Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor:Ron and Nancy Byron

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:FIGUREHEAD (55A: Carved decoration on a ship's prow ... or a hint to the first word of 17-, 25-, 37- and 45-Across) — first words of themers can *precede* (so, come before, or at the "head" of) "figure" in a common phrase:

Theme answers:

FULL NELSON (17A: Banned wrestling hold)
ACTION PLAN (25A: Aid in accomplishing a goal)
STICK TO YOUR GUNS (37A: "Don't give up the fight!")
GO FOR BROKE (45A: Risk everything)

Word of the Day:SADA Thompson(30A: Actress Thompson of "Family") —

Sada Carolyn Thompson (September 27, 1927 – May 4, 2011) was an American stage, film, and television actress. [...] Her portrayal of matriarch Kate Lawrence on Family won her the 1978 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and garnered her three nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not sure I'm getting the use of "head" here. In the phrase "go figure," I don't think of "go" as the "head" of "figure." A word that simply precedes another word is not the latter word's "head." A prefix could be considered a head, or the first letter of a word (a common cluing wordplay trick). So we're stretching the meaning of "head" here a little bit. But the "___ FIGURE" gimmick is consistent, even if the resulting "___ FIGURE" phrases are adjective, noun, noun, verb phrase. Still, all of them work. I'm more familiar with "plans of action" than ACTION PLAN(s), but again ... theme, technically works. The fill, however, was torturous. I would like to put it more nicely, but I don't have it in me. Dreadful, dreary, dated, and inexplicably bad. Worse, unnecessarily bad. Will or Joel should've quietly cleaned this mess up. A grid with this shape, with this many little corners, with this theme density, should be easy to fill at least moderately cleanly. There is no excuse for an EELY SNELL on a Tuesday, or any day. On and on and on the subpar fill goes. In case you can't tell, I ain't FER it. I'm agin it. Bobby DOERR, DON HO, and SADA Thompson probably think it's grand, but hoo boy no. No no no. AT NO no. Just no.

["Don't give up the fight!"]

Puzzle was pretty dang easy, except for RELIC, the clue for which was oddly hard (6D: Linotype machine, nowadays). I misspelled DORIA as DOREA, so that probably didn't help there. Also struggled to get PETR, as having Czech clued via French made my brain just balk. I should add: DORIA, PETR ... these are tolerable answers in a demanding, theme-dense, or otherwise sparkly grid. In *this* grid, they're just so much dreck. I'll resist the urge to spout all the junk. In order to resist, I need to get off the computer. Luckily, there is bread baking downstairs, so pulling myself away from the computer will not be hard. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Kyle Mahowald

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:cold people puns— famous names turned into winter-related puns (I think)

Theme answers:

EDWARD SNOWED IN (20A: Informant trapped after an icy storm?)
JODIE FROSTER (26A: Actress with an icy stare?)
CURT CHILLING (44A: Pitcher of ice?)
BARRY COLD WATER (52A: Next Republican nominee after Dwight D. Ice in Shower left office?)

Word of the Day:"VEEP"(16A: HBO hit starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus) —

Veep is an American HBO political comedy television series, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, set in the office of Selina Meyer, a fictional Vice President, and subsequent President, of the United States. The series was created by Armando Iannucci, who created the British political comedy series The Thick of It, and also wrote and directed that series' film spin-off In the Loop (2009), all of which feature the same writing staff. [...] Veep has received critical acclaim and won several major awards. It has been nominated four years in a row for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, winning the award for its fourth season. Its second season won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Comedy Series, and its third season won the TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy. Louis-Dreyfus has won four consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two Critics' Choice Television Awards and one Television Critics Association Award for her performance. (wikipedia)

• • •

I imagine the constructor first noticed the Snowden / "SNOWED IN" pun, then tried to find way to build a puzzle around it, and this is the result. EDWARD SNOWED IN is interesting. It's kind of funny. The others are less so, on both counts. JODIE FROSTER doesn't even make sense. What's a "froster?" Someone who frosts cakes? No, that's not in keeping with the winter theme. Seriously, when would you use "froster" in relation to cold weather? Or at all? Weren't there better answers out there? No EDDIE BLIZZARD (or WOLF BLIZZARD, I guess, but that's pretty awful)? FRIGID BARDOT? SLEET ULRICH? CLAMMY DAVIS, JR. (I guess the puns are all last names, so those wouldn't be consistent)? LASSE HAILSTORM? JAKE CHILLING ALL? BUSTA RIMES? AARON BRRR? Pick one. There are probably (many) more. I don't think having some form of "ice" in all the clues works either, as "icy storms" rarely "snow" anyone "in." Also, Dwight D. Ice in Shower is so bad it's not even groanworthy. It's grotesque. This puzzle wants desperately to be cute, but hits the mark only with its first theme answer. After that, the whole thing comes apart quite a bit.

I blazed through the non-theme parts of this—cluing seemed very Monday—but I couldn't even understand the theme for the longest time. JODIE FROSTER took forever, even with most of the crosses, for reasons largely explained above (i.e. WTF?). What I like about the puzzle is that the longer Downs seem to have been chosen with care, and with an eye to novelty. Well, most of them, at any rate. THE REAL ME andNEW IN TOWN are both nice, and BAD WORD and PHRYGIA (41D: Realm of King Midas), bring a colloquial and classical quality to the grid, respectively. This is important, because the rest of the fill is kind of subpar (With so much 3- and 4-letter stuff, this isn't terribly surprising). I couldn't make any sense of EXOD. for way too long (22D: Gen. follower) (abbr. of "Exodus," in case that wasn't yet clear). Mostly the fill isn't cringeworthy so much as it's dull—of the OLLA / ATAD / APSE variety. Puzzle skewed old, but not painfully. I suspect plenty of people will find the icy puns enjoyable. I am just not one of those people. Probably because of my icy, icy heart. Oh well.

Phoebe Snow (10)
Edgar Winter (11)
Robert Frost (11)
Vanilla Ice (10)

There's a weak theme I just made up. It's all yours. You're welcome.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:"I"s— Black squares form two large "I"s, which act as the letter "I" in the Across answers that run into them and extend away from them.

Word of the Day:LOTHAR(47D: Mandrake the Magician's sidekick) —

Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom).Mandrake began publication on June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip is distributed by King Features Syndicate. [...] Lothar is Mandrake's best friend and crimefighting companion. Mandrake first met Lothar during his travels in Africa. Lothar was "Prince of the Seven Nations", a mighty federation of jungle tribes; but forbore to become king and instead followed Mandrake on his world travels. Lothar is often referred to as "the strongest man in the world", with the exception of Hojo — Mandrake's chef and secret chief of Inter Intel. Lothar is invulnerable to any weapon forged by man, impervious to heat, cold and possesses the stamina of a thousand men. He also cannot be harmed by magic directly (fire bolts, force bolts, spell incantations). He can lift an elephant by one hand easily. // One of the first African crimefighting heroes ever to appear in comics, Lothar made his first appearance alongside Mandrake in 1934 in the inaugural daily strip. In the beginning, Lothar spoke poor English and wore a fez, short pants, and a leopard skin. In a 1935 work by King Features Syndicate, Lothar is referred to as Mandrake's "giant black slave." When artist Fred Fredericks took over in 1965, Lothar spoke correct English and his clothing changed, although he often wore shirts with leopard-skin patterns. (wikipedia)

• • •

An old gimmick, and one that was very easy to pick up. I've seen this done with other letters ... I seem to recall a Sunday-sized puzzle with a giant "H" in it. I'm sure the black-squares-as-letters thing has been done many other ways as well. Is there a phrase or concept or anything that is being illustrated here? The "I"s have it? Seeing "I" to "I"? Once you pick up the gimmick, then it's just a matter of solving the puzzle as if it were a themeless, with the letter "I" provided for you a hell of a bunch of times. That's it. Seems a bit cheap to use the "I"s as first-person pronouns twice. As for the fill, it's pretty gunky, though perhaps not as bad as I'd expected. I don't understand why (some) constructors don't take the time to learn to polish their grids, but the bigger mystery is why the substandardly filled puzzles keep getting accepted and run without the "fixing" they need. There was "fixing" in the cluing, of course. There always is (see the MAZ clue, for instance—no way that's the constructor's, for a host of reasons) (9D: ___ Kanata, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" character) (original clue was probably something like [1960 Pirates World Series hero, familiarly]). But -ICAL and -ENCE in the same grid? That's criminal (actually, either one of those suffixes on its own is pretty bad). ERST TOG CRU? WHO'S EFTS? SRI EEO? On and on. The central crossing wants to pass itself off as winky and self-referential, as opposed to just two more tired bits of fill. Sure, why not? Knock yourself out. But overall this puzzle has a general concept with no specific sense of purpose (i.e. it's just "I"s ... just ... 'cause), and the fill is a problem.

[ridiculously good]

I didn't have much trouble with this one, though I did have to work a little due to a few mistakes, most notably TO-DO for TOUT (14D: Ballyhoo) and IODIZING for IONIZING (17A: Like some radiation). I don't think repetition of little words matters much, but three ITs, two of them on top of one another (IN ITSELF, IGNORE IT), seems a little much. Kate BEATON is a wonderful, popular comics artist—she has been all over the NYT "Graphic Books" bestseller list for her collections "Hark, A Vagrant" and "Step Aside, Pops" (with both books reaching #1). Her work is amazing and I have at least two t-shirts and one refrigerator magnet designed by her and you should definitely check out her smart and hilarious comic-strip takes on literature and history. Like, now. This is all to say that seeing BEAT ON clued as 49D: Pummel was very, very disappointing.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty:Challenging

THEME:composers inside composers— composers whose names end with the names of other composers—so one composer clued as two:

Theme answers:

17. & 18A: Italian-born composer (MONTEVERDI) (i.e. MONTEVERDI *and* VERDI)
34. & 35A: German-born composer (OFFENBACH) (i.e. OFFENBACH *and* BACH)
59. & 60A: Austrian-born composer (SCHOENBERG) (i.e. SCHOENBERG *and* BERG)

Word of the Day:ELISHA Gray(46D: Engineer Gray who co-founded Western Electric) —

Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some recent authors have argued that Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him, although Bell had been using liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously. Bell's telephone patent was held up in numerous court decisions. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was way outside of my comfort zone, so I ended up with a time well north of my normal *Saturday* time, nowhere close to my average Friday time. To be honest, I only know half these composers. I mean, OFFENBACH and SCHOENBERG and BERG are names that I might recognize as composers if you schoewed them to me, but ... I couldn't name anything by them. Also, I honestly didn't understand the theme for the longest time, and the cluing seemed both trivial and hard. Whole NW was a wash for me the first time around. Only got a toe-hold in this thing because of COLA / COKE. After that, the NE came together pretty quickly, but that helped hardly at all.

Eventually worked up and over to the VERDI part, but ... no idea about the first part. Couldn't remember VERDI's first name, then sort of thought it was "Giuseppe" (which it is), but that didn't fit, and since FIAT (1A: Order) and ENNIS (13A: Town near Ireland's Shannon airport) and TIT (4D: Short-beaked bird) and (obviously) FEMBOT (1D: "Austin Powers" villain) were (at that point) beyond me, I was just stuck. Had to start over completely in the SW, with (I think) LITE EEKS ERIK SANS. That got me the symmetrical counterpart to the part I'd filled in up top, but again, no further. All themers, and both NW and SE, still mostly empty.

Please note that by this point I had managed to ditch the incorrect DR. EVIL but had decided that ORFF was one of the composers, and maybe the center themer was ORFF 'N' BACH (?). Oy. Also, note the BAA (as in "BAA BAA, black sheep"). I have never thought of "BYE" as a "cry," so ... yeah. I was just screwed. What are the roman numerals of Pope Benedict? Not me? Did you know POPE FRANCIS fits in that space? It does. Pulling teeth, I tell you. Pretty sure that TIE RODS was the answer that finally got things going in the NW. The SE was definitely the last thing to fall. GORSE ELISHA TESS ANNALEE ... I couldn't do anything with this puzzle. I think the concept is cute, but between my not really knowing so many of the names, and some occasionally icky answers like SRIS and OBLADI, and the pretentious faux-Latin plural SYLLABI (41A: Class lists?) (I am a longtime hardliner on this issue: #TeamSyllabuses), I just didn't enjoy myself much. Today, though, I think the problems are mostly mine, not the puzzle's. My struggle with composer names is especially ironic tonight, as I literally just got home from ... the opera. The first opera I've ever attended in my life. The director (Warren Jones) is a reader of this blog and offered me tickets to opening night and I thought "Sure, why not?" Got to see Menotti's "The Telephone" followed by Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti"—really wonderful, funny mid-century stuff ... but none of it helped me solve this puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:James Mulhern

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day:SHIH-Poo(58D: ___-poo (designer dog)) —

The Shih-poo is a small domestic dog. It is a crossbreed between a Poodle and a Shih Tzu. The name Shih-poo is a portmanteau of the two breed names. // Legitimate breed associations such as the AKC, the UKC, and the CKC, do not recognize the Shih-poo, or any other designer cross, as a breed in its own right. However, some major kennel clubs do accept registration of crossbreed and mixed-breed dogs for performance events such as agility and obedience. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty much a textbook Saturday. Normal Saturday solving time, normal (satisfactory) Saturday fill, grid shape, etc. At 72 words (the max), it would've been great if the puzzle could've come in a little cleaner and sparklier. PER SE over ALETA (16A: Longtime comic strip queen) made me kinda sad, as did ESE in a puzzle with MALTESE. But, as I say, it's fine. Just fine. It feels slightly dated, in a specifically "I was an '80s/'90s adolescent" kind of way. Maybe when you were a kid you had a FIXIE BIKE (a concept I grasp, but not a term I ever used or ever hear, despite having one as a kid), and then as a teen in the '80s maybe you start watching "MIAMI VICE" and "Remington Steele" (starring Pierce BROSNAN), and then OFF YOU GO to college where you get into the music of Kurt COBAIN, buying "Nevermind" on USED CD because, well, you're a poor college student and Napster doesn't exist yet.

[EPIDERMIS]

There were several proper noun gimmes today, which was lucky for me, because I really needed them. Thought 1A: Lives the dream was ___S IT ALL, but IDI helped me put the "IT" in the right place, and thus really got things moving in the NW. Erich Maria REMARQUE, gimme. Never read "All Quiet," but I own a vintage paperback copy, and his name is just really memorable. Kendrick LAMAR (18A: Hip-hop artist Kendrick ___) just won a bunch of Grammys last week, I think (I find that particular awards show, and ... well, most awards shows, actually ... unbearable). His "To Pimp a Butterfly" was a huge critical and commercial hit last year. You'll see him a lot in the future. Not as much as ADELE, but more and more, for sure.

I have heard of internet addiction, but not INFOMANIA (45A: Facebook-checking fixation, e.g.). Seems to have some currency, but as with many MANIA-suffixed words, it's hard to tell if it's supposed to be bad or awesome (see WrestleMania, Obamamania, etc.). Is the "sack" in [Salt sack?] supposed to be a bed? Like ... a sailor (salt) sleeps in a BERTH? Might've been a little too cute for me. But again, overall, just fine. My only real problems were EAR PIECE for EAR PHONE (still think EAR PIECE is better answer) (14D: Bit of Secret Service attire), and SHAR-poo for the damn dog. At one point, I seriously (seriously) considered SHIT-poo. Rhymes with SHIH tzu better than SHIH-poo does, that's for sure. Plus the double-scatological angle just felt right.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:"Awesome!"— homophone puzzle where "aw" sound stays the same but meanings / spellings of the words containing that sound change (via wackytastic "?" cluing). In every case, spelling change is from "O" to ... something else:

Theme answers:

BAWDY BUILDING (23A: Burlesque theater?)
POPCORN PAUPERS (31A: Moviegoers who can't afford concession stand snacks?)
NAUGHTY PINE (42A: Bad kid's Christmas tree?)
SHUTTLE CAULK (61A: Sealant used by NASA?)
STALK FOOTAGE (67A: B-roll from "Splendor in the Grass"?)
PAWED PEOPLE (87A: Owners of large enthusiastic dogs?)
CHALK FULL O' NUTS (92A: Writing implement from Planters?)
THE "MAUDE" SQUAD (106A: Supporting actors in a Bea Arthur sitcom?)

Word of the Day:HELOISE(113A: Legendary lover of Abelard) —

Héloïse (/ˈɛloʊ.iːz/ or /ˈhɛloʊ.iːz/; French: [e.lɔ.iz]; 1090?/1100–1?– 16 May 1164) was a French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess, best known for her love affair and correspondence with Peter Abélard. [...] Beyond the love story they tell, Héloïse's letters contribute one of the earliest, most radical feminist philosophies of not only the 12th century, but even today. Héloïse plainly writes of her disdain for marriage and even feminine life, stating in her first letter, “I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond.”^[18] She is also later quoted with her famous lines, “What man, bent on sacred or philosophical thoughts, could endure the crying of children…? And what woman will be able to bear the constant filth and squalor of babies?" (wikipedia)

• • •

Shakespearian character: O-HEL--. Go.

That is a weird little pattern thingie that I never would have noticed were it not for today's puzzle, and my totally botching 21A: Shakespeare character who says "Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night" (OPHELIA) because I was staring at that precise pattern and only one character sprang to mind: OTHELLO. Weirder still—OTHELLO is in this damned puzzle. Just ... later on (69D: Game with a 64-square board). This little bit of Shakespearean weirdness will be far more memorable to me than this theme, which seems a little Sub-Berry in its ambition and execution. Underdone. PINKBERRY? If you're being corny, yes. It's a simple sound change. These can be OK if they result in killer answers, but these are just adequate, and some of the clues go beyond wacky to just weird and implausible? Hard to imagine a Christmas tree being "bad." Not hard to imagine a car air freshener fragrance designed to make you horny. Do you see what I mean? The cluing just wasn't daring enough, funny enough, interesting enough. And what the hell are "popcorn poppers?" Seriously. My popper knowledge ends at "jalapeño." (LOL I just realized that "popcorn poppers" are simply the machines that pop the popcorn.... yes. That makes sense).

I just went away to have dinner and now I'm back and remember virtually nothing about this puzzle (beyond the theme), which isn't a great sign. Was there actual grass in "Splendor in the Grass?" I think "Children of the Corn" (or even "Field of Dreams") is a far, far, far better movie reference for "STALK FOOTAGE." Because CLOUDSCAPE clue had a "?" on the end, I thought it was a themer at first. "Clod ... something? What?" (46D: Heavenly painting?). I had EMITTED instead of EFFUSED (88D: Gave off), and TORN OUT instead of TORN OFF (43D: Roughly removed). Not much more to add here. A pleasant diversion of a puzzle, but not very very Berry.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty:Medium (i.e. normal Monday puzzle) (3:00)

THEME:DOWN-AND-DIRTY (22D: Done in a quick but effective manner ... or like the answers to the three starred clues?) — themers run Down and are (in various senses of the word) "Dirty":

Theme answers:

CHIMNEY SWEEP (4D: *One as "lucky as lucky can be," in "Mary Poppins")
SUCKER PUNCH (24D: *Sudden, unprovoked slug)
X-RATED MOVIE (9D: *Showing at an adult film theater)

Word of the Day:P. DIDDY(48D: Onetime stage name for Sean Combs) —

Sean John Combs (born November 4, 1969), currently known as Puff Daddy or Puffy, and formerly known as Diddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. Combs was born in Harlem and grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. He worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding Bad Boy Records in 1993. He released his debut album No Way Out in 1997, which has been certified seven times platinum and was followed by successful albums such as Forever (1999), The Saga Continues... (2001) and Press Play (2006). In 2009 Combs formed the musical group Diddy – Dirty Money and released the critically well-reviewed and commercially successful album Last Train to Paris (2010). (wikipedia)

• • •

Such a nice little theme, thus such a tragedy that the theme cluing has to go and step all over it. First, DOWN-AND-DIRTY isn't clued right. There seems to be some conflation with "quick-and-dirty.""DOWN-AND-DIRTY" conveys neither speed nor expediency. Look it up. No, don't bother. I did it for you:

adj.Informal
1. Intentlyandfiercelycompetitive,oftenunscrupulouslyso:a down-and-dirtypoliticalcampaign.
2. Bawdy;lewd.

Why not have an accurate clue? Take the time to be accurate? There is no reason to just be wildly wrong about what the term actually means. Also, why the non-lyrically-supported clue on CHIMNEY SWEEP. "Chim, chimney/ Chim, chimney / Chim, chim, cher-ee / A sweep is as lucky / As lucky can be." A "sweep." It's a "sweep." Not a "CHIMNEY SWEEP." If you are going to use the lyrics to clue the term, then the lyrics oughta bear you out. I know that "sweep" is short for CHIMNEY SWEEP and I don't care. Precision. Also, do "adult film theaters" still exist? Porn is ubiquitous, but are "adult film theaters" even semi-common establishments any more. That clue's not wrong, but definitely needs updating. All this cluing inaccuracy / laziness is galling when the theme is so nice. It's nice. Take the time. Do it right.

Fill is not good but not bad. Except ASKA, which is in fact bad (not that fond of NETFUL either). Astonishing that FLUES clue didn't cross-reference the CHIMNEY SWEEP clue. I mean, I'm not usually a big fan of the cross-referencing, but those two answers are crying out to each other. I am kind of hung up on CLV right now, imagining that (barring a complete teardown) I'd've gone with CLE. I asked Twitter what they best possible CL_ answer was, and sportswriter Diane Firstman shot back with CLA (Meredith), mostly as a joke, but I looked it up and holy $&%^ that is an actual (former) baseball player's actual (nick) name (CLA = short for "Claiborne," his middle name). Better yet, his real, non-nickname, his first name, is OLISE. If only he had been a major, or even minor star, we could've mined his name(s) for year(s). His early career was incredibly promising. Consider: "He did not surrender a run in 28 consecutive appearances, a span of 33²⁄₃ innings from July 18 through September 12 [2006]. That streak set a franchise record, eclipsing Randy Jones' 30-inning scoreless streak. The 33²⁄₃ scoreless innings also tied Orel Hershiser's mark in 1984 for the second-longest streak by a rookie since 1970. It now stands as the second-longest scoreless stretch by a rookie relief pitcher in the live-ball era (1920)" (wikipedia). Alas.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty:Wednesday (i.e. Challenging *for a Tuesday*)

THEME:LAYER / CAKES (13D: With 51-Down, description of the circled answers?) — types of cakes are "layered" atop one another at three points in the puzzle

Theme answers:

CHEESE (1A) on MARBLE (14A)
CRUMB (34A) on PATTY (42A) on SHEET (45A)
CARROT (70A) on SPONGE (73A)

Word of the Day:HAI(2D: Beijing's river basin) —

The Hai River (Chinese: 海河; pinyin: Hǎi Hé; literally: "Sea River"), previously called Bai He (Chinese: 白河; pinyin: Bái Hé; literally "White River"; Pei Ho in Western sources), is a river in the People's Republic of China which flows through Beijing and Tianjin before emptying into the Yellow Sea at the Bohai Sea. [...] Hai He is 1,329 kilometres (826 mi) long measured from the longest tributary. However, the Hai He is only around 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Tianjin to its estuary. Its basin has an area of approximately 319,000 km² (123,000 sq mi). Its annual flow is only half that of the Yellow River, or one-thirtieth that of the Yangtze River. (wikipedia)

• • •

A nifty little theme idea, but I have no idea why this played on a Tuesday. I was a full minute (i.e. a lifetime, over my normal Tuesday time). I almost never encounter answers I have no familiarity with on Tuesdays, and today there were a good handful. Plus the cluing was just vague enough to make me have to work harder than normal to finish this. Not surprisingly, the iffiest parts of the grid are right through the LAYER / CAKES. Everything is defensible, but much of it is sub-smooth. Not surprisingly, many of my struggles were right around the "layers." Didn't know HAI, but didn't struggle much there either, as all the surrounding stuff was easy enough, but PCPS kind of killed me, as I don't really know that term. Physician ... something something? *Oh*, that's short for Primary Care Physician??? Wow. Did not know that. NYT has never used this clue for PCPS. They use plural of the drug PCP, which is of course worse. The moral here, I think, is that PCPS is not great fill. Avoid. Anyway, between that and LORELEI (who what what?) and "outie or INNIE?" and a state nickname I've never heard of (LITTLE RHODY?) and NO SOAP (!?) (I had NO SALE) and BUS MAPS (which is a fine answer, but hard to get at from simple clue, 58A: Aids for some urban commuters), I was solidly into a normal Wednesday solving time. The puzzle felt old in its frame of reference (highly so)—both old-fashioned in fill (so much Latin... and other foreignisms ... and EERO and EOCENE etc.) and older-skewing in its cultural frame of reference (NO SOAP!)—but it was still mostly a pleasure to solve.

Oh, I left out the OTO-for-UTE mistake I made at the heart of the puzzle. Honestly, this is a no-brainer Wednesday, concept and all. Dumas title? Black TULIP? Loved the clue on KLEPTOMANIA (11D: Problem with lifting?), but it was definitely another element that added time. Oh well. This is a pleasant, admirable Wednesday puzzle. I'll just leave it at that.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME:SUBMERGES (37A: Goes underwater ... or a hint to the answers on the perimeter of this puzzle) — answers on the perimeter are real words that don't fit the clue unless you mentally supply the prefix "SUB-"

Theme answers:

LIME, URBAN, DUES, STANCE, MARINE, SIDE, TRACT, TEXT, SCRIPT, LETTER

Word of the Day:BOURRÉE(32A: Popular Bach piece for the lute) —

Bourrée in E minor is a popular lute piece, the fifth movement from Suite in E minor for Lute, BWV 996 (BC L166) written by Johann Sebastian Bach. This piece is arguably one of the most famous pieces among guitarists. // A bourrée was a type of dance that originated in France with quick duple meter and an upbeat. Though the bourrée was popular as a social dance and shown in theatrical ballets during the reign of Louis XIV of France, the Bourrée in E minor was not intended for dancing. Nonetheless, some of the elements of the dance are incorporated in the piece. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was pretty painful. I don't think I even understand the theme. That is, I don't get the "merges" part of SUBMERGES. My friend Jesse just suggested "You merge sub with the word in the grid, I guess." Uh ... what? Is that right? I thought maybe (Maybe) the idea was that the SUB edges MERGE into each other ... at the corners ... but that doesn't make sense either, so I guess Jesse's right? The idea of mentally supplying a prefix is being framed as a "merge"? Dreadful. That revealer is borderline incoherent. And why are the answers on the margins, then? What does that have to do with "SUBMERGES"? Baffling. And the fill, man oh man. ENBANC over BOURRÉE pretty much says it all, but LSTS crossing ELIHU says a little more, and then EMAC (!) ESSENES STAGG ouch ouch ouch. Ouch. 2/3 of the parts of M.I.T. in abbrev. form ... I don't understand this puzzle or what it thinks it's doing or what its idea of "entertainment" is. Honestly, one of the grid doctors or Shortz himself had an Obligation to tear out that entire NE corner, from BOURRÉE up (at a minimum) and redo it. 'Cause it's a disaster as is.

Couldn't pick a CITRON out of a line-up. Looks like ENRAPT just means ... RAPT (47D: Totally absorbed), so that was weird. Had LEOTARD instead of UNITARD (11D: Acrobat's wear). Had WAWA / LISA for ECHO / EMAC, and was happier. I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on the very existence of BOURRÉE in this puzzle. Look at that clue. It's got "popular" and "lute" in it. Those words have nothing to do with each other. They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near each other. Popular ... among lutists? Lutenists or whatever they're called? Louts? We are badly, perhaps fatally, stretching the meaning of the word "popular" here. And to have the obscure Frenchism sitting under ENBANC, that's a pont trop loin, mes amis. I asked some of my friends to say nice things about this puzzle, since I appear to be incapable. Lena: "it's [an] impressively open grid for a weds. and honestly I think the theme is neat" (though when pressed she agreed that the revealer didn't make much sense). Patrick: "I liked the clue for ENO" (25A: Composer of music "as ignorable as it is interesting"). I don't know who's being quoted there, but yes, fun clue, and with crosswordese like ENO, a new clue is always welcome. OK, that's enough. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Constructor:Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:CRASH SITES (49A: Focal points of many F.A.A. investigations ... or a description of 18-, 24- and 40-Across?) — well-known websites "crash" (?) into each other, forming wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style)

Theme answers:

AMAZON VINE (18A: South American monkey's handhold?)
YAHOO POLITICO (24A: [Insert your least favorite congressman here?])
VULTURE GAWKER (40A: Bird watcher upon spotting the rare California condor?)

Word of the Day:ZOOL(38A: Veterinarian's branch of sci.) —

Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension is a platform game originally produced for the Amiga by Gremlin Graphics in 1992. It was later ported to several other platforms and followed by Zool 2 in 1993. (wikipedia)

• • •

This grid is bizarre. The puzzle is super-low word-count for any day, let alone a Thursday (66), but because of its shape, and specifically its massive black square count (43), it doesn't have the wide-open look you'd expect with a count that low (though those are reasonably open corners, reasonably nicely filled—a certain RHEUMYness in the SAXE-y SE notwithstanding). So style points for originality of grid shape. The theme doesn't quite work for me, though. I'm failing to feel the CRASHiness of the themers. It's more like JUXTAPOSESITES. ABUTSITES. It's just one site name followed by another site name. "CRASH" is a stretch and a half. Further, the site pairs are arbitrary and there are only three. I don't think of VINE as a "site." It's an app ... or a 6-second piece of video I sometimes see on Twitter. Not in the same ecosystem as, say, GAWKER. I also didn't know New York Magazine's Culture Vulture had become just VULTURE, but the name is correct, so no problem there. Seems like you could've made this Sunday-sized if you thought the theme was so great. JEZEBEL SLATE TWITTER BING DROPBOX. Lots of options out there. These weren't that funny—well, cluing on YAHOO POLITICO was decent, but the other clues were dull.

The fill ... IT'S OK. NYT average. Hardest clue for me by far was 36A: "Junk" (HEROIN). I had HERO-- and no idea. Even after I put in all the letters, I stared at it for a second, figuring I'd misread something. Then I got it. Junk. Junkie. H. Horse. Smack. I don't think I've seen / heard "junk" for a while, and we've got something of an opioid epidemic up here. Clue is fine, just baffled me. Had ARUBA for IBIZA (nowhere near each other, not sure what I was thinking) (28D: One of the Balearic Islands). For some reason the inclusion of a monkey in the AMAZON VINE clue threw me off terribly. Got AMAZON fast but was scrolling through monkeys trying to figure out what came next ... also scrolled through potential handholds ... ended up with TITI and RUNG. Neither, obviously, worked.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME:none

Word of the Day:ALOE LACE(15A: Fragile fabric made from certain plant fibers) —

Hvar: agave or aloe lace
Hvar lace is unique in that the thread is collected from the aloe leaves of agave plants that grow on the island. The leaves are picked at a certain time of the year and are then specially processed to produce a thin, white thread. // The Benedictine nuns in the town of Hvar are the only ones who make the Hvar lace, which is also called "aloe lace". (wikipedia, buried deep, deep in the entry for "Lacemaking in Croatia")

• • •

This seemed pretty good, and pretty hard, but I'm not sure about either judgment because I solved it while watching and Tweeting about the GOP debate last night. Looking over the grid, I'll stand solidly by the "pretty good" part. There were a couple of plant-based answers that were from outer space (ALOE LACE being the more hilariously outlandish cousin of GUM WEED (21D: Yellow-flowered plant producing a sticky resin), whatever that is), and there were a few unfortunate short answers, but otherwise it's mostly vibrant, colloquial, current, and (especially for a 66-worder) smooth. If I went strictly by my solving time, I'd have this in the Challenging category, but I have to factor in my debate distraction, as well as the time I spent getting a couple of mid-solve screengrabs, so ... Medium-Challenging. The distinction hardly matters. It played harder than average. Those NW and SE corners, because they have the little-answer footholds, were easy enough to polish off, but I found everything from the NE to the SW to be Saturday-hard. Thought I was gonna cut into the middle with ease after ESCAPE KEY came effortlessly out of the bottom part of the NW corner, but it got me precisely nothing.

Tried all the Down crosses, came up empty. Never heard of CUT TIME, so I was at a real advantage there (36D: 2/2, to Toscanini). Thought 24D: Noisy recreation vehicles would be some kind of BIKES ... maybe? (no). Had to reboot with SOU (48D: Trifle) in the SW, which got me USERFEES and RAF and on from there. SE was probably the easiest part of the grid for me.

But again those teeny tiny openings into mid-grid made breaking this thing open very tough. Somehow, from -------US, I got BETWEEN US (29A: "Mum's the word"). I think that "N" seemed probably based on my sense that 11D: Adds with a whisk would probably end in "IN" (it did), so I went with it. And then BE PATIENT jumped out from the B-P------ pattern and I had the traction I needed. Love "I'M LIKE" since it's ubiquitous and yet I (almost?) never see it in crosswords. Hate Y'ERS, as no one ever ever ever ever said that. No one even knows what Gen Y is. It goes Boomers, Gen X'ers, Millennials, and then ... Freegans, I think. I forget. What the everloving fudge is Gen Y anyway? Let alone this alleged "Y'ERS" thing. Yikes. I wonder if the fill was originally NEWTON over OXHIDE over TAILED. Not that the resulting ODER or NEDS would be great or even good ... it's just that the NEWTON / NEDS version seems like a more plausible way to go than NEW TOY (kinda "green paint") and Y'ERS (atrocity). But these are minor issues in an overwhelmingly solid puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. wait, who the hell is PA BARKER? (32D: His wife and sons were Depression-era criminals). I keep googling and finding squat. Did anyone actually call this non-criminal guy "PA BARKER?" When I google "pa barker" in quotation marks I get, first hit, some old episode of "The Untouchables" TV show (?), and then a bunch of Pennsylvania-related things. Image search is worse. Just pictures of houses (??). PA BARKER seems pretty spurious.

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Constructor:Julian Lim

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day:HALVA(30D: Crumbly Mideastern dessert) —

Halva (halawa, alva, haleweh, halava, helava, helva, halwa, halua, aluva, chalva) is any of various dense, sweet, tahini based confections of arabic origin, served across the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Malta and the Jewish diaspora. // In global, popular usage it means "desserts" or "sweet", and describes two types of desserts:
Flour-based
This type of halva is slightly gelatinous and made from grain flour, typically semolina. The primary ingredients are clarified butter, flour, and sugar.
Nut-butter-based
This type of halva is crumbly and usually made from tahini (sesame paste) or other nut butters, such as sunflower seed butter. The primary ingredients are nut butter and sugar.
Halva may also be based on various other ingredients, including sunflower seeds, nut varieties, beans, lentils, and vegetables such as carrots, pumpkins, yams and squashes.
Halva can be kept at room temperature with little risk of spoilage. However, during hot summer months, it is better kept refrigerated, as it can turn runny after several days. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward Saturday fare. Did it right upon waking, at a leisurely pace, and finished about three minutes faster than yesterday, but not so fast it made my head spin. It was easy in the main, with a number of little KNOTty parts that required me to exert effort. Those ended up being the interesting parts, as the marquee answers, while nice and smooth, just didn't grab me that much, and there was definitely an ouchy bit here and there in the shorter fill. Seemed pretty clear from the jump that 1A: Anchor line meant "anchor" in the sense of television news anchor. The clue pretty much screamed "I'm trying to trick you, heh heh heh heh [sneer] [wring hands] [twirl mustache]." Classic misdirection language: clue looks nautical, but both its words have different potential spheres of meaning, and thus it's probably not nautical at all—this is how I think on Saturdays. But what do anchors say? "Dateline ..."? "And that's the way it is ..."? "Our top stories now..."? No idea. As usual, I used short stuff to get me going. Today: SEL (4D: Frites seasoning), but only after completely misreading the clue and writing in ÉTÉ. My brain registered something like "season when you fry in France." After I fixed that, I took an odd series of big steps down into the middle-right of the grid.

UTTER was an obvious guess, confirmed by R-ATA (who knows what spelling you're gonna get?), and then the next few answers after that were obvious. HALVA was such a weird throwback for me. I have a very location- and time-specific memory of HALVA: the San Francisco of my childhood. I remember when we'd visit, there were delis and other shops that would have HALVA bars out where "normal" shops (i.e. shops back home) might have the candy bars (home was Fresno, just to give you some idea of context here) . So I thought, "Sure, I'll try this." And found it both unusual (to my unsophisticated palate) and delicious. But I don't ever remember having HALVA anywhere else (in my entire life) except then and there. And yet, the name, somehow, I remember. Weird, considering it's a pretty damn common dessert and HALVA is surely available in most cities across the country now. For all I know they actually had HALVA bars in Fresno and I just never noticed. Anyway, that is my weird and largely uneventful HALVA story.

Had so much trouble parsing 35D: A host that even with -LEWS filled in I didn't get it. I was taking "A" as some kind of symbol or name or something, not as an indefinite article, and "host" can be understood a ton of different ways, of course. So there was some struggling there, but not much. The only other trouble spot was at the crossing of POWHATAN and SOWED, where I had to run the alphabet (and run it almost all the way—stupid "W"!) to get SOWED, which just did not occur to me at all for 45A: Set in motion. In fact, just looking at SO-ED, I couldn't think of *any* letter that could go there. PAWHATAN I just don't know. Maybe I've seen it before. Probably. But it's a jumble of letters to me, largely. There were other things I didn't know or couldn't remember (THAYER, IVAN IV, TAMIAMI), but crosses made them non-issues.

LEO and LEOPARD in same grid ... thumbs down. Liked freshness of HATERS (2D: No fans) and AIR BnB (48D: Website for budget travelers), but most other fill doesn't shine or surprise or delight that much. This is just a solid, workmanlike Saturday. A fine morning diversion.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:"Court Jesters"— basketball terms with wacky non-basketball "?" clues

Theme answers:

23A: Fly swatter? (BUZZER BEATER)
34A: Drool from both sides of the mouth? (DOUBLE DRIBBLE)
51A: Tip of an épée? (POINT GUARD)
58A: Busted timer? (SHOT CLOCK)
66A: Desi Arnaz? (BALL HANDLER)
79A: Winning an Oscar for "Norma Rae"? (FIELD GOAL)
88A: Acrophobe's term for a route through the mountains? (NO-LOOK PASS)
101A: Lament from an unlucky shrimper? (NOTHING BUT NET)
116A: Writing "30 and single" when it's really "50 and married" e.g.? (PERSONAL FOUL)
16D: Violation of Yom Kippur? (FAST BREAK)
79D: Rug dealer's special? (FREE THROW)

Word of the Day:GIMBAL(52D: Stabilizer of a ship's compass) —

A gimbal is a pivoted support that allows the rotation of an object about a single axis. A set of three gimbals, one mounted on the other with orthogonal pivot axes, may be used to allow an object mounted on the innermost gimbal to remain independent of the rotation of its support (e.g. vertical in the first animation). For example, on a ship, the gyroscopes, shipboard compasses, stoves, and even drink holders typically use gimbals to keep them upright with respect to the horizon despite the ship's pitching and rolling. // The gimbal suspension used for mounting compasses and the like is sometimes called a Cardan suspension after Italian mathematician and physicist Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) described it in detail. However, Cardano did not invent the gimbal, nor did he claim to. The device has been known since antiquity and may not have a single identifiable inventor. (wikipedia)

• • •

I wish the NYT would discontinue this type of theme. It's a non-theme—just basketball terms. All the "entertainment" is in the cluing, so the whole thing feels cheap. You could do one of these with tennis and even keep the puzzle title. In fact, I'm 83% certain I've seen precisely such a puzzle before. The theme is dense, as it often is when the puzzle is trying to make up for the theme's weakness. Conceptually, this seems far beneath what the self-styled "best puzzle in the world" oughta be offering in its marquee puzzle. The clues aren't even that entertaining, honestly. If you're going to do this kind of theme, where *everything* is in the clues, then you should go for broke, pull out all the stops, and other clichés of similar meaning. I mean your clues should be outlandish, brazen, hilarious. These are knee-slappers, at best. Elbow-jabbers. Winkers. Bah. Also, the clue BALL HANDLER was just disturbing to me—no need to go to a clue that asserts / reinforces male dominance like that when there are other ways to get a wacky funny loony "?" clue out of that particular word pairing. Animals have handlers. Come on, man.

[Gutter ball?] (ALLEY OOPS)

Gonna take a wild guess here and say there is No Way that BAIZE was originally in this puzzle (12D: Card table cloth). I mean, that answer hasn't been in any NYT puzzle in 13 years. Yikes. That thing was obviously MAIZE, and then someone caught the MANS dupe at 63D: "Jeez!" (OH, MAN). Because no constructor in their right mind is knowingly, voluntarily going with BAIZE over MAIZE. And yet this decision still makes no sense, as you could easily change NRA to IRA or SRA or TRA, keeping MAIZE and getting rid of MANS. So I have no idea what kind of cluing thinking was going on there. All I know is that BAIZE is desperation fill, and there was absolutely no need for desperation here. GIMBAL has never appeared in the NYT before. Totally new word to me. I guess I just don't understand the taste that's driving this puzzle, or the rationale for much of what's happening with the theme or fill. Puzzle was mostly easy, but then [Popinjay] (???) for FOP crossing [Go through] (?) for EXPEND caused me to just stare at a single blank square for a while. ALECTO is spelled with two "L"s in the translations of "The Aeneid" that I know of, so that answer was not easy for me.

Haec ubi dicta dedit, terras horrenda petivit;
luctificam Allecto dirarum ab sede dearum
infernisque ciet tenebris, cui tristia bella
iraeque insidiaeque et crimina noxia cordi.

When she had spoken these words, fearsome, she sought the earth:
and summoned Allecto, the grief-bringer, from the house
of the Fatal Furies, from the infernal shadows: in whose
mind are sad wars, angers and deceits, and guilty crimes.

See. Two "L"s. Both versions. But ALECTO is the spelling in the wikipedia entry, so it's legit. Just not Virgilian (and thus, dead to me).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:LEAP DAY (39A: 2/29/16, e.g. ... or a hint to the circled squares in this puzzle) — circled squares represent holi DAYs (i.e. words that precede DAY in the name of a well-know holiday) that LEAP over a black square, starting in the middle of one Across answer and finishing in the subsequent Across answer:

Theme answers:

BON MOT / HERSTORY
LA SCALA / BOREDOM
NAIVETE / RANSOMS
PHONE BOX / IN GEAR

Word of the Day:SHAGGY(49D: Scooby-Doo's pal) —

Norville "Shaggy" Rogers is a fictional character in the Scooby-Doo franchise. He is a cowardly slacker and the long-time best friend and owner of his cowardly Great Dane Scooby-Doo. Shaggy is more interested in eating than solving mysteries. He and Scooby are the only characters to appear in all iterations of the franchise. (wikipedia)

• • •

Never saw the theme, but looking back on it now, it seems solid. Interesting approach to representing LEAP DAY (and on the correct day, hurray). The selected days are all over the map, with the last one ("Boxing") being one we don't even observe in the U.S., but it's still a familiar holiday, so no foul there. I will say that when I finished and then looked up in order to figure out what the heck the theme was, I first saw MOTHERS and LABOR and thought this was going in a very different direction. A birth-related direction. But then I saw VETERANS and ah, yes, right, leaping, days, etc. Got it. I wish novice constructors (and some veteran constructors, hint hint nudge nudge) would study this grid to see what Monday-smooth should be. Clean clean clean. Nothing to make me Wince. Of course there are less-than-ideal entries; every grid has them. But there's nothing forced or obscure or oddly unfamiliar, and yet, magically (i.e. through actual craft and attention and care), the fill is wide-ranging and varied and interesting, and the long answers are not wasted on boring junk: SEX PISTOLS (30D: Johnny Rotten's punk band, with "the") and GROUND ZERO (11D: Where the 9/11 Memorial is), both very nice. Tight theme, clean fill, flashy long stuff—this *should* be the regular, everyday quality of the Monday puzzle.

[TKO!]

Mostly sailed through this (2:44!?) but I had one pretty good ridiculous (and slightly time-consuming) mistake along the way. Put down SHAGGY and then checked out the Acrosses down there in the SE. Couldn't get any of them at first glance, so threw ASST across and worked on the Downs. Faced with S--- at 57D: Edible part of a sunflower, I went with the first flower part I could think of that fit in the spaces provided: STEM. Considering sunflowers grow on giant stalks, I'm guessing the stem is about the *least* edible part of the sunflower. But my brain doesn't operate in reality on Monday puzzles. It operates in the realm of Pattern Recognition. There's very little thought involved. And most of the time this allows me to move very very fast. But some of the time it means I eat STEM. You take the good with the bad, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Freddie Cheng

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium ("Medium" only for KEROGEN !?)

THEME:ALL ABOUT EVE (56A: 1950 Bette Davis film hinting at something found 15 times in this puzzle) — Well, I'm not counting, but apparently the letter string "EVE" appears 15 times in this puzzle.

Theme answers:

"EVEN STEVENS" (19A: 2000-03 Disney Channel series with Shia LaBeouf)
EVEL KNIEVEL (26A: Daredevil who survived more than 400 bone fractures)
SEVEN ELEVEN (44A: Place to buy a Slurpee)
...and the rest!

Word of the Day:KEROGEN(37A: Oil-producing matter in shale) —

Kerogen (Greek κηρός "wax" and -gen, γένεση "birth") is a mixture of organic chemical compounds that make up a portion of the organic matter in sedimentary rocks. It is insoluble in normal organic solvents because of the high molecular weight (upwards of 1,000 daltons or 1000 Da; 1Da= 1 atomic mass unit) of its component compounds. The soluble portion is known as bitumen. When heated to the right temperatures in the Earth's crust, (oil window c. 50–150 °C, gas window c. 150–200 °C, both depending on how quickly the source rock is heated) some types of kerogen release crude oil or natural gas, collectively known as hydrocarbons (fossil fuels). When such kerogens are present in high concentration in rocks such as shale, they form possible source rocks. Shales rich in kerogens that have not been heated to a warmer temperature to release their hydrocarbons may form oil shale deposits. // The name "kerogen" was introduced by the Scottish organic chemist Alexander Crum Brown in 1906.

• • •

I guess the "ALL ABOUT" means "strewn all over the grid"? I only noticed that there were two in each (apparent) themer, i.e. long Across answer, and didn't think the revealer worked for a 2 x EVE puzzle, but I guess if it's ubiquiteve we're talking about, then yeah, on some level, it works. This is another example of the NYT trying to cover up a pretty flimsy concept with theme Density: an EVE in each long Down, two in each Across (excepting the revealer) and then assorted EVEs strewn about. There is some noticeable effect on the fill: there's a lot of iffy / old short stuff (AMATI ENERO ORANG ERTE STEN OLEO ANO HEXA, etc.), and then two outer-space answers: "EVEN STEVENS" (!?!?!?!?) (19A: 2000-03 Disney Channel series with Shia LaBeouf) and KEROGEN, which stand light years apart from the other answers in terms of general familiarity. KEROGEN is far too unfamiliar / technical for a Tuesday puzzle. I like that the puzzle is weird and kind of ambitious; its "flaws" are almost endearing. The inclusion of so many long Downs livens up an otherwise dull grid. So this puzzle has its charms. I'll just leave it at that.

Mistakes? I made a few. SPADE for SIEVE (2D: Forty-niner's tool). Actually, that might be the only outright mistake. I was very unsure of spelling of KOPECK, so had to work all the crosses there (8D: Fraction of a ruble). No other struggles of note (except the aforementioned KEROGEN disaster). I need to go get coffee and properly wake up. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS HEXA is junk, but I must admit I like [Tri and tri again?] very much.

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Constructor:Fred Piscop

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:pasta puns—

Theme answers:

20A: Politician in charge of pasta? (ZITI COUNCILMAN)
40A: Pasta, apparently? (ORZO, IT WOULD SEEM)
58A: Card game with pasta for stakes? (PENNE ANTE POKER)

Word of the Day:EVAN Hunter(12D: Hunter who wrote "The Blackboard Jungle") —

Ed McBain (October 15, 1926 – July 6, 2005) is one of the pen names of an American author and screenwriter. Born Salvatore Albert Lombino, he legally adopted the name Evan Hunter in 1952. While successful and well known as Evan Hunter, he was even better known as Ed McBain, a name he used for most of his crime fiction, beginning in 1956. He also used the pen names John Abbott, Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, Dean Hudson, and Richard Marsten. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pass.

This puzzle feels like an emergency replacement. Like, the puzzle you had booked canceled to do something better and now you're scrambling to find a new puzzle so you go halfway through your rolodex until finally this puzzle goes, "Sure, I'm not doing anything these days. Put me in." Even leaving my reasonably well-known pun aversion aside, this puzzle's theme feels weak. And thin. Puns are deathly boring. Clue on ORZO, IT WOULD SEEM doesn't make much sense. Not enough context for it to be amusing. [Pasta, apparently] is way way too general a clue for ORZO, IT WOULD SEEM to apply. Also, you have to pause (after ORZO) to make grammatical sense of the answer, in a way you wouldn't when just saying the base phrase. Bah. The other two seem like actual, viable puns, but [shrug]. And then the grid—it's all short stuff, all dull / ancient. This crossword actually seems nostalgic for a time when crosswords were more terrible. See the clue on OREO (35D: Dessert item that was clued as "Mountain: Comb. form" in old crosswords). Seriously? This puzzle belongs in 1986, and while I know there are some who long for Reagan's America, as it relates to crossword puzzles, this is not a nostalgia anyone should be getting behind.

Looking it over, I have no idea why it didn't play Easy. Possibly the puns, which I just couldn't make sense of. I had ZITI COUNCIL--- and still didn't know. COUNCILLOR? It's possible that once I got a whiff of the fill (right away), I just checked out mentally, and went about solving the whole thing half-heartedly, with worse and worser political speeches playing in the background. Is it possible that I would have enjoyed this puzzle had the soundtrack not been so dispiriting and heinous? No, it is not. But I might have disliked it slightly less. Slightly. I mean, there is Nothing of interest outside the three themers, and even with the themers, "interest" is being very kind. Missteps? Well, I had WHAT? for AHEM (1A: "Beg pardon...") so that was exciting. Also TRICE for TRACE (8D: Tiny amount). LADED for LADEN (53D: Filled with cargo). My mistakes are about as interesting as the puzzle was. I should go to sleep now.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME:ENHARMONIC squares (7D: Having the same pitch but written differently, in a score) — there are three of these, where the squares contains the same pitch is written out differently in the Across and the Down answers:

Theme answers:

MUSEUM O [F NATURAL] HISTORY (16A: Home to many stuffed animals) / TH [E SHARP] ER IMAGE (6D: High-tech home gadget company)
LOOKIN [G SHARP] (65A: Dressed neatly and fashionably) / GET [A FLAT] (53D: Suffer some tire damage)
D [E FLAT] EGATE (66A: Gridiron scandal of 2015, informally) / CAR [D SHARP] (55D: One adept with a deck)

Then there are some other answers that seem related, including:

MUSICAL NOTE (3D: One added to the staff?)
TWO-TONE CARS (9D: Dichromatic fad of the 1950s) (not sure how "cars" fits in, but...)

Word of the Day:Bill EGAN(38A: First family of Alaska => EGANS) —

William Allen "Bill" Egan (October 8, 1914 – May 6, 1984) was an American Democratic politician. He served as the first Governor of the State of Alaska from January 3, 1959 to 1966, and again from 1970 to 1974. Born in Valdez, Alaska, Egan is one of only two governors in the state's history (along with current incumbent Bill Walker) to have been born in Alaska. (wikipedia)

• • •

I haven't been sick in a long time, but I sure am now, so I have no idea how hard or easy or good or not good this thing was. Actually, I sense that it was good, or at least original. I got the basic concept reasonably early, but my brain was not at all capable of doing the conversions or whatever at those three ENHARMONIC squares. You don't wanna know how long I gaped at DEFLATEGATE wondering why it wouldn't work (it wouldn't work because I had the first square as DFLAT ... ugh. Are the black squares at the bottom of the grid supposed to be in the shape of a tuning fork? I honestly don't trust my assessment of anything right now. I don't know why "cars" is part of one of the (apparent) themers? I don't know why "as seen" is in 20A: Tar water, as seen in medieval medicine (CURE-ALL). That was just brutal, and the "as seen" phrase seems superfluous. I don't think the impulse to double up on Japanese P.M.'s was a good one (ITO, ABE)—so many other, non-trivial ways to go. There are two "IT"s in this puzzle, but I don't really care (I MEAN IT, QUIT IT). ETHNO jazz seems terribly made-up (13A: ___ jazz (fusion genre)), and helped make that whole center area the toughest part of the puzzle by far.

I had NO WORD for NO NEWS (32D: "Haven't heard a thing"), and LOFTING (?) for WAFTING (59A: Floating). Loved FANGIRL quite a bit (41A: Certain geek). I imagine musical types will be squealing with joy at this one. That's fine. I liked it OK. Again, I am far far under the weather, so don't take anything I say today too seriously. Gonna go RESOAK something in hopes it will make me feel better.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Evans Clinchy

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:none

Word of the Day:ADANA(49D: 1943 Churchill conference site) —

Adana (pronounced [aˈda.na]) is a major city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan river, 35 km (22 mi) inland from the Mediterranean Sea, in south-central Anatolia. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province and has a population of 1.71 million, making it the fifth most populous city in Turkey. Adana-Mersin polycentric metropolitan area, with a population of 3 million, stretches over 70 km (43 mi) east-west and 25 km (16 mi) north-south; encompassing the cities of Mersin, Tarsus and Adana. (wikipedia)

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At first I thought this might be one of those themed Fridays—something about the grid shape just didn't look right. But nope, it's a 72-word themeless. Nothing tricky about it. Played very easy for me. I thought the longer answers really held up, even as the 5-letter-and-under stuff got pretty wobbly in places. This solid without being too tasty. Like a big slab of nourishment paste. It will help me survive, and get me through to the next meal, but it's not particularly delicious. Asking me to know MARTA(23A: Atlanta train system) *and* SEPTA (!?) (35A: Philadelphia train system) seemed a bit much, and why you go to the "end of Hemingway titles" well that often, god only knows. Also, I pretty much guessed at the EDOM / ADANA crossing. I was 89% sure I was right, as EDOM was definitely an [Old Testament kingdom], but I figure there must be dozens of such kingdoms I'm not familiar with at all, and ADANA means nothing to me. Commander ADAMA from "Battlestar Galactaca," that means something to me. ADANA, not so much. I misremembered AKELA (13D: "The Jungle Book" wolf) as AKETA ... so I mixed the wolf from "Jungle Book" with the dog from Japan. Interesting crossbreeding.

Weirdly, the thing that slowed me down the most was writing in GIFS instead of PDFS at 28D: Some email pics. I think of PDFS as being more for documents, or at least multi-paged documents. People share pix in jpeg and gif form, largely, not PDF. The answer is valid, of course. I'm just trying to explain why "email pics" led me astray. Lastly, FYI, ACC. stands for "accusative." Screw the athletic conference, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:None

Word of the Day:CLORIS (19A: She played "Phyllis on TV's "Phyllis")

Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an American actress of stage, film, and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards (more than any other performer) and one Daytime Emmy Award. She co-starred in the 1971 film The Last Picture Show, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As Miss Chicago, Leachman competed in the 20th Miss America pageant and placed in the Top 16 in 1946. Leachman's longest-running role was the nosy, self-centered, and manipulative landlady Phyllis Lindstrom on the 1970s TV series Mary Tyler Moore, and later on the spinoff series, Phyllis. She also appeared in three Mel Brooks films, including Young Frankenstein. She had a regular role in the last two seasons of The Facts of Life, portraying the character Beverly Ann Stickle. She also played the role of Daisy May "Granny" Moses in the 1993 film The Beverly Hillbillies, directed by Penelope Spheeris. In the 2000s, she had a recurring role as Ida Gorski on Malcolm in the Middle. She appeared as a roaster in the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget in 2008. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi all, Lena here covering for Rex while he takes a long nap because he's sick; he needs his Rex and Rexlaxation.

But maybe this puzzle would have actually been just the thing to lull him to sleep-- I'll be blunt: I thought it was kinda boring. TALCUMS (1D: Choices in the baby department) got my blood flowing, but only because I hate plurals like that. "Please help me choose from this dizzying array of TALCUMS!" I had IMBLUE instead of IMBRUE (8D: Stain), not knowing the film director ERLE C. Kenton, and certainly not knowing this archaic literary definition of besmirch. Thank goodness we've got a homophonous EARL (37A: Overseas court figure) to make up for my missing the first one.

ECH (11D: Level in an org.)? ECH indeed. ENOL ether? Diethyl ether is way more popular. CMDR ASWE ORL NCISITT are lurking in the shadows of an otherwise pretty clean grid. From a distance, this puzzle isn't bad at all-- SILENT TREATMENT (7D: Quiet after the storm, maybe) is a great marquee and BEER MUG (12D: A head might go over the top of it) is fun fill with a fun clue. I loved TAMALE with its wonderful clue (34A: Husky food?)-- definitely had KIBBLE there for a bit. ARM WRESTLE (56A: Try to win hands down?) is also good-- so what's my problem? Not sure. Like I said, from a distance, all filled in, it seems better than it did when I was actually solving it. Maybe it's grid-locked Stockholm Syndrome, idk.

I don't like BODS (44A: Gym bunnies work on them). I wasn't familiar with the term "gym bunny" and it got my eyes narrowing. The stereotype is that women go to the gym to lose weight, and men go to the gym to get strong. I like the idea of a woman working on her BOD to increase strength and fitness, but the word "bunny" here keeps it sounding really superficial. It's very easy to clue BODS in a gender neutral way, and I would have preferred that it had been.

Do they really play I LOVE LA [at Staples Center after every Lakers victory]? That's hilarious. Randy Newman is a raunchy, cynical, and dare-I-say deep songwriter-- not just the dude who did that "Toy Story" song. "Trouble in Paradise" is a great album and, well, I LOVE LA is no "New York, New York."

And to those who may have missed it, the CrossWorld REELS as it reacts to the bombshell that was dropped today regarding the plagiarism of NYT grids, clues and themes by Tim Parker, the "editor" of USA Today/Universal's crosswords. Because it's "just crosswords" this kind of crime tends to stay off the radar, but if you look at the numbers expertly laid out by Oliver Roeder and the folks at FiveThirtyEight, it's absolutely flagrant and shameful. Check out the article here.

Signed, Lena Webb, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Lena on Twitter]

Constructor:David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:"In Character"— theme answers are clues describing Shakespearean characters whose names are found *inside* those descriptions (in circled letters). Theme clues read [See blurb]. Blurb reads: "the answers to [the long themers] are themselves clues to the names spelled by their circled letters"

Theme answers:

COMRADE OF MERCUTIO (ROMEO)
BANQUET GHOST (BANQUO)
ELDERLY MONARCH (LEAR)
SCHEMER AGAINST CAESAR (CASCA)
LOVE INTEREST OF OLIVIA (VIOLA)
EVIL ANTAGONIST (IAGO)
MACABRE THANE (MACBETH)
UNHAPPY MALCONTENT (HAMLET)

Word of the Day:ICE FOG(59D: Arctic weather phenomenon) —

Ice fog is a type of fog consisting of fine ice crystals suspended in the air. It occurs only in cold areas of the world, as water droplets suspended in the air can remain liquid down to −40 °C (−40 °F). It should be distinguished from diamond dust, a precipitation of sparse ice crystals falling from a clear sky. It should also be distinguished from freezing fog, which is commonly called pogonip [!!?!?!] in the western United States. (wikipedia)

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This is a solid, old-school Sunday effort. The answers (i.e. the 'clues') are pretty contrived, but they sort of have to be in a puzzle like this, because they have to describe the character and contain the letters of his/her name in order (albeit non-consecutive order). I think the themers start out good; that is they are reasonably accurate and reasonably *specific*. That is, COMRADE OF MERCUTIO is a nice, narrow, focused "clue" for ROMEO. ELDERLY MONARCH is the least focused of the first five themers, but it held up fine. Two of the last three, however, felt way too broad. EVIL ANTAGONIST?!? There is nothing IAGO-specific in that "clue." Also, it's borderline redundant, though, to be fair, it's not UNHAPPY MALCONTENT redundant, because *that* would be ridiculous. Seriously, what is up with UNHAPPY MALCONTENT? Not only is it not HAMLET-specific it's ... well it's a word and then a synonym of that word. Are there "happy malcontents"? I am pretty sure there are not. That answer is bizarre to the point of ridiculousness, and coming as it does in the punch-line (i.e. final) position, it's truly buzz-killing. So you've got a nice concept here, mostly but not entirely well executed.

Also not entirely thrilled about the double-dipping with "Macbeth" answers (BANQUO / MACBETH). There are a lot of Shakespeare plays. Spread the love. Evenly. As for the fill, it seems fine overall. The NW is nicely handled, with full-named ORRIN HATCH coming down through FAT CATS and (less probably) alongside QUICHE. AUTOSTRADA is an answer I can't remember encountering before. Classes up the joint a little, somehow. ONLINE CHAT feels a little too loose / vague / odd (70D: Real-time messaging system). It doesn't really sound like a "system." AOL Messenger, iChat ... those are systems. ONLINE CHAT is a very general internet phenomenon. I don't often groove on identical (or near-identical) sequential clues, but in the case of 94D: Like Lhasa apsos (TIBETAN) and 99D: Lhasa apso and others (BREEDS), the ploy worked very well. It wasn't forced, and it involved two substantial (6+-letter) answers. Nice work there.

In case you've somehow been ignoring Crossword News for the past 48 hours (and if so, what's wrong with you?!), here's that bombshell article about alleged crossword theme plagiarism: "A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In the Crossword World" by Oliver Roeder of 538.com. The story, which details the role one database played in unmasking what appears to be significant theme-stealing by the editor of the USA Today crossword, has already been picked up by a bunch of major media outlets, including the NYT (at least the online version). I have so much to say about this, but I have already shouted most of it into Twitter, and I'm not really up to rehashing it all here (still recovering from stupid horrible cold). The article raises lots of great issues about copyright law, ethics, the problem of distinguishing between accidental duplication and outright theft, etc. I'll be following developments in this story, and will let you know what I hear. For now, just read the article.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Linotype machine nowadays / TUE 2-16-16 / Part of fishing line to which hook is attached / Andrea ship that sank in 1956 / Half of SWAK / Czech form of French Pierre

Gen follower / WED 2-17-16 / One alternative of sentry's challenge / Twister Sister frontman Snider / Dwight D Ice in Shower / Old hairdo for Diana Ross / Toggery / Realm of King Midas

Mandrake the Magician's sidekick / THU 2-18-16 / Land of ancient Ephesus / Rarest of 50 state birds / Devastating namein 2005 news

Longtime comic strip queen / SAT 2-20-16 / Single-speed two-wheeler / Old TV channel that aired XFL games / Cry after Freeze on 1980s TV show / Defendant in 1963 obscenity trial

Onetime stage name for Sean Combs / MON 2-22-16 / Fireplace smoke escapes through them / Presidential Palace in Paris / Fictional Plaza Hotel girl / Indian in many an old western

Black flower in Dumas title / TUE 2-23-16 / Beijin'g s river basin / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes blonde / One terminus of Japanese bullet train / HMO doctor designations

Popular Bach piece for lute / WED 2-24-16 / College benefactor Yale / Politico lampooned by Fey / Football legend Amos Alonzo / Apple originally marketed to schools / Central figure in Mussorgsky opera / Property recipient in law

Epitome of cool with the / THU 2-25-16 / Style with illusory motion / Cactus flower eaters / Ratio involving height weight for short / Neighbor of Miss Gulch / Insert your least favorite Congressman here / america's diner is always open sloganeer

Fragile fabric made from certain plant fibers / FRI 2-26-16 / 1991 Scorsese De Niro collaboration / Pioneering labor leader samuel / My response was informally / Yellow-flowered plant procuing sticky resin / Barber five-time Pro Bowler from Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Hvar: agave or aloe lace

Florida community with portmanteau name / SAT 2-27-16 / Crumbly mideastern dessert / Bomberman console / Czar known for his mental instability / Dinner serving in prodigal son parable / Dwarf planet discovered in 2005

Card table cloth / SUN 2-28-16 / Nougaty treats / World Heritage Site in Andes / Queen pop nickname / 1961 space chimp / 1994 bomb based on SNL character

The Past from Feminist Standpoint / MON 2-29-16 / Once ubiquitous red fixture seen along London streets

Oil-producing matter in shale / TUE 3-1-16 / 2000-03 Disney Channel series with Shia LaBeouf / Sumatran swinger informally

British poet/critic Sitwell / WED 3-2-16 / Muscular Japanese dog / Corrida combatant / Setting for highest-grossing movie of 1939 / Drive popular light-powered watch / Circus horn honker / George whose name is lead-in to film

Tar water as seen in medieval medicine / THU 3-3-16 / Having same pitch but written differently in score / Virtual city dweller / Early Japanese PM Shinzo / Gridiron scandal of 2015 / High-tech home gadget company / Ypsilanti sch whose initials name bird / Sci-fi classic featuring Dr Susan Calvin

1943 Churchill conference site / FRI 3-4-16 / Worker on London's Savile Row / Shoshone relatives / Harmless slitherer

Barfly's request / SAT 3-5-16 / Jimmy Carter's mother / Stain / Heavy duty / Bush native to the South

Christopher tippler in Taming of Shrew / SUN 3-6-16 / Dumas swordsman / Movie co behind Boyhood Transamerica / Scandal airer / Colors 1960s-style / Journey to recurring segment Sesame Street