puzzle feels like something that should've been kept in your puzzle notebook until you'd figured out exactly how to execute in a way that would be clean, special, memorable. This incarnation merely rises to the level of "it'll do." Not NYT-worthy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:none

Word of the Day:NANETTE Lepore(22D: Fashion designer Lepore) —

Nanette Lepore (born January 1, 1964) is an American fashion designer based in New York City. New York magazine has said that "her gypsy-influenced designs are feminine and youthful. The looks are full of bold colors and bright prints, with ruffles and lace that manage to look good-time-girly but not overly frilly." (wikipedia)

• • •

Finished with facility, aka EASE. Despite the fact that there were a bunch of names I didn't know, and the puzzle seemed to be anchored in a past I never lived in (i.e. that misty time of my ELDERS, when DER ALTE squared off against Chuck COLSON in a rousing game of ONE O'CAT ...), the puzzle proved remarkably tractable. This was largely because the long answers were so easy to get. Got all the long Acrosses with somewhere between zero and three of the answers' first letters. When you can walk across all levels of the grid that easily, there's probably not going to be much that can slow you down. The whole thing felt pretty tepid, for the most part, though I really liked GLUTEN-FREE PASTA, both because it's a modern answer and because the clue was intriguingly inscrutable. [Rice elbows, e.g.] —> "elbows" definitely had me thinking pasta, but ... I was also imagining the elbows of Condoleeza and Jerry and the Owls of Rice U.

Very rare to have a themeless puzzle constructed by a woman. I don't know what the stats are, but I feel like, out of the ~104 themeless puzzles each year, maybe 5 are constructed, in part or in total, by women. I don't know if it's a coincidence (it probably is), but there seemed to be a Lot of women's names in this puzzle: ASTRID, NANETTE, BETSEY, CLARICE, and EVA. Women outnumber men as answers, which ... again, I have no idea how often this actually happens, but I want to say "not often." Wait, no ... looks like there are six men, if you count DANTE (plus DER ALTE, KEL, SWEE PEA (swee' pea was a dude, right?), Lance ITO, and that COLSON guy) (shoulda made that answer COLSON Whitehead, one of whose many virtues is being alive now). Oops, also STAN LEE. So I take back the outnumbering part. But the fact that five women's names *feels* like a lot—the fact that I noticed—tells you something about how low the Expectation Bar has been set. Not much else to say about this one except INATREE will never be not terrible, unless the clue is something involving "K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day:ZOE SALDANA(21D: Player of a green alien in "Guardians of the Galaxy" and a blue alien in "Avatar") —

Zoe Saldana-Perego (born Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario; June 19, 1978),Zoe Saldana (/sælˈdænə/sal-DAN-ə), is an American actress and dancer. Following her performances with the FACES theater group, Saldana made her screen debut in an episode of Law & Order (1999). Her film career began a year later with Center Stage (2000), followed by a role in Crossroads (2002). She first gained some prominence for her role as Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). // Saldana's breakthrough came in 2009 with the roles of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek and Neytiri in James Cameron's Avatar (2009). The latter film received widespread acclaim, and is the highest-grossing film of all time. Saldana continued her successful career with films such as Colombiana (2011), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). (wikipedia)

• • •

Kameron Austin Collins (KAC) is just so good at this. His puzzles somehow manage to be high and low (check out his biweekly themeless crossword, entitled, fittingly ... "HIGH:low"), smooth and crunchy, peanut butter and chocolate, all at once. The puzzle will be too poppy for some; as someone who has never seen "Avatar," or "Game of Thrones," or a single episode of "SVU," it was almost too poppy for me. But it wasn't. That's the point—I'd get into scrapes, but then crosses would get me out. Miss a TV question, get a basic vocab word, or some slang, or a Renaissance-era exploration answer, or PERFIDY, or what have you. I feel like I can rely on KAC's puzzles to dip into all manner of current things (shows, language, topics, etc.) but not relentlessly. The puzzle roams wide, and is full of surprises. It pulses and breathes and darts. Like the sourdough starter I've been cultivating for the past week or so, It's Alive! Not moribund, the way crosswords have a reputation for being—the way they can, on occasion, still be. There's a reason the American Values Club crossword recently made KAC one of its two new constructor hires. Old school craftsmanship + 2016 woke-ness.* One of the best constructors around, and he's only just started. Look out.

"AH, BLISS"—who says that? I feel like it's a phrase I recognize to be real, but that I can't really place? It feels so mannered and strange. Anyway, I found it hard to parse. Didn't help that I tried to run 4- through 6-Down and only got one of them right. BOY ICER JENNY is all kinds of jacked when what's actually called for is LAD ICER SHREK (you might've thought SHREK's "mate" was Fiona, not Donkey, but ... different meaning of "mate" here...). At least I knew enough to ditch those answers and try again. Was pretty sure it was SITZ bath (20A), and the "Z" immediately gave me ZOE SALDANA. Without the "Z," I would've struggled to call up her name; with it, boom. Once I built up the NW from there (which took a little doing), I didn't have any major snags the rest of the way, though I did have some ridiculously good guesses. TESSA off the -SA. ROBB off the RO- (despite never having seen "Game of Thrones"). PERFIDY off the P-. LEDA off the -A. There was some awkward over -ING-ing with the KNELLING / EKING crossing (ing ing ing) in the SW. KNELLING in particular was hard to see, given the plural clue (24D: Passing sounds?). And there are at least three plausible four-letter ST-- answers for 42A: Check. I went with STAY. Then STOP. Ended with STEM. Literally ended, in that that "M" was the last thing in the grid. I think the cluing (-ING!) in this puzzle could've stood to be more playful and clever. But the grid is Tight. All in all, a delightful romp. More more more.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"The phenomenon of being woke is a cultural push to challenge problematic norms, systemic injustices and the overall status quo ..."—Raven Cras

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Francis Heaney and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:"Initial Turn"— 3-letter first words in familiar phrases have their second and third letters switched, creating familiar 3-letter abbreviations (or "initials"), which results in wacky phrases / wacky "?"-cluing:

Theme answers:

SDI AND NANCY (23A: Two things on Ronald Reagan's mind?)
TBA COLA (30A: "We'll tell you what soda we're serving later"?)
DNA SAVAGE (32A: Brute working on the Human Genome Project?)
CPU OF NOODLES (48A: Soggy computer brain?)
CPA GUNS (50A: H&R Block employee's biceps?)
PDA OF PAPER (65A: Origami BlackBerry, e.g.?)
RBI TICKLER (68A: Amusing baseball scoring play?)
GTO MILK (91A: Drink in an old Pontiac?)
BTU? SERIOUSLY? (93A: "An A/C measure? Are you kidding me?")
BYO WONDER (104A: Sign in a restaurant that doesn't serve white bread?)
TMI COOK (108A: Chef who explains in detail how the sausages are made?)
BYU ON CREDIT (117A: Financial aid plan for a school in Provo?)

Word of the Day:Theodore MELFI(60A: Theodore who directed "St. Vincent," 2014) —

Theodore Melfi (Brooklyn,New York, USA) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his feature length debut film St. Vincent starring Bill Murray. (This is the Entirety of his awesomely bullshit-free wikipedia page)

• • •

This one threatened to be brutal, but then mellowed out nicely. I spent something like 4+ minutes on the NW alone, trying to figure out what was going on, putting malls in wrong places and misremembering early American Johns (I went with ROLFE ... that's somebody, right?) and forgetting my scant Hebrew etc. I had to go pick up the NANCY of that first themer and then back slowly up before a. seeing there was some play on the movie title "Sid and Nancy," and then b. figuring out what that play was. Nobody likes three-letter abbrs. much—not in crosswords anyway—but I'd file this under "Crosswordese Repurposing" themes, and as such, it's pretty good. The answers were clever, and somewhat tough to uncover. Tough enough, anyway. The fill gets away from them a bunch. Never cross-ref your unfortunate short stuff (ABA, ATTYS). One WALLA is about as bad as multiple MYOPIAS. The far SW corner is a little sour and the broader SE, same. In the latter's case, all I can think is that someone *really* wanted "MEIN HERR," grid quality be damned. That SAR TIERI STYRO chunk is flat-out painful. IS LOYAL TO is pretty iffy. Imagine IS PRETTY IFFY as fill, and you see what I mean. So I wish this had been cleaner. But the theme is entertaining (and dense!), and the toughness level was decent. Acceptable fare, overall.

I was trying to remember the exact number of the [Quorum for Jewish worship] and I was like "I think it's ten" (correct!) "... but this is six letters ending in 'N', so it must be ELEVEN" (noooooooo!). With every passing day, I am less and less able to get a grip on the current pop culture. I find this alarming, as I am someone who pays attention to the news every day, listens to new music, has some awareness of new books. It's movies and TV that are gonna kill me. My watching habits have just atrophied. What I do watch tends to be movies on TCM. I think this has been a great boon for my life, my mental health, my fitness, but for crosswords, er, not so much. This is all to say that I *got* you, Eliza DUSHKU, despite having only the faintest idea who you are. And I got *you*, NATALIE Dormer, despite having no idea who you are (had NA-, guessed), but MELFI, lord help me no. Needed every cross. And I'll just take y'all's word for it that Collin RAYE is a thing.

[RIP Glenn Frey]

I have occasionally gotten questions about puzzles for kids, and while I do know of some books out there that are pretty decent, I want to direct your attention to the Kickstarter project of Eric Berlin, accomplished author (of "The Puzzling World of Winston Breen" and its sequels), and top-tier (TIER I?) puzzle-maker. He's filling the kid-puzzle void (ages 9+) with "PUZZLE YOUR KIDS," a subscription service that gives you two kid-friendly puzzles a week, and, at least twice a year, a puzzle hunt—a suite of puzzles that fit together to tell a story. The weekly puzzles are word puzzles of all different kinds. He's got samples on the Kickstarter page. If you have a kid or know a kid who likes puzzles, or whom you think you can hook on puzzles (I mean, beats drugs, right? Probably?), then you should definitely subscribe, or buy a gift subscription for a curious kid that you know. Eric's very close to funding this project, so please go put him over the top today. That would be great. Thanks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:CHEW TOY (39A: Puppy amuser ... or the end of the answer to each starred clue) — answer ends are all things dogs put in their mouths for amusement; whether said things actually qualify as "chew toy"s ... I don't know.

Theme answers:

MASKED BALL (17A: *Party with disguises)
FISH STICK (3D: *Food item often dipped in ketchup or tartar sauce)
FUNNY BONE (35D: *Inaptly named part of the elbow)
VELVET ROPE (59A: *Barrier outside a popular nightclub)

Word of the Day:ANDRE Braugher(5D: Actor Braugher of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine") —

Andre Braugher (/ˈbraʊər/; born July 1, 1962) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1998 and again in the 2000 made-for-TV film, Owen Thoreau Jr. on the TNT show Men of a Certain Age, and his Emmy-nominated performance as Captain Ray Holt on the Golden Globe-winning comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm 98% certain Ian Livengood has a dog. A dog that was once a puppy. So I don't know how he figures that a "ball" or a "stick" is a CHEW TOY. "Rope," yes. "Bone," sort of. But the other things are just toys. Things dogs fetch. Things they put in their mouths because it is really their only means of effectively "playing" with any object (what with their tragic lack of opposable thumbs and all...). If your dog is chewing on a stick, there's a good chance he/she will aspirate bark. Not fun, for you or the dog. And if your dog is "chewing" on the ball, two things will happen: that ball will not last long, and it will also get so impossibly slobbery that you will refuse to take it from your dog's mouth, much to your dog's impatience and chagrin (I speak from recent, i.e. this morning, experience). So, to sum up, you can make the argument that all the end-words here are dog toys, but "CHEW TOYs," no. No you can't. Here's a picture of one of my dogs getting petted by a toddler (earlier today)—luckily my dog is super-good-natured and did not use said toddler for a CHEW TOY:

I have mostly given up on the NFL, but I did watch the end of the Pats/Broncos game, just before solving this puzzle, and am now considering whether sports spectatorship, particularly if it involves tense, down-to-the-wire matchups, might not be an effective pre-solving ritual—I shredded this puzzle in just over 2:30. And that despite completely blanking on ANDRE Braugher's name and (worse) the location of Shanghai (!?). I don't feel that great about the crossing of "HERE" in HERESY with "HERE" in ... well, HERE. I feel even less great about crossing THE and THE in that same center section (although I do love "THE NERVE!" as an answer). Mostly this puzzle is clean, harmless fun. But I'm standing by my CHEW TOY purism. Now please enjoy this picture of river ice that looks like my *other* dog in profile:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:DAVID / BOWIE (35D: With 43-Across, singer of the lyric formed by the first parts of 20-, 24-, 40-, 51- and 58-Across) — A tribute puzzle that spells out the opening lyric of his song "Space Oddity" (1969): "GROUND / CONTROL / TO / MAJOR / TOM"

Theme answers:

GROUND OUTS
CONTROL FREAK
TO TASTE
MAJOR PROBLEM
TOMFOOLERY

Word of the Day:ST. LUCIA(4D: Caribbean island whose capital is Castries) —

Saint Lucia ... is a sovereign island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 617 km² (238.23 sq mi) and has a population of 174,000 (2010). Its capital is Castries. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a decent, basic Bowie tribute. That lyric certainly makes a nice cohesive unit, and you've got Bowie's name in the middle there, however awkwardly staggered ... Bowie's work was itself so visionary and strange that I can write off any wonkiness as appropriately thematic, I think. Today, we'll just call it "artistic" or "avant-garde." First-words quote themes aren't the most exciting things in the world, but it's a Tuesday, so why not? Very accessible, and gives Everyone a nice "aha" moment, as well as an opportunity to fill in lots of grid real estate very easily. I wrote in TO and MAJOR and TOM without even reading their respective clues — strangely, this did not seem to help my solving time much. I was a little on the high side, even. I blame ST. LUCIA (4D: Caribbean island whose capital is Castries), for which I drew a complete blank (that clue was zero help). Not getting that meant rounding a corner in either direction (into the N, into the W) got somewhat harder. Later, ILIA slowed me right down, because WTF? (37D: Heroine princess of Mozart's "Idomeneo") I just changed ILIA DKNY to IDEA DUTY and already like it better. And then NUMLOCK, yikes (46D: Key near the upper-right corner of a PC keyboard). Have not seen that. My keyboard has a "caps lock" and that's it. So despite the lyrical giveaway, my time was no better than average for a Tuesday. Slightly worse, actually.

I like the loose, colloquial feel of this grid, all those KINDAs and I HEAR YAs and NO LIEs. I also like that you might carry DAVID / BOWIE music on your IPOD NANO, and that Bowie sang about TABLOIDS in "Space Oddity," at least indirectly ("And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear..."). So the theme is basic, and there are rough patches in the fill, but it's hard for me to be anything but pleased with a Bowie puzzle.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Political commentator Molly / THU 1-7-16 / Mom Dad slangily / Abdullah I made it capital city / Non-PC add-on / TV host who inspired Neil deGrasse Tyson / Juno Paycock setting / Short-term retail location nowadays

Noted kidnapee of 1613 / FRI 1-8-16 / Cosmetician Laszlo / Treaty of Rome creation for short / Hit 1981 Broadway musical made into 2006 film / Krenz last communist leader of East Germany / Combustion contraption / Bogus to Brits

Founder of Egypt's first dynasty / SAT 1-9-16 / Ultimate object to Aristotle / Chemistry concentrations / Org that tracks baby name popularity / Ruler's title from which word chess is derived / Popular cologne that shares its name with literary character / Boy's name repeated in nursery rhyme

Amphibious W.W. II vessel / SUN 1-10-16 / First gemstone mentioned in Bible / Bambino's first word / Ornithologist James / Poke kids book series / Author whose most famous character is introduced as Edward Bear / Ned's bride on Simpsons in 2012 / Object of hunt in Lord of Flies

Novelty B-52s song witih lyric Watch out for that piranha / MON 1-11-16 / Liquidy lump / Former New York senator Alfonse

Aerial navigation beacon / TUE 1-12-16 / Sea Italy Greece separator / Fitness program popularized in 1990s / Elle Decor reader

Old you're going to like us sloganeer / WED 1-13-16 / Equine nibble / Frost mixed with pebbles / Pond admired from back porch / Poison used on TV's Breaking Bad / Type of laptop to printer connection

Bygone Ottoman rulers / THU 1-14-16 / Immortal flower in Paradise Lost / Dog attacking newsstand / Longtime Law order actor / Boyfriend singer to fans / Features of urban ancient Rome

Major quinoa exporter / FRI 1-15-16 / Lincoln signed it into law in 1862 / I forbid to Caesar / Der Judenstaat movement / Rockaria band briefly

Bobby who wrote Route 66 / SAT 1-16-16 / Julie with two Tonys for Lion King / Stress test apparatus / 1974 film with three stars in its name / Sci-fi charcter who takes red pill rather than blue one

Drink for Hercule Poirot / SUN 1-17-16 / 1856 antislavery novel / Castle-breaching explosive / Nickname for only man to play in World Series Super Bowl / Actor Robert of Licence to Kill Goonies / Family name of old TV

Sublime physical performance / MON 1-18-16 / Smallville family / 2002 Tom Cruise sci-fi film / Fictional pirate who shares his name with bird

Sneaky shelters / TUE 1-19-16 / Criticized niggingly / Nearest target for bowler / Bubmling detective of film / Eye layer whose name derives from Latin for grape / Eyed caddishly

Deposits of glacial debris / WED 1-20-16 / Pitch-correcting audio processor / Charles who wrote Peg Woffington / Clearly Different eye care chain / Cross-dressing Streisand character

Golf Channel analyst Nick / THU 1-21-16 / Chocolate treat since 1932 / PC task-switching shortcut / Ford aircraft of 1920s-30s / Outburst accompanying facepalm / It's below C V B N M

Postwar German nickname / FRI 1-22-16 / Viking girl in How to train your Dragon / Chuck who advised Nixon / Winter wear resembling overalls / Old sandlot game

Country singer Collin / SUN 1-24-16 / Quorum for Jewish worship / John of Plymouth Colony / Daily schedule for filming / Theodore who directed St Vincent 2014 / Last king of Spain before Juan Carlos / VW head / Soggy computer brain

Finnish-based telecom / MON 1-25-16 / Barrier outside popular nightclub / shish kebab holders

Heroine princess of Mozart's Idomeneo / TUE 1-26-16 / Compton's state to hip-hoppers / Antidiarrheal brand