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Bagful on a pitcher's mound / MON 3-7-16 / Omar who portrayed Dr. Zhivago / Boots brand big in grunge fashion / Onetime big name in Japanese electronics

I'm still mad about the way that February 29th JUST BARELY stole my thunder last week. I would've blogged that day if it was any other year. Stupid Leaping!

Anyway, happy Annabel Monday again! WOOHOO!

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium



THEME: 90s fads — Theme answers are fads from the 90s.

Theme answers:
  • TAMAGOTCHIS (3D: Hand-held pets with digital "faces")
  • THE RACHEL (18A: Hairstyle popularized by Jennifer Aniston's character on "Friends")
  • THE MACARENA (27D: Dance associated with a #1 Los del Rio hit)
  • DR MARTENS (60A: Boots brand big in grunge fashion)
  • 90S FADS (39A: What the answers to the four starred clues are)
Word of the Day: FUGUE () —
In music, a fugue (/fjuːɡ/ fewg) is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and recurs frequently in the course of the composition.  ...
A fugue usually has three sections: an exposition, a development, and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Some fugues have a recapitulation.[4] In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works incanonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works.[5] Since the 17th century,[6] the term fuguehas described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint.[7]
• • •
(Wikipedia)



Guys. GUYS. GUYS. I REALLY liked this puzzle. Not only is this my first crossword puzzle with numbers in it (I thought for sure there was some alternate answer for 9PM, but no), but ALSO the 90S is easily one of the best ERAs in human history. Pokémon! Boy bands! Riot grrrl bands! The rise of flannels!!!!!! I wish I had gotten to spend more than three years in this beautiful decade. I've heard the argument that the 90s didn't end until 2003, and honestly, I kind of agree - everyone I knew had a Tamagotchi and/or a Furby. (God, Furbys were terrifying, weren't they?)

Oh, right, the rest of the puzzle. Nice fill, didn't learn any words but didn't really see any overused puzzle words either. I chuckled at the clue for STY - the constructor could have gone with "Where pigs live" or something similarly bland, but instead he decided to describe the natural state of my room in high school. Also, BREAK/LANCE sounds like what the actors at the Renn Faire do when they go out to the club - that was some excellent placement. Basically I'm excited to see more from Damon Gulczynski, even if I might be a little biased because of the whole 90s thing.

(My favorite Pokémon is Torkoal, by the way.)

Bullets:
  • UNHIP (43A: So not cool) — I can't be the only one who noticed that this word itself is unhip. (Who's used any variation of "hip" seriously since the 70s?) Now isn't that ironic, don't you think? ...a little too ironic, don't you think? IT'S LIKE RA-I-AAAAAAIN
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
but seriously that poor guy. he was just doin his job
  • THE RACHEL (18A: Hairstyle popularized by Jennifer Aniston's character on "Friends") — Hey, do you all want to hear a story about how my mom is a total troublemaker? This was taken at the Warner Brother's Studio tour in LA 3 years ago. They took us to see the set of Friends. We sat on the couch and handed the tour guide our camera to take our picture. Him: "Actually, you're not allowed to sit there, you're supposed to stay behind the line." Her: "Oops. Oh well! Take the picture and we'll get off!"




  • SMURFS (57A: Little blue cartoon characters whose adversary is Gargamel) — I'm getting war flashbacks to the time I had to sit through the CGI/live-action The Smurfs 2 with my sister. Maya, I hope you know that I reeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally love you.
  • NANA (46A: Mom's mom)— With all this emphasis on the 90s, let's not forget the second-best decade for music ever: the 2000s! And now, my favorite song in the world from about third grade. Nananananananananana... 
Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Disney bigwig Bob / TUE 3-8-16 / Cuckoo from Yiddish / Rebellious Turner / Virgin island that's 60% national park / Marry cutie on qt / Like Beatles in 1960s lingo

Constructor:David Steinberg

Relative difficulty:Medium


THEME: FUR COAT (60A: Wrap "worn" by 17-, 22-, 37 and 48-Across) — types of "fur" provide a "coat" for the themers by "wrapping" the answers (represented by circled squares—starting at the front of the answers, ending at the back)

Theme answers:
  • FUSEBOX (17A: Something to check if the lights go out)
  • SET THE TABLE (22A: Lay out plates, silverware, napkins, etc.)
  • OTTO PREMINGER (37A: "Anatomy of a Murder" director)
  • MINUTE STEAK (48A: Quick-cooking cut of meat)
Word of the Day:ST. JOHN(8D: Virgin Island that's 60% national park)
Saint John (Spanish: San Juan ; Dutch: Sint Hans; French: Saint-Jean ; Danish: Sankt Jan) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. [...] Since 1956, approximately 60% of the island is protected as Virgin Islands National Park, administered by the United States National Park Service. (wikipedia)
• • •

This started out laughably hard in the NW—I didn't know the first seven or so answers I looked at, which is preposterous on a Tuesday—but eventually it got going and by the time I finished, look at that, normal Tuesday time. Pretty sure I looked at all the Downs sequentially until I finally hit the obvious PAX (7D: ___ Romana). That's a pretty wide-open corner for a Tuesday. Hard to get traction. Had a little trouble in the NE corner as well; but by the time I got to their symmetrical counterparts, I was flying through them with no effort. Just having MINUTE STEAK in place, which gave me the first letters for the 5-letter Downs in the SW, meant that I tore that corner up without hesitation—every answer went straight in with just one glance at the clue. This is just to say that having a single answer in the right place can be the difference between struggling with a section and eating it for breakfast.


The very idea of FURCOATs is nauseating to me (unless you're an Inuit or a 19th-century Russian or Aretha Franklin), so I am constitutionally unable to Love this puzzle, but it's well made. The whole wrapping conceit is old hat, but it's executed nicely here. This was definitely spicier and bouncier all around than your average Tuesday (which is too often boo!-sday). I know nothing about ST. JOHN (8D: Virgin Island that's 60% national park), but was able to get it from the terminal -HN (not a lot of options with that pattern). Wrote in EPCOT for SOCAL (which ... yeah, I have no good excuse. I have only poor excuses) (20A: Disneyland locale, briefly). I lived in southern California for four years and never called it SOCAL, so that abbr., while completely legal, always irks me somehow. Looking these corners over now, the Across stacks are all very nice-looking. Clean, solid Tuesday. One thing, though: crossing MAME (39D: Broadway auntie) with MAMIE (41A: Mrs. Eisenhower) seems ... lame? Lamie? It *feels* like a violation, even if it isn't. Or maybe it's a *feature*—a little sing-songy crossing to brighten your day. Or maybe it's a meaningless accident. Or a pterodactyl. You decide.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Online provider of study guides / WED 3-9-16 / Capable jocularly / Abrupt realignment of policy priorities / Translucent sea creature that drifts with current / Longtime Vermont senator

Constructor:John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging


THEME:spreads— last words of themers are all fruit spreads you might put on toast or whatever...

Theme answers:
  • NATURE PRESERVES (16A: Wildlife refuges)
  • MOON JELLY (25A: Translucent sea creature that drifts with the current)
  • SLOW JAM (42A: R&B/soul ballad)
  • LADY MARMALADE (55A: #1 hit of 1975 and 2001)
Word of the Day:MOON JELLY 
Aurelia aurita (also called the moon jelly, moon jellyfish, common jellyfish, or saucer jelly) is a widely studied species of the genusAurelia. All species in the genus are closely related, and it is difficult to identify Aurelia medusae without genetic sampling; most of what follows applies equally to all species of the genus. // The jellyfish is translucent, usually about 25–40 cm (10–16 in) in diameter, and can be recognized by its four horseshoe-shaped gonads, easily seen through the top of the bell. It feeds by collecting medusae, plankton, and mollusks with its tentacles, and bringing them into its body for digestion. It is capable of only limited motion, and drifts with the current, even when swimming. (wikipedia)
• • •

MOON JELLY? I think your theme is dead if that's the best answer you can come up with. What you call a [Translucent sea creature that drifts with the current] is a JELLYFISH. Full stop. End of story. MOON JELLY? I mean, really. Come on. That answer took me forEver, and (with BERYLLIUM (15D: Fourth element on the periodic table), which I could not find the handle on) is the primary reason my time was a minute north of normal. But even if MOON JELLY were a great answer, the theme is thin, slightly weak, and very weirdly laid out. It's just "Last Things Similar," one of the oldest (and least seen, nowadays) types of themes. There are only four answers, totaling only 44 squares. I couldn't even find the theme at first—certainly didn't see it while I was solving, and needed a good number of seconds of staring to finally figure out what was going on. I don't like that SLOW JAM is so short, and that there are other, non-theme Across answers of equal length—four of them, in fact. The whole thing, thematically, just feels shaggy. Speaking of shaggy, my first thought upon finishing the puzzle, before I'd figured out the theme, was that the grid was shaped like a dog's face. Two eyes and nose are pretty easy to see there in the center. There's a grin there. And even a tongue at the bottom. I honestly thought the grid shape *must* be involved in the theme. But no.


The grid is interesting *looking*, and those longer Downs in the SW and SE are cool. Is LADY MARMALADE not named after the spread? PRESERVES and JELLY and JAM are all repurposed in their respective answers, but I'm not sure you can say the same for MARMALADE. There is no alternative meaning of MARMALADE. Putting LADY in front of it doesn't really change that fact. IRATER makes me IRATER than I was before I started the puzzle. And EPT, jeez. Yikes. No. ECOLAW continues to feel made-up. The NW of this grid was weirdly hard—all this "becomes this when you do that" and "sounds like two of these," yeesh. Just give me a clue. Also, would've been nice to have Patrick LEAHY's first name in that clue (2D: Longtime Vermont senator). Rough going, early on. I actually think the grid overall is pretty solid. But the theme is thin and wobbly, so in the end it ends up playing like an interestingly shaped themeless. But seriously, MOON JELLY? Is that a regionalism? Do people know what that is? Baffling.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Donizetti's lady of Lammermoor / THU 3-10-16 / John Donne poem with line starting It suck'd me first / It holds 5148 potential flushes / Hawaiian bowlful / French writer who co-founded newspaper Combat / Marxist exhortation to workers of world

Constructor:Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:VWS (65D: Bugs, e.g. ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — five rebus squares that read "V V" in the Down and "W" in the Across:

Theme answers:
  • FLI VV ER (20A: Old jalopy) / W BA (21D: Ring master's org.)
  • TECH SA VV Y (26A: Proficient, computerwise) / RENE W ER (12D: Longtime subscriber, maybe)
  • HI VV ACCINE (37A: Subject of medical research since the 1980s) / COLESLA W (5D: One side of a diner?)
  • RE VV ING UP (53A: Gunning) / LO W TIDE (42D: When a sandbar may appear above the waterline)
  • CI VV IES (59A: Mufti) / SA W (51D: Perform some millwork)
Word of the Day:ALEC Douglas Home(34A: Former British P.M. Douglas-Home) —
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the HirselKTPC (/ˈhjuːm/; 2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964. He is notable for being the last Prime Minister to hold office while being a member of the House of Lords, before renouncing his peerage and taking up a seat in the House of Commons for the remainder of his premiership. His reputation, however, rests more on his two spells as the UK's foreign secretary than on his brief premiership. // Within six years of first entering the House of Commons in 1931, Douglas-Home (then called by the courtesy title Lord Dunglass) became parliamentary aide to Neville Chamberlain, witnessing at first hand Chamberlain's efforts as Prime Minister to preserve peace through appeasement in the two years before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1940 Dunglass was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and was immobilised for two years. By the later stages of the war he had recovered enough to resume his political career, but lost his seat in the general election of 1945. He regained it in 1950, but the following year he left the Commons when, on the death of his father, he inherited the earldom of Home and thereby became a member of the House of Lords. Under the premierships of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan he was appointed to a series of increasingly senior posts, including Leader of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary. In the latter post, which he held from 1960 to 1963, he supported United States resolve in the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the United Kingdom's signatory of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August 1963. (wikipedia)
• • •

I crashed face-first into this theme, which is to say I had no choice *but* to pick it up. Came out of that NW corner very quickly and found myself staring at FLI--- (20A: Old jalopy). Now I know FLIVVER very well because it is among a very elite set of words I know *only* because of crosswords. (Ask me about my extensive old-timey wino-related vocabulary). When an answer in a crossword makes you fall flat on your face, it tends to stick with you (see UKASE, ORIBI, and on and on ...). So the answer was obviously FLIVVER. Only FLIVVER didn't fit. Aaaaaand I got the theme. I did a version of this theme (an excellent one) nearly a decade ago at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, although in that case I think instead of a rebus the Vs were actually in separate squares, which was Really disorienting. I'm not sure VWS is a very good revealer here. It's more W / Vs. The double-V makes the revealer inaccurate. I didn't think this puzzle needed a revealer at all and was surprised to run into one there at the end. For a simple theme, I thought it was very well executed—lots of nice interesting longer answers, reasonably clean fill, and, I mean, come on: "THE FLEA" (2D: John Donne poem with a line starting "It suck'd me first..."):

["It suck'd me first, and now sucks THEE" (14A: Pronoun in "America the Beautiful")]

A very literary poem, with Donne's poem next to AEOLIAN (3D: Wind-blown), a word I know only from Coleridge's "The AEOLIAN Harp" (though in that case, it's spelled EOLIAN ... but nevermind the details). Shelley's "To a Skylark" lurks on the other side of the grid as well (61D). I had a bunch of little errors, all easily corrected:

Bullets:
  • DUMAS for CAMUS (5A: French writer who co-founded the newspaper Combat)— had only the "M" at that point, and jumped at the first French writer I could think of whose letter pattern fit the bill.
  • LEAP AT for LASH AT (55A: Attack)— I guess LEAP AT usually implies a desire to possess rather than a desire to kill. But I had ...
  • SEW for SAW (51D: Perform some millwork)— yes, I know SAW and "mill" really should've gone together easily, but it's Thursday, and I always assume I'm being tricked in some way. I'm sure the number of SEWing terms I don't know are legion.
  • ALEN for ALEC (34A: Former British P.M. Douglas-Home)— I know there's some guy out there named ALEN. I figured this was him. Shrug.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Alloy of tin lead / FRI 3-11-16 / Tamarack trees / Quaint means of manipulation / Major tributary of Missouri / Grammy nominated blues artist in Louisiana Music Hall of Fame / City northeast of Kiev

Constructor:Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:Gabriel FAURÉ(31D: Debussy contemporary) —
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style. (wikipedia)
• • •

Solved this one on paper, and was stunned at how quickly it fell, especially considering how much white space there is in the middle. I think having a massive, huge, neon, flashing gimme at 1A: Phylicia of stage and screen (RASHAD) can make a huge difference for a puzzle's overall difficulty. With RASHAD in place, most of those short Downs were a cinch, which then meant that I had the front ends of the two 15s. So I was forced to linger up there for something close to zero amount of time. The only issue was what the hell came after EZ PASS .... the only thing I could think of was LANES, but obviously I needed more letters. So I just followed HEAVY CASUALTIES over to the NE, worked the short Downs over there, and then eventually worked my way into the center of the top section, revealing *TOLL* to be the missing crucial ingredient in the EZ PASS stew. I don't love that answer. EZ PASS TOLL LANES doesn't hang together that neatly. Doesn't pop. Doesn't feel coherent. It's hard to argue against the actual existence of such lanes, but I'd just call them EZ PASS LANES, the whole "toll" business being implied.


So, Much too easy up top. But then a little resistance: Who (the &&$^%!@#!...) is TAB BENOIT (16D: Grammy-nominated blues guitarist in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame)? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that neither being "Grammy-nominated" nor being in the "Louisiana Music Hall of Fame" makes you crossworthy. In fact, being both those things might actually work against you. Wow. He seems very talented, but in this puzzle, he's the outlyinglest thing by far, familiarity-wise. Well, luckily, every cross was solid and gettable, so no harm done there. LOSS OF INNOCENCE went easily down the center and then PLAY FOR A FOOL went in at 25A: Deem to be dumb. I immediately thought "Hmm, that could be TAKE FOR A FOOL," then saw the clue at 21D: Husky cousins, and knew it was, indeed, TAKE (and AKITAS). And so, though the center was harder than the top, it wasn't that hard at all. I've seen that "Fine" misdirection at 34A: Fine source of humor, with "the"? (THREE STOOGES) a lot, including once recently, so the trick missed me. I didn't know AL'S Toy Barn or TERNE, but it didn't matter—all the other answers just washed right over the little things I didn't know.


AboutFEMININE WILES (31A: Quaint means of manipulation): is the term itself quaint? Are the wiles quaint? Is the notion that women use such wiles quaint? I'm not quite sure what's quaint here. It literally says "quaint means," but … so … women DO use them to manipulate? … and it's quaint? When you use your wiles, are you being quaint? And does the etymology of the word "quaint" play any role in this answer (just google [quaint Middle English] and see what comes up). Let's just say I'm making all kinds of uncertain, skeptical faces at this answer. The phrase is certainly valid—I'm just not sure about the clue. I used to call my cat WILES. His name was Wiley. It made a kind of sense.

["I'm suspicious and keeping notes..."]

ONE BOTTLE also has me looking skeptically at it, but for different reasons (27D: Order to a sommelier, maybe). I would look similarly at ONE WALL or THREE CANS or EIGHT VOLVOS. 47D: Kid's cry (MAA) is pretty cute, in that at first I thought it was a human kid crying, protractedly, for his MAA (MAA). But of course a kid is a baby goat. And MAA is the goat cry, just as surely as BAA is the sheep cry. I thought that as stack-oriented themelesses go, this one held up OK. Lots of long answers, and nary a "ONE'S" in sight. Unless you count BARIT ONE'S AXES, which you probably shouldn't, as BARIT is not a word. That I know of.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Termagant / SAT 3-12-16 / Dummies / Jerk / Fetor / Up

Constructor:Josh Knapp

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium



THEME: None

Word of the Day:BOX SOCIAL(14A: Old-fashioned affair à la "Oklahoma!") —
In the U.S. state of Vermont the tradition is that women decorate a cardboard box and fill it with a lunch or dinner for two. The men bid on the women's boxes anticipating a meal with the woman whose box it is. Generally the boxes are anonymous, so the men don't know which woman belongs to which box, nor what the box contains, the mystery and sometimes humorous results adding to the fun. However, it is not unknown for a young woman to surreptitiously drop hints to a favored man indicating which box is hers, as a way of "rigging" the results (and avoiding potentially less desirable company). The bidding involves teasing, joking, and competition. The event frequently takes place in a town hall, school gymnasium, or church hall. The practice had fallen out of favor with young people in the 1970s–1990s, but has seen some resurgence in recent years. The rules today have become less rigid. Men now provide boxes as well, but the goal remains the same: raising money for a school, church, or civic project.[citation needed] A notable example from pop culture is the second act of Oklahoma!, which is set at a box social. (Wikipedia)
• • •

So I guess Rex was at a high school musical -- we don't know if it's "Oklahoma!" and we may/will definitely never know -- so it's me, Lena, again.

My boyfriend got QUESTLOVE (17A: "Tonight Show" bandleader with a signature 'fro) instantly (question: why do we assume his hairstyle is a "signature" rather than just, say, his hair?), and I followed on his heels with BBQ PIT (1D: Where dogs may be put in the backyard)-- a nice misdirecting clue with no "heads-up" question mark. I love the word ECLAT(6D: Acclaim) and am always happy to see it in puzzles-- which is pretty much the only place I do. BOX SOCIAL though... that was definitely a new old one on me. The concept seems weird-- it's a... meal swap? Secret sandwich? Men can put food in a box now too? Basically it's clear that I need to host one now. I will raise money for gin. For me.

THATS WHATS UP (31A: "Hell, yeah!") is a fun answer with a long stretch of consonants (TSWH) in the middle just to make you sweat your crosses. That stodgy punctuation in the clue though! Just make with the exuberance and throw caution to the comma. We've got that "hell,"ASS (4D: Jerk) and SEX SHOP (13D: Once-common Times Square establishment) to make for a wild Saturday. But the [Joint issue] is GOUT (28A) and has nothing to do with a missing roach clip or passing in the incorrect direction. 

I wanted TAIGA for TYROL (34D: Alpine region) because I had NO WAIT instead of NOT YET (37A: "Hang on, hang on"). I liked (10D: Keep lubed, say) for REOIL because it didn't do that annoying thing where you know it's RE- because they've put "again" in the clue. You get it. Overall I enjoyed the cluing in this puzzle-- clever, conversational, spunky. 

But what's up with [Termagant] for SCOLD (56A)? This is some next-level SAT vocab trivia-- and I don't like that the definition refers first and foremost to "an overbearing woman." I hate "shrew" and the concept that it's always women who nag, so why not just clue the word as is-- [Chide] or something. Oh, I'm sorry, am I being a termagant?

Also was not a fan of PENCIL PUSHER (38A: Office drudge). I work in an office; I'm an admin, and I do a LOT more than "push pencils." Office jobs are not inherently boring-- it's a crappy stereotype. I worked in the poxvirus division of the CDC and *that* was certainly one of the most boring jobs I've had.

I had a good time with this puzzle overall and thought it was clean, but maybe a little on the easy side for a Saturday.

Signed, Lena Webb, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Lena on Twitter]

Fatty cut of fish at sushi bar / SUN 3-13-16 / Modern carpe diem / Section of foreign travel guide maybe / Neophyte in modern slang / Two 1980s White House personages / Self-help guru who wrote Life Code / Wooden arts crafts piece

Constructor:Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:"Don't Sue Us!"— Circled squares represent the ® that indicates a registered trademark.

Theme answers:
  • POPSICLE® STICK
  • TUPPERWARE® PARTY 
  • VELCRO® STRAP
  •  XEROX® MACHINE
  • FRISBEE® GOLF
  • TEFLON® PRESIDENT
  • PING-PONG® TABLE 
Word of the Day:TORO(88A: Fatty cut of fish at a sushi bar) —
noun
noun: toro
  1. a pale, fatty cut of tuna used for sushi and sashimi. (google)
• • •

Finished (quickly) and had no idea what the theme was supposed to be. There's an "R," there's not an "R," Don't sue you ... nope. Nothing. I kept trying to think of how disappearing "R"s could be related to anything legal. And then I started looking at the words on either side of the "R" in the Across answers to see if they had anything in common. And bingo. I'm slightly stunned that the theme is this thin. I mean, literally, the theme answers are just registered trademarks + a word. There is nothing cool or interesting or wordplayish, there is no joke, no build-up, no ... nothing. It's corporate entities. All the puzzle has is the little "R" trick. Seven times. The theme answers are ... nothing. There's nothing there to love or be amused by. I mean, XEROX MACHINE? Clued in a completely straightforward way? Where's the  joy, the love, the fun? I did have to expend energy figuring out the theme, which is highly unusual, but ... that was an afterthought. The puzzle was completed. Getting the theme was not a pleasurable struggle. I thought for sure the aha moment was gonna be big—Sunday-sized! But mostly I was just annoyed at myself for not seeing it sooner. Seems obvious, in retrospect.


I have never heard of the sushi meaning of TORO, so that will be the one thing I take away from this puzzle. I did enjoy the very long Downs, but most of the rest was bland. Solid, competent, perfunctory (especially the cluing). Mostly the clues are so short (for reasons of physical space in the Sunday magazine) that they don't have room to be very interesting, but even so, a little spice would've been nice. NOOB was a nice choice at 121A: Neophyte, in modern slang. Beats NOOR for freshness. I like that the POE clue was given over to so much POE (44D: Writer of the line "Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December"). But the clue on TERSE is one of those "jokes" that is lost on me, for a couple reasons. First, is "Describe yourself in three adjectives" something anyone actually says to anyone else? The situation seems highly contrived. Is it an interview? I guess so. Second, I get that the whole point of the "joke" is that the respondent is so TERSE that she gives only one adjective, but ... if I asked for three, then give me three or get out and take your facetiousness with you. My main point here is that, with clue real estate so scarce, maybe use it better? Or less cornily, at any rate.


I did like 24A: One for two of four (SEMI) because I really had to think about how the hell that even works. I (mostly) knew it was a tournament-related clue, but somehow I couldn't parse it. Four semi-finalists play two SEMIs, so a SEMI is a game "for two of (the) four" remaining people/teams in a tournament. Sorry if I'm overexplaining. This clue really did hurt my brains, and so I'm feeling the need to return to the scene of the crime.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

One practicing mysteical form of Islam / MON 3-14-16 / Largest pelvic bones / Victim of bark beetle barrage / Rooster desined for dinner / Elijah press your clothes / Potato treat for Hanukkah / Chevy now called Sonic / Deviate erratically from course

Constructor:Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty:On the Challenging side *For A Monday* (solving time: 3:38)


THEME:Exhortations to famous people— ordinary compound words are reimagined as imperative clauses shouted at famous people:

Theme answers:
  • PLAY, WRIGHT! (18A: "Wilbur, get in the game!")
  • IRON, WOOD! (20A: "Elijah, press your clothes!")
  • SHARE, HOLDER! (33A: "Eric, give some to us!")
  • BATTLE, FIELD! (42A: "Sally, keep up the fight!")
  • FIRE, BIRD! (56A: "Larry, shoot!")
  • GRIND, STONE! (60A: "Emma, do that sexy dance!")
Word of the Day:Grind ("sexy dance")
• • •

This is some pretty decent wordplay right here. Difficulty level was up for a Monday because (at least for me) the theme itself was subtler, and the clues more ambiguous, than I'm used to seeing in early-week puzzles. You have to first grasp the concept, then, even after you've got it, you've got to figure out which famous person the clue name is pointing to, and how. Often on early-week puzzles, I'll sail through very quickly and have no idea what the theme was. It's virtually impossible that any solver could've done that today. The puzzle is still easy, but it forces you to stop and think about the exact nature of the wordplay involved before you can proceed. This is not a bad thing. I like a theme that grabs me by the lapels and shakes. Most Monday puzzles just wave politely.


Getting from the first names in the clues to the intended famous person was always easy, especially considering that the clue phrases oddly (counter-intuitively) put the name before the command. Seems more natural to me to say "Keep up the fight, Sally!", and that phrasing also parallels the phrasing of the answer: "BATTLE, FIELD!" ... Command, name! But the clues put the name first, perhaps just for the sake of variety. The bigger comprehension issue was figuring out who the first name in the clue was supposed to refer to. You say Wilbur, I think pig. Actually, I think:


I was lucky enough to have most of HOLDER in place before I saw that clue, because otherwise it would've taken some time to figure out which of the scores of famous "Eric"s were in play. But I liked the added challenge and the cleverness today. Other minor issues:
  • IRONWOOD— I don't know what this is. I honestly got it confused with the William Kennedy novel "Ironweed."
  • RUMP (58D: Posterior)— I went with "REAR"
  • SISSY (27A: Wuss)— I had ... several things here, not all of them plausible answers. I'd much rather see this clued as Spacek than as a term of derision.  
Looks like I'm going to post this before 9am, and given how late I was up, and the whole horror show that is Daylight Saving, I feel a deep sense of accomplishment and professionalism, even if it's entirely unwarranted. Good day.
    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Go down gangplank / TUE 3-15-16 / Just free of sea bottom / Eternally nameless Chinese concept / Welch of Myra Breckinridge / Site for parolee tracking device / Early rock genre for David Bowie / Bath prank call name

    Constructor:Gordon Johnson

    Relative difficulty:Challenging (*for* *a* *Tuesday*) (solve time over 4)


    THEME:SOLID LIQUID GAS (52A: Three main 20-Across ... with examples included in 38-Across and 11- and 26-Down) — three different STATES OF MATTER can be found at the beginning of the following theme answers:

    Theme answers:
    • ICE-SKATING RINKS (38A: Places to do figure eights)
    • WATER TANKS (11D: Large containers often found atop buildings)
    • STEAMBOATS (26D: Some Mississippi River traffic)
    Word of the Day:UTICA(29D: City on the Erie Canal) —
    Utica (pronounced Image may be NSFW.
    Clik here to view.
    Listen
    i
    /ˈjtkə/
    ) is a city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The tenth-most-populous city in New York, its population was 62,235 in the 2010 U.S. census. Located on the Mohawk River at the foot of the Adirondack Mountains, Utica is approximately 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Albany and 45 miles (72 km) east of Syracuse. Although Utica and the neighboring city of Rome have their own metropolitan area, both cities are also represented and influenced by the commercial, educational and cultural characteristics of the Capital District and Syracuse metropolitan areas. // Formerly a river settlement inhabited by the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy, Utica attracted European-American settlers from New England during and after the American Revolution. In the 19th century, immigrants strengthened its position as a layover city between Albany and Syracuse on the Erie and Chenango Canals and the New York Central Railroad. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city's infrastructure contributed to its success as a manufacturing center and defined its role as a worldwide hub for the textile industry. Utica's 20th-century political corruption and organized crime gave it the nicknames "Sin City", and later, "the city that God forgot." // Like other Rust Belt cities, Utica had an economic downturn beginning in the mid-20th century. The downturn consisted of industrial decline due to globalization and the closure of textile mills, population loss caused by the relocation of jobs and businesses to suburbs and to Syracuse, and poverty associated with socioeconomic stress and a decreased tax base. With its low cost of living, the city has become a melting pot for refugees from war-torn countries around the world, encouraging growth for its colleges and universities, cultural institutions and economy. (wikipedia)
    • • •
    If I could turn back time, I would turn back time because yesterday's puzzle was soooo much better. This is a conceptual mess. The two Across themers are barely and not at all coherent answers, respectively, and then ... it's just ICE, WATER, STEAM? That's it? No trick, hook, joke, wordplay? All those words used literally in their respective answers? I have no idea what this puzzle thinks it's doing. There appear to be a bunch of random water-related answers. Was that supposed to be part of this? DEBARK (ugh) and AWEIGH and REBOIL and SAILED, all symmetrical, all sort of watery ... coincidence? I hope so, because jeez louise that's a weak answer set. But at least there's a ton of Scrabble-f*cking because Who Doesn't Love Zs and Js jammed into corners, fill quality be damned, right!? (EN AMI ... I mean, come on; that "answer" should be banned for life). Here's what I love: EBULLIENT. Great word. Here's what I wasn't while solving this puzzle: EBULLIENT.


    [STEAMed hams! UTICA!]

    BES! The more I stare at that answer, the more laughable it becomes (22A: Wanna-___ (copycats)). I lost tons of time on STATES OF MATTER (which has all the charm and snap of COATS OF PAINT) and DEBARK (18D: Go down the gangplank). I don't know DEBARK. Looking at it, I get it. But the more common word, at least as I've heard it, is "disembark." So I had DEB--- and had no idea what was happening. I also confused "gangplank" with "the plank," but that's my bad. At least I didn't write in DEBOAT, like sommmme people I know (Hi, Lena). The fill was rough, and the theme was somehow both confused and excessively simple. Overall, the puzzle felt 30+ years old, minimally. I hope you enjoyed it more than I did. Actually, I'm almost certain that you did. Mistakes of mine included JAPED for JAWED (9A: Shot the bull) and PESTS for PAINS (24D: Annoying sorts). Good day.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Upstate New York city where Mark Twain was born / WED 3-16-16 / 1970 #1 Jackson 5 song / Title hero of Longfellow poem / Online site for business reviews / Fish said to be named for Mediterranean island / Martini's partner in winemaking

    Constructor:David J. Kahn

    Relative difficulty:Easy (minute faster than yesterday)


    THEME: DRUNKEN COOK (62A: Preparer of 17-, 27- and 47-Across?)— two-word food items where first word can be a synonym of "drunken":

    Theme answers:
    • FRIED ONIONS (17A: Serving with liver)
    • PICKLED PEPPERS (27A: Food in a tongue-twister)
    • STEWED TOMATOES (47A: Chili ingredient)
    Word of the Day:David MUIR(3D: News anchor David) —
    David Jason Muir (born November 8, 1973) is an American journalist and the anchor of ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, the news department of the ABC broadcast-television network, based in New York City. Muir previously served as the weekend anchor for the flagship ABC News broadcast ABC World News Tonight, and the co-anchor of the ABC newsmagazine 20/20. Muir formerly acted as principal substitute for World News with Diane Sawyer on weeknights, and then succeeded Sawyer in the anchor chair on Monday, September 1, 2014. At ABC News, Muir has won multiple Emmy awards and Edward R. Murrow awards for his national and international journalism. // Muir is one of the most visible journalists in America. According to the Tyndall Report, Muir's reporting received the most airtime in 2012 and 2013.TV Week has called him one of the "12 to Watch in TV News" and TMZ, a celebrity news website, has called him "the Brad Pitt of news anchors" or is Brad Pitt "the David Muir of movie actors?" Muir was listed as one of People Magazine's Sexiest Men Alive in 2014. (wikipedia)
    • • •

    Second day in a row with a revealer that is not a legitimate stand-alone answer. When I finished I wondered what a "DRUNKEN COOK" was; I figured it was some phrase like, I don't know, "full nelson" or ""dirty martini" or something, and that it was being repurposed here for humor's sake. But it's not. A DRUNKEN COOK is just a drunk cook. That is massively disappointing. The revealer should pop, not fizzle. Too bad NYT puzzles don't have titles—you could've put your "the cook's drunk, everybody!" in the title, and then added DRUNKEN NOODLES and then changed that first themer to FRIED ... something that makes it a 14. FRIED DUMPLINGS, maybe. And there you go: four foods, all two-word phrases, first words all synonyms for "inebriated," no dumb, made-up revealer. Just a thought.


    This puzzle was absurdly easy. I had a small regional advantage over some of you, as ELMIRA is in my backyard. I used to teach at the prison there. So 1A: Upstate New York city where Mark Twain was born went in easy, which is always a huge help in propelling you into the puzzle [Update: clearly my brain saw only the words "Upstate New York city" and "Mark Twain" and completely missed the Factual Error about Twain's being *born* in ELMIRA; he was born in Florida, Missouri. He is *buried* in ELMIRA]. I had no idea who David MUIR was (3D: News anchor David). Figured he was some old-timey news guy. Turns out he's younger than I am, although he *does* anchor a nightly network news show, which automatically adds 30 years to your age. I think that math is right. Anyway, I know only two MUIRs, the woods guy and the poet guy, so there was minor hesitation there, as there was with NEB (I had NIB). I think that NEB (41A: Bird's beak) is one of those rare answers where I prefer an Abbr. clue. All answers went straight into the grid without much thought. Toughest part, by far, was trying to figure out the front end of the non-phrase DRUNKEN COOK, and that wasn't terribly hard. The grid, overall, looks nice. Long Downs, sweet (though pluralizing HONOR ROLLS is a little iffy). Hardly a cringer in sight. And the the concept has merit. But the revealer really hobbles this thing.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    P.S. I thought of another MUIR: "The Ghost and Mrs. MUIR"

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Constituent part of Russia bordering Mongolia / THU 3-17-16 / 1990s fad game piece / Vin classification / Home invasion in police shorthand / Live ESPN broadcast every June / Some repurposed corn fields / Repeated title role for Jim Carrey

    Constructor:David Woolf

    Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


    THEME:TURN OF EVENTS (59A: Unforeseen development ... or a feature seen four times in this puzzle's answers?) — four answers take a 90-degree "turn" somewhere in the middle of the letter string "EVENT":

    Theme answers:
    • PREVENTABLE (17A: Like many disasters, in hindsight)
    • SEVENTEEN (10D: Hearst monthly)
    • ACE VENTURA (37D: Repeated title role for Jim Carrey)
    • TURN OF EVENT
    Word of the Day:TUVA(4D: Constituent part of Russia bordering Mongolia) —
    The Tyva Republic (Russian: Респу́блика Тыва́, tr.Respublika Tyva; IPA: [rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə tɨˈva]; Tuvan: Тыва Республика, Tyva Respublika, [təˈvɑ risˈpublikɑ]), Tyva or Tuva (Tuvan: Тыва, Russian: Тува́), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic, also defined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation as a state). It lies in the geographical center of Asia, in southern Siberia. The republic borders the Altai Republic, the Republic of Khakassia, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, and the Republic of Buryatia in Russia and Mongolia to the south. Its capital is the city of Kyzyl. Population: 307,930 (2010 Census). // From 1921 until 1944, Tuva constituted a sovereign, independent nation, under the name of Tannu Tuva, officially, the Tuvan People's Republic, or the People's Republic of Tannu Tuva. The independence of Tannu Tuva, however, was recognized only by its neighbours: the Soviet Union and Mongolia. // Forests, mountains, and steppe make up a large part of the geography of Tuva. // A majority of the people are Tyvans, but Russian is also spoken extensively. Tuva is governed by the Great Khural, which elects a chairman for a four-year term. The current chairman is Sholban Kara-ool.
    • • •

    Wow, this puzzle worked exactly like it was supposed to, I imagine. I traipsed through it, enjoying the fill and the little bendy-word game, but not having any idea what the unifying concept was—then I end up in the SE, fiddle around with the answers down there, and Bam: the revealer actually does its damn job, giving me the conclusive "aha"+appreciation moment that is so elusive. What I like about this puzzle is how reserved it is. The concept, in the end, is simple, and despite all the turning, the theme answers don't crowd the grid, meaning that the overall fill can be reasonably clean and even sparkly at times. I never imagined I'd be shouting SATANISTS! gleefully, but here we are (20A: Devilish sorts?). OPEN TABLE, likewise great (5D: Restaurant availability). The cluing was a little on the easy side, which seems a reasonable strategy for offsetting the difficulty of figuring out the loopy grid trick. Though the puzzle seems to want me to be angry (SEETHE! ENRAGE! RANT!), I liked this one a whole lot: clever, clean, fun to solve.


    The only parts that gave me a little scare were those teeny tiny corners. I honestly thought I might get stuck in the SW when the two little Downs ended up being mutually cross-referenced, and I couldn't figure out 66A: 100+, say (HOT). But then I calmed down and thought "Question that's an anagram of a question... there aren't really many options here." So WHO and HOW and done. In the NE corner, likewise, I wasn't sure if it was NAP or NOD (11A: Drift off), and for all I know Ginsberg wrote a poem about Plutonian ORE, so ... there was a little bit of muddling around up there before it all fell into place. None of the other nooks and crannies gave me trouble.

    My only slow moments involved not knowing I was dealing with a turning answer. When did Hearst publish a magazine called "SEVEN," I wondered. Repeated title role for Jim Carrey ... four letters ... must be "LIAR (LIAR)." I also tried to make EVITA PERON fit and/or turn Down. It would do neither (44A: 1996 Madonna starring role = EVA PERON). I was weirdly happy to see the return of the Ampersandwich, i.e. the letter+AND+letter-patterned answer. Today: B AND E (15A: Home invasion, in police shorthand). I feel like we used to see these a lot more. I find them slightly charming, and they add to trickiness levels. I was also happy to end on a high note (figuratively) and end in a high place (literally)—last answer in the grid was APEXES (51D: Tops).

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    PM who won 1957 Nobel Peace Prize / FRI 3-18-16 / Picasso masterpiece with French title / It flows for nearly 2000 miles in Asia / Hotel Impossible airer / Sir William so-called Father of Modern Medicine / Corsairs Rangers of 1950s

    Constructor:Michael Wiesenberg

    Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


    THEME:none 

    Word of the Day:LESTER PEARSON(34A: P.M. who won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize)
    Lester Bowles "Mike" PearsonOMCCOBEPCPC (Can) (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian scholar, statesman, soldier and diplomat, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis. He was the 14thPrime Minister of Canada from 22 April 1963 to 20 April 1968, as the head of two back-to-back Liberalminority governments following elections in 1963 and 1965. (wikipedia)
    • • •

    This is a solid puzzle underneath it all, but it's like a fairly well-made car that has started to RUST. There are definitely some weak and flaky parts along the edges. I think the NW put a very bad taste in my mouth that the rest of the puzzle just couldn't fully get rid of. AMIR is not and will never be redeemed by being in the title of a "comedy web series" (6D: "Jake and ___" (comedy web series)). It is and always will be a terrible variant of EMIR. No fair dressing it up as talented young people. If AMIR were a one-off, crosswordese-wise, I wouldn't find it that remarkable, but that corner alone has ESTEE and NTEST (hello, old friend) and MOIRE(1D: Op art pattern), a word I admittedly irrationally hate with the fire of several suns, mostly because I've never seen it anywhere but crosswords and can't really define it and know in my heart of hearts that no one but no one "likes" it and that it only exists in a puzzle because the constructor desperately needs that sweet sweet friendly letter pattern. [Exhale] Then there's "I HATE war" (!?). F.D.R. at his most eloquent, I'm sure.


    Things improve after that, considerably. The NE holds together nicely, with a TANGLE of varied and interesting answers and only ELOI to CREPE me out with its crosswordesey ghastliness. Then central stack seems fine, and I might've really enjoyed it if I'd had Any Clue who LESTER PEARSON was. Not often that the marquee, central answer is a complete unknown to me, but today is one of those days. This unfamiliarity would play a crucial role at the very end of the puzzle, which is the only time I really had to struggle with this one. I ended up here:


    The killer clue here was 32D: Says one can make it, say. I envisioned someone standing on the sidelines of a race, or on the other side of a tightrope, encouraging a competitor / tightrope walker. "Come on ... you can make it!" It's the referent of "one" that's the trouble here. Anyway, I put RAVES in here without knowing why. Perhaps the sideline encourager has lost her damn mind. This gave me P-EES at 36A: Friends, in slang, which was confusing. "BFFS ... B F F-ies ......... PHEES? Please let that be wrong." It was. Also looked at -I- AHEAD (34D: Be in store) and could imagine only GIT AHEAD ([Succeed in Dogpatch?]). Total wreck. Eventually I decided LIE AHEAD had to be right, then PEEPS, then (aha) RSVPS, and there we were. Done.

    After the NW, the only objections I had were ... the extended -ER family (you know, the DYERS and the CARERS and whatever the hell a so-called OSLER is) (the ANSWERS and ALDERs and STEWOVERs, on the other hand, are all fine people). The puzzle creaks, but it holds up.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    P.S. belated thumbs-up for the clever clue on VERBOSE (29D: Denoting the style in which one might consider this clue to be written).

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Green Lantern's archenemy / SAT 3-19-16 / Surrounded old-style / Good name for girl who procrastinates / Patron for desperate / Magpie Grainstack / Comedican Marc who recorded memorable podcast with President Obama

    Constructor:Byron Walden

    Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (that threatened several times to become Challenging)


    THEME:none 

    Word of the Day:SINESTRO(49A: Green Lantern's archenemy) —
    Thaal Sinestro is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by John Broome and Gil Kane, and first appeared in Green Lantern (vol. 2) # 7 (August 1961). // Sinestro is a former Green Lantern who was dishonorably discharged for abusing his power. He is one of the Green Lanterns' most enduring enemies, though he occasionally has acted in anti-heroic roles as well. In 2009, IGN ranked Sinestro as the 15th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. (wikipedia)
    • • •

    Delightful, and a little scary. Those corners are like scary little dark rooms that threatened No Escape many times, but I somehow managed to Houdini my way out of them the couple of times I felt caught. The fill in this thing is bananas, mostly in a (very) good way. I mean, no one likes ENGIRT or MII or NO SEE, but it seems pretty narrow-minded to pick on those few answers when there's nothing else nearly that absurd in the whole grid, and when so many other answers are just dazzling. NUDISTS on a LOVE SEAT! A TREE-HUGGING ZELDA FITZGERALD! A PROPOSAL *and* "A WEDDING." And the MAGIC CHARMS of SINESTRO! Wide-ranging and entertaining material. Difficulty level was very hard to gauge because the feel of the puzzle kept alternating between breezy and stone-hard. Luckily for me, the stone-hardness didn't last long, and the puzzle finished (in the SW) very very quickly, so overall this came out on the easy side for me. Tons of fun. Let's see how it all went down. To start, well, I feel like I got very lucky, but maybe I think my instincts were just on. I didn't know the [Patron for the desperate] at 1-Across, but I guessed "ST." something-or-other, and that was enough to get me THEODORE (2D: Presidential first name), which I confirmed with A DASH, and off we go:


    Biblical suffix -ETH at 5-Down and that got me MONETS, and from there, the NW didn't last long. Once I dropped the "Z" from SCHMALTZ (1D: Bathos), ZELDA FITZGERALD went right in (30A: "Save Me the Waltz" novelist, 1932)—huge gimme, and probably the single biggest reason this puzzle played on the easy side. When a grid-spanner just falls in your lap, things open up quick.


    After MICHELLE WIE, I tried to drop into the SE, but to no (and I mean No) avail. So I followed NON-CITIZENS up to the NE, where I found the NUDISTS (they stand out), and managed to clean up there pretty nicely, despite some pretty brutal cluing with highly misdirective cluing, namely 11D: Main passage for SEAWAY and 26A: Brace for DYAD. "Main" meaning the "sea" (not "primary") and "brace" meaning "pair" (not "support"). I wanted LOVE NEST instead of LOVE SEAT (15A: Couples' soft spot?), and I misspelled SCALIWAG (like that), I overcame those mistakes without too much trouble.


    The real struggle came in the SE, where an Altman movie starting "AW-" had me stymied (and a little angry at myself; I thought I knew the Altman corpus pretty well). None of the other Downs would come either, so I had to dive down and pick up JANIE (thank god for JANIE) (45D: Who's "got a gun" in a 1989 Aerosmith hit). But then ... I really had to work by inference again. Got nowhere until I just put in the -ED ending at 31D: Came back strong. Simply doing that gave me -ED---S at 54A: Rush relatives, which I immediately recognized as SEDGES (yet another misdirection in the cluing, this time with "Rush"). From that "G" I inferred the -ING ending on what ended up being "A WEDDING" (32D: 1978 Robert Altman comedy with Desi Arnaz Jr. and Carol Burnett). The "N" in "-ING" gave me WIENIE, and things came together from there, but that corner was easily the hardest.


    Thought I might have trouble getting into the SW, as I couldn't figure out what the last word was in LOSING THE P--- (15D: Getting totally confused, idiomatically). "Page"? I didn't think I knew the phrase. Eventually stumbled on PLOT, but then saw the -MT ending on one of the Acrosses and thought "well that can't be right ... unless it's UNDREAMT." And then I looked at the clue and whaddya know (51A: Yet to be imagined). That corner came together in like 30 seconds. And ... SCENE! (40A: "And ... ___!").

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Maurice who painted Parisian street scenes / SUN 3-20-16 / Black white sneaker lingo / Regenerist brand / Streaming video giant / 1999 rom-com based on Pygmalion / jacet phrase on tombstones / Small-capped mushrooms / Hero of kid-lit's Phantom Tollbooth / Band with Ben Jerry's flavor named for it / Old Spanish kingdom

    Constructor:Joel Fagliano

    Relative difficulty:Easy


    THEME:"Double-Crossed"— Note:

    The word that's spelled out: REMAINDERS (because every letter in every theme answer is used exactly twice ... except one)

    Theme answers:
    • HIPPOCRATIC OATH (27A: *Doctor's orders?)
    • "SHE'S ALL THAT" (38A: *199 rom-com based on Shaw's "Pygmalion")
    • LOS ALAMOS (42A: *Manhattan Project site)
    • BAR MEMBER (56A: *Lawyer)
    • PRIDE PARADE (58A: *Event with rainbow flags)
    • UNDER DURESS (70A: *Pressured)
    • SETS A DATE (73A: *Makes wedding plans)
    • MIAMI-DADE (86A: *County that includes much of Everglades National Park)
    • PRETTY PENNY (90A: *Tidy sum)
    • GOES UNDERGROUND (103A: *Hides out)
    Word of the Day:ASTANA(32A: Capital of Kazakhstan) —
    Astana [...] is the capital of Kazakhstan. It is located on the Ishim River in the north portion of Kazakhstan, within Akmola Region, though administrated separately from the region as a city with special status. The 2014 census reported a population of 835,153 within the city, making it the second-largest city in Kazakhstan. // Founded in 1830 as the settlement of Akmoly (Kazakh: Ақмолы) or Akmolinsky prikaz (Russian: Акмолинский приказ), it served as a defensive fortification for the Siberian Cossacks. In 1832, the settlement was granted a town status and renamed Akmolinsk (Russian: Акмолинск). On 20 March 1961, the city was renamed to Tselinograd (Russian: Целиноград) to mark the city's evolution as a cultural and administrative centre of the Virgin Lands Campaign. In 1992, it was renamed Akmola (Kazakh: Ақмола), the modified original name meaning "a white grave". On 10 December 1997, Akmola replaced Almaty to become the capital of Kazakhstan. On 6 May 1998, it was renamed Astana, which means "the capital" in Kazakh. // Astana is a planned city, such as Brasilia in Brazil, Canberra in Australia and Washington, D.C. in the United States. The master plan of Astana was designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. As the seat of the Government of Kazakhstan, Astana is the site of the Parliament House, the Supreme Court, the Ak Orda Presidential Palace and numerous government departments and agencies. It is home to many futuristic buildings, hotels and skyscrapers. Astana is a centre for sport, having been set to host the Expo 2017. Astana also has extensive healthcare and education systems.
    • • •

    There is no doubt that this is a clever theme, but I didn't experience it at all while solving. I noted that there were starred clues, but there was no trickiness involved, they were all easy to get, and there was no apparent pattern. It wasn't til I was done (in under 10 minutes!?) that I noticed the "Note" there up next to the title. So I read it. And followed instructions. And found out what the deal was. Needless to say, this type of after-the-fact theme is not my favorite type. I want the reveal to hit me right between the eyes, mid-solve, and I want it to unfold like a continual revelation. Is that too much to ask!? Maybe. Following the Note's directions, crossing out the letters, etc., felt like performing an autopsy. There is a kind of aha moment that comes when you (finally) see what's going on, and the theme, to its credit, is flawlessly executed. And REMAINDERS is the mot juste, to be sure. It just feels like a kind of sad magic trick. "I finished your puzzle, and it was nice, and ... oh, there was something to it? Oh, OK, explain it to me. Oh, ha ha, wow. Good one." It has to be explained. The solver doesn't just Get it in the course of solving. Therefore, :(


    As a bloated themeless, this one works quite well. It's a lot sassier and more interesting than most Sundays tend to be, and never drifts into the doldrums of cruddy boring fill. The long Downs are marvelous (SPEECH BUBBLES! NICOTINE PATCH!), and there are some neat up-to-date thing like MODS (short for "moderators") (47D: Chat room policers, informally) and APPLE / CEO / TIM Cook. I have seen MODS a few times lately as friends of mine have gleefully reported on the sad attempts of a certain disgraced crossword editor to erase information about himself on his wikipedia page. Let's just say the wikipedia MODS weren't amused.


    The only trouble I had with this one was ASTANA, which I'm just never going to remember, and LLC / CARB (34D: Cousin of inc. / 45A: Engine part, briefly). I wanted LLB and LLD at first, and my knowledge of engines is not, uh, great. To me, a CARB is a starch thing, a bready pasta-y thing. Engines have "cams," right? That's the engine part I know. Anyway, that little intersection caused a hiccup. But otherwise, I sailed through this faster than I've sailed through any NYT Sunday in a long time. Sometimes I finish a puzzle so fast I simply don't notice the theme (this typically happens on Monday or Tuesday). But today, it wouldn't have mattered if I'd taken the time to smell the roses—the theme was invisible. I wish there's been a way to push the theme into view or to make it somehow more ... relevant to the solve.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    P.S. if this theme seems familiar ... Patrick Berry! (from Sep 2007) (may as well accidentally duplicate the best!) (I say the same thing about the theme, use the same visuals ... it's crossword Groundhog Day)

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Jean old-time French pirate with base in New Orleans / MON 3-21-16 / Coffee shop employee / Sink-side rack / Action star Jason

    Constructor:Michael Hawkins

    Relative difficulty:Challenging (3:45, i.e. a Medium Tuesday)


    THEME:HUSH HUSH (66A: Top-secret ... or a hint to 17-, 25-, 39- and 56-Across (AND 66-Across!) — phrases contain "SHH"

    Theme answers:
    • SMASH HIT (17A: #1 success)
    • RUSH HOUR (25A: Likeliest time for a traffic jam)
    • TRASH HEAP (39A: Rubbish pile) (not RUBBISH HEAP?)
    • FISH HOOK (56A: It's at the end of the line)

    Word of the Day:Jean LAFITTE(21A: Jean ___, old-time French pirate with a base in New Orleans) —
    Jean Lafitte (c. 1780c. 1823) was a French-Americanpirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his elder brother, Pierre, spelled their last name Laffite, but English-language documents of the time used "Lafitte". The latter has become the common spelling in the United States, including for places named for him. (wikipedia)
    • • •

    I'm going to judge this as a Tuesday puzzle, since the constructor had nothing to do with what day of the week it ran on. But just for the record, I was almost a minute slower than (Monday) average on this puzzle. Its fill and clues make it manifestly un-Monday. LAFITTE is late-week stuff, STATHAM is a name I know but had no clear idea how to spell, understanding the clue and parsing the answer at 47D: Union agreements, informally? (PRE-NUPS) were both really tough to do, etc. Vague clues on UNWISE and UNTIDY, plus LAFITTE, plus IGNEOUS made that NE weirdly slow-going. Annoying when puzzle is so badly mis-slotted, but again, that has nothing to do with the puzzle's inherent quality. So ... quality. I mean, it's fine. I sort of like the SHHs (SHH is horrible fill on its own, but it's a neat little hidden element), and I like that the revealer also participates in the gimmick—nice trick. The fill is OK, but seems very 50-years-ago (despite Jason STATHAM crossing SAM Smith). I don't think people have given each other NOOGIEs in generations, DIG? Sorry if I sound like a FUSSPOT (another word no one has used in decades), but this just felt musty. It's like a nice-ish sweater that smells a little of mothballs: I'll keep it, but I won't find it too pleasant to ... wear ... in the near term. I think the simile fell apart a bit there, but you get the idea. Do WAH Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy old (60D: Do ___ Diddy Diddy" (1964 #1 hit)).


    IN SPACE is kind of a weak stand-alone answer (44D: Where "no one can hear you scream," per "Alien"). I really dislike UNCAST, but I think that might just be personal taste (although, in my defense, it really really doesn't google well). Most of the annoying stuff is too slight to be too bothersome. I tripped all over the place. Took a while to remember DRAINER (3D: Sink-side rack). I call mine a "drying rack" and actually tried DRY RACK here, which is ridiculous, since "rack" in is in the clue. Had NEW DAY for NEW ERA (59A: Dawning period). Had CUT IT for CAN IT (63A: "That's enough out of you!"). I'm going to CAN IT now and get back to my laundry.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Article 1

    Constructors: Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel

    Relative difficulty: Medium


    THEME: ABC (64A: One way of ordering things, like all the consonants in rows three, six and nine) - the consonants in these rows are indeed ALPHABETIZED 

    Theme answers:
    • BOCA (17A) - DEFOG(18A) - HOJO(19A)
    • KOALA (28A) - MEN (30A) - PIQUE (31A)
    • ORS (44A) - TOV (45A) - WA(47A) - YAZ (48A)

    Word of the Day:SALTON Sea(51D: California's_______Sea)


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    Clik here to view.
    We went to the Salton Sea in 2013 and there were many, many dead fish. Photo by Russell Bates


    The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in California's Imperial and Coachella valleys.

    The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riversidecounties in Southern California. Its surface is 234.0 ft (71.3 m)[1] below sea level. The deepest point of the sea is 5 ft (1.5 m) higher than the lowest point of Death Valley. The sea is fed by the New, Whitewater, and Alamorivers, as well as agricultural runoff, drainage systems, and creeks.(wikipedia)
    • • •
    Hi there Rexual Beings. I'm Amy and I'm filling in for Rex today. This was a last-minute arrangement and I just got back from a wine tasting, so please forgive me if I'm a little sloshy. I'm not sure I would have accepted this assignment on a similarly wine-fueled Thursday night.

    This was a slightly more challenging and significantly more rewarding Tuesday puzzle than I've seen in some time. There's almost no crappy fill and some sections are truly delightful. While I didn't need to spot the theme in order to solve the puzzle, I found it very clever that constructors Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel managed to arrange three solid lines of answers that cumulatively contain every English consonant in alphabetical order.



    That said, as an alumna of the San Diego Zoo summer curriculum, I must take issue with the myth-perpetuation that a KOALA (26A) is a bear. A KOALA is a marsupial, and a slow, stupid (though adorable) one at that. As an aside, here in Los Angeles, the citizenry is bitterly divided on the recent Koala v. Mountain Lion controversy.

    I wish ODIE (14A: "Garfield Drooler), AMIE (36A: French female friend) and MOIRE(57D: Wavy-patterned fabric) would take a break from crosswords. Maybe a forever break. I also hate ELIZ (35D: Part of QE2: Abbr) - who says "Eliz"? Nobody, that's who.

    Brand names show up more than usual with SKOR (13D: Hershey toffee bar), TARGET (40A: Walmart competitor), DASANI (42A: Fiji competitor), PELLA (53D: Big name in windows), PIK (62A: Commercial ending with Water) and HARDEES (69A: Sister fast-food chain of Carl's Jr.).  

    I approve of ON A DIET(20A: Losing some love handles) and HOME GAMES (49A: They're never away), neither of which I've seen before in that context.

    Signed, Amy Seidenwurm, Undersecretary of CrossWorld

    [Check out Amy's website - You And What Amy]

    Young competitor in Hunger Games / WED 3-23-16 / Bridge four-pointer / Romantic comedy featuring two members of Brat Pack / Like toves in Jabberwocky / Strongman player on A-team / Parts of ratchets

    Constructor:Alex Boisvert and Jeff Chen

    Relative difficulty:Medium


    THEME:TRIPLE TIME (54A: Minuet meter ... or a description of the answers to the starred clues?)— theme answers are three-word phrases, each word of which can precede "TIME" in a (reasonably) common phrase or word:

    Theme answers:
    • NEXT-DAY AIR (17A: *Speedy shipping option)
    • "ABOUT LAST NIGHT" (23A: *Romantic comedy featuring two members of the Brat Pack)
    • STARTING ALL OVER (33A: *Going back to square one)
    • LONG LOST FATHER (47A: *Recurring soap opera plot device) 
    Word of the Day:PAWLS(45D: Parts of ratchets) —
    n.
    A hinged or pivoteddeviceadapted to fitinto a notch of a ratchetwheel to impartforwardmotion or preventbackwardmotion.

    • • •

    Interesting variation on the "Words That Can Precede..."-type puzzle. No idea what's going on and then, boom, revealer, followed by the joy of saying all the words in the theme answers in succession, each one followed by "Time," I guess. I wonder how big the "___ TIME" list was to begin with. I'm guessing Massive. I'm impressed that they got three very solid answers out of this theme. As for LONG LOST FATHER, that one is a reach. I'm sure that some soap somewhere has featured such a thing. Who knows, soaps run so long that perhaps the conceit has been used multiple times. But as soap opera plot devices go, this one doesn't feel ... paradigmatic. EVIL TWIN, now *that's* a soap opera plot device. But it's just weak, it's not terrible, and given that the others are air-tight, I don't think there's much harm done.


    I now and forever object to TOVE, BRILLIG, SLITHY, and all the other "Jabberwocky" nonsense, except in cases of pure necessity (11D: Like the toves in "Jabberwocky"). The idea that we're all supposed to know that made-up junk has always annoyed me, and here, it's patently unnecessary. That NE corner can be redone a million ways, with real words. Maybe you could ditch OLIN and NARITA in the process. The fill is mostly solid and serviceable. TURN TAIL and END RUN are cool, dynamic answers. I want to like LOVE HOTEL, but I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of it. Strange euphemism. I'd think LOVE NEST, or, better, NO-TELL MOTEL. Looks like the concept is much more common overseas, particularly in Japan. I'm familiar with the idea, just not this specific phrase. I also think of Cal Ripken, Jr. as a shortstop, as does everyone, so that clue on THIRD, while defensible, is mostly just annoying (he didn't move to THIRD'til '97—his 15th year in the league). I blanked on RUE, and read the "Young" in 55D: Young competitor in "The Hunger Games"as somebody's name, i.e. the person who competed against someone named Young. Sigh. Surprised that TOOLS was allowed to fly with that clue (34D: Obnoxious sorts), which turns TOOLS into the rough equivalent of DICKS. OPE should always be a nope unless gun to head. No real problems, otherwise. Generally fine work.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Abbr in Guiness logo / THU 3-24-16 / Washington Post March figure / Washington Post April figure / Author who wrote Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again

    Constructor:David Liben-Nowell and Tom Pepper

    Relative difficulty:Medium, except for the part where I had an error that wasn't actually an error, which took my time to Infinity, so ... Medchallengimpossible?

    [ZIP your LIP]

    THEME: 

     
    The "self-descriptive statement about a 16-Across [LOGICAL FALLACY]" is:

    CIRCULAR REASONING MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE, which reads in a rectangular loop in the middle of the puzzle

    Then there is another theme answer at the bottom: BEG THE QUESTION (64A: Reach a conclusion by assuming one's conclusion true)—so, another form of circular reasoning

    Word of the Day:"The Washington Post March"(34A: "The Washington Post March" figure => SOUSA) —
    The Washington Post is a march composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889. Since then, it has remained as one of his most popular marches throughout the United States and many other countries.

    • • •

    This was joyless, largely for technical reasons, but also for circular reasoning being represented in a ... rectangle. Sad trombone. But the concept is cute, and clever, in its way, and deserved better treatment than it got in the online and downloadable versions. In the latter, an important element of the puzzle (the "AROUND" clue) simply wasn't there. But apparently in the app and on the NYT site, as well as in the Across Lite (.puz, downloaded) version, the puzzle simply has a flat-out, no-doubt-about-it error. There appears to have been a late change to the grid, but not a commensurate change to the *clues*, so ... the clues said DAZE / ZIP (21D: Flabbergast / 33A: Nada), but the "correct" grid said DALE / LIP (see grid, above). So no one got a Happy Pencil or congratulatory message or anything ... just seconds to minutes of bewilderment wondering where the damned error was (answer: nowhere). So spectacular technical incompetence overshadows the damn puzzle. I feel bad for the constructors. [UPDATE: I am told the error was fixed sometime last night]


    There's not much to say here. The theme is self-explanatory and you liked it or you didn't. Fill is not very interesting, but it's not terrible either. It just is. CUBANO is nice and timely, given the recent presidential visit to Cuba (29D: Castro, por ejemplo). I flew through this pretty quickly except for in the west, where I couldn't get the circular phrase to meet up until I (finally) figured out BEACON (25D: High light?). I was thinking much higher, like up in the sky. I had BE-CO- and decided to run the alphabet for the first missing letter. Luckily for me, the first letter of the alphabet is "A." Clue, solved. Puzzle, finished.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    P.S. in case you were befuddled by the clue at 35A: The Washington Post April figure (NAT): the Nationals (aka the NATs) are Washington's baseball team, and baseball's regular season begins in April, and presumably the Post writes about ... them.

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Mellow R&B track / FRI 3-25-16 / Acid alcohol compound / French border region / 500-pound bird hunted to extinction / Lost tapes rapper / Echos French daily / W competitor

    Constructor:Ian Livengood

    Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging


    THEME:none

    Word of the Day:RENÉ Préval(52A: ___ Préval, twice-elected president of Haiti) —
    René Garcia Préval (French pronunciation: ​[ʁəne pʁeval]; born January 17, 1943) is a Haitianpolitician and agronomist who was twice President of the Republic of Haiti. He served from February 7, 1996, to February 7, 2001, and from May 14, 2006, to May 14, 2011. He was also Prime Minister from February 1991 to October 11, 1991. Préval was the first elected head of state in Haitian history to peacefully receive power from a predecessor in office, the first elected head of state in Haitian history since independence to serve a full term in office, the first to be elected to non-successive full terms in office, and the first former Prime Minister to be elected President. His presidencies were marked by domestic tumult and attempts at economic stabilization, with his latter presidency being marred through the destruction wrought by the 2010 Haiti earthquake. (wikipedia)
    • • •

    Wrote two exams and gave two exams and hiked in the woods for an hour and ate pizza and drank a Manhattan and had a chocolate-chocolate chip / walnut cookie my daughter made and Passed Out on the couch at like 9pm last night. Woke up (in bed, somehow) at 7am. Now it's 7:36 and I'm staring at this puzzle trying to recreate why it played so hard for me, given that so much of it—almost all of it—is fresh, up-to-date, familiar stuff. Stuff. You know, things, JUNK. Not PACK (1D: Stuff). Not PACK, Ian! Seriously, though, that was a nice misdirect, and 22% of the reason that I couldn't make the NW corner work for so long there at the end. But that corner was only the last in a series of roadblocks for me. In between the roadblocks was some lovely, vibrant scenery. I do like this puzzle. I think I was just having car problems, to continue this poor metaphor. So ... OK. I started in the NW and got absolutely nowhere. A French daily I've never heard of ... probably ends "-ES"; Probably LES but not sure, could be DES (?). Wanted JUNK / KNEEL (half right!). Tore that out. Wanted, amazingly, ARAL at 3D: Water source for 11 countries (NILE). ARAL is the one that is *disappearing*, Rex. Come on! So I just abandoned ship up there, to toggle to another metaphor. And then I found a much friendly, warm, laid-back reception in the NE, in the loving embrace of SLOW JAM (7A: Mellow R&B track), the first thing I put in the grid with any certainty.


    Between that and "Glengarry Glen Ross," that whole corner was Mine (11D: "Glengarry Glen Ross" co-star, 1992). But one problem coming out of there—the biggest problem I had in the whole damn puzzle—was 7D: Pink property. I kept hacking away and getting letters, but it continued to make no sense. I sensed early it could be a Monopoly property, but, funny story, I have none, and I mean zero, recollection of there being a STATES AVENUE. I mean ... none. So I eventually had AVENUE (from crosses) and STATE (from crosses) and thought "Hmm, STATE blank AVENUE, what letter goes there? "S"? STATE S AVENUE ... what is that?" If I had to name all the Monopoly properties I could, I would never name STATES AVENUE, clearly. MARVIN GARDENS, BOARDWALK, ST JAMES PLACE, VERMONT AVENUE, PACIFIC AVENUE, see, I know a lot of them. Soooo. I got slowed right down. Also couldn't remember how to spell the DHABI part of ABU DHABI (seriously, even now I typed "DAHBI"), and that was the part I *needed* to get into that perilous little SE corner (38D: Where Etihad Airways is headquartered). But ESTER / SPA / ARISEN bailed me out.


    Did you know HANGOVER CURE has exactly the same number of letters as HAIR OF THE DOG? (19D: Supposed morning remedy) And they both start with "H"! Fun! [faceplant].

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    HATERADE and HASHTAG already feel like dated slang your parents know and use wrong, but I still like them, perhaps because I'm actually the parent in this scenario. I tore up that SW corner (GARETH is a close personal friend of mine), and went right up to the NW corner, where I nearly died. That clue on 1A: Far and away one's favorite writer? is both ingenious and unfair. The "favorite" part really adds unnecessary and irrelevant information that even the "?" doesn't fully redeem. The "Far and away" part is perfect. Same with "writer." But "favorite"? Thought for sure it would be an actual writer's name. A writer who might be someone's actual favorite. A specific writer, anyway. Vague clue on EVEN (2D: Flush) and (as with PENPAL) general category of answer (rather than specific answer) for 5D: Snorkeling mecca (ATOLL) added to my woes. I think AVIATE eventually saved me (14A: Fly). Don't remember.

    There's some great, great clues in here, including
    • 17A: Slice from a book? (PAPER CUT)
    • 12D: Chill in bed? (AGUE)
    • 26D: Statements for the record (LINER NOTES)
    Overall, this was a fine puzzle that I was in no shape to handle effectively this morning.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

    Rough loosely woven fabric / SAT 3-26-16 / Mechanism for making things disappear in 1984 / Calligrapher's grinding mortar / Irish revolutionary Robert / Jimbo's sidekick on South Park / 458 488 on road / Fictional dog owned by Winslow family / Yellow-flowered primrose / Drug company founder of 1876 / Clusters of mountains / Fraternal patriotic org / Crooner with 1978 album You Light Up My Life

    Constructor:Damon Gulczynski

    Relative difficulty:Easy


    THEME:none 

    Word of the Day:RATINÉ(28A: Rough, loosely woven fabric) —
    n.
    A looselywovenfabricwith a roughnubbytexture. (thefreedictionary.com)
    • • •

    Fastest Saturday in a long, time. Under 8, and I stopped to take screen grabs, so ... yeah. Cake. The problem with lower word counts is, you're always gonna pay for it somewhere (well, mortals are, anyway), and today it felt like the price was a bit too high (word count: 64). There are a few great answers—MOM JEANS and MEMORY HOLE (34A: Mechanism for making things disappear in "1984") and TOTAL IDIOT (20A: Big dip)—but you get into some of those nooks and crannies and it gets pretty jarring. I was having a pleasant enough time at first. I saw straight through the "?" clue at 1A: Produces heat? (DRAWS), guessed the answers correctly, tested it on the "D" and guessed DRIFT (1D: Sight after a blizzard), and it all came together quickly. In less than 30 seconds, I was here:

    Here, WILLA CATHER acts kind of like a fishing line: you're just trying to get Any of the crossing answers to bite. Luckily for me, CETERA, ASHEN and -STER all did. This is precisely when things started to go south. Latin plural ... ugly suffix ... I was hoping that would be the worst of it (not sooo bad), but then *directly* after that came the MASSIFS (?!) / SAR (!?!) crossing, and Enjoyment Levels took a nosedive from which they only partially recovered (29D: Clusters of mountains / 38A: Fraternal patriotic org.). If you keep looking at -STER over SAR you will become sad and your sadness will deepen and deepen until you avert your eyes. I recommend not looking. MASSIFS would just be one of those "Oh, huh, what an odd new word" words if -STER and SAR weren't stabbed right into its heart. As is, that corner is a Blot. After that, we get stuck in the rough terrain of -ERS-ville: a patch of roughly one bajillion plurals, most of them ending -ERS (or -ORS). You know the old expression: COVERS ROTORS, SAVERS DOTERS. You don't? Well, now you do.


    Once I hit yet another French-derived nutso word (RATINÉ!?) and the never-welcome author abbrev. EAPOE, I got worried again. Then the TSETSES showed up and I was beginning to think this was SATAN'S own puzzle. Now, to be fair, there's a lot of meat to this puzzle, average words doing average things. But it fizzles out in a particularly, strangely weak SE corner and ... well, that's that. From a speed-solving, tournament warm-up perspective, I guess I'm elated. But the bumps were just a little too bumpy for me today—again, not unexpected when the puzzle plummets to sub-68 depths.

    Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

    P.S. I was looking for the Rickie Lee Jones song where she actually sings "E.A. POE" ("Traces of the Western Slopes," off of the immaculate "Pirates" album). But then I found this and just watched it on repeat like 30 times.


    [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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