Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Gary Kennedy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (*for a Monday*) (still under 4 minutes) (relax)

[oversized grid: 16x15]

THEME: SWISS / ARMY / KNIFE (1A: With 43- and 76-Across, camping aid)— four functions of said knife:

Theme answers:

CAN OPENER
CORKSCREW
SCISSORS
TWEEZERS

Word of the Day: WOTAN (2D: King of the gods in Wagner's "Ring" cycle) —

Ultimately from Proto-Germanic*Wōdanaz, cognate with EnglishWoden, Old FrisianWeda, Old NorseÓðinn. Attested since the 12th century in the Chronicon of Godfrey of Viterbo, where it is spelled Wotan. In Old High German, the name could be spelled Wodan, Wotan, Wuotan or Woatan, depending on regional dialect. // After Christianization, the name persisted in folklore and formed various derivations, such as Old High German Wuotunc, Wodunc, medieval Wüetung. In modern (19th century) folklore, invocations of the god could still be found (Grimm, w:Deutsche Mythologie), especially in Westphalia as Wuodan and in Mecklenburg as Wode (also spelled Waur after its approximate pronunciation). However, they descend not from Old High German but from Old Saxon Wodan and Middle Low German variant Wode. // In literary modern German, the spellings Wodan and Wotan competed during the early 19th century, but Wotan became prevalent in the wake of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, published in 1853. (wiktionary)

• • •

WOTAN? Pfffft, man, was that a harbinger. What a dreadful, ridiculous word to put in a Monday puzzle. Just bonkers. But I guess it did prepare me for the Avalanche of crosswordese that followed. This is a solidly Maleskan puzzle. It seriously felt like the early '90s (when I first started solving), when opera trivia roamed freely across the grid and SSTS flew the skies and ... well, IKE wasn't still president, but he may as well have been, as far as the crossword was concerned. If you are putting Cheri OTERI and N*SYNC in your puzzles in order to be hip, with-it, and up-to-date, you are doing something very wrong. And for what? Four functions of a SWISS / ARMY / KNIFE? That is a straightforward, dull-as-dishwater theme. The only thing I admire about it is the grid construction, specifically the breaking of the revealer into three, in order to accommodate the four other themers. Of course, this is also the thing that, from a solver's perspective, I enjoyed the least about the theme. Cross-referenced / themed 1As are Not fun. Also, having themers at the first and last Acrosses still really restricts your grid and puts pressure on the fill, and boy does it show. See WOTAN, above.

Other trouble spots: SHIPLOAD (!?). What a bizarre answer / clue (5D: All a tanker can hold). I assume a SHIPLOAD is *whatever* the so-called "tanker" is holding. The "All" part had me all "???" And that was hot on the heels of The WOTAN Clan (which is what I'm calling that answer now, to amuse myself). Rough. PARTD was also very hard for me to parse (41A: Medicare drug benefit). But my worst wipeout came at 63D: Where all roads lead, it's said. Maybe it says something about my state of mind by that point, but I quickly (and sincerely) wrote in HELL. Let me tell you, it really *felt* right at the time. So right. But then another member of the crosswordese posse (EMERIL!) showed up and I changed HELL ... to HOME. Good look getting 62A: Fad when you're staring down CHA_E. Ugh. But of course all roads lead to ROME, in an old (very old, like everything about this puzzle) saying. Next!!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (a bit on the slow side for a Tuesday)

THEME: PAIRS (68A: Figure skating event ... or what the circled items always come in)—the circled items all intersect in intriguing but ultimately meaningless ways

Word of the Day: LEN Wiseman (26A: "Live Free or Die Hard" director Wiseman) —

Len Ryan Wiseman (born March 4, 1973) is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for his work on the Underworld series, Live Free or Die Hard, and Total Recall. (wikipedia)

• • •

This simply doesn't work. It lacks consistency on many levels. No such thins as one PANT or one TONG, but there is, of course, such a thing as one SOCK or one SKI. Once you let SOCK and SKI play, now *anything* that customarily comes in pairs is fair game: boot, shoe, earring, whatever. I thought maybe the crossing PAIRS crossed in certain ways for certain reasons—the TONGs kinda look like TONGs, and the PANTs are arguably pant-shaped. I guess you could try to contend that the SOCKs form one big sock, but that's pretty tenuous, and then there's the SKIs, which ... have no visual relationship an actual pair of skis. There's some winning fill here and there, but there's a good amount of junk too (RWY!? Wow, terrrrrrrible—only used three times in past decade, and the other two were Sundays).

Puzzle felt more Wednesday than Tuesday. All the colloquial stuff made it quite slow (though also more enjoyable than it would've been otherwise—weird trade-off). [Enthusiastic assent] ("I DO, I DO!") coulda been a million things. Ditto ["Wow, unbelievable!"] ("I'M IN AWE!"). Two-worders were also slippery in places. IN RETURN took me forEver to see (39D: Reciprocally). And [Future perfect tense in grammar class, e.g.] is an absurd clue—an absurdly specific clue—for LESSON. Why would I think "tense" = LESSON. I get that one can teach that as a LESSON, but one can teach *anything* as a LESSON. [Parallel-parking at driving school, e.g.]. But in the end, the fill probably averages out to average. Not bad (well, -EME is pretty bad, and NON-PC can go jump in a lake, along with his ugly cousin, UN-). It's just that this is the kind of theme that you should sit on and rework and rethink until it's Perfect. Why run with half-baked stuff like this. Editor's job is to get the best work out of people. But here we have yet another case of "meh, good enough, run it!"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. NAAN is a bread. NAN (30A) is a Bobbsey Twin or a Talese.

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Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"... as a plumber?"— ordinary phrases are clued as if they had something to do with a plumber's behavior:

Theme answers:

RUNS HOT AND COLD (20A: Vacillates, as a plumber?)
ALL TAPPED OUT (26A: Exhausted, as a plumber?) (I've heard TAPPED OUT on its own, but add the "ALL" and then I've only heard ALL TIRED OUT or ALL TUCKERED OUT)
DOWN THE DRAIN (43A: Wasted, to a plumber?)
SINKING FEELING (52A: Anxiety, to a plumber?)

Word of the Day: Buddy EBSEN (62A: Actor Buddy of "The Beverly Hillbillies") —

Christian Ludolf "Buddy" Ebsen (Jr) (April 2, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was an American singer, dancer, author, film, television and character actor, whose career spanned seven decades. He had also appeared as a guest on several talk and variety shows. The SAG-AFTRA records also show him as Frank "Buddy" Ebsen. // Originally a dancer, Ebsen began his long career in films in 1935, beginning with Jack Benny in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Maureen O'Hara in They Met in Argentina (1941) and June Havoc in Sing Your Worries Away (1942). He also danced with child star Shirley Temple in Captain January (1936), released the same year. Cast as the Tin Man in 1939's The Wizard of Oz, Ebsen fell ill due to the aluminum dust in his makeup and was forced to drop out of the film. In Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), he portrayed Doc Golightly, the much older husband of Audrey Hepburn's character. He also had a successful television career, including playing Davy Crockett's sidekick, George Russell, in Walt Disney's Davy Crockett miniseries (1953–54). But he is best remembered for starring in the CBS television sitcomThe Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971) as Jed Clampett. He also played the title character in the television detective drama Barnaby Jones (1973–1980), also on CBS. Ebsen had a cameo role in the 1993 film version of The Beverly Hillbillies, not as Jed Clampett, but as Barnaby Jones.

• • •

This is a fine puzzle if the year is 1987 ... is it? ... [looks at calendar] ... nope. Corny, tame puns, with mostly dull, well-worn (if not terrible) fill. Not much to say about this one. Themers all involve plumbing-related wordplay. Kind of a narrow definition of what plumbers do. Two answers related to taps, two related to sinks, which means they're all related to sinks, I guess. Nothing about leaks or drips or snakes or ... look, I don't know. What am I, a plumber? I just know these are very safe, not at all outlandish or funny or even interesting answers. The most interesting part of the puzzle, which was also the hardest part of the puzzle, was the SW corner, specifically those two long Downs. They were very tough to pick up—well, tough for me, as I made the mistake of writing ESL in at 40A: Lang. course (ENG.) (it could never have been ESL, of course, since the "L" *stands* for "Lang."). Both GAG WRITER and I'M NOT SURE feel like party-crashers, like they were in a different ballroom, at a much cooler party, and accidentally stumbled into a seminar on tax preparation. Anyway, that anomalous pair of answers, I liked. The rest you can have back.

I've given myself so many lessons on the EPSOM / EPSON / EBSEN distinction, but apparently none of the them have taken. It's the vowel-in-the-fourth-position that's the (primary) problem. EBS-N!? Maybe if I just remember that the P versions take the O and the B takes the E. Maybe? Probably not. STOKERS? That one also took me a while to pick up (41D: Steamship workers). I wasn't AGASP (!), it's just that "steamship" conjures up a whole mess of old-timeyness, and STOKERS wasn't in my mental picture. I don't think I even knew "stoker" was a specific job title. Nothing else about this puzzle caused me too much trouble, and I finished in the same time as yesterday, which was the same time as the day before. Weird week.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: I'LL GO FIRST (54A: Trailblazer's declaration ... or a hint to 17-, 19-, 34- and 51-Across)— Familiar phrases where the last words have been changed simply by moving the letter "I" to the "First" position, resulting in a new words and wacky phrases and wacky "?" clues, huzzah!

Theme answers:

PURPLE IRAN (17A: Possible result of spilling grape juice on a map of the Middle East?)
FRENCH IGUANA (19A: Pet with a dewlap and a beret?)
ROLL OF ICONS (34A: Pantheon list?)
COVER IVERSON (51A: Guard the 2001 N.B.A. M.V.P.?)

Word of the Day: FAN ART (11D: Some derivative drawings) —

Fan art, or fanart, are artworks created by fans of a work of fiction (generally visual media such as comics, film, television shows, or video games) and derived from a series character or other aspect of that work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are neither created nor (normally) commissioned or endorsed by the creators of the work from which the fan art derives. // A different, older meaning of the term is used in science fiction fandom, where fan art traditionally describes original (rather than derivative) artwork related to science fiction or fantasy, created by fan artists, and appearing in low- or non-paying publications such as semiprozines or fanzines, and in the art shows of science fiction conventions. The Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist has been given each year since 1967 for artists who create such works. Like the term fan fiction (although to a lesser extent), this traditional meaning is now sometimes confused with the more recent usage described above. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very tough, mainly because of the themers, which refused to give themselves up without a ton of crosses. The wacky clues were often very little help at getting to anything specific, and without the revealer, it's very hard to see any link among the anagrammed words, or any consistency at all in the themers. After finally locking down the first two, I was certain the theme was geographical—what are the odds of having both Iran and French Guiana involved in anagrams in the first two themers, and then having that theme *not* be about geography? Well, those odds are probably incalculable, and anyway, if I'd been paying closer attention, I'd realize that those countries were "involved" in different ways—i.e. one was the anagram itself, the other was anagrammed into something else. Because I was looking for countries, later themers were especially rough. ROLL OF --- had me unable to think of *any word* that could go there, even in the base phrase. ROLL OF ... the dice. That was all my brain kept doing. Plus I wanted whatever that last word was to be an anagram of a country (!). Plus I don't think of gods of the Pantheon as "ICONS" (had IDOLS for a bit). This is what I mean about the clues being almost no help at getting to the actual answers. The worst case of this was, unfortunately, the revealer clue. A "Trailblazer" just goes, unannounced, and does Big, Important things heretofore unaccomplished. "I'LL GO FIRST" is not something a trailblazer would say. It's what someone in couples therapy would say. It's a banal statement for a quotidian situation and has zip to do with "trailblazing." That said, cluing aside, this theme is kind of amazing (even if it did take me almost two minutes of confused staring before I understood it)—simply move the "I" to the front, get a new word. Nice twist on the anagram-type theme.

The fill is pretty polished. Hard to pull off when you stack *theme* answers right on top of each other like that (I think of this as "Merling," since Merl Reagle stacked themers All The Time in his Sunday puzzles). Look at all the Downs running through those stacks of themers. There's really nothing bad. Nothing even mildly wince-y. This is what I admire, and see so little of—craft and polish. Dedication to the details, and especially to making sure you are sacrificing the rest of the puzzle on the altar of The Theme. It's not that there's No crosswordese in this thing—you can see repeaters hither and YON: PSA, ALI, OLE, ELI, MDI, ELLA). But now that I type even those answers out, the only one I'd try to ditch if I could is MDI. Maybe ENDO-, if possible. In short, there's not much to fault in the the fill. Considering the theme density, that's really quite impressive.

Tough parts:

4D: Many a Trump property (GOLF RESORT)— seems straightfoward enough, but having GOL- coming out of the gate, I wrote in GOLD-PLATED. Later, I had GOLF COURSE (w/ REBOUND in the cross—21A: Public relations pivot (REBRAND))
13A: Goes high (SOARS)— having tried ALDER for 5D: Wood that doesn't burn easily (ASPEN), I went with LEAPS here, and ouch. ALDER and NARC and SLID all confirmed ("confirmed") LEAPS ... until later crosses unconfirmed it.
55A: Wait in a strategic location, in video game lingo (CAMP)— ah, video game lingo, the one knowledge sphere there's actually no hope I'll ever master, or get any purchase on whatsoever. I had CAMO. It's a good guess, I think.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easiest Friday I've Ever Done

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Roger TANEY (23D: Chief justice in the Dred Scott verdict) —

Roger Brooke Taney (/ˈtɔːni/; March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864) was the fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), that ruled, among other things, that African-Americans, having been considered inferior at the time the United States Constitution was drafted, were not part of the original community of citizens and, whether free or slave, could not be considered citizens of the United States, which created an uproar among abolitionists and the free states of the northern U.S. He was the first Roman Catholic (and first non-Protestant) appointed both to a presidential cabinet, as Attorney General under President Andrew Jackson, as well as to the Court. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this was quite smooth, but also maybe too smooth. So smooth it was barely there. I finished in 3:51, a personal Friday record. Faster than every other puzzle I've solved this week (M, T, W and F were all actually within five seconds of one another). The puzzle seems nicely made, but I didn't really have much time to notice. Dropped 1D: ___ mocha (CAFFE) in pretty much right away (no point even looking at those long Acrosses before I've given the short Downs a go), and I honestly didn't pause, hesitate, or have to skip a clue for about the next dozen answers. Read clue, write answer. ELSE ATOLL FLUTE TORUS SMITE and goodbye. Slight hesitation on BFA vs. MFA (12A: Writer's deg.), but powered right through that. If there were such a thing as a Tuesday themeless, this would be it. Looking it over now ... it's really quite nice. Not scintillating, maybe, but not at all boring, and really quite polished. No gunk, lively fill. Possibly this constructor's best work.

There were exactly four answers in the puzzle that I had to work around.

1. I didn't really get the clue at 33A: Cricket, to a grasshopper, or vice versa. I thought maybe there was some adage or some Aesopian something or other that this referred to. Actually, my first thought upon seeing "Cricket" was the sport, but "grasshopper" got me back to reality. I just solved all the crosses, but even at -OUSIN I had at least a second of "????" and thought maybe I had an error. Is "COUSIN" a technical entomological term? Seems dicey.

2. Then I had the "F" in 38D: Surgical tool but couldn't bring it down. I was So Bummed because I knew I was flying and I was relying on that answer to help me turn the corner quickly into the SE. But I just blanked. Luckily ROMAS got me REEDED (educated guess), and then DARKO got me the "K" I needed to see KEEP TALKING.

3. I know BALOO now that I see it, but as I was filling that section in, the "B" didn't help, then the "BA-" didn't help, then the "BA--O" didn't help. Also, I ended up looking at the ELGIN clue really late for some reason. That was a gimme and might've made my progress through the SE a little smoother. But ultimately BALOO got worked out from crosses.

4. This was the only flat-out Don't-Know-It in the puzzle. An old, uncommon proper noun. No big surprise that it was the least movable object. I ran into it early and just turned the other direction (toward the NW). And then I solved the rest of the puzzle and just ended up back there again. Got every letter from crosses, ending with the "Y" in BETRAY (37A: Unknowingly reveal).

The overall easiness owes a lot to CAFFE and DARKO—two gimmes in optimal positions (providing the first letters of a bank of long Acrosses). The "C" and "F," and the "K" and the "O" (respectively) were particularly high-value letters, allowing me to see those long Acrosses very, very quickly. Low proper noun load meant low chance of getting badly stuck. Then there's the fill, which lives very much in the realm of real words / terms, and not crosswordese / obscurities. All of this adds up to Lightning. Hope you had a similarly triumphant solving feeling. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Challenging (Easy, except for SW corner, which is not)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: COLPORTEUR (28D: Peddler of religious literature) —

Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called "colporteurs". The term does not necessarily refer to religious book peddling. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sometimes just an answer or two can ruin a whole puzzle for me. And I don't just mean ruin as in "ruin my time." I mean "bring the mood crashing down" or "make me wince in a way that never quite leaves my face." Today's puzzle was mostly excellent, I think. Lots of fresh and lively fill, incl. THROW SHADE and FLEXITARIAN. Fairly polished, wide-ranging. There were some dicey bits, like ETTAS (?) over IATE (??), but in the main, things were pretty ship shape. I am not sure I believe there is such a thing as a FLORIDA TECH (?), but I'll take the puzzle's word for it. Don't mind BOSOMY as a word, I guess, but coulda done without the ogley "centerfold" reference (43D: Like centerfolds, typically). But still, like I say, I was largely digging it. But then: two problems.

Just because a word *technically* exists doesn't mean you should try to pass it off as a legit crossword answer. 999 out of 1000 people are gonna say PRE-NATAL. 1 out of 1000 is going to say ANTENATAL (8D: During pregnancy), and that person is possessed by the ghost of a 19th-century country doctor. Just as you would never say PREBELLUM, you would never say ANTENATAL, no no no. I mean, I'm no doctor, but no. Looks like ANTENATAL might be Australian-speak. That's what google is indicating. But, yeah, I don't live there. So no. You don't take ANTENATAL vitamins, you take prenatal vitamins. You know it, I know it, the Carthaginians knew it. Prenatal. But that was just an eye-roll, frankly, *This* on the other hand, was a hard middle finger:

So much wrong here. First, yes, I *do* enjoy learning new things. But I do Not enjoy inelegantly made grids. This answer is the *only* way into a tight corner. So basically, you get COLP-, and you (if you're like me) go "Huh ... that's the start of no word ever. I must have an error." Then you think, "Wait ... is it MALE BLUE DOT?" Then you dive into the SW and you actually know the pitcher (though aren't sure about ABBOTT v. ABBETT) (39D: Jim ___, one-handed Yankee who pitched a no-hitter in 1993) and you know BOER (44A: Great Trek figure of the 1830s) and you know TERRY, but ... the rest stump you. Oh, you guess NEARER(41D: Like Mars vis-à-vis Jupiter), but ... still stuck. *Two* "?" clues down there? Come on. And that 28-Down, yeah, that still looks like gibberish. I still somehow managed to finish this thing in under 7 minutes, but the last two of those were spent just in that tiny stupid corner.

To end on a word that obscure, that uninferrable, that ... ugh. It sapped all the good vibes. All I was left with was this crappy jerk-word, which I would've been "happy" enough to learn, I guess, if a. it hadn't been such a sore thumb standout compared to the rest of the grid, and b. it hadn't been completely blocking the only entrance to that small corner. Solver experience, not considered. AGAIN: just because a word exists doesn't mean you should pull the trigger. Use some judgment. And for god's sake, don't ruin your otherwise lovely puzzle with obscure clunkers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"In Bad Taste"— Themers are written a la recipe instructions. Answers are all bad (?) things, and together they make A RECIPE FOR DISASTER (106A: What 27-, 39-, 56-, 66-, 79- and 96-Across together make up):

Theme answers:

STIR UP A HORNET'S NEST (27A: Step 1: Raise hell)
MIX ONE'S METAPHORS (39A: Step 2: Make some literary gaffes)
BEAT A DEAD HORSE (56A: Step 3: Devote energy to something hopeless)
POUR MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN (66A: Step 4: Be a financial wastrel)
CUT A POOR FIGURE (79A: Step 5: Look pretty schlubby)
SERVES TWO MASTERS (96A: And finally: Has divided loyalties)

Word of the Day: URBAN II (35D: Pope who initiated the First Crusade) —

Pope Urban II (Latin: Urbanus II; c. 1042 – 29 July 1099), born Odo of Châtillon or Otho de Lagery, was Pope from 12 March 1088 to his death in 1099. He is best known for initiating the First Crusade (1096–99) and setting up the modern-day Roman Curia in the manner of a royal ecclesiastical court to help run the Church. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is the second personal record I've set this week. I'm trying to let that sink in. I've been doing crosswords how long? (A: off and on for > a quarter century) And I've been doing them daily, without fail, in earnest, for over a decade, and I've been to dozens of tournaments ... and in one week, a single week, I break not one but two personal time records? First Friday (under 4), and now today? I was under 7!? Do you know how many times I've been under 8 on a NYT Sunday? None. None times. And when I finished this one the clock was just ticking over to 6:59. I didn't even really understand the theme. In fact, I'm still not sure I do. Seems really ... loose? Incoherent? Cutting a poor figure and beating a dead horse seem like bad things to do, but they hardly seem like "disasters." The whole thing just doesn't hang together very well. Answers feel contrived and far too unrelated to make the the really click, hum, and whir. But as I say, honestly, what theme? I flew through this thing, destroying every answer I touched. Could do no wrong. It was an amazing feeling.

ONE'S—that is the constructor's little helper. You usually see it in quadstacks, e.g. A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE (15) (a classic example of the type). Here, it helps get MIX ONE'S METAPHORS to the right length to fit into the grid. You can see the constructor played with tenses (and articles) all over the place. [Look pretty schlubby] (2nd person) but [Has divided loyalties] (3rd person) (note: 3rd person is really awkward in an alleged "recipe"). And then you get the indefinite article "A" in A RECIPE FOR DISASTER, which you rarely see. These aren't bad or wrong things; they're just ways that a constructor can toy play around to get the the themers to come out symmetrical. MIX METAPHORS, MIX ONE'S METAPHORS, MIXED METAPHORS, MIXED ONE'S METAPHORS ... all available depending on the length requirements.

["WOO WOO!"]

There's not really anything to talk about here. If I had any trouble, it was dead center, where I wanted GOT AT IT (which didn't fit) before GO TO WAR (54D: Begin fighting), and where WOO was half of a drink I'd never heard of (76A: When doubled, a drink with vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice). I wanted to THROW MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN (again, non-fitting). I thought 21A: Venusian or Jovian was asking for some kind of religious adherent (ALIEN), I never think of Buddha as a YOGI, and 68D: Napping, so to speak really felt like it was gonna be UNAWAKE (UNAWARE). Other than that, just like Friday, it was see clue write answer see clue write answer, start to finish. It's kind of a high, being in the zone like that. It felt semi-impossible, like when this happened in "Caddyshack":

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen and Seth Geltman

Relative difficulty: Challenging (over 4?!) (I mean, it is 16-wide, but still)

THEME:PRIME TIME (63A: When TV viewership peaks ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 36- and 53-Across) — some answers that are ... like ... good times?

Theme answers:

GOLDEN AGE
BANNER YEAR
RED LETTER DAY
FINEST HOUR

Word of the Day: KIR (42A: Aperitif with black currant liqueur) —

Kir is a popular French cocktail made with a measure of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) topped up with white wine. // In France it is usually drunk as an apéritif before a meal or snack. It used to be made with Bourgogne Aligoté, a lesser white wine of Burgundy. Now, various white wines are used throughout France, according to the region and the whim of the barkeeper. Many prefer a white Chardonnay-based Burgundy, such as Chablis. // It used to be called blanc-cassis, but it is now named after Félix Kir (1876–1968), mayor of Dijon in Burgundy. Kir was a pioneer of the twinning movement in the aftermath of the Second World War, and popularized the drink by offering it at receptions to visiting delegations. Besides treating his international guests well, he was also promoting two economic products of the region. Kir allowed one of Dijon's producers of crème de cassis to use his name, then extended the right to their competitors as well. According to Rolland (2004),^[1] the reinvention of blanc-cassis (post 1945) was necessitated by the German Army's confiscation of all the local red Burgundy during the war. Faced with an excess of white wine, Kir renovated a drink that used to be made primarily with the red. // Another explanation that has been offered is that Mayor Kir revived it during a year in which the ordinary white wine of the region was inferior and the creme de cassis helped to disguise the fact. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not feeling this at all. The theme is a tremendous let-down. I kept wanting PRIME TIME to actually mean something (honestly, I thought maybe the numbers on the theme clues were all "primes"?), but it's just a time that is good. YEAR and DAY and HOUR are at least discrete units, but throw AGE in there and ... who knows? Anything goes, I guess. The worst part about this puzzle was the cluing, which was off, badly, everywhere. The fill has its moments, but some of those moments are garbage. If the puzzle goes 16-wide, I expect there to be a reason and I expect it to be good. Being able to put RED LETTER DAY in the center is not "good" enough. My wife wanted to murder the puzzle for MAIL IT IN alone (59A: Do a perfunctory performance). She's right that PHONE IT IN is much (as in infinitely) more common. MAIL IT IN may be an expression, but yuck. See also RUB NOSES. That's some western bullshit. I know because the lead picture of "Eskimo kissing" at wikipedia features these two:

It's one thing to amass a giant word list. It's another thing to have the ability to control it, to have discernment, to know when to say when, when to say 'no.' I'm not impressed by a tepid theme with some rough (ETERNE, ugh) fill that then tries to play all 'zazzy with a few "fresh" answers. If you can't do your core job right, all the BEDHEAD in the world won't save you.

Bah humbug:

24A: Topic of a happy annual report (BANNER YEAR)— This clue made no sense to me as I was solving. None. Zero. "Happy annual report"? I mean, I get it, in retrospect, but it's not really the "topic."BANNER YEAR is an idiomatic expression, so it's weird to say it's the "topic" or a "report." I kept wondering "What kind of report? Sales report?" I just couldn't envision the occasion at all. Also, I know BANNER DAY better than BANNER YEAR, though I'm not sure why.
36A: Something circled on a calendar (RED LETTER DAY)— this was King Garbage. What where and when? I've seen a bunch of calendars in my life, I have never seen one where a RED LETTER DAY is "circled."RED LETTER DAY is a *$&%ing metaphor. I circle appointments, birthdays, important days, but RED LETTER DAYs (which is something highly subjective, I think) precisely never. I want this clue to die slowly in prison.
9D: Like a diet lacking bread or pasta, for short (NO-CARB)— ugh there is no such thing as a "NO-CARB" diet. Also, your diet can be "lacking bread or pasta" and still have carbs in it.
18D: Counterparts of dahs in Morse code (DITS)— Morse code remains useful today only to provide an excuse for constructors to put junk in my grid and I am over it. À bas le Morse code cluing!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Average

You might've thought it was by Charlotte

THEME: GREY MATTER— Each theme entry contains a word that, when paired with the word GREY (indicated by shaded squares in the grid), makes up the name of a person (two real men, two fictional women) whose last name is Grey.

Theme answers:

LIPIZZANER [ZANE GREY] (17A: Horse breed known for dressage [western writer])
MILK OF MAGNESIA [AGNES GREY] (27A: Upset stomach remedy [Brontë governess])
REAR LIT [EARL GREY] (39A: Like a silhouette [19th-century U.K. prime minister])
HAMMERED IT HOME [MEREDITH GREY] (46A: Really made the point [TV surgeon played by Ellen Pompeo])
GREY MATTER (63A: Brains ... or this puzzle's four shaded names?)

Word of the Day: LIPIZZANER (17A: Horse breed known for dressage) —

The Lipizzan or Lipizzaner (Czech: Lipicán, Croatian: Lipicanac, Hungarian: Lipicai, Italian: Lipizzano, Slovene: Lipicanec), is a breed of horse closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria, where they demonstrate the haute école or "high school" movements of classical dressage, including the highly controlled, stylized jumps and other movements known as the "airs above the ground." The horses at the Spanish Riding School are trained using traditional methods that date back hundreds of years, based on the principles of classical dressage.The Lipizzan breed dates back to the 16th century, when it was developed with the support of the Habsburg nobility. The breed takes its name from one of the earliest stud farms established, located near the Karst Plateau village of Lipica (spelled "Lipizza" in Italian), in modern-day Slovenia. The breed has been endangered numerous times by warfare sweeping Europe, including during the War of the First Coalition, World War I and World War II. The rescue of the Lipizzans during World War II by American troops was made famous by the Disney movie Miracle of the White Stallions. Along with the Disney movie, Lipizzans have also starred or played supporting roles in many movies, TV shows, books and other media. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Laura here, guest-posting for Rex, and solving on West Coast time. It's still light out and my laptop and I are outside. (I am considering moving to California just to get the puzzle at 7pm on weeknights.) This one was quite a treat, though I suspect (and have already seen on Twitter) that there are a few entries that will stand out to solvers as somewhat more obscure than one would expect to find on a Tuesday. Case in point: LIPIZZANER, our Word of the Day, which I barely remembered from a brief tweenage obsession with horses. This was after I erased GOAT from 18D (Prize you don't want on "Let's Make a Deal"). (I was originally thinking of a probability puzzle called the Monty Hall problem.)

Let's get meta with an image from Rex's other blog

Of the GREYs referenced herein, I suspect ZANE will be the most familiar to solvers, some of whom may be only familiar with EARL GREY from his namesake tea.

"Tea, Earl Grey, hot": The Supercut

Bullets:

3D: Guitarist's key-changing aid (CAPO)— I was pleased to learn the term for the thing I have always referred to as "that clamp thingy on the neck of a guitar" (no musician, I). Also pleasing to see it clued as something other than "Mafia bigwig."
9D: Island wrap (SARONG)— Nothing, what sarong with you?!
57D: One side of a Stevenson character (HYDE)— Ya (or I) gotta like a puzzle that references the Rocky movies (6D: Boxer Drago of "Rocky IV" [IVAN]), Blazing Saddles(13D: Madeline KAHN), 1970s Broadway (15A: "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" musical [EVITA]), the BARD(51D: Shakespeare, for one), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Grey's Anatomy, and the youngest and arguably most obscure Brontë sister. Too bad Neville didn't clue DUNE (68A: Beach hill) as "Novel concerning the struggle for Arrakis."

"Have I said too much?
There's nothing more I can think of to say to you."

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

[Follow Laura on Twitter]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (slowest Wednesday for me in years, but I think some of my slowness was weird and idiosyncratic)

THEME: Fishing— there's a warning to some fish (DON'T TAKE THE BAIT) (3D: Warning for easily provoked types ... or for the answeres to the six starred clues?) and also some fish names and then a Down answer that's supposed to look like a fishing line: 9D: What might tempt the answers to the six starred clues?:

(this "J" is the "hook" on the end of the line)

(there's not actually "bait" on that hook)

(fish aren't normally "tempted" by a bare hook)

(but whatever)

Theme answers:

CARP (4A: *Complain)
SMELT (24A: *Extract with heat, in a way)
PIKE (32A: *Weapon with a point)
BASS (44A: *The Mikado in "The Mikado")
PERCH (53A: *Birdcage feature)
SOLE (69A: *Shoe part)

Word of the Day: MEL Martinez (63D: Former senator and R.N.C. head Martinez) —

Melquíades Rafael Martínez Ruiz, usually known as Mel Martínez (born October 23, 1946), is an American lobbyist and former politician who served as a United States Senator from Florida from 2005 to 2009 and as chairman of the Republican Party from November 2006 until October 19, 2007, the first Latino to serve as chairman of a major party. Previously, Martínez served as the 12th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George W. Bush. Martínez is a Cuban-American and Roman Catholic. He announced he was resigning as chairman of the Republican National Committee on October 19, 2007. (wikipedia)

• • •

Laborious. Cluing was so weird and ambiguous and hard and oblique and "?"-laden that all the joy got sucked right out of this one for me. Also, why would you warn a fish? Also, who can talk to fish? Is this puzzle for Aquaman? The whole hook-on-the-line thing is cute, in retrospect, but overall this thing was painful to solve. Tries to do too much, too cutesily. I'm sure I've seen the whole "I"s-making-a-line thing before. Very sure. Can't remember where, but dead certain. It's interesting that all the fish types can be clued as non-fish things, but again, these things are all interesting in retrospect, outside the solving experience. *Inside* the solving experience, bah. I don't know who's monitoring difficulty levels these days, but they've been wildly off. Two impossibly easy days last week, and now this thing.

I just couldn't get anything. The NW destroyed me, both at the beginning, since I wasted time trying to start there, and at the end, where I had run the alphabet to get the last letter of the puzzle—the "V" in FIVE (1D: Solid orange ball) and VENT (16A: Jacket feature). Didn't get the context of either Across or Down there. Theme clues ranged from straightforward to kinda hard (24A: *Extract with heat, in a way) to *&%^ing brutal (44A: *The Mikado in "The Mikado") (that last clue—a Saturday clue if I've ever seen one—can shove it). EXTORT doesn't involve physical "force," so that clue didn't compute (19A: Take by force). Speaking of force(d), ugh, those "?" clues on AIM (5D: Fire starter?) and GLIMPSE (22D: Short notice?). Painful. The theme itself is already too clever for its own good—why are you jerking around with these clues? DISCI? (29A: Things hurled at the Olympics). Oh sure, they use that word all the time at the Olympics.

STOOL is a [Bar sight]? Sure, OK, but ... Again with the vague cluing. Not big on BYPATHs (?). I never really think about the existence of LABRADOR—didn't occur to me until I had Many crosses. "Ash" is not a TREE? (36D: Ash, e.g.). I had -R-- when I saw that clue, and I had literally just read about an ash TREE (improbable as that may sound)**, so that hurt. TRALALA is cruddy enough w/o the winky little "?" clue (26A: Refrain from singing?). Don't dress trash up in taffeta and try to get me to dance with it. Nothing doing.

I actually think the theme itself is fine and the little hook thing is cute. But god, the meat on this thing was inedible. To me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

**in George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Derek Bowman and Sarah Keller

Relative difficulty: Average, with a Thursday gimmick

THEME: The World, orbiting The Sun— The World, indicated in the circled squares in the four quadrants of the grid, orbits The Sun, indicated in a rebus square in the center. The Sun also has lovely rays extending out into the grid.

RIP

Word of the Day: FALUN Gong (23A: ___ Gong [Chinese spiritual practice]) —

Falun Gong/ˈfɑːluːnˈɡʊŋ/ or Falun Dafa/ˈfɑːluːnˈdɑːfɑː/ (Standard Mandarin Chinese: [fàlwə̂n tâfà]; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a Chinese spiritual practice that combines meditation and qigong exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance (Chinese: 真、善、忍). The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and identifies as a qigong practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment. [...] On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. It blocked Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization" that threatened social stability. Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities.As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died as a result of abuse in custody.Some observers put the number much higher, and report that tens of thousands may have been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. In the years since the persecution began, Falun Gong practitioners have become active in advocating for greater human rights in China. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Laura here -- I'm back again, and I get to blog a woman constructor! (Or co-constructor, at least.) Did you know that so far in 2017, only 13% of New York Times puzzles have been constructed by women? That's on track to be the lowest percentage ever. Why so few? Editors, constructors, bloggers, and journalists have offered explanations: crossword constructing is more techy now (eye-roll), more women used to construct as a hobby and now they have real jobs and don't have time (larger and more dramatic eye-roll), or perhaps there's systemic and/or unconscious bias in the culture (eyebrow raise). Are you a woman or female-identified solver reading this blog and interested in constructing puzzles? I can't claim to be an expert, but I'm learning, and I'd love to learn with you. Send me a tweet or ask Rex to forward an email -- maybe we can work together on breaking what I've decided to call the Newsprint Ceiling.

Oh yeah, the puzzle: I liked it very much. I knew something was up, likely rebus-wise, when I couldn't fit SUNSET into 35A (Cowboys may ride off into it). Got the northeast right away with BATHTOY (14A: Rubber ducky, e.g.) crossing STUART (9D: Little of children's literature), noted that the circled letters spelled out THE WORLD and also that they made a little circle. Went to the southeast next, noted that we had another THE WORLD but that it was oriented differently, then orbited the sun clockwise and finished up in the northwest with ETRURIA (15A: Ancient region of central Italy) and ADRIENNE (2D: Actress Barbeau of the cult classic "Swamp Thing"). Did you notice that the letters of THE WORLDs aren't just randomly placed?

In each quadrant, THE WORLD is oriented differently; in the NE, it begins at noon and goes counterclockwise; SE, at 3pm; SW, at 6pm; and NW, at 9pm. Cool and lovely -- but I am a greedy solver and wanted more. I saw AARON (6D: Composer Copland) in the NE and thought, "Appalachian Spring"? Maybe each quadrant alludes to a season? Or did ETRURIA indicate something about which hemisphere faces the sun at whatever point? But nah. The fill was fill, however decent.

I live near the Appalachian Trail, where it is finally Spring

Bullets:

55A: Part of the escape route in "Casablanca" (ORAN)— I have seen Casablanca eleventy-godzillion times. Thought I had the script by heart. And I needed all the crosses to get this -- since it turns out that I have every bit of dialogue memorized except the escape route narration by the movie announcer guy in the opening credits. "I was misinformed."
40D: Jack of "Barney Miller" (SOO)— Barney Miller was a 1970s sitcom about NYPD detectives. Jack Soo, born Goro Suzuki, was ~~interned~~ imprisoned at the Topaz ~~War Relocation Center~~ Concentration Camp during WWII and acted for years on Broadway and in films and television, usually playing stock Asian characters. Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miller was his last (and best) role until his death from cancer in 1979.
Jack Soo, 1917-1979 (on far right)
44D: Detective whose first name is Kentaro (MR MOTO)— Mr Moto was a recurring character in stories and novels by John Marquand from the 1930s through the 1950s. In eight movies produced in the 1940s, he was played by Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre (whom you might also remember from Casablanca).
64A: Cartoonist's aide (INKER)— This was clued back in January as "Comics artist," which is far more accurate. Let's not demote our INKERs! Inking isn't something your assistant does to help; it is an integral part of the collaborative art of comics production. There's even an Eisner Awards category for inking.

Thanks to Rex for giving me another guest-posting opportunity this week, and I hope to see you all again soon.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

[Follow Laura on Twitter]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta and Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CYCAD (3D: Palmlike tropical plant) —

noun
noun: cycad; plural noun: cycads
a palmlike plant of tropical and subtropical regions, bearing large male or female cones. Cycads were abundant during the Triassic and Jurassic eras, but have since been in decline.
Origin

mid 19th century: from modern Latin Cycas, Cycad- (order name), from supposed Greek kukas, scribal error for koikas, plural of koix‘Egyptian palm.’ (google)

• • •

Misplaced (felt way more Saturday than Friday) and irksome in its unevenness. Also, it just wasn't on my wavelength, anywhere, ever. VOLUNTOLD? No. Please, stop. It's one thing to put "new" things in a puzzle—a good thing—but use discretion. See also BACONATOR. Here's what I liked: SQUEAMISH, IDRIS ELBA, PIECEMEAL. The rest is fine but unrermarkable, except for the following remarks I have about some bad patches. Actually, the grid divides neatly into thirds—doable / clean middle and eastern thirds, and then a western third that I wish a massive earthquake would cause to fall into the Pacific. CYCAD? MAIA? ALPEH (!??!!?!) NULL? Go ahead and high-five yourselves, math nerds, but that answer is crap. Seriously, all my red ink is on the left side of the grid. ("Red" signifies pain)

The esoteric fill is one issue. There's not a ton of it, but there was enough of it, strategically placed, that things got gunked up good. Then there was the bizarro cluing, like 1D: Company once named Socony-Vacuum (MOBIL). That clue tells me precisely nothing. I had -OBI- and had to run the alphabet. I didn't have the "M" because I thought 1A: Churchill Downs, to horse racing fans (I am not one) would be specific, not this dumb MECCA answer. Why is LTD Lucasfilm specific? (22A: Abbr. for Lucasfilm) It's a general company designation. If you think that NW corner was clean, then you have low standards of clean. You probably have BACONATOR ON YOU.

Had ROAR for CLAP (26D: Sound in a storm), ANNOY for IMPLY (29A: Get at) (I was probably thinking [Get to]), nothing for MAIA(35A: Eldest of the Pleiades) (?), nothing for ALEPH (!!?). In fact, I literally just had NULL (38A: Smallest infinite cardinal number). Down below, jeez louise, 55D: Relative of "die" is brutal. That clue could have gone so many different ways. Here (in case you still haven't figured it out, which seems plausible), "die" means "the" in German and "LES" means "the" in French and so ... relatives? Eh? Eh? Arf. Another rough clue: 57A: Plasma, for one (STATE). Had the second "T" and thought "some kind of TV." So this thing had competent parts but they were overshadowed by blecch. Not outnumbered, but overshadowed. Doesn't take much blecch to bring a whole puzzle down.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day: ARECIBO (52A: Puerto Rican home to the Western Hemisphere's largest radio telescope) —

Arecibo (Spanish pronunciation: [aɾeˈsiβo]) is a municipality on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta and Florida. It is about 50 miles (80 km) west of San Juan, the capital city. Arecibo is the largest municipality in Puerto Rico by area, and is part of the San Juan, Caguas and Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is spread over 18 wards and Arecibo Pueblo (the downtown area and the administrative center of the city). Its population in 2010 was 96,440. // Arecibo is also known as La Villa del Capitán Correa (Captain Correa's Villa) after the Puerto Rican hero Captain Antonio de los Reyes Correa of the Spanish Army, who drove off a British Navy invasion by ambushing forces led by rear-admiral William Whetstone. Arecibo is also known as El Diamante Del Norte (The Diamond of the North) and La Ribera del Arecibo (The shore of Arecibo). // The Arecibo Observatory, until July 2016 the world's largest radio telescope, is located here. Arecibo is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arecibo. (wikipedia)

• • •

Big groan when I opened this. Design is cool to look at, but we've got here is a super-segmented quad-grid, which is essentially four mini-puzzles. Success in one area only really helps you in that area, as your ways into and out of every section are so narrow. So we get four puzzles, all roughly 7x7, which means the *best* we're going to get is a dull, clean puzzle (which is, mostly, what we get). It's hard to fill big chunks of white space like that cleanly, and even if you manage clean, you're never gonna manage interesting, at least in part because there are No answers longer than 7 letters in the entire puzzle. Tends to make things somewhat snoozy. In a puzzle like this, you gotta be looking for common-letter-laden answers. For instance, my first guess at 17A: Some farm machinery was REAPERS, despite the fact that I don't really know what those are, or what they look like. I just knew it was gonna be an -ERS answer (or was likely to be) and REAPERS has lots of common letters, so I didn't even wait to see if the crosses checked out. The "S" (which I had from SASS) was enough. You can see how the letter bank here tends to skew hard to RLSTNE, and far away from Scrabbly stuff. As my friend Doug Peterson said (just now—he's sitting right next to me), STREETS is a classic bottom-of-the-grid answer. We were talking earlier about stacks where the bottom answer is something like PEER ASSESSMENTS and STREET ADDRESSES. Do enough puzzles, and you start to know what to look for, what to expect.

So this thing isn't bad. But it was definitely ho-hum, and it feels weird to give it one difficulty rating, because it played like four different puzzles. Easiest by far (for me) was the NE, where several of those answers were gimmes. THISTLE was first in. PIRATES, a no-brainer. ARACHNE, same. I finished that quadrant at a Monday pace. The NW was the opposite. Despite SASS / REAPERS opening, I couldn't do much up there. Eventually I said the clue to 6D: Bleachers blaster out loud and Doug guess "AIR HORN" so I don't know how long I would've been stuck up there. I think I would've gotten CAPISCE and OWES TO and TYPE without too much trouble. The other quadrants ... are there. There they are. They exist. I did them. Doug again helped with a clue—41A: Like hippies, by nature—when he said something like "Pacifists?" and since I had the last "R" I said "yep, ANTIWAR." Only real sticking point down there was ARECIBO, which I've never heard of. So ... that's it. Not much to say. There it is. It is not terrible. Neither is it remarkable. This grid shape yields mediocre results at best, so maybe don't use it ever again, thanks!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Dunno—group-solved it as Doug Peterson read clues to us in the restaurant earlier this evening... Medium?

See, here's the screenshot of Doug's phone:

THEME:"Advice to Writers"— themers are ironic "rules"—ironic because they violate themselves

Word of the Day: John NANCE Garner (28D: Vice President John ___ Garner) —

John Nance Garner IV (November 22, 1868 – November 7, 1967), known among his contemporaries as "Cactus Jack", was an American Democratic politician and lawyer from Texas. He was a Texas state representative from 1898 to 1902, and U.S. Representative from 1903 to 1933. He was the 39th Speaker of the House from 1931 to 1933. In 1932 and 1936 he was elected the 32nd Vice President of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1941. A conservative Southerner, Garner opposed the sit-down strikes of the labor unions and the New Deal's deficit spending. He broke with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in early 1937 over the issue of enlarging the Supreme Court, and helped defeat it on the grounds that it centralized too much power in the President's hands. (wikipedia)

• • •

I have serious qualms about this theme, mainly because nearly every themer is lifted (with small changes for the purposes of answer-length/grid symmetry) from this list of "The Fumblerules" by William Safire. (Here's the direct link to the "On Language" column in question, from 1979). There are a couple of changes that are original and cute—most notably the repeated final themer (AVOID REDUNDANCY)—but even POOFREAD CARFULY, which is original in its misspelling conceit, plays off a base phrase that was lifted verbatim from Safire's list. I'm trying really hard to understand how this kind of appropriation without attribution is *not* a form of plagiarism. When you take someone else's ideas, their original work, and pass it off as your own ... yeah, that's what plagiarism is. I'm just ... trying to find a way around this. "It's just a crossword" is the only defense I can imagine, and as you can imagine, I find that defense fantastically pathetic. NEVER GENERALIZE is the only one here that seems entirely original, and (perhaps not surprisingly) it's also the weakest. I've seen puzzles that were obviously just "stuff from a list I found on the web" before, but I've never seen anything that seemed to be taking the work of one specific person before. It's disturbing.

Theme answers (Writing tips #1-7):

NEVER GENERALIZE
POOFREAD CARFULY (Safire: “Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.”)
NO SENTENCE FRAGMENTS (Safire: “No sentence fragments.”)
PASSIVES MUST BE SHUNNED (Safire:“The passive voice should never be used.”)
DON'T USE CONTRACTIONS (Safire: “Don't use contractions in formal writing.”)
AVOID REDUNDANCIES (Safire: “Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.”)
AVOID REDUNDANCIES

I don't really care to comment more on this puzzle. Except OVERGO, which is hilarious in its non-wordness.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi guys!!! It's Annabel Monday!!! *funny trumpet noises*

Constructor: Paul Coulter (with, perhaps, some uncredited "inspiration" from Elizabeth C. Gorski)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BAD THING TO BLOW— Theme answers include two Os, contained within two circles, which look like tires, and TIRE is the answer to 67A. It...doesn't make much sense, but hey, it is what it is.

Theme answers:

HOT OIL (19A: Deep-frying need)
NO FOOL (35A: A sensible sort)
TOE SHOE (49A: Ballet footwear)
BONO (65A: U2's lead singer)
TIRE (67A: Bad thing to blow ... or what each of the circled letters in this puzzle represents)

Word of the Day: CANIO (32D: Tragic clown in "Pagliacci") —

Pagliacci (Italian pronunciation: [paʎˈʎattʃi]; literal translation, Clowns)^{[note 1]} is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It is the only Leoncavallo opera that is still widely performed.^[1] Opera companies have frequently staged Pagliacci with Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni, a double bill known colloquially as 'Cav and Pag'. [Blogger's note: Cavio is the main character.]

• • •
(Wikipedia)

So I started this summer internship in DC (more details to come next month!!!). I love it so, so much, but I've been commuting from Annapolis and I am so, so tired. Add onto that the fact that I had dinner with family in Baltimore, and I am, right now, so, so, so, so tired. So tired, in fact, that I actually had to ask my mom for help with this puzzle. And then Rex. I usually try to do absolutely everything myself but I feel like I'm going to fall asleep before I finish this sen

....Anyways. WADES looks like HADES when it's right across from ARES, and WEE GEE reminds me of those weird Mario cartoons. (Why were those a thing, anyway? It works much better as a video game.) Honestly, a lot of the clues/answers felt like cop-outs in general; really, ESS, and SILENT I? Sigh. Oh well. I suppose it is kind of cool to think about the hissing ESS of HOT OIL in a pan.

I do not have anything to say about the theme other than rehashing how TIREd I am. Sigh.

Bullets:

DAB (23A: Apply gently, as cream) — This is also a pretty popular dance move with the kids now, so I hear. It basically looks like a sneeze.
TOE SHOE (49A: Ballet footwear) — What a doozy. When I think ballet footwear, I think "ballet shoes," or "flats". I was so annoyed when FLATS didn't fit! Was there anyone whose mind just went straight to TOE SHOE?
AIDA (17D: Elton John/Tim Rice Broadway musical) — When I was a kid, I saw a CD containing the soundtrack to this show and for some reason got it confused with ABBA (similar amount of letters and they both start with A, I guess?). Imagine my surprise expecting to hear "Dancing Queen" and getting "Elaborate Lives" or something. It did end up being the first musical I ever saw onstage, though. :)
COOT (55D: Geezer)— "It's not me, you old coot!"

WELLNOW, it's time for me to be going to bed. zzzzzzz

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Lisa Loeb and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tues. time)

THEME: #1 songs ... reimagined—themers are familiar phrases beginning w/ the (one-word) titles of #1 songs, and clued as if they were about the song:

Theme answers:

"UMBRELLA" POLICY (20A: Regulation regarding a 2007 #1 Rihanna hit?)
"HAPPY" HOLIDAYS (33A: Special observances for a 2014 #1 Pharrell Williams hit?)
"STAY" FOR DINNER (41A: 1994 #1 Lisa Loeb hit played at a potluck?)
"BABE" IN THE WOODS (52A: 1979 #1 Styx hit played for Little Red Riding Hood?)

Word of the Day: NSFW (43D: Warning letters next to a web link)—

Not suitable/safe for work or NSFW is an Internet slang or shorthand tag used in e-mail, videos, and on interactive discussion areas (such as Internet forums, blogs, or community websites) to mark URLs or hyperlinks which contain nudity, intense sexuality, profanity or disturbing content, which the viewer may not wish to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as in a workplace or school. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello fellow solvers. Full disclosure: Doug Peterson is my friend and I just hung out with him all weekend, and heard a lot of (secret) (not really) back story about the creation of this puzzle. Also, he gave me a small stack of sleaze paperbacks to add to my collection, so I am good and buttered up and totally biased. I found the puzzle fairly entertaining, though the theme felt really, really loose. There are a gajillion one-word #1 songs, it turns out—so many, in fact, you'd think there'd be some way to create greater coherence among the themers, a way to create a cluing concept that unites the entries all ... just, more. Even the "played ..." concept ("played at a potluck" / "played for Little Red Riding Hood") would've been nice if it had been carried all the way through. But it wasn't. FANTASY FOOTBALL, MAGIC CARPET RIDE (15!), BURN NOTICE, SMOOTH MOVE, FAITH HEALER, STILL LIFE, LADY MACBETH ... I figure if you just churn out as many of these first-word-is-a-#1-song phrases as you can think of, some pattern will begin to emerge, something you can use to make the theme ... theme-ier. But maybe not. It's a light, cute theme as it is, but it feels a bit slight.

STAY FOR DINNER is (ironically) the weakest of the bunch, UMBRELLA POLICY the strongest. The long Downs are solid all the way around. Short fill gets a bit rough in places (ESE ENE ENS ECO AGIN SHES etc.) but I'm mildly impressed that there's no bad fill anywhere near that SW corner, given the spectacular amount of Scrabble-f**king that is going on there. Three Zs in a tiny corner, and all the answers solid? Nice. I really wish the editor would stop forcing the president* into (seemingly) every damn puzzle. There are (a million) other ways to make your puzzle contemporary—try one of those. OBAMA got in on the merits of his name (vowel consonant vowel consonant vowel). The puzzle's obsession w/ this non-crossword-friendly president* is gratuitous and weird. ALEC has done many other things ... and is also a Waugh or a Guineess, if you want to go that route.

[" ... ella, ella, ella ..."]

I loved the clue at 5D: Adam's family member (ABEL) because of the way it evokes the (two-d) Addams Family TV show / cartoon. Also think [Jabba-esque] is one of the better / more original / less abusive-sounding clues I've seen for OBESE. [Hit home?] is a brutally hard clue for SIDE A, but it's clever, and the crosses are all easy. I had two great wrong answers today: AND I for LION (14A: "The ___ King") (!?!?) and TYSON for MYERS (28D: Mike who played filmdom's Austin Powers). Once again, I say to you (and myself), it helps to read the clue carefully and completely.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. you might find this site ... interesting: http://didrexparkerlikethepuzzle.com/

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Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: And the hits just keep on comin'...— familiar phrases ending in words that can (in other contexts) be synonyms of "hit"

Theme answers:

GARDEN SLUG (16A: Slimy outdoor pest)
GARTER BELT (24A: Item in the lingerie department)
"BLITZKRIEG BOP" (33A: Classic 1976 Ramones song that begins "Hey! Ho! Let's go!")
ARGYLE SOCK (45A: Diamond-patterned footwear)
OFF THE CUFF (54A: Improvised)

Word of the Day: EINK (36D: Text-displaying technology on Kindles) —

E Ink (electronic ink) is a paper-like display technology, characterized by high brightness and contrast, a wide viewing angle, and ultra-low power requirements. The technology has been commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates J.D. Albert& Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson, Jerome Rubin and Russ Wilcox. // It is currently available commercially in grayscale and color and is commonly used in mobile devices such as e-readers, and, to a lesser extent, digital signage, mobile phones, smartwatches, electronic shelf labels and architecture panels. (wikipedia)

• • •

What a strange little puzzle. Looks remarkably like a Friday (i.e. themeless) grid, with huge open corners and a very low word count (most themed puzzles run 74-78 words—this one's 70). And it played just like a themeless, in that I solved it without getting the theme or even noticing that there were theme answers. With a grid like this, longer Across answers just don't stand out, don't advertise themselves as "Themers!" There are four non-theme answers in the Acrosses that are just as long as theme answers one might see in other puzzles (i.e. 8+ letters long). So it's a themed puzzle disguised as a themeless. Also weird: how easy it was. I thought for sure that with that grid shape, I was gonna end up on the slow side of normal, but the opposite was true. Didn't break any records, but my time was far more Tuesday than Wednesday. So it's eerie, this thing—looks like something it's not, plays much easier than it oughta. The theme type is solid, sturdy, old as the hills. This iteration is solid enough (and the grid weird enough) to keep my interest. Entertaining longer answers, and (with some notable exceptions) a very clean grid overall.

This theme could've been much longer. Sunday-sized, possibly. RUM (or FRUIT, or HOLE) PUNCH? BONG (or SMASH or BOX OFFICE) HIT, TALKING SMACK, etc. But he chose the answers he chose, and these are fine. I'd be surprised if this puzzle didn't start with "BLITZKRIEG BOP," which is the marquee themer here, both in its centrality and in its originality. The fill was decent, but I had some issues. I didn't even know there *was* a UCSF (and I grew up in California) (9A: Bay Area campus, in brief). I'm pretty sure boots are STEEL TOE, not STEEL TIP (?) (11D: Hardy work shoe feature). Had no idea what people were asking Lassie to do (28D: Entreaty to Lassie); had GET ___ and cycled through lots of things that weren't the right answer: BENT, LOST, DOWN. Had STUMBLE before SHAMBLE (37D: Walk with an awkward gait). And then there's E-INK, which I got entirely from crosses and which is really about the ugliest thing I've seen in the Four-Letter Answer category in a long time. In my head, it's pronounced like the pig noise, only ... German-er. Oh, and at least one scuba diver has taken issue *again* with the NYT's scuba-cluing:

Two more things today. First, here is an article by Adrianne Jeffries at The Outline called "The NYT Crossword is Old and Kinda Racist," which you will love or hate or be indifferent toward (I'm quoted). And then here is a link to this fantastic new graphic novel about crossword puzzles called "Fun." It's a comic by Italian artist / writer Paolo Bacilieri about the history of the crossword puzzle, but it is also a detective story, so it essentially scratches every itch I have. Mainly, it is beautiful, and genuinely informative re: the crossword. I'm only about halfway done, but I already know I'll be giving copies as gifts and rereading it many times in the future.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 50A: Campus V.I.P. (PROF.)—LOL, no. Trust me.

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:MINCE / WORDS (26A: With 45-Across, not be direct ... or what four groups of black squares in this puzzle do?)— the four black-square crosses "mince" (in the sense of divide into parts) the answers that run through them:

Theme answers:

DIETITIAN (3D: Certain nutritionist) / TITIAN (30D: Red hair tint)
ADORATION (8D: Extreme fandom) / RATION (32D: Allowance)
WARRANTED (21A: Called for) / RANTED (22A: Sounded off)
COPACETIC (48A: Just fine) / ACETIC (49A: ___ acid)

Word of the Day: Jim EDMONDS (61A: Eight-time Gold Glove winner Jim) —

James Patrick "Jim" Edmonds (born June 27, 1970) is an American former center fielder in Major League Baseball and a current broadcaster for Fox Sports Midwest. He played for the California/Anaheim Angels, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, and Cincinnati Reds. Known for his defensive abilities – particularly his catches – Edmonds also was a prolific hitter, batting .284 with 393 home runs and an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .903. He is affectionately known by Cardinal fans as "Jimmy Baseball" and "Jimmy Ballgame". (wikipedia)

• • •

Stupid penguins. Stupid crosswordese penguin species, ugh (14A: Penguin species). I had the "A" and thought "Oh, I've seen this a bunch in crosswords ... uh ... AMELIE!" Pfffffff, that's a whimsical French movie. That teeny error was very important, and it happened in the *one* letter in that answer that is involved in the theme, and so I could think of *no* word starting AMO- that fit 8D: Extreme fandom, and so I got St-uck (more than most of you all, probably). SEINES (63A: Nets with weights) is the bottom-of-the-grid Long Crosswordese counterpart to ADELIE. They are both ATAD tired. The theme was OK, I guess. In the end, it's just words broken into pieces, which I've seen plenty. Nice little twist here is that both the answers that every grid-spanning themer has inside it a shorter themer (one that crosses only one of the black-square crosses). OK. But I still can't say I enjoyed this much. I recognize that the grid has some nice features, but solving this wasn't that pleasurable, for a host of reasons. Mainly the cluing.

EDMONDS is gonna be hard enough for most people; you'd think the clue would at least give *some* indication of years he played, position he played, team he played for ... something besides the dreadfully dull award clue 61A: Eight-time Gold Glove winner Jim. The cutesy "stood up" / "sit down" clue for ROSA Parks felt tonally off. [Embarrassing spots?] is not a "?"-worthy clue. I don't even know the wordplay that's supposed to be involved there. "Spots" as in "positions"? Is that the base phrase? The clue works fine without the "?" (though it might come across as A TAD shaming / judgmental). George Eliot wrote poetry? (4D: "Our deeds still travel with us from ___, / And what we have been makes us what we are": George Eliot). That AFAR clue was (a)far-fetched. Baffled by EVAN Peters, who is a white dude in a lot of things I don't / won't watch ("American Horror Story," X-Men movies, etc.). And then, beyond cluing, there were just some nuisance answers. E-SIGNS is not quite as e-dumb as yesterday's E-INK, but it's close. CAPITAL Q is a cheap-as-heck way to get a "Q" in your grid, and that stupid clue (36A: MapQuest feature), ugh. Yeah, it's got a CAPITAL M too, so what? And are QR CODES still a thing? (39D: Scannable black-and-white boxes). I literally never see that term / hear anyone use it. Had -R CODES and couldn't even remember the letter that went there. POP TABS is the STEEL TIP boot of today's puzzle (they're POP TOPS or PULL TABS). Also very much not a thing: BAR TRAY (1D: It might hold your glasses). (I asked a bartender just to confirm: "LOL not a thing" was her response). Too much unpleasantness PERMEATEs this thing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. here's audio of the interview I did with Adrianne Jeffries about the NYT crossword's continued tendency to be exclusionary and tone-deaf, particularly where race is concerned.

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Constructor: Steve Overton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LUZON (27A: Where Manila is)—

Luzon [...] is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. it is ranked 15th largest in the world by land area. Located in the northern region of the archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as well as Quezon City, the country's most populous city. With a population of 53 million as of 2015, it is the fourth most populous island in the world (after Java, Honshu, and Great Britain), having about 53% of the country's total population. (wikipedia)

• • •

Between the casual sexism and the obsession with a 20-year-old movie franchise I never found funny, I was a hostile solver for most of this, which is too bad, as the constructor seems to have some skill, and that central Down is golden (15D: Not right, sarcastically => YOUR OTHER LEFT). I can't / won't take COEDS unless it is clued in relation to some old movie title or otherwise flagged as old-fashioned. The NYT crossword itself clued COEDS as [Female students, condescendingly] (emph. mine) just three years ago. Other recent clues have included the qualifiers "quaintly" and "in old lingo." But here, in 2017 ... no qualifiers. At five letters long, I confidently wrote in WOMEN. But then (fittingly / ironically) SHEILA proved the appropriate WOMEN wrong, and I knew it was COEDS. This moment happened pretty early in my solve (I had to abandon the NW when I got most of it but couldn't turn the corner), so ... yeah, my experience was colored by this. Negatively. SHEILA is another term I also find slightly condescending, and one I can only hear (in my head) in a man's voice. I wouldn't have reacted to SHEILA alone, but crossing COEDS, it somehow compounds the assumed male perspective. The ensuing "Austin Powers" answers (esp. SHAGUAR, ugh) do the same. DR. EVIL obviously has nothing to do with women, but doubling down on a movie with such juvenile humor and such an objectifying view of women ... yuck. COEDS got the ball rolling ... and then it just kept rolling.

UNODOS / TRES is ridiculous. Cluing MAR as a month, also ridiculous. Mostly, though, the grid is solid, with some notable strong parts. All the long central Downs hold up, as does WASH DOWN. Puzzle felt pretty easy, but ME TARZAN proved particularly stubborn. Trouble started with ENTER ___ for 14A: It'll give you a break. KEY was soooo anticlimactic. A break ... in your document? Pfffff, ok. I guess. Later, when I came back to this section, I just blanked on the Philippine island, as well as the [1972 top 10 hit that ran for 7+ minutes], so getting that section to finally come together took work. Clue on ME TARZAN was brutally vague (7D: Famous introduction that was never actually used). So that answer alone, and its environs, brought the overall difficulty for me back to normal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. A historical note: COED hasn't been clued as a noun (meaning a female college student) since 2005.

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Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ACHENE (19A: Seed of a strawberry or sunflower) —

An achene (Greek ἀ, a, privative + χαίνειν, chainein, to gape;^[1] also sometimes called akene and occasionally achenium or achenocarp) is a type of simple dry fruit produced by many species of flowering plants. Achenes are monocarpellate (formed from one carpel) and indehiscent (they do not open at maturity). Achenes contain a single seed that nearly fills the pericarp, but does not adhere to it. In many species, what is called the "seed" is an achene, a fruit containing the seed. The seed-like appearance is owed to the hardening of the wall of the seed-vessel, which encloses the solitary seed so closely as to seem like an outer coat. (wikipedia)

• • •

This grid is really quite impressive for how smooth it is, given the low word count / massive amounts of white space (esp. in the middle). Clues were hard as heck (mostly), and so overall this was satisfying: a clean, genuinely thorny, proper Saturday puzzle. I want to talk briefly about my strong ambivalence re: the clue on MENACHEM (1A: Begin at the beginning?). On the one hand, that is a brilliant burying of a proper noun. That trick is ancient (i.e. the trick of putting a name-that-is-also-a-word at the beginning of a clue to camoflauge the name-ness), but with *that* name, in *that* phrase, with the "?" clue ... brutal. I had MENA-HE- and still had no idea. So I admire the trick. But as a clue ... it's just not fair. Hard is not the problem. It's just that "in the beginning" is a thing that makes sense only after you've solved it, and then only if you really think about it hard (I assume that the clue means the "beginning ... of Israel"). I don't associate him w/ "beginnings," and I think a no-context "beginning" there really violates the spirit of fair play. You got enamored of your wordplay and just went for it, even though it really wasn't a very good / accurate / specific enough clue. Cheap. You can see the ambivalent, right? Love the idea, but I think if I'm a ref, I call a foul.

[UPDATE: I totally misunderstood the clue. "... at the beginning" simply refers to MENACHEM's being his *first* name. I knew it was his first name ... but ... wow ... yeah, just whiffed on that one. Thanks to my Twitter-friend Helen for helping me out]

Other brutal (but fair) clues include 24A: Two stars, perhaps for ITEM (I thought SO-SO); and 30D: Runner's place for BASE (I thought LANE, which ... as you can see ... half works). The very hardest part, though, was the last square I filled in, because once again the cluing was nasty. In the SW corner, I had BARKAT and OGEEARCH thrown across the empty space, and then put "WHAT THE"!? up the side (36D: "Are you kidding me?!"). That "W" made the answer to the cross easy: 34A: It's got teeth = SAW. And the "A" worked. And then I filled in the rest of that corner and ended up with S-NK ART for 34D: Refuse work? Now I knew "refuse" was gonna be a noun (trash) not a verb, but ... SINK ART? SUNK ART? The cross at the vowel was 38A: Drivel and I had M-SH and thought there was some PISH or BOSH or other kind of word that might go there. Then MUSH seemed right. But SUNK ART? Yeah, that was wrong. So the JAW clue is sadistic. It's obviously intentional in its attempt to redirect you *specifically* to SAW. And it worked. I'm not so much a fan of that particular brand of "difficult," but to each his own. The puzzle's wavelength wasn't exactly my own, but it's very good as hard, low word-count themelesses go.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. oh and 22A: Jules or Jim, in "Jules et Jim" ... I had NOM :(

P.P.S. and oh yes more iffy clue shenanigans...

[27A: Mom and pop business?] (DNA TESTING)

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King of gods in Wagner's ring cycle / MON 5-22-17 / Inverse trig function / Form of papyrus document

TD Garden athlete informally / TUE 5-23-17 / Friendly Islands native / Bread that's often brushed with ghee

Letter carrier at Hogwarts / WED 5-24-17 / Initialism whose third initial often isn't true / High airfare season for short / 20th century author famous for her journals

Central Italian river / THU 5-25-17 / Pet with dewlap beret / Wait in strategic location in video game lingo

Chief justice in Dred Scott verdict / FRI 5-26-17 / Donnie of 2001 cult film / Sport for rikishi

Peddler of religious literature / SAT 5-27-17 / Great Trek figure of 1830s / Notable 1973 defendant / Dickens character with dead lull about her / Spring's cyclic counterpart

Musical genre for Gangnam Style / SUN 5-28-17 / Whom Kala reared / Hop o my thumb villain / Character with aria when I am laid in earth

Aperitif with black currant liqueur / MON 5-29-17 / Counterparts of dahs / Tousled look of recently woken

Horse breed known dressage / TUE 5-30-17 / Rogen "Neighbors" / Simoleon / "Storage Wars" network / Justice Gorsuch / Boxer Drago / Madeline "Blazing Saddles" / Ex Trump / Religion Five Pillars /

Solid orange ball / WED 5-31-17 / Former senator RNC head Martinez / Hoof essentially / Blaster toy gun / Fancy cracker topping

Ancient region central Italy / THU 6-1-17 / Universal life force / Theater pioneer Marcus / Folly to be wise / Liberty Tree / El Orinoco / Actress Barbeau Swamp Thing / Composer Copland / Calder Cup / Buttermilk Sky / Kentaro / Escape route Casablanca

Eldest of Pleiades / SAT 6-2-17 / Palmlike tropical plant / Smallest infinite cardinal number / Cousin of polecat / Assigned as to do charity work in modern lingo

Open-sided shelters / SAT 6-3-17 / Horizontal pieces covering joints in architecture / Weaver of Greek mythology

Ackbar's rank in Star Wars / SUN 6-4-17 / Cylinder-shaped pasta / It knits up the ravell'd sleave of care per macbeth

Tragic clown in "Pagliacci" / MON 6-5-17 / Common Market letters / Casual calls / Brief brawl / Oil cartel

Mythical mischief-maker / TUE 6-6-17 / Warning letters next to web link / Regulation regarding 2007 #1 Rihanna hit / Foster child in Freaky Friday

Text-displaying technology on Kindles / WED 6-7-17 / Jazzman Stan / Baseball boobird's target often / Road-scraping custom car / Worthless mounds

Scannable black white boxes / THU 7-8-17 / Letter before Peter in Joint Army Navy Phonetic alphabet / Grease actress whose first name consists of same two letters twice

Movie villain modeled after Ernst Stavro Blofeld / FRI 6-9-17 / Austin Powers car with portmanteau name / Household brand famous for its infomercials / Ginny's brother in Harry Potter books / Famous introduction that was never actually used / Brokerage famous for its spokesbaby

Epithet meaning great soul / SAT 6-10-17 / Victor at Brandywine / Bob who narrated how I met your mother / Begin at beginning / Launch of April 1968 / National bird of Trinidad Tobago