Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor:Dan Schoenholz

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:"Mishmash"— familiar phrase ends in a word which is then repeated with a vowel change, creating a kind of sing-songy nonsense phrase that gets a "?" clue:

Theme answers:

POWDERED-WIG WAG (23A: Witty British judge?)
JOINED-AT-THE-HIP HOP (38A: Three-legged race, e.g.?)
FINGERTIP TOP (55A: Nail?)
"OF THEE I SING" SONG (66A: "America"?)
LET HER RIP RAP (81A: Grant a girl permission to dis Drake?)
NEW YORK KNICK KNACK (98A: Ability to score at Madison Square Garden, e.g.?) (whoever clued this has not seen the Knicks play lately)
TRIPLE FLIP FLOP (117A: Diving disaster?)

Word of the Day:RIPRAP(81A) —

Riprap, as rip rap, rip-rap, shot rock, rock armour or rubble, is rock or other material used to armor shorelines, streambeds, bridge abutments, pilings and other shoreline structures against scour and water or ice erosion. It is made from a variety of rock types, commonly granite or limestone, and occasionally concrete rubble from building and paving demolition. It can be used on any waterway or water containment where there is potential for water erosion. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't have the inclination to deal too much with this inanity today. I'm still filled with hope and optimism after seeing the Women's marches all over the world today, and I'm not gonna let this puzzle get me down. I'd never heard of WIGWAG or RIPRAP, but they both appear to be things, so all the ping-pong ding-dong clip-clop endings are real things, hurrah. The whole thing didn't feel clever so much as awkward. I kept having to think about how the phrase worked, exactly. None of them ever seemed funny. Luckily, the puzzle was so easy that I didn't have time to dwell much on how sub-entertaining it was. Finished in well under 9, which is down near record territory for me on a Sunday. Is my fingernail the top of my fingertip? That seems ... wrong. Directionally wrong. The finger tip is the end. It has no top. I guess the nail is on "top" of my finger, in a way, but the lack of spot-on-itude there (and elsewhere) was irksome. It's "let 'er rip"; the idea anyone's saying that "h" is pretty hilarious. A very enthusiastic elocution coach, perhaps. You don't "hop" in a three-legged race, do you? The "third" leg consists of two legs moving as one, but not ... hopping. What is a triple flip? I am guessing it is a thing where you flip three times, but it's hardly a snappy diving phrase, like a pike or a tuck. There is no "flip" in Olympic diving. Somersaults are involved, but ... you see, all these phrases just feel off. Like carob. It's not chocolate. You can fool some rube who wants to be fooled, but I like chocolate, and you can't fool me.

I had MALT for ICEE (5D: Drink commonly served with a spoon straw) and I did not know COPs were called [Bluecoat]s. I was thinking it was some Revolutionary counterpart to the Redcoat. Beyond those initial hiccups, I don't remember any resistance whatsoever. Fill isn't terrible. It just is. I need to get back to drinking and watching TCM now. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (2:48)

THEME: FAIRY TALE (60A: What the starts of 17-, 26-, 35- and 50-Across are)— those beginnings spell out "RUMP/EL/STILT/SKIN"

Theme answers:

RUMP ROAST (17A: Slow-cooked beef entree)
EL DORADO (26A: Fabled city of wealth sought by conquistadors)
STILT WALKER (35A: One with a leg up in the circus business?)
SKIN GAME (50A: Gambling scam)

Word of the Day:ETHAN Hawke(32D: Actor Hawke of "Boyhood") —

Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, writer, and director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed two feature films, three Off-Broadway plays, and a documentary, and wrote the novels The Hottest State (1996), Ash Wednesday (2002), and Rules for a Knight (2015). // He made his film debut in 1985 with the science fiction feature Explorers, before making a breakthrough appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society. He then appeared in numerous films before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama Reality Bites, for which he received critical praise. In 1995, Hawke first appeared in Richard Linklater's romance trilogy, co-starring opposite Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise, and later in its sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), all of which met with critical acclaim. // Hawke has been twice nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; his writing contributions to Before Sunset and Before Midnight were recognized, as were his performances in Training Day (2001) and Boyhood (2014). Hawke was further honored with SAG Award nominations for both films, along with BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for the latter. // His other films include the science fiction drama Gattaca (1997), the contemporary adaptation of Hamlet (2000), the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), the crime drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and the horror film Sinister (2012). (wikipedia)

• • •

This may as well be a themeless, so unremarkable is the theme. There are a few nice answers, most notably in the south (MISCAST alongside ASK AWAY; and I especially like I'M A FAN), but way too much short gunk / crosswordese. And, as I say, a super-blah theme. I wasn't yet out of the NW before I knew the fill would be a problem. It's HEP TO MOO WHAP! I like LASER fine but for some reason LASE in its various verb forms irks and even ires me (if IRES were a thing, which, I maintain, it is not and never will be, sorry crosswords) (yes, I know IRES isn't in this puzzle; it's just that even thinking about it gets me so IRED, I ...). In the end, though, this was more plain old dull than bad. Musty. If your dad was HEP TO EDSELS when you were a WEE LAD, maybe this spoke to you.

Difficulty-wise, it was just a shade easier than average for me. Had some hesitation at the phrase ON MIKE (had the ON, but the second part needed crosses, since AIR came up short) (3D: Like a live radio announcer). Also needed all the crosses for WHAP because WHAP, WTF? (6D: Fly swatter sound) I don't really know the phrase SKIN GAME, but that answer must've just filled itself in via crosses. The biggest trap in the puzzle is probably the CLUMSY / KLUTZY one (38D: All thumbs), which I clumsily and / or klutzily fell into. Luckily for me I saw that that made the ending on the central themer -ALCER, and my spidey sense told me that was unnnnlikely. So change: to KLUTZY, to ZALES, to zip zap zoom ET AL. And done. Wish there were more to say. There is not.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: John R. O'Brien

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME: HIDDEN GEM (58A: Masterpiece waiting to be found ... or a hint to the words in the circled letters)— mostly non-consecutive sequential circled letters in themers spell out ... gems:

Theme answers:

TOLL PLAZA (17A: Place to pay the going rate?)
JEOPARDIZE (25A: Put at risk)
PAPER AIRPLANE (35A: Something that might be thrown behind a teacher's back)
PRESUMABLY (49A: In all probability)

Word of the Day:ANZIO(7D: W.W. II Allied landing site in Italy) —

Anzio[ˈantsjo] is a city and comune on the coast of the Lazio region of Italy, about 51 kilometres (32 mi) south of Rome. // Well known for its seaside harbour setting, it is a fishing port and a departure point for ferries and hydroplanes to the Pontine Islands of Ponza, Palmarola and Ventotene. The city bears great historical significance as the site of Operation Shingle, a crucial landing by the Allies during the Italian Campaign of World War II. (wikipedia)

• • •

Everything about this puzzle screams "bygone." This theme type—one of the weakest and most ancient—had, I thought, been quietly phased out over time. "Non-consecutive letters that "spell" things" is a fantastically unimpressive and uninspiring gimmick. Those gems aren't "hidden." If you'd strung gem names across two words in the theme answers (e.g. HOP ALONG or DROP A LINE or whatever), and you *didn't* provide the circled squares, and then hit us with HIDDEN GEM, yeah, OK, maybe. But that would be near impossible to do four times with familiar gem names. You could also do the same kind of "hiding" with the letters GEM (e.g. STAGE MANAGER etc.) and that would get you a legit HIDDEN GEM. But finding today's HIDDEN GEMs is like finding secret messages from Cleopatra in your Denny's menu. They're there if you want them to be there. But they aren't *there*. It's not hard to find the letters "RUBY" in a word or phrase. ARGUABLY. CRUMBLY. DRUG BUY. Etc. This puzzle seems like something I'd see in another venue *not* billing itself as "the greatest puzzle in the world." But it's not up to (what should be) NYT standards. And that's without even mentioning the fill, which is far too often tired old stand-bys (some real "classics" today, like the full "ERES TU" and ORA pro nobis, as well as the usual glut of OTO ACTAS DODOS OLEO etc.). The grid is also oddly built, with these huge 8-blocks in the NE / SW, but a super-choppy, black-square riddled middle. 74 words? The whole thing should probably have been rebuilt at 76 or 78 with the fill drastically improved.

It was very easy. The big revelation for me today was that I can't spell GENTEEL (29A: Affectedly polite). I said the word to myself in my head as I read the clue, but what came out of my fingers and on to the screen was GENTILE. This and TOLL BOOTH were my big missteps for the day, though I also had ADOPT (?) for ACT AS (4A: Assume the role of) and ETS (??) for EMS (43D: Letters on many ambulances). The best part of the grid, for me is DRE DEY down at the bottom. Those aren't "good" answers, but side-by-side they form an unintentional pun that is at least amusing me.

Good dey.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:"@#$!" from [various fictional characters]— bowdlerizations and euphemisms for profanity

Theme answers:

DAGNABIT! (17A: "@#$!" from Deputy Dawg)
HORSE HOCKEY! (24A: "@#$!" from Colonel Sherman Potter) (fun fact, your editor once told me and a co-constructor that Sherman Potter was not famous enough to be a theme answer in a puzzle) (this was after rejecting Sherman Alexie) (puzzle ran in another venue) (it's probably the best easy puzzle I've ever (co-)made) (true story)
SHAZBOT! (39A: "@#$!" from Mork)
OH, BARNACLES! (50A: "@#$!" from SpongeBob SquarePants)
JEEZALOO! (61A: "@#$!" from Frank on "Everybody Loves Raymond")

Word of the Day:Uriah Heep(52D: Uriah Heep's profession=>CLERK) —

Uriah Heep is a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his novel David Copperfield. // The character is notable for his cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own "'umbleness". His name has become synonymous with being a sycophant. He is one of the main antagonists of the book.

• • •

Well. OK. I actually enjoyed parts of this, despite the extreme datedness of the whole thing. Not sure how anyone under 40 is going to find this puzzle doable at the Wednesday level, since even "SpongeBob" watchers are in their 30s now, and the shows only get older from there, and only a few of these @#$!s are truly iconic / representative. SHAZBOT is the only one that even approaches a definitive catchphrase, and HORSE HOCKEY is the only one I can even clearly remember hearing, though JEEZALOO rings a very faint bell. The animated ones fall on either side of my wheelhouse, though I've certainly seen both toons and have zero recollection of hearing these particular exclamations. This is to say that they are familiar to me in precise relation to my age (i.e. "Mork & Mindy" and "M*A*S*H" were childhood staples, I watched a little "Everybody Loves Raymond," and the others I watched sporadically, accidentally, here and there). Despite the generational bias, I still think SHAZBOT is the only spot-on entry. I certainly know DAGNABIT but that expression isn't strongly associated with any character in particular (in my mind) and is therefore by far the weakest thing here, conceptually. Sounds like a @$#! from any OATER, honestly. Seems like it's also kind of alt-spelled (I'd do two "B"s) Anyway, mothball city, theme answer-wise, but the concept was kind of fun, I think. Fanciful profanity is at least original and wacky, and no more or less than it pretends to be. Face value fake-swearing. Fine by me.

Going on to my "Let's Not!" list today is every formulation of [network]TV. No one but no one would say that "The Voice" airs on NBCTV. What, did you think someone might think it was a radio program? It's on NBC. Stop the madness. AZO and ALGA and PROSY and ON HIRE and multiple FSTOPS are the clunky stuff today, and that's not too bad. RUMOR HAS IT, SYCAMORE, and SNAPCHAT are nice-ish long Downs. I misspelled CRONIN thusly, and stupidly wrote SPAM / PANING instead of SCAM / CANING (which is to say, I wrote in SPAM for 32A: Robocall from the I.R.S., e.g. and didn't check the cross very well—only reason I even found that mistake was because SPAM magically occurred "again") (53D: Much-maligned food). Alright, I'm done. See you Thursday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a note from Ben Tausig, ed. of the American Values Club Crossword:

"This Wednesday's AVCX is a polemical puzzle by me. After the pos energy of the march, maybe it's a little poorly aimed to point a cruciverbal weapon at trump. I mean, whatever, but what we're going to also do is donate 100% of subscription money received this Wednesday to Planned Parenthood. The puzzle itself, titled "Of the Free World," will be available free. There will be a blurb/link on the front page of avxwords.com to download it." Here's the official statement re: today's puzzle.

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Constructor:Hal Moore

Relative difficulty:Challenging

THEME: A LITTLE BIRDIE (36A: Secret's source ... that can be found four times in this puzzle)— rebus puzzle where a "birdie" name is made "little" (i.e. squooshed into a single square) four times.

Theme answers:

BAL[LOON]IST / C[LOON]EY
FRA[TERN]ITY / E[TERN]AL
T.E. LA[WREN]CE / LO[WREN]T
[CROW]N ROYAL / IN [CROW]D

Word of the Day:Le Duc THO(20A: Le Duc ___, decliner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize) —

Lê Đức Thọ ( listen; 14 October 1911 – 13 October 1990), born Phan Đình Khải in Hà Nam Province, was a Vietnamese revolutionary, general, diplomat, and politician. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, but he declined it. [...] Thọ and Henry Kissinger were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in negotiating the Paris Peace Accords. However, Thọ declined to accept the award, claiming that peace had not yet been established, and that the United States and the South Vietnamese governments were in violation of the Paris Peace Accords:
However, since the signing of the Paris agreement, the United States and the Saigon administration continue in grave violation of a number of key clauses of this agreement. The Saigon administration, aided and encouraged by the United States, continues its acts of war. Peace has not yet really been established in South Vietnam. In these circumstances it is impossible for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace which the committee has bestowed on me. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this prize. With my thanks to the Nobel Prize Committee please accept, madame, my sincere respects.
The ceasefire would not last, with the war ending when Saigon fell in 1975 and North Vietnam captured South Vietnam. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard as hell because of the nature of the rebus—even when you know it's a rebus, and even when you know it involves A LITTLE BIRDIE, you have no possible way of knowing which of hundreds of birds it might be, or where the rebus squares might be (though at some point you can infer that there will be one per corner). Cluing was also slanted hard, especially in the rebus answers. Since the theme itself isn't that clever, there's not much to this but its challenge, which is OK. It's nice to have a challenge once in a while. And the birds, though hard to turn up at times, did provide a kind of "aha" moment when they appeared. So it played like a Saturday, and that was kind of irritating, and the concept is no great shakes, but I had an OK time, as frustrating solves go. I have to say, though, that I was predisposed to be irritated by this puzzle because Yet Again (seriously, this happens a couple times a month, it seems), the NYT puzzle site had a glitch. This time, it just wasn't providing the .puz file. Not there. This was what I got:

So I had to solve in the applet, directly on the site, and I ****ing hate that interface. Since it doesn't behave quite like the AcrossLite interface, I fumbled with the cursor a lot more than I do normally. Unwieldy. Blecch. The NYT makes massive profit on the puzzle, continues to pay constructors abysmally, and yet can't manage to deliver its product on time without technical glitches for what seems like more than a few weeks at a pop. Embarrassing.

[Cover of a Bon Iver song]

Fill on this one is OK, though THO is a no imho (20A: Le Duc ___, decliner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize). I mean it's bad fill. Even if you'd clued it as shortened "though" it's bad, but here, it's massively dated and pretty obscure. So even worse. And -IZE is terrible, but there's really not much else that's inherently unpleasant. Aside from the many many missteps, e.g. NECK for NAPE (8D: Common spot for a sunburn), MAN for IT'S (11D: "___ alive!"), RAH for AYE (12D: Word of support), ORBS for ASPS(5D: Ancient symbols of sovereignty), HERB for C[LOON]EY (3D: Rosemary, for one), which is as obviously-by-design a trap as I've seen in a while. I also had trouble with the proper nouns. Couldn't bring up SAPPHO from that clue (1D: Plato's "tenth Muse"), couldn't remember ULTRON (kept thinking VOLTRON), no idea who BEA Benaderet is (I'm guessing she's at least as old as Le Duc THO), and KIERAN Culkin was a name I eventually halfway remembered, but from where, I don't know. I do know I couldn't pick him out of a line-iup. The toughest part, though, was the birds, and that LO[WREN]T / T.E. LA[WREN]CE was far and away the hardest to find. Parsing either of those without the bird is tough. That was my last square, though I briefly thought it was T.H. LAWRENCE (because of T.H. White, probably). The LOON was the second-most elusive bird, followed by the CROW (my first bird, which was the last square I got in that corner, but the first bird I actually found). TERN was probably easiest to turn up, though it came second for me, and I knew to look out for birds by then. Once again, the puzzle plays old, but the challenge was in general a welcome one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty:Tougher than average

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: OMAR (1D: Bradley with many medals) —

General of the ArmyOmar Nelson Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981), nicknamed Brad, was a highly distinguished senior officer of the United States Army who saw distinguished service in North Africa and Western Europe during World War II, and later became General of the Army. From the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 through to the end of the war in Europe, Bradley had command of all U.S. ground forces invading Germany from the west; he ultimately commanded forty-three divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a single U.S. field commander. After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration and became Army Chief of Staff. In 1949, Bradley was appointed the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the following year oversaw the policy-making for the Korean War, before retiring from active service in 1953. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Laura here, filling in for Rex, whose computer MADE A BOOBOO (15A: Slipped), so he said GO FOR IT (41A: "Be my guest!"). This was somewhat of a TOSSED SALAD (55A: Course that offers mixed results?), but I hope this post AMELIORATE[s] (26D: Take[s] the edge off) your solving experience. Smooth sailing in the SE and the NE, then completely turned to GOO (39D: Too-sweet sentiment) in the SW -- I sat there NAVEL GAZ[ing] (being 25D: Way too introspective) and thought, I can't finish this, and I'm going to disappoint Rex and the teeming millions. But then, previous years of living in NYC brought to mind NATHAN (25A: First name in hot dogs), and vague impressions from reading too many bad fantasy novels in my adolescence gave me LIEGEMAN (38A: Vassal), and I finally got it all, SO THERE (11D: "Told ya!"). I originally had ONTARIO for BAHAMAS (5D: Where many Loyalists settled after the American Revolution), because it is also true. OMAR Bradley is the Word of the Day because he's one of those names I remember from endless WWII documentaries on basic cable; however, had I used it in a puzzle, I would've clued it differently (Character on "The Wire" who says, "You come at the king, you best not miss"). Fill was pretty clean in general, although there were some repeated letter strings in the NW (OMAR/OMAN/OBIWAN/RONAN) that bothered me.

Bullets:

MEGAN (28D: Actress Mullally with two Emmys) — Nice to see my girl MEGAN in a puzzle again. I've been told I look like her. She's a fantastic singer! (There the similarity ends.)
PIMIENTO (33D: Red stuffing?) — At first, had PIMENTO. Could not see that extra i.
ARIOSE (43A: Melodious)— I wanted this to be OTIOSE ("Serving no practical purpose, like a crossword puzzle.")
OPEN BORDERS (1A: Feature of the European Union) — First appearance of this phrase. I can't help but wonder -- and hope -- that the puzzle is trolling the new administration. Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty:Easy (6:40-something)

THEME: none

Word of the Day:PERONI(23A: Italian brewery since 1846) —

Peroni Brewery is a brewing company, founded in Vigevano in Lombardy, Italy, in 1846. It has been based in Rome since 1864. The company's main brand in Italy is Peroni (4.7 ABV), a pale lager sometimes known as Peroni Red in export markets. However, it is probably best known worldwide for its premium lager, Nastro Azzurro (5.1% ABV), which was the 13th best-selling beer in the United Kingdom in 2010. (wikipedia)

• • •

Too many long giveaways made this more Friday- than Saturday-ish. With no crosses crosses, I got "JANE EYRE""HE GOT GAME" ACHILLES, JOHN HENRY, and BON JOVI. That's handing me A FEW too many. I mean, thanks—I always feel quite amazing when I crush a Saturday—but my success today felt tainted a bit by the gimmes. The best solves involve succeeding by unlocking the tricky clues. That "JANE EYRE" clue made getting that answer (and the whole corner) into the equivalent of dunking the basketball ... by climbing a ladder on sitting on someone's shoulders. I do got game, but I didn't get to show it here. Too much just handed to me. Speaking of not feeling great about my success—let's look at another way that that happens, i.e. when I avail myself of my deep store of crosswordese to crack open a puzzle. I guess that is "game" (i.e. talent) of a sort, or at least the product of experience, but it still feels slightly cheap. For instance, first word in today: DEBAR. Who's gonna feel good about that? Then KIR over ECO—the former I'd never heard of before crosswords (today, instant gimme) and the latter I see clued this way ("Friendly" prefix) so often that I had no doubt about it. KIR over ECO + DEBAR got me BAD JOKE (1D: Something a bomber delivers?), and I was off. I wonder if you could've left the "?" off the BAD JOKE clue. It's pretty literal. And that would've made things a lot harder, probably. Anyway, gimmes + heavy reliance on crosswordese make me less than exultant today about my good time.

Only thing in the grid I had no clue about was PERONI, which I'm sure I've seen before once or twice. I think it might even have been the Word of the Day before. But it didn't take. I'm not sure it'll take now. I'm writing about it in the hopes that it'll take. PERONI was part of my mild solving problem in the middle. No initial "P" meant that for a while PLEDGING was hard to see (23D: Activity in a drive). Also, several of those Across clues didn't compute at first, namely 30A: " (INCHES) and 37A: Opposite of slow (FLYING) and 43A: A cry of relief (TGIF). The last one, I really should've gotten more quickly, as I had the "T," but no dice. Corners of this thing mostly went lightning fast, though SW was probably the toughest. Front end of 41A: "Gotcha" (SO I SEE) was a mystery. I wanted "OH, I SEE" or some such. And then there was AIR ... PIPE? Not HOSE? I knew ESPN was 100% correct (49A: "Outside the Lines" airer) so I discarded HOSE quickly, but PIPE? This was the one clue that provoked reaction on Twitter from a reader last night:

He then sent me a link to some SCUBA forum where this very "mistake" (I think it's a real mistake, I'm just being careful) had come up before. Good luck getting WS to change his mind on something like this. But even non-SCUBA me gave that answer side-eye. I also wasn't sure about the back end of SPIDER EGG (wanted SAC) or RED ROBIN (wanted ROSES, though in retrospect, that was a terrible want). Last minor (very minor) stumble was wanting IN A STIR for IN A SNIT (47A: Agitated). Second "T" in TRIOLET was my last letter (39D: Eight-line verse form). I liked the puzzle fine, but it was light-weight, and without a lot of sparkle. Maybe if I hadn't seen JAZZ HANDS before, that would've added something. BANG-UP JOB is nice. Otherwise, you know, fine.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Jim Hyres and David Steinberg

Relative difficulty:Normal / Medium

THEME:"Hit the Deck"— a visual representation of "TWENTY-ONE" (i.e. Blackjack) (69A: Game depicted in the circled squares) with imagined PLAYER hand on left side (1A: One side of a 69-Across showdown) and DEALER hand on right (14A: Other side of the showdown), with the PLAYER hitting twenty-one ("I WIN") (123A: 1-Across's cry) and the dealer going BUST.

Word of the Day:Max STEINER(87D: Composer Max who was called "the father of film music") —

Maximilian Raoul "Max" Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian-born American music composer for theatre and films. He was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, either composing, arranging, or conducting, when he was fifteen. [...] Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), the film score for which he is best known. // He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score to Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire. A lot of his film scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to concentrate on / care about this puzzle right now, with immigrant families being literally torn apart as I write. Yep, that's blackjack ... there it is. PLAYER v DEALER, I WIN v. BUST ... cute. Shrug. Even if I weren't depressed at the thought of living in a racist police state for four more years, I don't think this puzzle would've amused me much. Buncha face card / numbers in circled squares ... I'd hardly call those proper theme answers. It seems like a pleasant enough diversion, but pretty old-fashioned and largely boring. Some of the fill was irksome, but mostly it was serviceable. It's "Gimme five!" not "GIVE ME FIVE" (which is what aliens say, with perfect enunciation, when imitating human life forms). GRAU is OFFAL. But the worst is SUM TO. I have no idea how that's even used. Does it mean "come to," as in "add up to"? Blargh, IMO.

[SKA BAND]

Circled squares made "themers" easier, but the N and ENE sections of the puzzle were really hard for me, so the whole thing evened out to average difficulty. LOB, OMAR EPPS, and TVSPOT were all really hard for me to see, and so were TOOL BAR and VAMOOSE (without the "TV" part of TVSPOT, very hard to see the long Acrosses up there). And then the SUMTO (ugh) DAY TRADER part was also really hard for me. Lots and lots of methodical hacking in those parts to get them to work out. The rest flew by pretty easily.

Bullets:

54A: Jane Rochester, nee ___ (EYRE)— guess who's back? Back again. (See yesterday's puzzle) (Charlotte Brontë wrote "Jane EYRE" under the pen name Currer Bell ... but you knew that)
101D: City that's home to the Firestone Country Club (AKRON)— forgot about their association with rubber. Kept thinking of Flintstones.
88A: Investment seminar catchphrase (CASH IS KING)— ??? This has some specific context of which I am unaware. Wikipedia entry on it is murky and mentions "investment seminars" not at all.
57A: Matchmaker of myth (EROS)— this makes him sound more like a dating service. He hardly puts happy couple together.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. looks like a federal judge just ordered a temporary stay of the stupid immigration ban Executive Order, at least for those in transit / detained at airports. Small victory. I'll take it. Good night.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty:Average Normal Everyday Monday time (in the 2:50s)

THEME: MALE LEADS (57A: Certain Hollywood stars ... or an apt title for this puzzle)— answers begin ("lead") with MALE animals:

Theme answers:

STAGNATED (18A: Got stuck in a rut)
COCKTAIL HOUR (20A: Time before dinner for socializing)
BULLETPROOF VEST (37A: Protection for a police officer)
BUCKEYE STATE (53A: Ohio's nickname)

Word of the Day:OLD VIC(24A: Venerable London theater) —

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and renamed in 1833 the Royal Victoria Theatre, in 1871 it was rebuilt and reopened as the Royal Victoria Palace. It was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 and formally named the Royal Victoria Hall, although by this time it was already known as the "Old Vic". In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian Baylis assumed management and began a series of Shakespeare productions in 1914. The building was damaged in 1940 during air raids and it became a Grade II* listed building in 1951 after it reopened. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is in many ways an elegant puzzle. Reminded me of some of the best Mondays I've done: smart, simple, clean. Lynn Lempel-esque. And there's very little way in the way of junk fill, which so often mucks up early-week puzzles. So it's a definite thumbs-up today. One minor but noteworthy issue with the theme: STAG and BUCK are not only the same animal, one (the former) is really a subset of the other (the latter). Stags are just big bucks ("buck" referring to any adult male deer). To have only four "males" and then have half of those be the same animal, that's a bit of a glitch. Would've been cooler to be able to spread the theme more widely across the animal kingdom, but that might simply not have been possible. Actually, RAM-. That would've worked, right? I mean, very few things start with DRAKE- or STALLION-, but RAM-. Or BOAR-? BOARD-CERTIFIED!? I'd've ditched STAG, is what I'm saying. Still a lovely little puzzle, but thematically perhaps not as ambitious / exacting as it ought to have been.

Don't like LIE TESTS at all (33A: Polygraphs). They are called "lie-detector tests." They are not called anything else. Also, the (much more) common phrase is EPIC FAIL. No -URE (3D: Huge blunder). I fear these answers came from some bloated but not very discriminating wordlist. Oh well, I guess if the upshot of that wordlist is that the grid comes out overwhelmingly clean, I should be grateful. I had no real trouble today, though I did go with THE VIC (?) instead of OLD VIC at first (24A: Venerable London theater). If it's a London theater, shouldn't it be a "theatre"? One other mistake was writing in MARX for 54D: Marx who wasn't one of the Marx Brothers (KARL). Yeah, yeah, I know. I know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Neil Padrick Wilson

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (somewhat north of my normal Tuesday time)

THEME: IN A BOTTLE (61A: Words that can follow the ends of the answers to the starred clues)— what it says:

Theme answers:

CARGO SHIP (18A: *Vessel with a large hold)
QUALITY TIME (23A: *What a family spends together at the dinner table) (big assumption)
FORKED LIGHTNING (whatever that is) (38A: *Branches in a storm?)
TEXT MESSAGE (55A: *Its arrival may be signaled by a ding) (you're thinking microwave oven)

Word of the Day:Channing FRYE(43A: 6'11" Channing of the N.B.A.) —

Channing Thomas Frye (born May 17, 1983) is an American professional basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The 6'11"power forward–center played college basketball for the University of Arizona. He was drafted eighth overall by the New York Knicks in the 2005 NBA draft, and was the first college senior to be selected in that draft. He has previously played for the Knicks, Portland Trail Blazers, Phoenix Suns, and Orlando Magic. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was brutal, as my wife can attest, as I could hear her laughing from the next room at my groans and profanity. Let's leave aside the fact that I have no idea what FORKED LIGHTNING is. None. That "K" was the last letter, and there were a few seconds in there where I thought "O my god I'm going to get Naticked on a Tuesday" (I may even have said this out loud, hang on ... wife says yes, I did). Also, SIR BARTON!?!? But whatevs, let's say those are Greeeeat answers and get to the two big problems. First, the theme. IN A BOTTLE!? Revealers can't just be random phrases. That phrase can't stand alone. I did something like this once with an ALL IN revealer, but ALL IN is a stand-alone phrase, and in my puzzle it preceded a lot of other phrases, not just the first / last word. IN A BOTTLE is a very weak revealer, and the whole theme feels like an interesting concept that got destroyed on execution. But the (much) bigger problem was the fill. I wasn't out of the NW before I was saying "Oh, no, this is gonna be bad." When you can't get out of a corner on a *Tuesday* without ABU and Dan bleeping ISSEL, yikes. And I knew ISSEL. I remember him from my childhood. But no. No. And it got worse from there. Eventually, the number of non-word / abbr.-words got downright comical. INCOG *and* COHAB!? What is happening? AGAZE? O, man, no.

Bullets:

Channing FRYE— unless you are a pretty serious basketball fan, you don't know who that is
LOLZ— I thought "lulz" was the preferred ... plural?

LE OX— it goes in Le YOKE

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Matthew Sewell and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:Friends, Romans, countrymen...— first words of the theme clues are (in order), "Friends,""Romans," and "Countrymen," which explains what the revealer clue is getting at: 51A: Shakespearean entreaty appropriate for 19-, 25- and 43-Across (LEND ME YOUR EARS) (you know, 'cause the full quote by Mark Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" is "Friends, Romans, countrymen, LEND ME YOUR EARS)

Theme answers:

19A: Friends who go to White Castle in a 2004 film (HAROLD AND KUMAR)
25A: Romans who protected the emperor (PRAETORIAN GUARD)
43A: Countrymen who met in Philadelphia in 1787 (FOUNDING FATHERS)

Word of the Day:Mosque of OMAR(4D: Mosque of ___ (Jerusalem shrine)) —

The AyyubidMosque of Omar (Arabic: مسجد عمر بن الخطاب‎‎) in Jerusalem is located opposite the southern courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Muristan area of the Christian Quarter. (wikipedia)

• • •

Took me a longish time to understand the theme once I was done. First thought was "... corn?" Which is fitting, as this theme is pretty corny. I kept thinking there was some wordplay in LEND ME YOUR EARS, and kept looking for things related to ears, the word "ears," the letters in ears. But there is no wordplay. You have to look at the clues to see the words you need. Looking at the clues didn't occur to me. In fact, figured out the "friends Romans countrymen" shtick without looking at the clues. It's only after I found the concept really dissatisfying that looked to the clues to see if there might be something there to tie it all together. And there was. This didn't do much to clear the dissatisfaction, but it did tighten up the whole concept somewhat. "Friends" and "countrymen" are recontextualized ridiculously by the theme answers, but "Romans" ... isn't. Not sure how you'd recontextualize "Romans," though. You just get ... Romans. All Romans lead back to Rome. No wacky places to go. Whaddya gonna do? So, there's a theme, it's basically consistent, the implementation is adequate. The punchline didn't really land for me (awkward phrasing in the revealer clue made the aha moment more "oh" then "ooh"), but it'll do.

Grid is very clean and lively, with an unusual couple of 8-blocs in the N and S. WENT YARD is probably the most noteworthy and original answer here (35D: Hit a home run, in baseball lingo). I love baseball terminology, and I don't think I've seen this expression in present *or* past tense in a puzzle before (there was a brief moment where I considered GONE YARD...). I didn't have many snags at all. Was lucky enough to know both of the first two themers (presumably everyone knows the third). Had no idea SPADER voiced Ultron (I know him primarily as the asshole in many '80s movies). Never heard of the Mosque of OMAR. But neither of these ignorances cost me more than a few seconds. I probably lost more time wondering why LIQUIDS wouldn't fit in 46D: What doctors recommend that sick people get a lot of (FLUIDS). Had -UIDS and was Baffled. Why wouldn't LIQUIDS fit!? Of course FLUIDS is the better answer in every way, but somehow that "U" really cried out for a "Q" to rub against. Thus concludes my erotique musings on libidinal letters.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME: direction switching— themers are phrases describing a forward or backward direction, and subsequent Acrosses switch accordingly, until next themer reverses them again...

Theme answers:

20A: How a book in Hebrew is read [watch out now!] (BACK TO FRONT) [Acrosses switch direction]
33A: Wagon train cry [you can relax ...] (FORWARD, HO!) [Acrosses switch back to normal]
39A: Ready to leave the garage [here we go again!] (IN REVERSE) [Acrosses switch direction again]
50A: How people are usually listed in photo captions [phew, all done!] [Acrosses back to normal]

Word of the Day:VEGA(16A: Lyra's brightest star) —

Vega, also designated Alpha Lyrae (α Lyrae, abbreviated Alpha Lyr, α Lyr), is the brightest star in the constellation of Lyra, the fifth-brightest star in the night sky and the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. It is relatively close at only 25 light-years from the Sun, and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood. (wikipedia)

• • •

I have done puzzles where the Across answers go in reverse. I have done puzzles where you toggle from forward to reverse and then back again. Those puzzles had ... concepts. Reasons. This one ... doesn't. There is no concept. Further, the cluing, with its weird, post-clue bracketed comments, makes the ridiculous assumption that I solve in order, top to bottom, left to right. This is to say, those bracketed comments meant nothing to me while I was solving. Once I figured out some of the answers went backwards, that became my operation assumption: some of these answers go backwards. Rhyme, reason? Who knows, who cares, just solve. And solve I did, and it was pretty easy. What is being illustrated or demonstrated here? I guess if you've never seen a puzzle do this before, maybe it seemed neat. But it seemed pointless to me. I didn't hate the puzzle—it seems solid enough. But there's no core concept holding this thing together, which, on a Thursday, is disappointing.

Not much to say here. Fill is straightforward and familiar, none of the clues gave me much trouble or seemed particularly tricky. I would like to thank RENEE Zellweger and GERI Halliwell for teaming up to help me figure out the theme. They were both gimmes. Their names wouldn't work. Since I'd already seen the "Hebrew" themer, my first instinct was to turn RENEE around, and there we were. Done. I had DOLT for TWIT (52D: Blockhead). Don't recall any other problems that weren't part of the initial, short-lived "what's going on?" theme confusion. RECORD DEAL is a cool answer (10D: Aspiring band's goal). Nice dig at the president at 19A: Grp. that promised Trump "We'll see you in court" (ACLU), but with fatally botched raids in Yemen, and threats to invade Mexico, and angry toddler-like phone calls to our closest allies like Australia, and a combination of incompetence and narcissism the likes of which the planet has never seen, and a staggering ignorance of / contempt for history on full display just in time for (shocker) Black History Month ... I don't know if "seeing him in court" is going to be enough, or if there will even be courts (to speak of) in our near future. Things are very, very bad. Gonna go read some Frederick Douglass now. I hear he's doing a great job. . .

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy Groundhog Day, and happy birthday to my dad.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty:Medium (actually ATAD on the slow side for me, but I'm not myself this morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day:KEN'S(56A: Salad dressing brand) —

Ken's Foods is a privately held food manufacturing company located in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Ken's primary products are salad dressings, sauces, and marinades. The company's commercial food manufacturing divisions produce products both for retail sale and food service, including contract manufacturing for companies such as Newman's Own. (wikipedia)

• • •

I normally crush this kid's puzzles, but not today. Stumble stumble bumble. My first foray into that NW corner—total Bowling Green Massacre (look it up!). I feel like DRUNK DIAL shoulda been a gimme (1A: Call from a bar, maybe), but phone call never occurred to me. Even when I saw the first word could be DRUNK, I was like "DRUNKS ... OUT!"? Do bartenders say that? I doubt it. And then I just came up blank on everything. Thought gymnastics at 1D: Tumbling equipment (DRYERS). Had the "U" from SUCKS (a gimme!) (27A: "Your Movie ___" (Rober Ebert book)), and thus thought 2D: Tear into ended in UP (some equivalent of RIP UP). Couldn't see THEEU to save my life (31A: What's exited in Brexit). Man that is one ugly answer. Correct, but yipes. ___-Luddite. Even that stumped me. Considered NEO, but also considered PRE- (which now seems ... redundant). ISABEL? Uh, no idea (7D: Juan Peròn's third wife). Never saw "Thor" (sorry, RENE RUSSO) (15A: She played Odin's wife in "Thor"). So that corner alone destroyed me. I actually had to *finish* there, it was so bad. Luckily, the rest was less brutal.

Small corners were cake, big corners less so. I got handed some pretty useful answers (ZEVON, PAWNEE, THERON, SUCKS), but they never seemed to help that much. Well, that "Z" from ZEVON probably did. After the NW, there were really no Disasters except 63A: "Keep your pants on!" (IN A MOMENT). Did you know SECOND and MINUTE both fit in MOMENT's place!? I'm guessing at least a few of you do, in fact, know that. Now. I kept trying to get [Caregivers' org.] (which is not in a million years how I would describe the AMA) (I think of nurses as giving the actual "care"), but with SECOND in there, I was like "... ACA? I mean, I'm all for it, but it's ... not a caregivers' ... org. Is it?" It is not. But I *somehow* knew [Marcel Marceau moniker] was BIP, so I was able to power the other longer Acrosses across (BIKE LANES!) and fixed that corner way faster than its NW counterpart. Really good work overall, w/ clues that (initially) just baffled (solve-upon-waking-at-5am) me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty:Medium-Easy (hard to start, then super-easy)

THEME: none

Word of the Day:Plumeria(5D: Plumeria creation => LEI) —

noun
noun: plumeria; plural noun: plumerias
a fragrant flowering tropical tree of a genus that includes frangipani. (google)

• • •

And here I thought a plumeria was where PENs were made. I wish I were joking. I not only put in PEN for 5D: Plumeria creation, I then immediately put PEN in *again* for the very next clue, 6D: Stir. PEN PEN. Wrong wrong. Still, my plan of strafing stacks with first-guess answers on all the short crosses weirdly ended up working, despite those wrong answers (and the also-wrong ATM for 4D: One rolling dough). SMALL (3D: Minor) was right and YENS (7D: Wants) was right, and I figured the 1D: "___ vobiscum" ("the Lord be with you") would start "D" (I could think only of "Deus"), so I stuck that in there too. But I didn't get started in earnest til GALS (26A: Ben-___ (N.F.L. cheerleading squad)) over OLE (28A: Estadio cheer) (both gimmes), then VIRGO. Worked my way up to the long Acrosses from there. Once I finally figured out the Count wore a MONOCLE, "MOMMIE, DEAREST" became obvious, and instantly fixed all my wrong initial guesses on the short Downs (13A: Best-selling celebrity tell-all book of 1978). COMPANION PIECE(14A: Something work-related) was very very hard because the clue has "Work" in it and starts COMPAN- so naturally I wanted COMPANY something. Not knowing what "Plumeria" was meant that COMPANY stayed COMPANY too long. Not knowing CAP'N (by any stretch, at all, at all), also made uncovering COMPANION PIECE super-hard. But once I got out of the top, the puzzle opened up and suddenly became more like a Tuesday. Monday in the middle, Wednesday down below. Ended up finishing in very average time, despite terrible beginning.

"ROSEANNE" (yay!) was the turning point (22A: Sitcom set in Lanford, Ill.). Got it easy (right in my wheelhouse), and then everything underneath it just fell away. After that, I only had minor trouble: writing in SENTRA instead of XTERRA (37D: Nissan model discontinued in 2015); not knowing Hebrew letters (43D: Hebrew letter on a dreidel => SHIN); forgetting the manner in which PEAS were processed for babies (brain just kept going "smashed? smashed? are they smashed?"). But that's it. Puzzle is both easier and less interesting down below—very heavy on the RLSTNE, especially in the SE (!) with ESTEE on the SETTEE eating PASTRIES with her BESTIES. But overall the grid is really lovely, and the clues were suitably tough. I can tolerate a fantastic obscurity like CAP'N Bill Weedles (!?) (8D: ___ Bill Weedles (Land of Oz character)) if surrounding material is fair, and it was. Nice job.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy-ish in the middle, Medium-ish up top, and Challenging-ish down south.

THEME: "Break The Glass Ceiling" — The names of notable women "firsts" literally break apart across answers that describe different types of glass- at the top- or "ceiling" of each name.

Theme answers:

BREAK THE GLASS CEILING (64A: Overcome a certain career barrier... or what the answers to the starred clues do?)
O'CONNOR (2D: *One who 64-Acrossed for Supreme Court justices...) breaking P(o)INT (1A: 16-ounce container)
RIDE (7D: *... for astronauts) breaking ST(r)AINED (6A: Material commonly used during cathedral construction)
THATCHER (15D: *... for British prime ministers) breaking S(t)AND (14A: Primitive timer)
ALBRIGHT (77D: *... for secretaries of state) breaking SP(a)Y (75A: Easy-to-carry telescope)
BIGELOW (88D: *... for Best Directors) breaking A(b)LE (87A: Pub vessel)
CURIE (98D: *... for Nobel laureates) breaking WIN(c)E (95A: Cab destination?)

Word of the Day: FLEXAGON—

In geometry, flexagons are flat models, usually constructed by folding strips of paper, that can be flexed or folded in certain ways to reveal faces besides the two that were originally on the back and front. (Wikipedia)

Middle Schoolers Still Make These. Trust Me.

My definition: Those eeny-meeny-miny-moe things that we made in elementary school... less elegantly know as "cootie catchers" as I've just learned.

• • •

Hello CrossWorld! This is Jim Q filling in for Rex today (the conversation went something along the lines of this-ME:Hi, Rex… I know you know absolutely nothing about me, but I’d like to fill in for you one day…REX:Ok. How ‘bout now?)

C'mon Across Lite... Make a Sad Pencil for Me. I Can Handle It

As with some (read: most)Sundays, I had one wrong box that kept Across Lite’s Mr. Happy Pencil mascot from congratulating me on a perfect solve. But I’m gonna call Natick on that. I can’t imagine anyone saying “ISEULT and NEGEV are right in my wheelhouse!” So I missed that E crossing. Meh. Who cares? Virtually everything else about this puzzle was top notch in my book.

THE THEME- It’s refreshing and timely to see a NYT puzzle celebrating the achievements of women. A couple of Saturdays ago, I walked out of Grand Central Station and found myself right in the middle of the Women’s March. It. Was. Amazing. (missed it? check out a quick vid from my phone:)

BIGELOWtripped me up for a while, and I would’ve filled it in a lot earlier as I had -ELOWin place, but sadly (and somewhat ironically given the theme), theBIGELOWthat comes to my mind first is Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. I only just noticed their last names are spelled differently. That’s a good thing. To my credit, I never saw or will see that idiotic movie, and I’ve seen two of the real Bigelow’s films. Both excellent.

I'm Pretty Sure "Deuce Bigalow" Inspired this Ebert Title.

It actually took me quite a while toGROKthat the names were breaking types of glass (ME: “Primitive timer is aSTAND? If you say so!). This was enough for me to thinkYOU IDIOT! I mean, the letters are even circled (perhaps unnecessarily?) to make the gimmick that much clearer. WHY DID THAT TAKE ME SO LONG TO FIGURE OUT?!?! To be fair, of all those glasses, the only two I see and use on a regular basis arePINT and WINE. Using the former right now actually. And the latter is due up in about 60 minutes... I'll set my hour...errr... SANDglass. So that's my lame excuse.

Not Quite Sure What an ALE GLASS is... But I Don't Care What it's Called as Long as the ALE is Good.

True 'Dat.

THE FILL: When it comes to Sundays, I usually brace myself for awful fill. But Trabucco went through obvious pains to come up with the liveliest fill possible for a grid with a lot of restraints. There’s hardly anything to roll eyes at… I SPOSE"IT HELP" looks a bit ugly, but that’s me really searching for something other than the ISEULT/NEGREV cross. A look back at Trabucco’s past two NYT grids shows an emerging pattern of a constructor who cares about the solver’s experience once the theme has been cracked. And no one is allowed to complain about the partial I SEE A... because it made all of us hum Bohemian Rhapsody with joy. Don't deny it.

THE CONSTRUCTION: This is remarkably well built. It’s not the usual 21x21 size, but it can’t be as it has to accommodate the 20-lettered BREAK THE GLASS CEILING grid-spanner. The fact that the constructor found truly notable names that balance out evenly throughout the grid in addition to finding types of glass that can be “broken” while still making a legitimate "post-break" word using only the first letter of each name… I’m impressed. Wowza.

Bullets:

My Cat, Abby. Currently.

SEXILE (74A: Send elsewhere for the night, as a roommate in modern lingo) — I never heard this word... but I love it. And I want ever so badly to use it. But I don't have this problem anymore. I SPOSE I can SEXILE the cat... but she could care less as to what I'm doing (see pic for proof).
FOGGIER (80A: Less safe for a plane landing, in a way)— Just watched Sully. Think that guy is fearful of fog? Hell no. My dad was an awesome pilot too... and he was no Fog Fearer.
DID I WIN (46A: Question after a photo finish) Normally I turn to this blog when I don't understand the clue... but... ummm... can't this time. Little help?
STREAKED (6D: Hurriedly showed oneself out?) I enjoyed this clue. I hope this happens during the Super Bowl. The ads just aren't doing it for me anymore and my boxes never hit.
PADDING (1D: Superfluous part of an essay) I almost wish my middle school English students would throw some superfluous stuff in their essays. Something. Anything. Or at least just not conclude them with "This is the end of my essay." I'll settle for that.
EASTON (28A: Sheena who sang "U Got the Look" with Prince) My parents provided two options of music for a stint during my childhood. Huey Lewis and the News. Or Sheena Easton. I prefer Huey.

Thanks, Sam. This is my favorite NYT puzzle so far this year.

Signed, Jim Quinlan

Plebeian of CrossWorld (is that title still up for grabs?)

P.S.

Please enjoy this delightful 6 second video I made for y'all.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

You know what they say, the first Monday of the month is the best Monday of the month! OK, nobody actually says that, but it's Annabel filling in for Rex today as usual! :)

Constructor: Andy Hinz

Relative difficulty: See at this point I can't tell if it was easy or if I'm just getting better? Let's go with medium. Medium works. It was a medium puzzle and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

THEME: HIDDEN CAMERA— Theme clues included "hidden" brands of camera. (Not that hidden if they're right there in bubbles, are they? Oh well.)

Theme answers:

HIDDEN CAMERA (51A: Common security device...or a feature of 20, 33- and 38-Across)
I CAN ONLY HOPE (20A: "Keeping my fingers crossed")
PRISON YARD (33A: Exercise area for convicts)
SPUTNIK ONE (38A: First satellite to orbit Earth)

Word of the Day: MOREL (55A: Edible mushroom) —

Morchella, the true morels, is a genus of edible sac fungi closely related to anatomically simpler cup fungi in the order Pezizales (division Ascomycota). These distinctive fungi have a honeycomb appearance, due to the network of ridges with pits composing their cap. Morels are prized by gourmet cooks, particularly in French cuisine. Due to difficulties in cultivation, commercial harvesting of wild morels has become a multi-million-dollar industry in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, in particular North America, Turkey, China, the Himalayas, India, and Pakistan, where these highly prized fungi are found in abundance.

• • •
(Wikipedia)

(Unofficial fun fact about morels: I googled them to get a picture but they're kind of gross looking.)

Tbh, I'm getting a little sick of seeing IDO with the "something you say at a wedding" clue. It's like playing THE in Scrabble. There's gotta be something better you can come up with! The rest of the fill was pretty interesting though. RAFT, BERG, ASEA.....did Andy Hinz rewatch "Titanic" yesterday? I can't blame him, Kate and Leo are pretty cute together. Anyway. I got stuck around the middle of the left side for-freaking-ever, and also for some reason I had REAREST EXIT instead of NEAREST EXIT for 25D? I remember thinking to myself, "Funny, I don't think "rearest" is a word." Guess I was right.

The theme was actually really fun! Like I said, I don't really get how the cameras were "hidden," but it was still cool to find the brands and wonder where they were going with it. Still gets imaginary points off for not being Downs-only-solver friendly, but hey, it's Monday. Also, I think "I can only hope" is a bit of a stretch, but hey, again, Monday.

Bullets:

DEFY (7D: Challenge)— Oh no, I'm getting flashbacks to my Wicked phase. When I was a kid I went into one of those amusement park recording studios to record my own solo a cappella version of "Defying Gravity" and have it played for everyone in that area of the park. I was very proud of myself at the time. It is all very embarrassing.
NERD (54D: Jock's antithesis)— Jock's antithesis, huh? CollegeHumor has a pretty funny take on that!

ESCAPE ROUTE (3D: Means of getaway) — What does it say about my status as a Pokémon kid that my first thought was ESCAPE ROPE and I got really confused when it wouldn't fit? (An escape rope is an item in a Pokémon game that lets you escape from a cave. It's really useful when your Pokémon are low HP because in Pokémon caves you can't use Fly and....Oops, this is getting a little NERDy!)
TESTER (48A: Employee at a perfumery)— THE PERFUME DEPARTMENT?!?!?!

Also, happy late birthday to my dad!!! :D He's a high school sailing coach now and that's really exciting so everyone congratulate him!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (time in the high 3s; I think that's somewhat above average)

THEME: Queens' places— every themer is some differently punctuated variant of [Queen's place], with highly varied results

Theme answers:

18A: Queen's place (CHESSBOARD)
23A: Queens' place (NEW YORK CITY)
36A: Queens' place (RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE)
47A: Queen's place (ROCK AND ROLL / HALL OF FAME)

Word of the Day:RUBATO(9D: In a relaxed rhythm, musically) —

noun
noun: rubato; plural noun: rubati; plural noun: rubatos; noun: tempo rubato; plural noun: tempo rubatos
1.
the temporary disregarding of strict tempo to allow an expressive quickening or slackening, usually without altering the overall pace.

• • •

Far more enjoyable than your typical Tuesday, and, for me, slightly harder. I do not know the term RUBATO, it turns out, and when I don't know a longish answer on a Tuesday, turns out there's a price to pay, time-wise. Even a small delay on M or T can be quite significant time-wise. So I fumbled a bit up there, but then I really fumbled down below, with the two-part themer—clue was known, so added nothing, and with a 2-part themer that's 2 x nothing, and then I couldn't land a couple of crucial Downs: had SIC- but no idea about SICK OF (38D: So done with), had H- but no idea about HOT ONE (44D: Scorcher). So there was a lot of hacking before the themer(s) finally filled in. This puzzle is much bouncier and more current than most NYT puzzles—pop culture gets a bit heavy at times ("RUDY"!?! Had to reach back for that one), and that is a ridiculous / ostentatious / gratuitous use of modern initialisms in the SE corner (NSFW x/w SXSW) (that's "not suitable for work" and "South by Southwest," in case you're unfamiliar). OK, OK, you listen to contemporary music and use the internet, we get it, Finn, you're young(ish). Dial it back, kid.

Since I don't watch "RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE," I thought that answer was a little anomalous, as I would say "drag queen," not just "Queen." I would refer to a chess piece as just a queen, the band as just Queen, the urban area as just Queens, but a drag queen I would call a "drag queen." Of course colloquially "queen" can stand alone as meaning "drag queen," but in everyday usage, the "queen" is usually preceded by "drag." Not sure if all contestants on the show are called simply "queens" or maybe just the winner ... anyway, this queen seemed to want a qualifier ("drag"), and none of the others did. There maybe be an in-show reason for the clue that make its apparent anomalousness a non-issue.

Bullets:

7D: Shake one's booty (TWERK)— if ever a clue needed "... in a way," this one did. I was looking for something much more generic (like DANCE).
6D: Hold together (COHERE)— I had ADHERE, as in "Place your AD HERE! ACT NOW! Low AD FEES!"
28A: "Let's Get Loud" singer, affectionately (J-LO)— she is famous. That song, though??? What the heck is that? On a Tuesday, maybe something a little more ... iconic? See also the awful clue for BRUNO MARS (35D: 2014 Super Bowl performer). Who remembers 3-years-ago Super Bowl performers!? I'm gonna forget Lady Gaga performed at the 2017 Super Bowl by next week, and *that* performance was actually memorable. Why not clue BRUNO MARS by something related to him!? His music is fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ned White

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME: LETTER DROP (55A: Opening at the post office ... or, when read as three words, a hint to the answers to the starred clues)— theme answers are familiar (ish) phrases with the letter string "TER""dropped" (i.e. omitted), creating wacky (that's a euphemism) phrases, clued wackily.

Theme answers:

PRAIRIE OYS (16A: *Great Plains plaints?)
GIMME SHEL (24A: *"Get Silverstein on the phone now!") [no question mark??]
STRAIGHT SHOO (29A: *Command like "Let me be direct: Get lost!"?)
PORTRAIT PAIN (38A: *Cramps from posing too long?)
TRAIN SPOT (46A: *Teach Dick and Jane's dog new tricks?)

Word of the Day:William STEIG(5D: Shrek creator William) —

William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, and, late in life, an illustrator and writer of children's books. Best known for the picture booksSylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto, he was also the creator of Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name. He was the U.S. nominee for both of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeah, no. Not feeling this one at all. The themers are all terribly forced and awkward. STRAIGHT SHOO is borderline incoherent. Sooooooo many words have "TER" in them, you couldn't have done better than STRAIGHT SHOO? All those "?" clues and ridiculous answers, and then a revealer that feels ... I want to say dated. What is a LETTER DROP? Is that, like, a slot you put mail through? Seriously, I am 47 and go into post offices not infrequently and I don't really know what this is. Feels bygone. Ah, yes, I see it is a "slot through which letters can be pushed." OK, then. I'd've called it a slot, but at least I know what the phrase means now. The clues/answers are so ridiculous that the clues are barely any help, and so the puzzle definitely played on the hard side. I'm sure there will be people who don't fully grok the theme even upon completion. I *know* there will be people with an error in the last square of 7D: Bottomless pit because ... I mean, ABYSM? A "bottomless pit" is an abyss. ABYSM is just abysmal. Oy. So many (non-prairie) oys.

[Bottom topper?] for TALC. That clue ain't right. It's a baby's bottom, not a sundae. "Topper?" Come on. Had trouble with 23D: Bill fatteners because a. clue is needlessly plural and b. I wasn't sure what meaning of "bill" was in play. Had LATTE for LECHE (20A: Café lightener). Had most of my trouble in the SE due simply to vagueness of clues, like 40D: Stereo component (TUNER) and 45A: Supreme Court action (RULING) and 52A: Like refrigerators, at times (RAIDED) and 64A: Visa concern (DEBT). Mostly this thing was just a slog. "GIMME SHEL!" is the closest thing this puzzle has to an entertaining moment. That's not nearly enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME:Across the pond— ATLANTIC OCEAN sits in middle of grid, and themers are paired answers representing the different names Yanks and Brits have for various things:

Theme answers:

2D: 56-Down, across the 15-Down (HIRES) / v.v. (RENTS)
4D: 41-Down, across the 15-Down (QUEUEING) / v.v. (LINING UP)
35D: 10-Down, across the 15-Down (KNACKERED) / v.v. (EXHAUSTED)
52D: 8-Down, across the 15-Down (CHIPS) / v.v. (FRIES)

Word of the Day:ALITERATE(22A: Able but unwilling to read)—

adjective
adjective: aliterate

1. unwilling to read, although able to do so.

noun
noun: aliterate; plural noun: aliterates

1. an aliterate person.

• • •

Easy. Feels like I've seen an Atlantic-divided puzzle like this one before, but the word-pair thing is cute and enjoyable. Having themers cross-referenced made the puzzle Very easy to solve, though. Well before ATLANTIC OCEAN came into view, I could tell what was going on. In fact, before I knew it was a theme answer, it was clear to me just by the phrasing of its clue that 2D: HIRES was part of a US/UK pair. At that point, I thought HIRES was the root beer (seriously), so I'm lucky I didn't decide to jump to the other side of the grid and write in, I don't know, AANDW (though we have that here....). Once I hit QUEUEING, I *did* jump the pond and write in LINING UP, and then the pace picked up very, very quickly. When your central themer is so easy as to be an afterthought, the puzzle doesn't stand much chance. KNACKERED is one of my favorite Briticisms, though I'm not sure I'd say it—I just like hearing it. My wife's a Kiwi, so sometimes we forget in this household what's British and what isn't. I don't know if she says any of the British stuff any more, if she ever did. She's lived here so long even she gets confused about what's "original" and what's picked-up.

So, cute theme, but the fill on this thing, holy moly it's a mess. Soooo much tired, overfamiliar crosswordesey gunk. Innocuous stuff like ELOPE STYE ULNA ABASE ABET and then crosswordesey names like RITT RUDI and foreignisms like SOU UNO QUA ICI LAC AÑO and then generally ugh-ish PSAT ETTU ETRAIN RAH OMANI VIOLS ICARE ESE especially INOT ULA NANU ATUG and the cherry on top, AFLERS (!?). Hard enough to get me to buy NLERS and ALERS, no need to shove *bygone* sports -ERS down my throat.

Also didn't care for BOBO, mostly because I had BOZO, which is more "common" than BOBO as a clown name, in that I can identify at least one BOZO. Ugh. Now there are some fine longer answers that distract from the junkyard fill. Never heard of ALITERATE, but I like it. Not that familiar with LEGROPE, but I'm enjoying reparsing it as LE GROPE (I imagine him as a miserable French count who cannot keep his hands to himself). GO VIRAL and BREXIT are nice modern touches. If you haven't seen Aziz ANSARI in "Master of None" (Netflix), do yourself a favor. Enjoyed seeing him in here. Yes, the fill is truly terrible, but people are going to like the puzzle, generally, because the theme was cute and it was very, very easy. A puzzle that is both easy and charming, with a handful of decent longer answers, can make people forget (or forgive) some otherwise pretty shoddy craftsmanship.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Finn is right about the themers (geographically speaking) ...

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Kyle Mahowald

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day:BOITO(28D: Librettist for Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff") —

Arrigo Boito (Italian: [arˈriːɡo ˈbɔito]; 24 February 1842 – 10 June 1918) (whose original name was Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito and who wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio), was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele. Along with Emilio Praga, and his own brother Camillo Boito he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very nice longer answers. A very (almost aggressively) current puzzle, very much in the tech-boy universe. Feels like it was made by/for math-science boys who went to college in the '00s. It's got DATA SCIENTISTs and MINECRAFT and the actor who played Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" and the host of "The Daily Show. There are only two women in the puzzle and they're huddling together in the SW corner. Oh, sorry, forgot about LENI (whoever that is). Anyway, the few female answers all TINY four-letter names. Very MALE, is what I'm saying. But well made, I think. MENA is ick and BOITO is obscuroito (to me), but there's not a lot of other junk, and the skeleton on this one is solid—good, strong longer answers holding this thing together.

I did this in fits and starts, racing at times, dead-stopped at others, getting JESSE EISENBERG from *that* clue wasn't easy for me, and the first bit of his name I got was the "EEI" string, which looks wrong / insane (5D: Oscar-nominated actor who has written several humor pieces for The New Yorker). And then DATA SCIENTIST didn't (and still doesn't) sound like a thing. I wanted ANALYST. Bah. But the worst problem came at the end, with my last corner—the SE. And it was all MINECRAFT's fault. I have a 12yo nephew who is ObSessed—goes to conventions and everything. But I just don't think of MINECRAFT as a "video game." That's a label I associate with stand-up console games like "Donkey Kong" or home console games like "Mario Kart" (which fits). And maybe "Myst," I guess. But you play a video game—like, there are clear objectives. It's relatively finite and goal-oriented. I think of "MINECRAFT" as more like a virtual world in which you explore and build ... I don't know. Are there points? Can you score? Win? It's obviously technically right, the clue, but ugh, again, the vagueness. So I had MINIKARTS at some point (and JOE KOOL!). And then TRIBES for 42A: Concerns for sociologists (TRENDS). Gulf of RIGA? Never heard of it. Got rescued by a blind guess at TARS (after I'd pulled MINECRAFT). Not so fun down there. TRUST ME. But fun overall.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

1960s sitcom set in 1860s / SUN 1-22-17 / Grammy winning drummer Lyne Carrington / Piano dueler with Donald in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Aware of in cool cat slang / MON 1-23-17 / Little shaver to Scot / 50s Ford flops / Many John Wayne film informally / Corkscrew-shaped noodles

Part of brain believed to control emotion / TUE 1-24-17 / 1974 top 10 foreign language hit / WW II Allied landing site in Italy / Right-hand page of open book

Kind of dye with vivid colors / WED 1-25-17 / Christina who played Lizze Borden / Montana city that consolidated with Silver Bow County / Giraffe's cousin / bit of birdbath gunk / Uriah Heep's profession

Half a ten-spot / FRI 1-27-17 / Loafer alternative / Romance novelist Tami / Bradley with many medals / Brand with the flavor French Silk / Loyalists American Revolution / Actress Saoirse / Bond girl Kissy Suzuki / Stray calf / Alto clef instrument

Italian brewery since 1846 / SAT 1-28-17 / Gesture of razzle-dazzlement / Its logo consists of pair of calipers in oval / Classic novel written under nom de plume of Currer Bell

Famed Broadway restaurateur / SUN 1-29-17 / Linc's portrayer in 1999's Mod Squad / Composer Max who was called father of film music / Last mustachioed president

Venerable London theater / MON 1-30-17 / Summer in soissons / Card with two pips / Items on Indian necklace / Whirrer on muggy day

Devon cathedral city / TUE 1-31-17 / Hilarity in Internet-speak / Seinfeld stock character / Sean who played Mikey in Goonies / Pope who excommunicated Martin Luther / Item that might be wanted fervently by prisoner

Seneca Falls orator Lucretia / WED 2-1-17 / Follower of Hosea / Main squeeze in modern lingo / Prayer wheel turner / Hit home run in baseball lingo

Lyra's brightest star / THU 2-2-17 / Its sound in old westerns was often simulated by coconut / Language in which hello is annyeonghaseyo / British crown colony from 1937 to 1963

Marcel Marceau moniker / FRI 2-3-17 / Ned's adoptive son on Game of Thrones / App with envelope icon / What's exited in Brexit / Juan Peron's third wife / Roman-Parthian War figure / Lead-in to Luddite / Black Tulip novelist 1850 / Jazz devotee most likely / Superhero with foe Professor Von Gimmick

Plumeria creation / SAT 2-4-17 / Sitcom set in Lanford Ill / Best-selling celebrity tell-all book of 1978 / Spica's constellation / Item worn by count on sesame street / They're known as viennese bread in scandinavia / Medieval invader of Spain / Final car built in buick city before its shutdown

Best Foreign Film of 2005 set in South Africa / SUN 2-5-17 / Moretz of "Carrie" / Mexican president Enrique Pena

Edible mushroom / MON 2-6-17 / Dictator ___ Amin / Summer hours in Denver: Abbr. / Philosopher and social activist West

In relaxed rhythm musically / TUE 2-7-17 / Lets get loud singer affectionately / Asian river whose name is one letter away from Ivy League college / Warning initials above Internet link / Annual Austin festival for short

Auto designer Maserati / WED 2-8-17 / Great plains plaints / Fire-breathing monster of myth

Subject of notable 2016 referendum / THU 2-9-17 / Caesarean rebuke / Surfer's tether / Trounce informally

Seducer of Josef in Kafka's Trial / FRI 2-10-17 / Librettist for Verdi's Otello Falstaff / Navy enlistee informally / Comedian with 2016 memoir Born a Crime / Director's cry that's said with pause