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Channel: Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle
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Magnum opus of Spinoza / SAT 4-16-16 / subtilior music style / Place to get brew in more than 11000 US locations / Edible Asian sprout / Quack stopper for short / Only actor to appear in all eight American Pie films

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Constructor:Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (more Easy)


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:Bob RAE, leader of Canada's Liberal party before Justin Trudeau(26A) —
Robert Keith "Bob" Rae, PCCCOOntQC (born August 2, 1948) is a lawyer, negotiator, public speaker and former Canadian politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre and was the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2011 to 2013. He was previously leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and the 21stPremier of Ontario, from 1990-1995. (wikipedia)
• • •

Easy, and mostly delightful. The stacks are sparkly and worth the occasional bump and bruise in the shorter crosses. I MEAN, REALLY, that is a nice NW stack, even if you do have to go through BARIC (?) and HAHAS (ugh) and the weird crosswordese twins OLAN and OLIN to get it.  Oh, and OR LESS ... I guess that is a lot of damage for one stack to cause, but it *is* a nice stack. "Nice stack" is now making me laugh because it sounds like an objectifying, sexist remark, but isn't. I don't know what a BARREL CHAIR is, but then again I don't know who Sir JONY Ive is, either, and I'm being mocked on social media for it right now, so maybe BARREL CHAIRs are as ubiquitous as iPhones and I've just been blind. ANOTCH and ORLESS are really too long to be partials, but I did a (mainstream!) puzzle yesterday that had ONAANDE and MYDUST in it, so it's hard for anything to faze me much right now.


I threw BIB down immediately, though I wasn't certain. Then I posited BORIC (so close ... I actually knew Boron was a lower at. no. than 56, but plowed forward anyway) and that mostly-right answer got me RIME, which made it easy to see MERRIEST, which made for an easy hop from B-M... to BAMBOO... and the NW was pretty much done in a couple minutes.

[can you find the dumb typo?]

From here, the obvious move is to check out the F and B crosses in FBI CASES, so I did that. Why "obvious"? Because a. I've got the first letters, so there's a higher probability I'll get them than any other answer in the grid, at least at first glance; and b. if/when I get them, they'll have given me the front end of that central grid-spanner. Always great to have the top letters in place in any bank of answers—drastically increases the likelihood you'll be able to drop the Downs and finish off a section expeditiously. And that's what happened, though I wrote in FRAK for 22D: Assault, as a commanding officer, and had No Idea who that Canadian Bob guy was. (Dictionaries are telling me that FRAG actually means "kill a commanding officer, usu. w/ a grenade"; distinction between "assault" and "kill" seems at least moderately important). From FRAG, I ran across grid via GET THE WRONG IDEA and then up to NE, where I briefly struggled with MCCAFE (I don't ... go ... to there). Had --CAFE and had to really think about it. And so, half done:

[found the stupid typo yet? ugh. stupid fat fingers...]

WIG crossing is weird, but not bad, imho. PERIWIG is probably the most arcane thing in this grid, but the word must live somewhere in my brain, because I somehow wanted PERI-. But I didn't trust it, so moved over to the SE, which is really the most lovely part of the grid. EUGENE LEVY running down into a beautiful triple stack, and not a bad answer in sight. Much, much cleaner than its symmetrical counterpart in the NW. So kudos to this one. It had some rough moments, but I thought it more good than bad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Sobriquet for ardent Boston fans / SUN 4-17-16 / Prophet whose name means deliverance / La saison chaude / PI in old slang / Seasoned pork sausage informally / River past Orsk / Poetic shades

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Constructor:Howard Barkin

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:"Expanded Worldview"— a puzzle that riffs on GOOGLE EARTH (113A: *Popular app that can view any of the places named at the ends of the answers to the starred clues), with the last words in being things you can see using the app, starting with the smallest (HOUSE) and progressively zooming out to the largest (EARTH) (wait, can GOOGLE EARTH see the whole EARTH? Cameras in space? God's-eye-view? Cool)

Theme answers:
  • ANIMAL HOUSE (23A: *1978 movie in which Kevin Bacon made his film debut)
  • ON EASY STREET (32A: *Having it made)
  • STUMBLING BLOCK (48A: *Progress preventer)
  • "SEX AND THE CITY" (68A: *1990s-2000s HBO hit)
  • COMMUNIST STATE (84A: *Laos or Vietnam)
  • RED SOX NATION (101A: *Sobriquet for ardent Boston fans)
Word of the Day:CHINUA Achebe(3D: Achebe who wrote "Things Fall Apart") —
Chinua Achebe (/ˈɪnwɑːəˈɛbɛ/, born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958) was considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature. (wikipedia)
• • •


Ladies and gentlemen, your 2016 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament Champion, Howard Barkin! He hardly ever constructs, so this is a timely treat. I flew through this puzzle so fast that I had no idea what the theme was, but now that I look at it, I do like how it zooms out, and how the revealer is also part of the zooming sequence. It would've been cool if the theme-related words could've been used, in their answers, in non-theme-related context, but I'm not sure how you "hide" words like HOUSE and STREET. Well, DELLA STREET. How 'bout FUGUE STATE? I mean, you've got FUGUE in there already, so ...? But honestly I think the theme answers are just fine. The longer Acrosses, also decent (ONE-SEATER, TIME-LAPSE). Fill-wise, things felt a bit creaky, but not many things made me wince (though that IDIO-/EDUC. section in the SW is purty rough). I laughed when I put in what I thought was a pretty bad answer (ABEAM) only to find out the actual answer was worse (AGRIN). ABEAM has an actual, nautical meaning. I don't know what AGRIN's excuse is, but its very existence did, eventually, make me (a) grin. GFS feels pretty weak, though GF is certainly a common enough text-abbr. Not fond of THE A as a partial (120A: "___-Team"). I had -HEA and honestly thought "Oh god, please don't tell me there's some old term for the Mets called 'SHEA-Team!'"? And there wasn't, but I almost wish there was.

 [2016 champion Howard Barkin hugs 2001 champion Ellen Ripstein]

I knew LOOIES, but man, every time I look at it, it looks like it's got one too many vowels. Really hesitated in putting all of them into the grid.  I had a few other weird hiccups. Like BESEEM for BE SEEN (14D: Appear). Like ABEAM, BESEEM is in fact a word (meaning "seem" or "befit"), though it is archaic. I studied Chaucer for a long time, so I figure I picked it up that way. I misspelled HEDREN because how in the world are you supposed to remember that last vowel (97D: Star of Hitchcock's "The Birds"). I went with "O," which is how you spell the Tippi HADRON Collider (after you also change the first vowel to "E"). I have to throw a flag and call a Scrabble-f*&^ing penalty on that "J" in the SW corner, though. Sure, we all love JOLT, but the cost is a name part (TAJ) instead of an actual word. "B" is clearly the better letter there: gives you two actual words with infinite cluing possibilities instead of one such word and then a name *part* with highly limited cluing possibilities. Five yards. Repeat 2nd down.


LOL at AANDE, which I now find sad without an "ON" appended to the front. Seriously, as I mentioned yesterday, that LAT Friday puzzle had ONAANDE as an answer. I will never tire of talking of this. It's so outlandishly bad it has left the bad-o-sphere and gone into orbit. I think I'm all done with this one. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Idiot in Canadian lingo / MON 4-18-16 / Flash faddish assembly / Yellow-skinned melon / 1938 horse of year / Athlete/model Gabrielle

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Constructor:Janice Luttrell

Relative difficulty:Easy side of normal


THEME: BREAD (37A: Moolah ... or the makeup of the ends of the answers to the starred clues) — ends of starred answers are bread-like:

Theme answers:
  • BANK ROLL (4D: *Provide funds for)
  • SEABISCUIT (18A: *1938 Horse of the Year)
  • STUD MUFFIN (54A: *Hunk)
  • MEAT LOAF (38D: *"Bat Out of Hell" singer)
Word of the Day:LAKE / CHAD(45A: With 24-Across, body of water that's in four African countries) —
Lake Chad (French: Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow, endorheiclake in Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998, but "the 2007 (satellite) image shows significant improvement over previous years." Lake Chad is economically important, providing water to more than 68 million people living in the four countries surrounding it (Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria) on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It is the largest lake in the Chad Basin. (wikipedia)
• • •

This grid is very promising, but the theme feels fundamentally broken. Yes, all the end pieces (!) are BREADy in their way, but LOAF is a shape of BREAD, ROLL is a type of BREAD, and BISCUITs and MUFFINs are merely BREAD-*ish*—BREAD kin, not BREAD. Certainly BREAD is not the "makeup" of a MUFFIN. Flour is in there, but ... no. That's not enough to call the "makeup""BREAD." The connection among all the answers is far too tenuous, and the wording on the revealer clue feels simply inaccurate. But as I said, the grid is very promising. Yes, many familiar words, but it seemed pretty clean and pretty zippy. Themers are nice answers in and of themselves, and all the other longer answers (GOOD EGG, MYSPACE, KICKBACK, CAPS LOCK) are strong as well. Nothing made me wince, and I got to reexperience the '80s via the WAPNER / HOSER cross, so I was well entertained, if only for 2:45.


The only place I encountered resistance today was in the middle, for a number of reasons. First, the revealer just wasn't coming to me. Don't know why. Possibly because I wasn't sure what part of the toucan was "colorful"—somehow I thought maybe it was his COAT, which is ... not a thing a bird has, right? They have feathers. Dogs have coats. I also couldn't get BELLE without a lot of help from crosses (33A: Scarlett O'Hara, for one). Accurate enough clue, just not obvious to me. Then there was the fact that the whole center was framed by LAKE / CHAD, which caused slow-down both because it was cross-referenced and because its symmetricality made me briefly imagine it was somehow a theme answer. Also, the fact that both parts of LAKE / CHAD act like guards / gatekeepers for the puzzle's middle worked to make that section by far the hardest to get through. Not "hard" in any absolute terms—merely harder than the rest of the (very easy) puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Double in baseball lingo / TUE 4-19-16 / Veil material / North America's largest alpine lake / George ___, longtime maestro of the Cleveland Orchestra / Cleveland cager for short / High-tech 1982 Disney movie

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Constructor:David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (*for a Tuesday*)


THEME: HEADS UP (36A: Warning appropriate for this puzzle?)— circled squares are words that can precede "head" in common words/phrases:

Theme answers:
  • REVOLT
  • DEDICATES
  • NIPS
  • STOP ORDER
  • RAW DEAL
  • TWO-BAGGER
  • MURDER ONE
  • KENOBI
  • ARIA
Word of the Day:RENATA Tebaldi(54A: Opera's Tebaldi) —
Renata Tebaldi (pronounced [reˈnaːta teˈbaldi]; 1 February 1922 – 19 December 2004) was an Italian lirico-spintosoprano popular in the post-war period. Among the most beloved opera singers, she has been said to have possessed one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century which was focused primarily on the verismo roles of the lyric and dramatic repertoires. (wikipedia)
• • •

This one seems to be trying to get by on sheer density of theme. Seems like a find concept, but wasn't much fun to solve—cultural frame of reference that's a half-century old, and fill that is just too rough around the edges. It's like the good ole (read: bad ol') days today with cameos by I, TINA and SDS, and also names that were likely very familiar once but aren't anymore, like George SZELL (26D: George ___, longtime maestro of the Cleveland Orchestra) (I wanted SOLTI ... that's Georg, not George, and he conducted in Chicago, not Cleveland, stupid me) and RENATA whoever. Again, if you look for *balance* in cultural / historical coverage, you won't find any. Old and white and crosswordesey, with slightly off stuff like SOPPY (not SAPPY!), and painful partials like "I SHOT" and "TO BAT." There are definitely an impressive lot of "HEADS" going "UP" in these answers, and the idea to put two into each of the long Downs in the NE/SW is pretty bold. But there are a million heads in the world (hot, bed, etc.—I'm looking at TAHOE (31D: North America's largest alpine lake) and thinking "hat head" is probably a thing (it is)) and "RED" is so common (or, rather, "DER" is so common) that you've got not only the authorized one in STOP ORDER, but an unintentional one in MURDER ONE, and you could've had another if PROVIDER had been running Down. From AREA to ARIA, from MAES to RIS, I found this one just OK.


Got very hung up in the whole SZELL area, not surprisingly. SAPPY also slowed me down. In all other respects, difficulty felt pretty normal for a Tuesday, but those two patches were enough to put me significantly (say, 20-30 seconds) over my Tuesday average.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hockey scoring play / WED 4-19-16 / Material that is foreign to body / Loose garb in ancient Rome / Words finger-drawn on dirty car

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Constructor:Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


THEME: FOURTEEN POINTS (39A: Proposal of Woodrow Wilson ... or what the scoring values of 18-, 27-, 55- and 66-Across total) — yep, add 'em up, and you  get FOURTEEN:

Theme answers:
  • GRAND SLAM (18A: Baseball scoring play) — homerun with bases loaded, 4 runs score
  • HAT TRICK (27A: Hockey scoring play) — 3 goals scored over the course of the game
  • FOUL SHOT (55A: Basketball scoring play) — 1 point for a free throw...
  • TOUCHDOWN (66A: Football scoring play) — 6 points for the TD (maybe you thought 7, but you need the extra point for that)
Word of the Day:SCORIA(12D: Dark volcanic rock) —
Scoria is a highly vesicular, dark colored volcanic rock that may or may not contain crystals (phenocrysts). It is typically dark in color (generally dark brown, black or purplish red), and basaltic or andesitic in composition. Scoria is relatively low in density as a result of its numerous macroscopic ellipsoidal vesicles, but in contrast to pumice, all scoria has a specific gravity greater than 1, and sinks in water. The holes or vesicles form when gases that were dissolved in the magma come out of solution as it erupts, creating bubbles in the molten rock, some of which are frozen in place as the rock cools and solidifies. Scoria may form as part of a lava flow, typically near its surface, or as fragmental ejecta (lapilli, blocks and bombs), for instance in Strombolian eruptions that form steep-sided scoria cones. Most scoria is composed of glassy fragments, and may contain phenocrysts. The word scoria comes from the Greekσκωρία, skōria, rust. An old name for scoria is cinder. (wikipedia)
• • •
Fell asleep over election results last night (yes, they were *that* exciting) so just a brief write-up this morning, as I have things to be and places to do [note: turns out it's a normal-sized write-up, after all]. Here's what I remember from last night's solving ... first, a confession. If I have ever heard of Woodrow Wilson's FOURTEEN POINTS, I *completely* forgot about them. Total U.S. History fail on my part. I finished (quickly, 'cause this one was easy), and then shouted clear across the house to ask my wife if she'd gotten the revealer yet. "Did you know the revealer?!""Oh, yeah, that was a gimme." Sigh. She teaches social studies, and has a Ph.D. in American History, but still, "gimme" hurt. She started giving a from-across-the-house lecture on the Treaty of Versailles, but I was like "OK, got it, don't rub it in." So, now that we've established that I only got a 3 on my US History AP test, let's look at the puzzle. Nice repurposing of POINTS to scoring in the various sports: in order, baseball, hockey, basketball, football. There's only one (big) problem with the theme: a HAT TRICK is absolutely positively not a "Hockey scoring play." In fact, "play" is much more closely associated with football—a single, set strategy executed as one continuous act following the snap of the ball. You can run a play in basketball too. It might have lots of components, but it's fundamentally *one continuous thing*. Meanwhile ... in hockey, a HAT TRICK is the scoring of three goals ... over the course ... of the whole game. It is not a "play." Not by a long, long, long shot. It is three completely separate events. Unrelated events that might take places seconds, minutes, or even several periods apart. It's the simple fact of having scored three goals in a game. That is not a "play." That is fundamentally not a "play."


Despite never having heard of the revealer, I moved through most of the grid, from the NW to SE, with hardly any trouble at all; in fact, FOURTEEN POINTS itself was about the only resistance. It was those damned isolated corners in the NE and SW that scratched and clawed a little. But only a little. I didn't know what an OIL CUP does (turns out it simply holds and regulates the flow of oil in your car) and I really really didn't know what SCORIA is. So that pretty much explains the NE. In the SW, my brain could not process the kind of conversation that would allow me to make sense of the clue 64A: Question in response to "I am" ("ARE YOU?"). That is a messed up question in response to "I am." She just said she was. WTF? Also, I was not aware anyone ROARed IN to anywhere. Even ___ SHOT from [Basketball scoring play] was not obvious to me. So some slowness there. But I still ended up under normal time, and since this is an extra-wide (16x) grid, difficulty probably slots between Easy and Easy-Medium.


More AFROs and a token DRE ... in a puzzle built entirely around a super-racist president. I'll stop pointing this stuff out when it stops being the norm. This is a fine puzzle on a technical level, and if the puzzle treated black people as something more than an assemblage of hairdos and rap musicians with convenient names, if it were even slightly more inclusive on a regular basis, a puzzle like this wouldn't even make me blink. But this AFRO thing is a now a thing. The puzzle equivalent of "Can I touch your hair?" Again, it wouldn't be, if the puzzle were regularly more inclusive. Then, an AFRO would simply be one hairstyle among many in the world, one with very useful letters that one tends to see in grids. At this point, however, AFRO always feels kind of objectifying, and only highlights the puzzle's general and strong tendency toward an exclusively white POV.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Failure to sneeze / THU 4-21-16 / Brilliantly blue / Textbook market shorthand / Drunk's woe / Redheads book lovers maybe / Title figures in Gilbert Sullivan opera / Nevada county with part of Death Valley National Monument

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Constructor:Alex Bajcz

Relative difficulty:Medium


THEME:SST to SD— ST- goes to D- at the front of the second word in two-word phrases where first word ends in -S, creating wacky near-homophones, clued "?"-style:

Theme answers:
  • BLUEGRASS DATE (19A: Romantic night in Kentucky?) (Bluegrass State)
  • NOSE DUD (4D: Failure to sneeze?) (nose stud)
  • PLEASE DAY (34A: "Come on, Doris"?) (please stay)
  • FALSE DART (41A: Counterfeit Dodge?) (false start)
  • CHILDREN'S DORY (57A: Fishing boat at summer camp?) (children's story)
  • ICE DORM (45D: Student housing in Fairbanks?) (ice storm)
Word of the Day:Harvey MUDD College(8D: Harvey ___ College) —
Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private residentialliberal arts college of science, engineering, and mathematics, founded in 1955 and located in Claremont, California, United States. It is one of the institutions of the contiguous Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds. The college's mission is: "Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society." (wikipedia)
• • •

I woke up to this in my Twitter feed:



This never happens. That is to say, this kind of immediate collective outcry about a single answer, this kind of anguish, this kind of astonishment that is so keen you have to shout it at someone the second you're finished—people do shout their puzzle displeasure at me from time to time, because they know I'll understand, if not agree, but to wake up to this kind of singular unanimity: weird. So it was with trepidation and an odd excitement that I dug into today's puzzle, wondering if the answer would have the same impact on me. As I saw 25-Down coming together, my only thought was "... no ... it's not ..." but because other people had already BORNE the impact of that one, I laughed instead of some more violent reaction. How can you not have known that putting that answer in your puzzle would render Everything Else You Did In Your Puzzle virtually invisible. I think this is a relatively novice constructor, so I'll forgive the very common new-constructor thing where you overlook really bad fill because Holy @&$%! I actually built a grid that's fillable! But the editor should've been like "Uh, fix that. Please. Now."


Theme is pretty ho-hum. I think it must have been deemed acceptable (or deemed Thursday, at any rate) because of theme density (i.e. you get those extra Down themers in the NW and SE). There is a Bit of a problem with the answers where the "S" is actually more of a "Z" sound—the homophone part works a lot less well in those cases. That is, PLEASE DAY sounds like PLEASE DAY, not "please stay," and NOSE DUD, well, that second "D" was my last letter and I still didn't get it. I just kept saying NOSE DUD over and over to myself until it dawned on me the base phrase was supposed to be "nose stud," which a. is a million times less familiar / common as a phrase than the others, and b. has the "Z" problem mentioned above, which kills the sound gag.


Struggles:
  • HERSHEL (7D: ___ Greene, character on "The Walking Dead")— gave up on that show after season 1. Had HERSHEY there for a bit.
  • POWERED ON (11D: Booted, say)— had POWERED UP. This made the SKYEY section more ... I don't know, SKYEY?
  • ET TU (51A: "I thought you had my back!") / GUN SHY (48SD: Nervous and apprehensive)— "ET TU" is never not facetious in modern parlance, so a "facetiously" would've been appreciated. As for GUN SHY, I needed every cross and then thought it was a one-word adjective pronounced "GUN'-shee"; I mean, you've already got SKYEY, so why not?
  • TYPE (27D: Redheads or book lovers, maybe) — still not sure about this. Is this a dating thing? Like, a kind of woman (man?) you tend to be attracted to? It's a weird, weird clue.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S.



 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Project Mercury primate / FRI 4-22-16 / Roller on carriageway / Hills counterparts / Title food in children's literature / Relative of Sinhalese

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Constructor:Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty:Very, very easy


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:Ken OLIN(39A: Co-star of TV's "thirthysomething") —
Kenneth Edward "Ken" Olin (born July 30, 1954) is an American actor, director and producer. He is known for his starring role on the television series thirtysomething, and most recently as executive producer, director, and recurring guest star of the television series Brothers & Sisters (2006–2011). (wikipedia)
• • •

"Shoulders" (sides of the road)
"Cells" (boxes that hold data)
"Pacers" (people walking back and forth)

These are the clue words I could not get my head around. Those three words specifically, and the clues they are found in more generally, gave me fits. They were also the Only resistance this puzzle provided. I went through this like the Kool-Aid Man through drywall. I SMOTE it good. The clues were saran-wrap transparent. SMOTE MARIN ENOS ADDTO TITLE and see you later.


It's too bad this was so easy because I think it's a nice grid. I think. Now that I look it over. In retrospect. Hard to appreciate it when you're driving by at 90 mph, but it strikes me as very clean, with any ugliness being both short and uncommon. RARE, even. EES YOO ANOS ANAS. Maybe AGA. Maybe AREST. These are the only answers I'd seriously rue, and they're none of them that bad. Also, they're seriously outnumbered by good stuff. ORDER ONLINE has a slightly wobbly quality, but its counterparts in the NW are great, and the SE looks nice as well. All the Acrosses through the middle are whistle-clean. This was a nice, easy Friday. A gateway themeless for aspiring late-week solvers. All funk, no junk.

[You can skip to 3:20; that's when He takes over]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Give up out of frustration in slang / SAT 4-23-16 / Pericles domain in Shakespeare / Panama paper revelation / Tomb Raider weaponry / Chocolaty treats introduced in 1932 / Intl org that was first to land probe on comet 2014 / Acronym in 1990s news

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Constructor:Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (really really easy for me, but I think I lucked into some stuff...)


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:ESA(47A: Intl. org. that was the first to land a probe on a comet (2014)) —
The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, with 22 member states. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a worldwide staff of about 2,000 and an annual budget of about €5.25 billion / US$5.77 billion (2016). (wikipedia)
• • •

RAGEQUIT was a gimme (1A: Give up out of frustration, in slang). Couldn't get the "Q" cross straight away, but I got EDD and UNWED, so I knew it was right. That jump-started the whole solving experience. For the second day in a row, my time was ridiculously low. I wasn't even speed-solving (I rarely go flat out on Fri or Sat) and I almost broke 7. That's absurd. I broke 5 yesterday (even more absurd). This feels anomalous, as I struggled with both today's Newsday and today's LAT, so ... (OH) I DUNNO what's going on. Paolo Pasco is very very young. 15 or 16, I think. You can't really tell that from this puzzle, though RAGEQUIT does skew a bit young (it's a gaming expression). BROMANCE once felt newish, but now feels quite established (64A: Relationship in many a Seth Rogen film). TUMBLR's been around a while (18A: Blogging site owned by Yahoo). In short, we have a puzzle made by a young person that does not fell young, but that also does not feel tired, old, and dated. It's kind of in the Goldilocks Zone for the NYT. Just right. As with yesterday's puzzle, there's a little bit of cruddy short stuff, but not such that it interferes much with solving pleasure. ESA probably interfered the most, as I've never heard of it. Had no idea what it referred to. Took me several googles to track it down because [Define ESA] doesn't turn it up at all (lots of Spanish-related hits, unsurprisingly). So ESA shmESA SMERSHa. But anything else I might ding is just as small and far more innocuous. Longer stuff isn't mind-blowing, but it's quite solid.


This puzzle seems like it might turn on proper nouns. For me, the following were All gimmes: "LA BAMBA," Hermann HESSE, Portia de ROSSI, Jason SEGEL, and Edward SOREL (though I wasn't *quite* sure about the spelling on that last one). Oh, and despite never really having watched "Seinfeld," I knew ELAINE off just the "N" (65A: Sitcom character whose dancing is described as "a full-body dry heave")—her "I" gave me RABBI (48D: Black hat wearer) and helped me close out the puzzle, which was threatening (there at the end) to not cooperate. Anyway, if the above names or a good chunk of them are beyond you, you might've had slowness issues. I didn't know MARCO Island, Fla. at all, and as far as characters from "A Series of Unfortunate Events" go, I know only OLAF, so ESME took a little work. But nothing else puzzled me. I even somehow knew Pericles was from TYRE, with no help (Happy Shakespeare's birthday, btw) (yes, it's his death day, but by convention, it's also his birthday). Like I said, I got lucky today. I was in the PascoZone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Givee / SUN 4-24-16 / Botnaical cover / Biscuits with no sharp edges / Cave deposits / Selfies around 2012-13

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Constructor:Kathy Wienberg

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:"'Tee' Time"— 'TEE' sound is added to the end of the first word in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style

Theme answers:
  • CASUALTY FRIDAY (22A: Nickname for an accident-prone L.A.P.D. sergeant?)
  • PATTY DOWN (27A: Cry from an errant burger flipper?)
  • PANTY HANDLER (44A: Victoria's Secret job?)
  • BATTY MOBILE (66A: Gulf Coast port that's gone bonkers?)
  • REALTY NUMBER (89A: Three houses flipped this week, e.g.?)
  • BUSTY FARE (104A: Hooters menu?)
  • SAFETY CRACKERS (114A: Biscuits with no sharp edges?)
  • PETTY ROCKS (44D: Sign seen at a Heartbreakers concert?)
  • JETTY LINER (40D: Protective covering for a pier?)

Word of the Day:OMAR al-Bashir(86D: Longtime Sudanese president ___ al-Bashir) —
Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (Arabic: عمر حسن أحمد البشير‎; born 1 January 1944) is the President of Sudan and the head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when, as a brigadier in the Sudanese Army, he led a group of officers in a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi after it began negotiations with rebels in the south. Since then, he has been elected three times as President in elections that have been under scrutiny for corruption. In March 2009, al-Bashir became the first sitting president to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. (wikipedia)
• • •

This has been the easiest Fri-Sat-Sun stretch that I can remember. Of course, I can't actually *remember* any other Fri-Sat-Sun stretches, but I doubt I've ever had a combined time on two themelesses and a Sunday-sized puzzle come in under 21 minutes, as I have this week. 8:47 on today's puzzle, which probably a Sunday NYT record for me. I've done Sunday-sized puzzles in under 8 before, but those were Newsdays, I think. The theme here was so basic, and the overall cluing so straightforward, that once I got past 1A: Contents of some tubs, which probably threw me more than anything else in the puzzle (I wanted OLEO), I barely stopped entering letters until the end. I don't think this theme is really worthy of the NYT—not in the 21st century. It's just too vanilla, too hackneyed. It's executed well enough, but there's nothing very entertaining going on. I got a dark chuckle out of CASUALTY FRIDAY, but the rest of it was just ho-hum. Fill was also kind of, let's say, retro, with TSAR ALDA ALAR ARIL and ECRU getting the band back together, but it was all quite tolerable. Just old-fashioned and dull, despite the boobs (104A) and panties (44A).


Here are some memorable moments—there were little bits of trickery that might've caused a lot more trouble if the surrounding fill / clues had also been at all difficult. Thought the "band" in 8A: Military band (SASH) was musical. Thought 40A: Bridge (JOIN) was SPAN. I can never remember what AMPAS stands for, so ARTS was tough (71D: Part of AMPAS) (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences).  I had no idea what I was looking at at 103D: "Givee." I thought it was either some weird, possibly racist version of "gimme." Who in the world actually says "givee" to mean "one who has been given something," i.e. TAKER, even ironically? Yipes. I had trouble with but ultimately very much enjoyed the clue on TOKE (107D: It's a drag). Also had trouble with PILE, which I had as PILL, 'cause that's what some sweaters do ... and it gives the fabric a kind of NAPpy texture. It made sense in my mind. But none of these problems were really problems. No trouble. No TRAUMA. Cakewalk.



Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Mumbai titles / MON 4-25-16 / Don't mess with him per old song lyric / Walter who created Woody Woodpecker / James of Gunsmoke

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0
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Constructor:Betty Keller

Relative difficulty:North of Medium by a little bit (i.e. Medium-Challenging *for a Monday*)


THEME:MR. IN-BETWEEN (37A: "Don't mess with" him, per an old song lyric ... or a hint to 18-, 20-, 55- and 58-Across)— "MR." is "IN BETWEEN" (i.e. straddling) two words in two-word phrase:

Theme answers:
  • BOTTOM ROW (18A: 64-, 65- and 66-Across, in this puzzle)
  • STEAMROLLER (20A: Heavy vehicle that smooths a road surface)
  • PALM READING (55A: Means of fortunetelling)
  • AM/FM RADIO (58A: Audio feature that comes standard on cars)
Word of the Day:Walter LANTZ(17A: Walter who created Woody Woodpecker) —
Walter Benjamin Lantz (April 27, 1899 – March 22, 1994) was an Americancartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker. (wikipedia)
• • •

There's a fairly standard, reasonably solid theme concept here. Not great that it relies on a non-title phrase from a song that the clue doesn't even bother to name, but let's leave that aside for now. You put "MR." as a bridge between words in two-word phrases. OK. Problem one: this theme is infinitely replicable. It's not tight enough, not special enough. DORM ROOMS, ALBUM REVIEWS, FILM REELS, FOAM RUBBER, FARM-RAISED, WARM REGARDS, RUM RAISIN, GRIM REAPER ... I'm not even trying here. If the theme answers that were chosen were particularly fantastic—really scintillating examples of the form—then maybe? But they're not. They are just phrases. So the theme just doesn't cohere enough, and the chosen answers are flat.


Then there is the much much bigger problem of fill quality. It's quite poor. This is a 74-worder—that is low for a Monday. I Do Not understand why this grid wasn't built in a more accommodating, good-fill-friendly manner. Bring it up to 76 or 78 words, pull the themers apart a little, or at least add some corner cheaters in the NW and SE. *Something*. That NW corner is in excusable—and it's where people's first impressions of the puzzle come from. Will or Joel could refill that thing cleanly inside of 10 minutes, guaranteed. So why didn't they? I am baffled. We have to endure a partial, a foreign partial, a Latin phrase word, a single BEATLE, a tired golfer name, and (most improbable of all) *crossing* *old-timey* *names*. That square will Natick more than a few people guaranteed. It nearly got my wife. It got one other person I've heard back from already. This problem is—I can't stress this enough—utterly foreseeable. LANTZ is not and will never be a Monday name, no matter what it crosses, but crossing it with ARNESS.... (3D: James of "Gunsmoke") ... that is baffling. People who have been doing the puzzle forever and ever might not be troubled at all by either of those names, but man, look this puzzle over—from the theme, to every corner (but especially the NW corner), it's basically telling people under 40 to f-off.



The grid is both poorly filled and unacceptably narrow in its cultural frame of reference. Cleaning up that NW corner *alone* would've made this puzzle 2x as good. There are fill problems throughout, but virtually *everything* from ABANG down to MMLI is objectively not good, so a quick clean-up there would've made a huge difference. I do like the NE and SW corners on this one, with all those long Downs alongside one another. But they're not worth the pain we have to endure elsewhere. I mean, MAAMS plural? SRIS plural? You can't let puzzles go out like this—unpolished, unfinished. It's not fair to the constructor, and it's especially not fair to the solvers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Former Sanyo competitor / TUE 4-26-16 / Canyon Park running spot in Hollywood Hills / Ones helping public prosector / Aggressive manager for child star / Popular strength-training program

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0
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Constructor:Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:words made into scandals— familiar words/names ending in -GATE are reimagined (in wacky "?" clues) as unlikely scandal names:

Theme answers:
  • DELEGATE (18A: Scandal surrounding copy editors' proofreading marks?)
  • ELONGATE (19A: Scandal involving Tesla C.E.O. Musk?)
  • APPLEGATE (28A: Scandal affecting iPhone owners?) (Christina! She'll like that...)
  • FLOODGATE (47A: Scandal in the aftermath of a tsunami?)
  • TAILGATE (57A: Scandal that implicates a detective?)
  • NAVIGATE (61A: Scandal depicted in "Avatar"?)
Word of the Day:RUNYON Canyon Park(33A: ___ Canyon Park (running spot in the Hollywood Hills)) —
Runyon Canyon Park is a 160-acre (65 ha) park in Los Angeles, California, at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, managed by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The southern entrance to the park is located at the north end of Fuller Avenue in Hollywood. The northern entrance is off the 7300 block of Mulholland Drive. The Runyon Canyon Road, a fire road that is closed to public motor vehicle access, runs roughly through the center of the park between the northern and southern entrances along Runyon Canyon itself, and there are numerous smaller hiking trails throughout the park. The highest point in the park at an elevation of 1,320 ft (402 m) is known as Indian Rock. Because of its proximity to residential areas of Hollywood and the Hollywood Hills, celebrity sightings are common. The park is also noted for having a fairly liberal dog policy, with dogs allowed off-leash in 90 of the park's 160 acres (0.65 km2). (wikipedia)
• • •

Simple, clever concept, very easy to solve (so many -GATEs to be automatically filled in).  For me, the highlight of the puzzle wasn't the theme, it was the sassy, polished grid. FRENEMY and STAGEMOM before I even got out of the NW? That's impressive. There's current and/or snappy fill all over the place. I particularly liked CROSSFIT, AIR COVER, LOST LOVE, LOW-RISK, and "WORD UP," though I'd've clued that last one via the 1986 Cameo song. People mostly actually just say "Word," if they use that expression at all. This is an incredibly minor point. There is hardly any junk in this puzzle. ADAS, I don't like. Any other problematic short fill is, at worst, overfamiliar, and even that is quite infrequent. No CHAGRIN here. The weirdest answer in the puzzle was RUNYON. Usually I'm giving sideeye to the hyperlocal *NYC* (or overall Northeastern US) fill, accusing the puzzle of its own special brand of provincialism. But a park in L.A.? When I see pictures, the park actually looks familiar, but I lived in Southern California for a while and I've never heard of RUNYON Canyon Park. It is a deeply weird proper noun to put in your *Tuesday* *NYT* puzzle, especially when a much more famous RUNYON is readily available to you (Damon, who wrote "Guys & Dolls" and was a hugely famous sportswriter and short story writer in the early 20th c.). But with this theme that essentially gives away huge chunks of real estate in the grid, maybe the thinking was that you gotta put *something* in there to slow people down. So ... some park! Why not?


My stumbles were not that noteworthy. First thing I wrote in the grid was PEONS, but I instantly knew it was wrong (1A: Medieval drudges). RUNYON slowed me down a bit over there in the west. I hesitated writing in SEAN Bean because even though it felt right, I couldn't picture him in my head. Only Mr. Bean popped up. And SEAN Astin. But no matter. SEAN was right. This one was perhaps over-easy, but highly pleasing for me nonetheless. Nice gridwork.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Five Pillars adherent / WED 4-27-16 / Terrier of old whodunits / Cryophobe's fear / Hotfoots it, old-style

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Constructor:Jeff Stillman

Relative difficulty:Medium


THEME: THEME— male-sounding pen names for female authors

Theme answers:
  • ELLIS BELL (17A: Pen name of the female author of "Wuthering Heights") (Emily Brontë)
  • ISAK DINESEN ( 39A: Pen name of the female author of "Out of Africa") (Karen Blixen)
  • ROBERT GALBRAITH (39A: Pen name of the female author of "The Cuckoo's Calling") (J.K. Rowling) (Joanne Rowling)
  • GEORGE ELIOT (49A: Pen name of the female author of "Silas Marner") (Mary Ann Evans)
  • ANDY STACK (61A: Pen name of the female author of True Detective stories) (Ann Rule)
Word of the Day:ANDY STACK(61A: Pen name of the female author of True Detective stories) —
Andy Stack is one of the founding members of the band Wye Oak and a touring member of EL VY, as well as a remix artist and a composer and producer for film and television music. He is noted for his technique of performing drums, keyboard, and electronics simultaneously as part of Wye Oak. (seriously, this is the first thing that came up; I still have no idea who this "female author" is ... hang on ... oh, look, it's Ann Rule, whom I've vaguely heard of) Ann Rae Rule (née Stackhouse; October 22, 1931 – July 26, 2015) was an Americantrue crime author of The Stranger Beside Me, about serial killer, and Rule's co-worker, Ted Bundy. Rule was also known for her book Small Sacrifices, about Oregonchild murdererDiane Downs. Many of Rule's books center on murder cases that occurred in the Pacific Northwest and her adopted home state of Washington. (wikipedia)

• • •

Surprised this theme was deemed NYT-worthy. There's nothing here. A set of names that fit in a grid. It's like a theme from a very bygone era, or from a very sub-NYT puzzle. No wordplay, no kicker, no zing, nothing. Here Are Some Pen Names That Women Have Taken Over The Years (Only Two Of Which Are Truly Famous). Yes, women have taken male-sounding pen names. They sure have. This isn't a theme; it's a trivia game. With nothing interesting happening in the rest of the puzzle to offset the dull theme, this one just sinks like a stone. ASTA, AGAPE, SAS ... the fill also feels like it belongs to another era. VENETO MINIM ... we've slid back into arcana a little. Foreign words and foreign word parts and arcana. EENIE ECRU ANNUM.  Yesterday's puzzle was too easy, but it least it was entertaining. I guess people who like crosswords to be "tests of knowledge" might enjoy this. I am not one of them.

["ALIVE" (by SIA)]

I didn't know ELLIS BELL or ANDY STACK. I read one of Rowling's ROBERT GALBRAITH novels and thought it was pretty good, though I keep remembering that pen name as Kenneth Galbraith, who I think is an economist.... yes. That's who he is. Does anyone who's not a paleographer ever actually say MINIM? I learned MINIM in graduate school—it's an important word in MS studies. It's just a "short vertical stroke" in handwriting. The trouble for the modern (inept) scholar like me is that so many different letters are made with minims that reading can be exceeding difficult. You keep hitting blocks of MINIMs and trying to figure out where "m"s end and "n"s begin. Nightmare. I've never heard MINIM used in any other context ever. This puzzle seems obsessed with tiny thing (MINIM, WEE, EENIE ... oh, I guess EENIE is a counting word; I got it confused with EENSY). Also obsessed with Roman thing (Via VENETO, ANNUM, MLI). Neither obsession portends a snappily filled grid. Hoping for livelier things tomorrow...


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Daughter of Loki / 4-28-16 / Contemporary of Wordsworth Coleridge / Extinct creature with armored spikes on its back / Nascar stat for short / Rappeller's need / Goldfinger's first name

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Constructor:Kurt Krauss

Relative difficulty:Challenging (mainly because of having to remember exactly how the gimmick works, not because of Inherent difficulty)


THEME:compass directions—Downs run North in the North, South in the South; Acrosses run West in the West, East in the East. Words extending from the center (which is supposed to house a compass rose, the note tells me) start with the relevant words:

Theme answers:
  • NORTHER (which has the direction meaning of "north" in it)
  • EASTMAN (which doesn't)
  • WEST END (which has the direction meaning of "west" in it)
  • SOUTHEY (which doesn't) 
Word of the Day:SOUTHEY(43D: Contemporary of Wordsworth and Coleridge) —
Robert Southey (/ˈsði/ or /ˈsʌði/; August 12, 1774 in Bristol– March 21, 1843 in London) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity. (wikipedia)
• • •

I've seen this type of gimmick before, for sure. I'm quite sure that I've solved a puzzle that had a compass rose at its center before. And I know I've done puzzles were the answers appear to go backwards. The question is... why? What's the hook? Where's the fun? Here, there is none. I mean, yes, there's the NEWS thing (north east south west, I mean), but even that is slightly botched. You should bury your direction words in non-direction answers, or (less good but still acceptable) make them all direction answers. This grid, however, decides to split the difference. I say "decides" as if anyone was even thinking about this issue, which clearly they weren't. Filling this one grid was an unpleasant experience. Gimmick was obvious early, and then there was just this slog... because once you see that the answers run the "wrong" way half the time, all you're left with is a not-very-well-filled grid. There's no reason backwardsness alone should cause you to put PES and SCH and SATRAP and ADE into one little corner of the grid. Baffling. This lack of polish, or, rather, this reliance on Whatever Works without any care to make it Better, pervades the whole grid. It's choked with ARIL ELOI EFT AURIC SENAT HEL (?!) ELEM NOT I, and there's nothing to mitigate that onslaught. There's just this 1/2 backwards gimmick, which is not so much challenging as it is tedious. Even the clues don't look like they're really trying—mostly one-worders or straight trivia. Come on, man.


Do people know SOUTHEY? I have an English Ph.D. and I took a Romantic Poetry course in college and I've never read him and have barely heard of him. He's totally acceptable as a crossword answer, but he seemed very much like a familiarity outlier today. I wish I liked *something* about this grid, but I don't. SALIVATE and ERGONOMIC are fine answers, but they're not scintillating, and this puzzle really really needs some scintillating to pull itself out of the quicksand of crosswordese and tedium that makes up the rest of the grid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Sonnet-ending unit / FRI 4-29-16 / Slangy true no / Questel who voiced Olive Oyl / Onetime motel come-on / Old radio dummy / Result of holding hooking / Shot from behind arc informally

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0
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Constructor:Andrew Kingsley

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:MAE Questel(6D: Questel who voiced Olive Oyl) —
Mae Questel (pronounced ques-TELL; September 13, 1908 – January 4, 1998) was an American actress and vocal artist best known for providing the voices for the animated characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. She began in vaudeville, and played occasional small roles in films and television later in her career, most notably the role of Aunt Bethany in 1989's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. (wikipedia)
• • •

Super easy, a little rough around the edges, but mostly entertaining. Just when it seemed in danger of sinking into tiresome territory, it would zag back to something unexpected or modern, fresh or lively. A real yo-yo rollercoaster elevator, this one. One minute I'm down with EDIE and ACADIA, then up with VALUE MENU and ICY STARES, then down with oldey-timey MAE and SNERD, then up with GOOD TIME SLAM POETRY. Ugsome ARME and ETERNE get made up for with VIRUS SCAN and "THE RAVEN" (58A: 72 of its 108 lines end in "-ore" sounds). Less than great fill like SUP and TREY at least get nice modern clues. Ultimately, I'm FOR this one—but what is with the easiness. The EASE! I broke 5 minutes last week, and I nearly broke it again this week, despite what felt like a very slow start in the NW (FOUR A.M. really loused me up at 1A: Graveyard hour), and despite not really having my speed-solving hat on. Longer answers like JET BLACK, ICY STARES, and LATIN LOVER came together with just one or two letters in place. I got FINLAND off just the "F" (40D: First country in the world with universal suffrage (1906)). I know I'm asking for trouble when I say this, but More Teeth, please. I need late-week puzzles to put up something of a fight.


OMSK OREL and OREM are all located in the same room in my brain, and I couldn't figure out which one I needed for a while today at 30A: City on the Oka River. OREM is in Utah, so I mostly ruled that out (though I wouldn't have been stunned if it had turned out that Utah had an Oka River). OMSK was contradicted by crosses, so ... OREL. I thought COMER was COMET (13D: Star on the horizon?). I imagined a scenario like this—Person 1: "Is that a star on the horizon?" Person 2: "No, it's a COMET." End scene. Cool that POETRY intersects "THE RAVEN" (*and* contains the letter string "POE"). The toughest clue to parse was 48A: Answering to (UNDER). I'm still not sure I can find a good example of how those can substitute for one another, but I assume ... oh, no, wait, I just got it. Of course. You answer to your boss. You're UNDER your boss. Figuratively. Probably just figuratively. I was thinking it had something to do with going UNDER a different name, answering to a different name. But no, that's absurd. The boss thing is right. LMAO. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Just remembered that my friend Laura wrote me earlier in the week telling me that this Friday's puzzle was going to be a debut by one of her students at Dartmouth. She was like "be kind" and I was like "You're Not The Boss Of Me!" So happy that I totally forgot about that exchange until just this second, as it had no bearing on the write-up whatsoever. Also happy that this crossword debut is so promising.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Game also called Five in a Row / SAT 4-30-16 / Herbal stress reliever from Polynesia / Bone-boring tool / Alternators in some combustion engines / Royal name in ancient Egypt / Woodworker's device informally / City across border from Eilat

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Constructor:Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty:Challenging


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:GO BANG(48A: Game also called Fine in a Row) —
Gomoku is an abstract strategyboard game. Also called Gobang or Five in a Row, it is traditionally played with Go pieces (black and white stones) on a go board with 19x19 (15x15) intersections; however, because once placed, pieces are not moved or removed from the board; gomoku may also be played as a paper and pencil game. This game is known in several countries under different names. // Black plays first if white did not just win, and players alternate in placing a stone of their color on an empty intersection. The winner is the first player to get an unbroken row of five stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. (wikipedia)
• • •

What was I saying about wanting the puzzles to have teeth? Yikes. This was the hardest puzzle I've done all year, or close to it. Mostly it was just a tough Saturday, but down south things got slightly hairy in the SW (SLAPJACK / JOCKO!?!) and then very, very hairy in the SE. Hirsute, even. Names and technical terms just did me in, or almost did. Let's back up, though, to the NW, where very quickly I could tell it was going to be one of the Those puzzle—a good old-fashioned crocodile-wrestling puzzle. I'm still not sure what 1D: Key that oxymoronic at school? is even supposed to mean. Is it F SHARP because if you get an "F" in school you're not "SHARP"? But ... what? The whole "at school" part feels really forced, like ... you've taken a music clue and shoved it into a non-musical context just so you can make your oxymoron point. Trying too hard (TTH™), I think. But I generally liked that corner once it came together, especially FACE PLANT (1A: Result of a bad trip), which I wanted to be DRUG something something. I've never heard of AMENHOTEP (19A: Royal name in ancient Egypt). IMHOTEP, yes. AMEN-, no. So again, names make things hard. My opening gambit looked super weird:

[auspicious beginnings!]

You'd think that if I could go traipsing across the grid effortlessly like that, I'd be well on my way to success. But not so much. AMENHOTEP, the awkward CAGE IN, and the (for me) elusive TREPAN made that NW truly Saturdayish. NE corner was more like a Wednesday for me (back on familiar name-ground with LL Cool J and "HEY LOVER"), and once I worked the puzzle down to KAREN and LAURYN (the latter of which was a pure gimme), and *especially* once I dropped KNAVERY off just the "K" (39D: Acts of a scalawag), I was sure I had this. But first there was the SLAPJACK / JOCKO thing ... never heard of that game (I'll be saying this again soon...), and didn't know chimps were "common"ly named anything except maybe ENOS or BONZO. I wasn't at all sure that the "J" in that crossing was right, but it felt rightest of all the options, so ... onward. Or not. Couldn't round the corner. 48A: Game also called Five in a Row sounded a lot like GO (or maybe PENTE, which was a variation I feel existed when I was growing up? YES!). GOBANG can go to hell. No hope in hell, and considering it was crossing the equally hope-in-hell-less MAGNETOS (!?!), I was well and truly screwed. Just. Stuck. Oh, and had GONG for GANG (41A: Ring). And DYSPEPTIC for DYSPEPSIA (61A: Upset). Full-on disaster. Looked like this:


Weirdly, once I came to terms with EROSIONAL's being an actual word (ugh), I saw ANGELA (Merkel) immediately, and (go) bang! that corner snapped into place quickly. AQABA got me the very terrible name partial JOHN Q (29D: Public figure?)—putting that junk in a "?" clue is just sadism—and then I changed Dick LUGAR's name from the gun spelling to the actual spelling and done. At least a third of my total time was spent just staring and poking at the SE. Enjoyed the challenge. Can't say the grid was great, but it wasn't bad. And after a string of overly easy themelesses, I'm just grateful for the workout.


Two items you might find interesting:

1. This short (6:41) podcast put together by Tufts University student Julia Press, called "The Future of Crosswords." It contains interviews with me, 6-time ACPT champion Dan Feyer, and several other constructors and solvers. I was really impressed with how it came out. So was Oliver Roeder, who (segue!) wrote...

2. This article, a follow-up to his piece about Timothy Parker's crossword puzzle plagiarism a couple months back. Looks like one of the syndicators of Parker's puzzles, Universal Uclick, has handed down its punishment, and it is *severe*! Just kidding, it's a tiny wrist-slap and he'll be back at work very soon. Read about this pathetic response to serial fraud here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Pause word in psalms / SUN 5-1-16 / Eyelike opening in architecture / Pirate's mate in literature film / Red giant in constellation cetus / Language descended from Old Norse / Pro-consumer ideology

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0
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Constructor:Joel Fagliano and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (more Easy for me, but those big open spaces might slow you down)



THEME:"Stellar Work"—theme clues look like normal clues marked with asterisks, but in order for the clues to make sense, those asterisks must be interpreted as standing for the word "STAR":

Theme answers:
  • CABLE CHANNEL (22A: *Z, for one)
  • RIGHT SIDE (38A: *Board)
  • UNITED AIRLINES (42A: *Alliance member)
  • BROKERED A SETTLEMENT (60A: *Ted talks, say) (this answers is drifting into Green Paint territory...)
  • ROMEO AND JULIET (87A: *Crossed pair)
  • ED MCMAHON (89A: *Search party)
  • ACTING CAREER (110A: *Let's hope) 
Word of the Day:MIRA(86A: Red giant in the constellation Cetus) —
Mira (/ˈmrə/, also known as Omicron Ceti, ο Ceti, ο Cet) is a red giantstar estimated 200–400 light years away in the constellationCetus. Mira is a binary star, consisting of the red giant Mira A along with Mira B. Mira A is also an oscillating variable star and was the first non-supernova variable star discovered, with the possible exception of Algol. Mira is the brightest periodic variable in the sky that is not visible to the naked eye for part of its cycle. Its distance is uncertain; pre-Hipparcos estimates centered on 220 light-years; while Hipparcos data from the 2007 reduction suggest a distance of 299 light-years, with a margin of error of 11% (wikipedia) (I have no idea what half of this means)
• • •

The theme is ... a theme. It works. It doesn't really do much, because once you catch on (this took me about 1.5 theme answers), then you just mentally add "star" to the front of the theme clues, so whatever misdirection there was supposed to be ... isn't. Isn't there. So it's pretty straightforward, bordering on ho-hum, themewise. But the grid is pretty sensational, especially considering it's a mere 130 words (compare to a NYT norm of 138-140 ... I checked with a bunch of old Sunday grids and the first eight I looked at were all 140, which is supposed to be the max, but which also appears to be close to the average). If it seemed like you were looking at a lot more white space than normal, your eyes weren't lying to you. Those are giant, open corners in the NE and SW, and big open pockets in the ESE and WNW—very challenging to fill well. Considering that there is usually a fair amount of junk even in a 140-worder, the clean, crisp quality of this 130-worder is pretty remarkable. There's some yarpy stuff here and there. Some SMEE-on-SPEE action in the NE, and the AGRO-LOMA HALIDES aren't particularly beautiful, but the grid felt very sturdy and well made overall. We're not looking at anything scintillating here. We're looking at what *should* be NYT-average, but isn't. It's above-average. NYT B.


Theme didn't register for me at first because I just figured "Z" was some CABLE CHANNEL I hadn't heard of. There are nine thousand of them, so why not? Only with the UNITED AIRLINES clue did I see what was going on. Really enjoyed OWN GOAL and PI DAY. I taught some English translations of Psalms earlier this semester, and we talked a bunch about the odd word "SELAH," so that was easy. Surprised OCULUS didn't get the OCULUS Rift clue. Do they speak FAROESE on the Faroe Islands? They do! I weirdly just ran across the Faroe Islands today in a soccer story, of all places. Seems that the coach of Leicester City (which is about to win the Premier League title) was the coach of the Greek national team last year but was fired after his team lost to ... the Faroe Islands (a country with a population < 50K). So ... there's some FAROESE-adjacent trivia for you! (Not sure why NYT is spelling the country "Faeroe Islands." Perhaps some conflation with Spenser's "Faerie Queene"? Who knows?)


Thought FORAGE might be SILAGE. Thought NAMIB was NEGEV (or NAGIV to be precise ... but the NEGEV is middle eastern, not southern African). I am now amusing myself by making rhymes and nonsense phrases out of the answers in the SW ("ADESTE HESTER, MR. MISTER!"), so I should probably go.


ICYMI—here's the "Future of Crosswords" podcast (under 7 minutes) by Tufts University student Julia Press, featuring me, Dan Feyer and others. And here's the Ollie Roeder article about the "punishment" handed down to plagiarizing crossword editor Timothy Parker (spoiler: it's not much of a punishment). See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Indian state known for its tea and silk / MON 5-2-2016 / Letter between sigma and epsilon / Émile of the Dreyfus affair / Vermont skiing destination

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Hi, it's me, first-Monday-of-the-month-guest-blogger Annabel, and no crossword puzzle can ever cross me! OK, that's totally not true, I got stuck on the right side for awhile on this one, and finished it in 24:43. But that's only because I took a break to get ice cream from the dining hall. We have sundaes every Sunday...good stuff.

Ahem, the point is it's another Annabel Monday!

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Easy



THEME: ME TOO — Theme answers are two words, both of which end in "me."

Theme answers:

  • PRIME TIME (18A: 8:00-11:00 p.m., TV-wise)
  • RHYME SCHEME (23A: ABAB in a poem, e.g.)
  • ME TOO (41A: Copycat's comment...or, phonetically, a hint to this puzzle's theme)
  • WELCOME HOME (56A: Greeting to a returning soldier, maybe)
  • BLAME GAME (62A: What a finger-pointer "plays")

Word of the Day: LYNX (29A: Wildcat with tufted ears ) —
ok yes many of us know what a lynx is but i just
wanted the excuse to put a picture of this cute kitty
lynx (/ˈlɪŋks/;[2] plural lynx or lynxes[3]) is any of the four species within the Lynx genus of cats. The name "lynx" originated in Middle English via Latin from the Greek word λύγξ,[2] derived from the Indo-European root leuk- ("light, brightness")[4] in reference to the luminescence of its reflective eyes.[4]
Neither the caracal, sometimes called the desert lynx, nor the jungle cat, called the jungle lynx, is a member of the Lynx genus.
• • •
(Wikipedia) 






So, despite what I said about getting stuck on the right side, this puzzle went pretty smoothly for me! (Honestly, it wouldn't have been a problem if I had remembered any Greek.) I liked how the fill featured both YOWZA and YOWIE, although I must add that a YOINK or a YIKES would be the icing on the cake. (Future Monday theme: Exclamations starting with Y?) I wasn't super impressed by the rest of the fill - didn't learn any words, am getting very tired of seeing ALTO in every single puzzle because then I have to go listen to "Alto's Lament" like five times in a row -  but it wasn't bad enough to go all Rex on. LOOIES was funny, I definitely did not know that was a word.

The theme was OK, pretty Monday-ish for sure. It wasn't a lame theme, but at the same time, the constructor missed the opportunity to make a meme reference. ("I can haz the answers?")

Bullets:
  • SOPH (15A: Next year's jr.) — IN JUST A FEW MONTHS THIS IS GOING TO BE ME -   AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
  • ELF (40D: Santa's little helper)— The correct clue for this is "the third funniest Will Ferrell movie after Anchorman and Talladega Nights,"but I'll let it slide. Ahem. Anyway:
  • PEPSI (1A: Coke rival) — OK, so, what's the consensus on Coke v. Pepsi in the crosswording world? Personally, I say Pepsi is better in general, but Coke is better out of a glass bottle, but Diet Pepsi is better than anything else because it just is. There's just soda many possible arguments you could make about this one. 
  • SHEEN (13D: Luster) — This one just makes me nostalgic for a really weird cartoon:
Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Proto-matter of the universe / TUE 5-3-16 / Coyolxauhuqui worshiper / Longtime oreo competitor

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Constructor:John Westwig

Relative difficulty:Normal Tuesday (medium)


THEME:Jeremy's iron— famous names, where last name is a make of car, have apostrophe-S added to end of first names to make it sound like the famous person drives said car ...

Theme answers:
  • ABRAHAM'S LINCOLN (20A: How the Great Emancipator got around?)
  • HARRISON'S FORD (25A: How the star of the Indiana Jones films got around?)
  • ICHIRO'S SUZUKI (42A: How a Seattle Mariner great got around?) (why are Ford and Suzuki in past tense; they're still alive)(also Suzuki is a former Mariner current Marlin, just FYI)
  • FREDDIE'S MERCURY (48A: How Queen's former frontman got around?) (Mercurys are bygone, but OK)
Word of the Day:PICOT(36A: Embroidery loop) —
noun
noun: picot; plural noun: picots
  1. a small loop or series of small loops of twisted thread in lace or embroidery, typically decorating the border of a fabric. (google)
• • •

It's official. Crossword brain drain is real. I was thinking about it earlier today—how the best constructors I know are less and less often selling their stuff to the NYT, choosing instead to work with other organizations or to go the independent route. And then tonight I open this puzzle, which is ... I don't know where to start. I haven't seen such a weak, antiquated theme in a while. This is almost a non-concept, or ... a parody concept. You just add apostrophe-S ... for some reason. This puzzle is like a "joke" that goes "Isn't it funny how some people's last names are also the names of cars...?" and then that is the joke, right there, all of it. It just stops, and maybe you smile and nod but you almost certainly walk away. I feel like the NYT is running on fumes, propelled forward largely by the inertia provided by its former fame. It's become hyper-reliant, for its good puzzles, on former and current Shortz employees, or people who are otherwise part of the "NYT Family" (a phrase I did not make up). It does not in any way feel like it's moving forward, becoming more inclusive, more modern, interesting, daring. It tells you (in ads) it's the "best crossword in the world" ... because it is because of course it is because it is. Meanwhile, it's not. It's just not. Today's theme alone should've made this one DOA. *Would've* made this one DOA if submission quality had been what it was even five years ago.


The fill is stale but that hardly matters at this point. The fact that you couldn't fill that simple little corner in the SE without resorting to RAGA *and* ET AL *and* (the real kicker) YLEM ... it's astonishing. I don't even have RAGE at this point. Just disbelief. The "P" in PICOT (36A: Embroidery loop) and the "N" in NIMES (60A: City near Avignon) were my last letters because I don't know those things (or, I do, but not terribly well). Thank god I know who the hell Xerxes was (36D: Xerxes' people = PERSIANS). I could've summed all of my feelings about this puzzle up like so: "Hackneyed theme concept and oh yeah YLEM wtf?" The end. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Pearl Fishers priestess / WED 5-4-16 / Variety of sherry whose name means little apple / Guitarist Borland / Vocalist known for 1944 song / Muhummad's successor to Shiites / Dante symphony composer / Author of 1841 poem / One-named athlete whose real first name is Edson

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Constructor:Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty:Medium (took me longer than normal, but it's bigger than normal (16-wide))



THEME:"INTO / EACH / LIFE / SOME/ RAIN / MUST / FALL"— these words sort of "fall" down the grid (in circled squares) and then two more answers in the corners provide examples of where these words have appeared:

Theme answers:
  • 15A: Author of an 1841 poem that contains the line spelled out by the circled squares (LONGFELLOW)
  • 64A: Vocalist known for the 1944 song whose title (and first line) appears in the circled squares (FITZGERALD) 
Word of the Day:KIT BAG(31A: Purchase at an Army-Navy store) —
noun
noun: kitbag
  1. a rectangular canvas bag, used especially for carrying a soldier's clothes and personal possessions. (google)
• • •

Interesting, though I feel like what's driving it is less cleverness than strange quirks of symmetry—the fact that each word in this relative famous six-word phrase is exactly four letters long is itself tantalizing from a constructor's perspective. The fact that the phrase appears in two works associated with famous people whose names also happen to be the same length is just another quirky coincidence. I don't think that LONGFELLOW work is famous at all, though. The title doesn't appear in the clue because it's got "RAIN" in it. It's called "The Rainy Day" and it goes a little something like this (actually it goes precisely like this):

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary. [source]
Is this famous? Not as famous as the FITZGERALD song, which is not really a FITZGERALD song—it's an Ink Spots song *featuring* Ella. I was wondering why the voice I was hearing in my head was a man's and not Ella's. Then I found it and played it, and there it was, just as I remembered it. This may seem impossible, but I forgot she even sang on it. So ... a not-that-famous poem and a song on which the really famous singer is not the lead ... it's not the strongest theme foundation, but it's solid enough.


I want to point out some details that relate (for me) to consistency and elegance, though these details are simply details and you may not see them the same way. First, and not really all that important, is the fact that all the lyric words are buried inside other words where their lyric meaning is hidden (good!) .... except LIFER, where the meaning of "Life" still pertains. To be fair, I'm not sure there's a way to hide "LIFE" inside a word in a way that de-Lifes it. And to be double-fair, that clue was Wicked (and good) (29A: Big house party?). I had LIFE- and still had no idea what was going on (a LIFER is one who is serving a life sentence ... in the big house, i.e. the pen, so ... he (usually "he") is a party (i.e. member) of the big house). Ideally you bury all those words, but you do what you can do.


Bigger issue for me was having non-theme answers of equal length to the theme answers stacked right on top of (or below) said theme answers. MANZANILLA and INFILTRATE are both great words (and I love those open corners in general), but it's weirdly distracting to me that the theme answers have these non-theme twins right up against them. Not sure why grid was made that way. Easy enough to design a grid that isolates the 10-letter themers. Add black square and push FITZGERALD up / LONGFELLOW down. Also, what is ALTA MONTE Springs (!?!?!?!)? I'm not sure wide-open corners are worth enduring such a marginal place name ... part. Altamont is a thing. That, I would've accepted. This feels like a themed puzzle that the constructor tried to give the virtues of a themeless (open corners, mostly nice longer answers), but for that reason it feels a little ragged to me. Fine, just a little conceptually and architecturally messy.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

L'chaim / THU 5-5-16 / Nonstick pan brand / World's second most translated author / 7 on the Beaufort scale / Sports org. with the Calder Cup

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Constructor: David Poole

Relative difficulty: Thursday


Hi, everybody. It's me! PuzzleGirl! And I'm here to talk you through your Thursday puzzle. If it seems like I'm in a bad mood, it's because I had surgery on my foot three weeks ago and I've been in bed since then. Three weeks! And it wouldn't be so bad if I had been expecting it. Do you know what my doctor said when I asked him back in January about what the recovery time would be like? Of course you don't.
Well, I'll tell you. He said, "You won't be able to drive for a week." What he failed to say was, "And then you won't be able to drive for three weeks after that." And, "There's a good possibility you won't be able to drive for the three weeks after that either." No, he didn't say either of those last two things. And yet, here we are.

So, if I'm in a bad mood, now you know why. If, on the other hand, I say anything crazy, well that's just the Vicodin talking. Got that? Okay, here we go.

Theme:"Ace in the Hole" - the word ACE is presumed to reside in four squares (holes) in the grid.

Theme Answers:
  • 1A: Cel material - [ACE]TATE
  • 13D: Sourness - [ACE]RBITY
  • 24A: Spiritual that lent its name to a 2015 Broadway musical - AMAZING GR[ACE]
  • 12D/30D: Period when dinosaurs became extinct - CRET[ACE]OUS
  • 52A: Hidden advantage that this puzzle employs four times? - [ACE] IN THE HOLE
  • 35D/56D: Neighboring - ADJ[ACE]NT TO
  • 68A: Big name in Italian fashion - VERS[ACE]
  • 51D: Longtime Vegas performer - LIBER[ACE]
This puzzle gave me fits. You should be able to see in the grid above where I made my mistakes. First, I had IRELAND where ICELAND was supposed to go [6D: European country whose telephone directories list people alphabetically by first name]. Then, I had IN OUR instead of IS OUR [65A: "A Mighty Fortress ___ God" (hymn)]. The crosses might have helped me if I had taken the time to think about it. But I didn't. ARRE could be an Israeli port just as well as ACRE to me. And I typically don't pay attention to the cities named in the Random Direction clues, but if I had in this case, I would have seen my mistake.

But that third error? Well, what I think we have here is a living, breathing Natick. Crossing [41D: Charlie Chan's creator Earl ___ Biggers] and [23D: Cubist Fernand] at the last letter is just ... well, that could have been any letter in the alphabet as far as I was concerned. I guess if I'm going to put a positive spin on it, I learned something today. But that's all you're getting.

What else?
  • 21A: TAROT [Holder of The Sun and The World] - I was thinking this was referring to newspapers. Are there any newspapers actually called The World? Now that I think about it, that seems like a fake newspaper name they would use in, like, cartoons.
  • 33A: DEN [TV spot, often] - I had a hard time talking myself out of "spot" meaning "advertisement," which really slowed me down here.
  • 35A: ARIETTA [Short piece at La Scala]
  • 55A: DEMI [Starting half?] - I entered the last three letters and then had to wait to see if the first letter was going to be an H, an S, or a D.
  • 67A: METS [N.L. East team] - Of course, I wanted this to be NATS. Sigh.
  • 8D: SEP [Mo. with Talk Like a Pirate Day] - My favorite line of the Talk Like a Pirate Day origination story is this: "They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates."
  • 46D: AHL [Sports org. with the Calder Cup] - Darn it! I knew it was a hockey award, but didn't realize it was for only one league.
  • 61D: JAM [Showy basket] - I had to ask Doug to explain this one to me. He sent me this:
 

I have two quick things to plug before I let you go.
  1. I contributed a guest puzzle for the American Values Club Crossword this week! If you're not a subscriber, you can subscribe here. Or you can buy single puzzles (including mine!) for the low, low price of $1. I hope you'll try it. And I hope you'll like it!

  2. It's not too late to register for the Indie 500 crossword tournament, which will be held June 4 in Washington, D.C. I attended last year as a competitor and had a blast. This year I'm on the organizing team and, if I do say so myself, it's shaping up to be even better than last year. Don't miss out! Register now!
Thanks, everybody. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

[Follow PuzzleGirl on Twitter]
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