Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BIP (31D: Marcel Marceau persona) —

Marcel Marceau (French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl maʁso]; born Marcel Mangel, 22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was a French actor and mime most famous for his stage persona as "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence", and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris. (wikipedia)

• • •

I wonder if the vanity clue on TEEN was Paolo's or Will's (12D: This puzzle's constructor, for one). I mean, Paolo's already been at this for *two years*, so the TEEN thing isn't exactly news. Also not news: the kid is immensely talented, and respected by top editors and constructors across ... let's say, Crossworddom. He is on the constructor slate for the upcoming Lollapuzzoola tournament in NYC (August 19), and he's written puzzles for American Values Club Crossword, and ... probably other stuff. It's sick. This puzzle has a few wobbly moments, but basically looks like what I've come to expect from this constructor: very smooth and very current, with pop cultural predilections. Pop culture is dangerous, though, and I'm betting at least a few people founder and crash on the rocky shores of ZAYN (a massive pop star, but ... I mean, definitely not a gimme for the crossword crowd). My wife had LAID / ZAYD and never questioned it until she got the error message. She then thought, "Hmm, is it LES MIS?!" before eventually figuring out her error. BIGGIE SMALLS and Spike JONZE and IDRIS ELBA add to the pop cultural bro-fest down south. Quite a group.

[d. JONZE]

I didn't expect to end up with a solidly sub-5 time, as I flopped around a lot. A quarterback's asset is obviously his ARM, so I botched that one at first pass (3D: AIM). Did you know "I NEED A MINUTE" fits in the space ALLOTted? It does (19A: Words from one about to break into tears: "I NEED A MOMENT"). I spelled Spike JONES then Spike JONEZ before finally alighting on the correct Spike JONZE (56A: Spike who directed "Being John Malkovich"). I used to watch ESPN a Lot and have seen innumerable ads for fantasy sports apps and still, for the life of me, I couldn't remember the word that followed FAN at 7D: DraftKings competitor. FANZONE? FANBROS? FANDOME? Had to work the crosses to turn it up. Still, despite those hiccups, I found this one very enjoyable. I would humbly suggest that the constructor (and all constructors) delete the following from their wordlists: BIP, ENSEAL, REMS (plural?), and GALOP (I put GALOPS in my first ever published NYT puzzle and I still haven't forgiven myself).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (suuuuper-easy, I'm told, but I have a slight concert hangover this morning, so I was just fast, not Fast)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALUM (8D: Application to a cut) —

noun: alum; noun: potash alum
a colorless astringent compound that is a hydrated double sulfate of aluminum and potassium, used in solution medicinally and in dyeing and tanning.
any of a number of analogous crystalline double sulfates of a monovalent metal (or group) and a trivalent metal.
plural noun: alums

• • •

Must be very quick today, as I am writing inside an absurdly small window. Didn't get back from the ELVIS Costello concert at Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown until well after midnight, and I have to be out of the house again at 7:30am. So you all get maybe half an hour this a.m.—and I've already used a good chunk of it writing these first two sentences. This puzzle is just fine, though it feels like a parody of a puzzle that's trying extra super special hard to be current. Twitter! Facebook! Two Snapchat clues! Kids like the Snapchat, right? Am I Relevant Yet!? We are living in a digital world, and I am a digital ~~girl~~ boy, but take it easy. I actually enjoyed LATTE ART and FOAM HAND more than any of the marquee social media stuff (or BITMOJIS, for ****'s sake). And it's weirdly extra jarring to see a puzzle be so Now and then have crap like SERT and AMENRA and ATBAR in it. Fustiness stands out by contrast. But as I say, overall, this is a win, and, if you're coming from a certain cultural space (under 50), it was likely Very easy for you (compared to other Saturdays, I mean).

Quick Stuff:

ALUM— I apparently have no idea what this is (that is, if it's not someone who's REUNING); a large part of whatever stuck-time I had was spent here, trying to figure out how four letters ending in "M" was not BALM (8D: Application to a cut).
KOJAK (27A: Lieutenant of 1970s TV)— In naming the detectives he used to watch on TV, Elvis Costello name-checked this guy last night, though he saved his most effusive praise (rightly, if possibly ironically) for one Ms. Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury of TV's "Murder, She Wrote")

LOOSE TEA (34A: What some caddies carry)— got the TEA part fine, but the LOOSE part, ugh. See also the latter part of CREED (26D: Seminary study).
SATE (43D: Be adequate for)— Screw this word. One word should not be able to be clued [Be adequate for] *and* [Fill to the gills] (an actual clue once used in a puzzle by this actual constructor). I think it can also mean, simply, [Satisfy] or [Fill to something less than the gills], so this stupid word apparently means every single level of filling, and thus is useless.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Caleb Madison

Relative difficulty: Easy (16:36)

THEME:"Back on the Charts"— Names of musical artists are "back" -- i.e. at the end of the entries -- and on the charts -- i.e. in the grid.

Theme answers:

30A: Title character in a 1943 French novella [6] (LITTLE PRINCE)
47A: The Big Pineapple [4] (HONOLULU)
66A: Like some lawyers' work [4] (PRO BONO)
86A: "Why are you looking at me?" [4] (WHAT'D I DO)
100A: 11th-century campaign [4] (FIRST CRUSADE)
First Crusade
3D: 17,000+-foot peak near the Equator (MOUNT KENYA)
5D: Make airtight, in a way [4] (HEATSEAL)
10D: Healthy [4] (IN THE PINK)
12D: Nightshade family member [4] (MANDRAKE)
13D: Prized possession [5] (CROWN JEWEL)
26D: One doing routine office work, informally [5] (PEN PUSHER)
51D: Dave of jazz [4] (BRUBECK)
63D: One leading the exercises, for short? [4] (PE TEACHER)
70D: Fruity spirit [6] (PEAR BRANDY)
73D: Vain, temperamental sort [7] (PRIMADONNA)
77D: Band member's main squeeze? [4] (ACCORDION)
82D: 1940 Disney release [3] (FANTASIA)*

87D: Pulling off bank jobs [5] (HEISTING)

* Depending on your preferred cultural frame of reference, this could have also been early 80s synth-rock band ASIA (with their chart-topping hit "Heat of the Moment") or third-season American Idol champion FANTASIA (with her chart-topping hit "I Believe"). Also, dude. DAVE BRUBECK. Take Five and take him back to the charts.

Word of the Day: AGOUTI (69A: Guinea pig relative) —

The term agouti (Spanish: agutí, pronounced [aɣuˈti]) or common agouti designates several rodent species of the genusDasyprocta. They are native to Middle America, northern and central South America, and the southern Lesser Antilles. Some species have also been introduced elsewhere in the West Indies.^[1] They are related to guinea pigs and look quite similar, but are larger and have longer legs. The species vary considerably in colour, being brown, reddish, dull orange, greyish or blackish, but typically with lighter underparts. Their bodies are covered with coarse hair which is raised when alarmed. They weigh 2.4–6 kg (5.3–13.2 lb) and are 40.5–76 cm (15.9–29.9 in) in length, with short, hairless tails. (Wikipedia) [Them are cute rodents. (Me)]

• • •

Hello, CrossWorld! Rex is on a well-deserved vacation, so you get me, Laura, blogging the puzzle through next Sunday. Be confident there will be no disruptions in your regularly scheduled crossword blogging service. Between you and me, I didn't find this a terribly exciting Sunday with which to start our week together. I wanted the theme to do more than just hide the names of chart-topping popular musical artists -- in fact, I even spent a little time browsing the Billboard charts to see if there was any correlation between, say, the entry number and the artist's chart position re their biggest hit -- but, no, unless I'm missing something. (Mansplain at me in the comments, if so.) A few of the artists are hidden beautifully in the entries (86A: WHAT'D I DO, 26D: PEN PUSHER [wait, don't we usually say PENCIL PUSHER? or PAPER PUSHER?]) but others were more than obvious (30A: LITTLE PRINCE, 10D: IN THE PINK). Also -- and this is likely a function of cramming so many (eighteen!) themers into the grid -- we've got some oldies in there -- Dion! Lulu! -- who are outliers from the rest of the late-1980s-to-the-present playlist.

Double helix in the sky tonight

Fill-wise ... wow, lots of little words. I'm working hard on improving my own constructing skills, and I struggle the most with limiting the inclusion of three-letter entries that are abbreviations or tired crosswordese. It's difficult to do this well, and this grid suffers a bit with EST, WTO, AEC, NIH, DSO, DOA, OTB, FCC, CNN, NEA and the like.

Bullets:

89A: Inverse trig function (ARCTAN)— One of my crossword twitter friends (who is also a fine constructor) goes by the handle @ArctanPrime. Being a humanities person/librarian who hasn't taken math since my first year of college, I didn't quite remember what this meant. Now I know! Raising a glass in your general direction, Chris!
99A: Lewis ___, 1848 Democratic candidate for president (CASS)— Is he the most famous CASS out there? Not Ellen Naomi "Mama CASS Elliot" Cohen? Or legal scholar CASS Sunstein? Anyone?

55A Bert who sang "If I Only Had the Nerve" (LAHR)— But I could show my prowess/ Be a lion, not a mowess/ If I only had the noive ...

See you tomorrow! And the day after that. And a few more after that!

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:17)

THEME: Morphological reduplication (as they call it in linguistics)— An idiom and the names of a person, a brand, and a Muppet repeat sounds (morphemes) in a rhyming pattern.

Theme answers:

28A: Ramen product -- OODLES OF NOODLES
56A: "Sesame Street" Muppet with wings and a magic wand -- ABBY CADABBY
6D: Competing with the goal of victory -- IN IT TO WIN IT
7D: Daredevil in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame -- EVEL KNIEVEL

Do you get enough noodles in your noodle soup?

Word of the Day: RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE (from the clue for FOREMAN [13A: Boxer George who lost the Rumble in the Jungle]) -- almost a reduplication!

The Rumble in the Jungle was a historic boxing event in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) on October 30, 1974 (at 4:00 am). Held at the 20th of May Stadium (now the Stade Tata Raphaël), it pitted the undefeated world heavyweight champion George Foreman against challenger Muhammad Ali, a former heavyweight champion. The attendance was 60,000. Ali won by knockout, putting Foreman down just before the end of the eighth round. It has been called "arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century".The event was one of Don King's first ventures as a professional boxing promoter. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Jeepers creepers! This super-de-duper puzzle was just chock-a-block with boogie-woogie. The nitty-gritty: Peter Gordon gives us a grid with left-right symmetry (as opposed to the standard topsy-turvy rotational symmetry), no doubt to accommodate a set of hodge-podge theme entries without symmetrical lengths. Add the hocus-pocus of crossing the 15-letter OODLES OF NOODLES with the two 11-letter down themers and that's evidence of some razzle-dazzle construction skills.

I wonder if there's a Goth Muppet named AVER CADAVER

The fill was neither fuddy-duddy nor hoity-toity. There's some kind of postmodern fusion cuisine suggested by WASABI (1A: Green condiment served with sushi), TACO BELL (42D: Fast food chain with the slogan "Live más"), and RONZONI (16A: Brand of pasta). You've got your Midwestern cities represented with ST PAUL (11D: Capital of Minnesota) and SHEBOYGAN (38D: Wisconsin city on Lake Michigan). And I have a teentsy-weentsy quibble with SLABBING (45D: Applying thickly, with "on") because it seems a bit hugger-mugger, but okey-dokey.

EVEL KNIEVEL was IN IT TO WIN IT

Bullets:

44A: Milo of "The Verdict" (O'SHEA)— Poor Milo. A long career in British cinema, and you are known forever to crossword solvers as the judge from a 1980s Paul Newman legal drama. I propose that from now on we clue O'SHEA as [Rapper and actor ___ Jackson, better known as Ice Cube].
70A: Molecule components (ATOMS)— Q: Why can't you trust atoms? A: Because they make up everything.
63A: Punk rock's ___ Pop (IGGY)— I'll let Iggy sing me out.

I see the stars come out tonight

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:37)

THEME: SPREAD THE GOSPEL (61A: Evangelize ... or what this puzzle's circled squares do?— Letters in the names of the four canonical gospels are "spread" through four theme entries.

17A: Was loved by — MEANTTHE WORLD TO
22A: Know-it-all — SMART ALECK
39A: Comment after a fortuitous happening — LUCKY ME
50A: Frequently going from one post to another
— JOB HOPPING

Word of the Day: BLAIR HOUSE (51D: ___ House (Washington landmark)) —

The President's Guest House, commonly known as Blair House, is a complex of four formerly separate buildings—Blair House, Lee House, Peter Parker House, and 704 Jackson Place—located in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. A major interior renovation of these 19th century residences between the 1950s and 1980s resulted in their reconstitution as a single facility. The President's Guest House is one of several residences owned by the United States government for use by the President and Vice President of the United States; other such residences include the White House, Camp David, One Observatory Circle, the Presidential Townhouse, and Trowbridge House. The President's Guest House has been called "the world's most exclusive hotel" because it is primarily used to host visiting dignitaries and other guests of the president. It is larger than the White House and closed to the public. (Wikipedia)

• • •

11D: Variety show host of 1951-71

I'm going to go 32A: No holdsBARRED on this one: it is my least favorite of all the puzzles I've blogged for Rex. It's not a terrible puzzle, but meh. The theme itself is kinda old fashioned, as is much of the fill (more on that later), and while it was competently executed ... if not for 20A: Zoë of "Avatar" (SALDANA) and 69A: Craft company with a 2015 I.P.O. (ETSY), I could've been solving this with my grandfather in 1982. And as much as I miss those times, and I as much as I miss him, I'd rather solve a better puzzle.

“It’s hard when you go and fight for a role, because they’re like ‘I don’t know, man, you mean, it’s like the blue girl from Avatar? ... I want to go down a different route. I feel like a little bit of an underdog because I live in space, nobody wants me here on Earth.” (Interview in The Independent)

Fill-wise ... TSK (41A: Sound of reproach). We've got our prefixes: LACTI, ALTI, TERA, and ISO. We've got BSIX (take one ADAY). We've got DSHARP crossing ESCARP (I'll bet MSHARP will be glad he ESCARPed this one). We've got ANTE, APSE, ADA, and ENO. SPEW, EEGS! HIE there, RUSSO! ABAFT, PELOSI, say the GOP Reps. I did like to see both fictional ships ARGO (25A: Jason's vessel, in myth) and NAUTILUS (35A: Captain Nemo's vessel).

66A: Family history, e.g.

Bullets:

4D: House of Elizabeth II (WINDSOR) — Almost exactly 100 years ago, the British Royal Family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.
23D: What gives you the right to bare arms? (TANK TOP)— Not in Congress, apparently.
9D: Nuisance in an online comments section (TROLL)— Don't be one.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Brian Cox

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:38)

THEME: Knock-Knock jokes— You know what a knock-knock joke is.

17A: Response to "Knock knock": WHO'S THERE
21A: "Esther ...": ANYONE HOME
36A: "Yvonne ...": TO BE ALONE
42A: "Sadie ...": MAGIC WORD
52A: "Ken ...": I GET AN AMEN
62A: "Luke ...": MA NO HANDS (did anyone else parse this as "man o' hands"?)

Word of the Day: ARIAL (27D: Typeface similar to Helvetica)—

Arial, sometimes marketed or displayed in software as Arial MT, is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts. Fonts from the Arial family are packaged with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 onwards, some other Microsoft software applications, Apple Mac OS Xand many PostScript 3 computer printers. The typeface was designed in 1982 by a 10-person team, led by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, for Monotype Typography. It was created to be metrically identical to the popular typeface Helvetica, with all character widths identical, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without having to pay for a Helvetica license. (Wikipedia) [This paragraph is in Arial.]

• • •

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'

I love knock-knock jokes, and I had high hopes for this puzzle -- up through 42A I thought there would be some kind of progression, i.e. that the person knocking would say the magic word and be let in. Maybe the magic word was DORIS. Doris who, you ask? Doris locked, that's why I'm knocking. Or maybe it was CARMEN. Carmen who? Carmen let me in! Wait, no, it's HARRY. Harry who? Harry up, it's cold out here! Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

Knock knock. Who there? Phyllis. Phyllis who? Phyllis decent but not flashy. I suspect people may trip over HOB (63D: Play ___ with (do mischief to)) -- it's not an expression I'd heard, and most of the sources I'm finding suggest that it's a British idiom. OVINE (66A: Like a merino) is a handy Scrabble word if you're trying to use up a V tile, or if your opponent has played VINE and you have an O. I'm curious about the cluing on AMOS (55D: "Chicago" simpleton ___ Hart) in a Wednesday puzzle, since there's a far more famous Amos.

The only 30D I recognize

No bullets, but a quotation from 1A: "Common Sense"pamphleteer (PAINE)—

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:00 exactly)

THEME: HOLD DOWN THE FORT -- three across entries "hold down" the word FORT into corresponding down entries in the grid.

16A: Enjoying first-class amenities, say (TRAVELING IN COMF[ORT])
33A: Wind speed metric (BEAUF[ORT] SCALE)
40A: One looking to become rich (F[ORT]UNE HUNTER)
59A: Have charge temporarily ... or a hint to answering this puzzle's three starred clues (HOLD DOWN THE FORT)

Word of the Day: ORESTES (66A: Euripides tragedy) —

[SPOILERS] In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at her hands. Despite Apollo’s earlier prophecy, Orestes finds himself tormented by Erinyes or Furies to the blood guilt stemming from his matricide. The only person capable of calming Orestes down from his madness is his sister Electra. To complicate matters further, a leading political faction of Argos wants to put Orestes to death for the murder. Orestes’ only hope to save his life lies in his uncle Menelaus, who has returned with Helen after spending ten years in Troy and several more years amassing wealth in Egypt. (Wikipedia)

• • •

As the constructor put 25D: Expenditures of time and energy (EFFORTS) into this puzzle, I was determined to 40D: Sally ___ FORTH into solving it, which was only moderately challenging, given that I have found Thursdays to be my 18D: Strong point (FORTE) -- or at least, my favorite puzzles of the week. There always a moment in these "spillover" (my term) themes when you're all, I know the answer and it won't fit into that space in the grid, and for me that moment was when I thought, I know what the wind speed scale is called, and BEAUFORT isn't fitting there. But will it be a rebus or something else? I liked the way the FORTs were at different positions in each themer: end, middle, beginning.

The NW was last and toughest quadrant for me -- didn't feel like STAVE (3D: Fend (off)) and COVE (4D: Small bay) should be next to each other. RECTO (38A: Right-hand page) in the middle of the grid is a handy (ha!) word from descriptive bibliography. (The left-hand page is the VERSO because it's on the back of the RECTO.) LAND SALES (32D: Some real estate business) -- is that a thing that people say? Or sell? Not much that was tremendously trendy in the fill, but it felt classic rather than dated. There was some dependence in the AFORESAID (12D: Mentioned previously) fill on little bits to hold things together -- RUS HAB EEN UTE HOR RDS MDS -- TIL OMG that's a lot all at once.

I get too hungry for dinner at eight
I like the theater, but never come late
I never bother with people I hate

Bullets:

15D: Things mined in Cleopatra's Mines (EMERALDS)— This is name given to an archeological site near Aswan Dam in Egypt, discovered in the early 19th century. Almost made it Word of the Day, but felt like spoiling the plot of Greek tragedy instead.
64A: Blues-rock group that grew out of Jefferson Airplane (HOT TUNA)— They're still touring.
57A: Bill of Southwest legend (PECOS)— Apparently, Pecos Bill wasn't truly a legend that grew out of folk culture, but a character invented for a series in the early 20th-century magazine The Century (published in New York City), and as such, he is considered fakelore.
13A: Out of place, in obstetric parlance (ECTOPIC)— A very, very, very common complication of pregnancy, not serious if treated promptly. I'm a little surprised this passed the "breakfast test" -- but perhaps that's a sign of progressiveness.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld, who will 59A for another three days.

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Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:53, close to a Friday record)

THEME: THEMEless

Word of the Day: TENON (44D: Dovetail component) —

The mortiseand tenon joint has been used for thousands of years by woodworkers around the world to join pieces of wood, mainly when the adjoining pieces connect at an angle of 90°. In its basic form it is both simple and strong. Although there are many joint variations, the basic mortise and tenon comprises two components: the mortise hole and the tenon tongue. The tenon, formed on the end of a member generally referred to as a rail, is inserted into a square or rectangular hole cut into the corresponding member. The tenon is cut to fit the mortise hole exactly and usually has shoulders that seat when the joint fully enters the mortise hole. The joint may be glued, pinned, or wedged to lock it in place. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Whenever I blog the puzzle, I play music suggested by the grid (this policy leads to a lot of Brian ENO and ANI DiFranco). Earlier this week it was Iggy Pop, then later, Peter, Paul, and Mary; last night it was Lena Horne and Hot Tuna (that made for an interesting mixtape). Tonight it is BETTE (1D: The Divine Miss M) on endless repeat.

The opening riff of this song is my ringtone

So much to like about this themeless: the stack of BEST MUSICAL (1A: Award for "Hairspray" but not "Hair"), E.T. PHONE HOME (15A: Famous 1980s movie quote), and THREE IN A ROW (17A: XXX, for example); NORSE (40A: Like some myths) crossing RUNE (34D: It may be carved in stone); and such clean fill -- really, the only area I wasn't crazy about was the SW: ILO (when we also had ILE at 18A), OVI, NEV, ORE (where are CAL and IDA?).

Love the stack of MICROMANAGE (52A: Oversee to a fault), PLAINSPOKEN (56A: Bluntly honest), and HORNET'S NEST (58A: Dangerous situation) in the SE. Together they make a nice sentence: I don't want to MICROMANAGE, but to be PLAINSPOKEN, sometimes anonymous blog comments can be quite a HORNET'S NEST. (Hope that wasn't too OBTRUSIVE [31D: Meddling].)

You've heard IVES (27A: Burl who sang about Rudolph) so many times; the Heat Miser doesn't get quite enough attention. He's certainly one to RUN A FEVER (30D: Have a hot body).

Woman Constructor Watch: Robyn's puzzle today makes 30 out of 179, still holding steady at 14%.

Bullets:

36D: Coppola film family name (CORLEONE)— It's not spoken by one of the CORLEONEs, but my favorite line in The Godfather is "Leave the gun; take the cannoli."
13D: Sriracha ingredients (JALAPENOS)— I actually got up and went to the fridge to look at our bottle of Sriracha (with the rooster on the label, from Huy Fong Foods of Irwindale, California) and while I was doubtful, this is indeed true: it is now made with red jalapeño peppers, formerly with serranos.
24D: "Ten ___ Commandments" (song from "Hamilton")(DUEL)— Another BEST MUSICAL winner (2016). But your man has to answer for his words, Burr.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (8:57)

THEME: THEMEless

Word of the Day: HOUR ANGLE (22D: Measurement in a celestial coordinate system) —

In astronomy and celestial navigation, the hour angle is one of the coordinates used in the equatorial coordinate system to give the direction of a point on the celestial sphere. The hour angle of a point is the angle between two planes: one containing the Earth's axis and the zenith (the meridian plane), and the other containing the Earth's axis and the given point (the hour circle passing through the point). The angle may be expressed as negative east of the meridian plane and positive west of the meridian plane, or as positive westward from 0° to 360°. The angle may be measured in degrees or in time, with 24^h = 360° exactly. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Barbara Cheeseborough on the cover of the first issue of Essence, May 1970

I'm IN AWE (14A: Floored). What a fantastic themeless by my brilliant friend Erik Agard. So much fun stuff, great clues, entries that surprised me. My favorite: the $ in the name of A$AP ROCKY (7D: Rapper with a role in the 2015 film "Dope") crossing EA$Y MONEY (15A: Gain with little effort).

A$AP Rocky is (was?) dating Kendall Jenner, daughter of 34A: KRIS (First name on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians")

Favorite misdirection: 10D: Hackers' helpers for LOZENGES. I had the Z from MAGAZINE, and I'd thrown in the S for the plural (a solving tactic that helps most, but not all, of the time), and I kept thinking, BAZOOKAS? BUZZSAWS? either of those seem like overkill to get past a firewall ... you can't hack with MEZUZAHS ... or even GAZEBOES ... maybe GAZELLES would help? I also liked 13D: Hole near a tongue for EYELETS (which was prescient after yesterday's mortise and TENON controversy) -- I thought, GROOVE? Nah. And salivary DUCTS (1A: Heating system network) wasn't right. That whole NE section was the last bit I got. Overall, very little not to like in this grid; I guess it did have some CUTELY TWEEST EENY OWIE fill: your EFTS (53D: Pond juveniles), et ALIA (49A: Octavia's "others").

Writing for this blog on East Coast time is brutal; I get the puzzle on my iPad at 10pm, and since I'd rather stay up late than get up even earlier than I usually have to, this has made for a groggy week. What, then, does an intrepid blogger do to stay PRIMED (41D: Ready) for each night's puzzle? She TAKES A NAP (18A: "Rests ones eyes). So, NO BIG (47A: "Don't worry about it," slangily).

Here's a song from my days as a punk rock girl: "Bitchin'CAMARO" (6D: Firebird alternative)

Bullets:

55D: Verizon purchase of 2006 (MCI)— Erik could've clued this as [1101, in Rome] or something else that you've seen 1,101 times. I'd rather have a fresh clue, even if it relies on knowledge of telecommunications mergers.
30D: One lighting up the dance floor (DISCO BALL)— At first I had DISCO BOOT, then DISCO STU (but then I remembered that he doesn't advertise).
41A: "Close one!" (PHEW)— is what I'm still saying after what the SENS (5D: Political century: Abbr.) just put us through.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Isaac Mizrahi and David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Average (18:19)

THEME:"By Design"— Idioms are clued with fashion-related jokes.

24A: Flaunt a loose dress at a soiree? (WORK THE NIGHT SHIFT)
33A: Title of a fashion industry seamstress's tell-all? (ON PINS AND NEEDLES)
56A: What some wrap dresses are? (FIT TO BE TIED)
77A: Like a model's hairstyle? (CUT AND DRIED)
99A: Takes fashion photos using an unorthodox angle? (SHOOTS FROM THE HIP)
109A: Shorten some couture dresses? (TAKE UP A COLLECTION)
3D: Preferred means of arriving at a fashion show? (TAXI DOWN THE RUNWAY)
46D: Inspects a fashion designer's offerings? (GOES OVER THE LINE)

Word of the Day: A-BOMB (35D: Little Boy, e.g., informally)—

"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium-based detonation. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). The bomb caused significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima and its occupants. (Wikipedia)

7D: Stain that's hard to remove (INK SPOT).
The Ink Spots had the definitive version of "We'll Meet Again," the song (Vera Lynn's version) that plays over the last scenes of Dr. Strangelove, the definitive film about the A-BOMB.

• • •

If I might OPINE (20A: Offer a thought): HONESTLY (70D: Cry of exasperation), this felt NOT SO GOOD (78D: Medium-to-poor) for a Sunday theme. I appreciate the intent of the famous-person-and-veteran-constructor match-up, I'm a huge fan of Isaac Mizrahi (I had many of the clothes from the "chic librarian" line he designed for Target, many years ago, including a wrap dress that was FIT TO BE TIED), but this one did not WIN (71A: Get the gold). A SHIFT is both a dress style and a period of working time! TAKE UP means both "collect" and "shorten, as a hem"! TAXI is both something an airplane does on a RUNWAY and a vehicle one could take to get to a RUNWAY, which is also a place where fashion shows are held! (get it? do I need to explicate all of these?). It doesn't feel strong enough to carry a Sunday puzzle; the three or four best of the set could've fit neatly into a Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm sure there are plenty who will like it; however, I was AVERSE (116A: Resistant (to)) -- but I've been told my taste in crossword themes is a bit EDGY (not as in 121A: Uneasy, but as in "risqué" or -- as I prefer to think of it -- "badass").

Fill 'er up with ... UNA BOA IST NAT FRA ANA. LEI INE HOS HAT? NIA SEZ EOE OID! OLEO SATE ELSA, ENDE ELLE. HIHO SNAP! I don't want NUN if you ain't got HUNS, HEN.

The best scene from The Mummy (1999)

Bullets:

90D: Creator of an ancient pyramid scheme? (IMHOTEP)— Imhotep was apparently a real historical figure, but he's better known in pop culture (my favorite kind of culture, aside from Saccharomyces cerevisiae) as the title character of The Mummy (played by Boris Karloff in 1932 and Arnold Vosloo in 1999).
61A: ___ pants (HAREM)— I prefer this word clued in this, uh, fashion -- compared to previous approaches.
14D: Christmas threesome (HOS)— 🤔.
11D: Klingons, e.g. (ALIEN RACE)— TlhInganpu' wej chenmoH QeH.

I've really enjoyed blogging the puzzle this week, and thanks for your lovely comments and tweets. It takes a great deal of work to make a daily crossword blog; Rex has written this thing almost every day for more than ten years, just because he wants to, and because he cares about puzzles. I deeply respect and admire him for what he does here -- and even more so after spending eight days ~~in his shoes~~ on his Blogger account. So: thanks to you for reading, and many, many thanks to my friend Rex for giving me a platform to blather at you for a while. I hope to return, but in the meantime, you can find me covering the Tuesday WSJ puzzle at the Fiend, and next Sunday I'll be helping to run Boswords. Speaking of which, we've had so many sign-ups that we're in need of more volunteers: Sunday, August 6, noon-5pm, in lovely West Roxbury, MA -- only 10 miles from Natick! If you're interested (free lunch!), drop a line to boswordstournament [at] gmail [dot] com.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

[Follow Laura on Twitter]

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging (so, like, 30 seconds north of normal)

THEME: SEATTLE (68A: City that's the subject of this puzzle)— things related to SEATTLE and then a child's menu-quality connect-the-dots Space Needle thingie...

Theme answers:

RAIN (2D: Common 68-Across forecast)
PIKE PLACE MARKET (17A: Downtown 68-Across attraction) (really thought PIKE'S ... cost me valuable seconds)
MARINER (42A: 69-Across baseball player)
COFFEE SHOP (27D: Business on every block in 68-Across, so it's said) (there's a COFFEE SHOP on every block of every city in America; this clue is dumb)
PUGET SOUND (31D: Body of water that 68-Across is on)

Word of the Day: MOLESTS (42D: Pesters repeatedly) —

verb
verb: molest; 3rd person present: molests; past tense: molested; past participle: molested; gerund or present participle: molesting
1.
assault or abuse (a person, especially a woman or child) sexually.

"he was charged with molesting and taking obscene photographs of a ten-year-old boy"

synonyms: (sexually) abuse, (sexually) assault, interfere with, rape, violate; More
informalgrope, paw, fondle;
literaryravish

"he molested a ten-year-old boy"
2.
dated
pester or harass (someone), typically in an aggressive or persistent manner.

"the crowd was shouting abuse and molesting the two police officers"

synonyms: harass, harry, hassle, pester, bother, annoy, beset, persecute, torment;
informalroust

"the crowd molested the police"
(google) (emph. mine)

• • •

Hi everyone. Just back from the OBX, which you don't see in puzzles very much (in fact ... [checking] ... never in the NYT), though you do see it a lot on the rear windows of cars owned by people who want you to know where they've been on vacation. At least in the northeast you do. Nags Head (wheres the apostrophe!!!?) was lovely. Gorgeous. If you depopulated it completely: perfect. Populated, it's got a certain Horribleness that's like Southern "heritage" meets New Jersey. I mean, #notallOBX of course, but ... yikes. I tend to like my vacations Confederate-flag-clothing-free. I'm a coastal elite that way. But geographically, it was astonishing. Woke every morning before 5:30 to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic. Walked for an hour or two every morning on perfect beaches that went on forever. The key was being up when almost no one else was. Under those conditions, OBX is heaven. Under normal working-hours conditions, it's a lot louder / whiter / racister / drunker / cheesier. I mean, the first night we ate at a restaurant that was essentially venereal disease-themed.

So, all in all, a mixed bag, but the good was Very good. This puzzle, on the other hand, wasn't very good, *especially* for how Much was going on. Why are we celebrating SEATTLE? Because the Space Needle is, uh, 55 years old this year? RAIN? Really? You're tryna theme that one? Is TRIO themed? No? OK, then no. I love Seattle. My whole family is from the Pacific NW. My dad went to med school at UW. My niece starts undergrad there next month. My mom lived there briefly in the '90s. It's great. But this puzzle is blah. The payoff is ... well ... I mean, *this* is the payoff:

Are you happy? No, you're not happy. Nobody's happy.

Further, there is some serious ugh in the fill and clues. Clue on KEEP LEFT is corny dad humor (4D: Liberal's favorite road sign?). It's wrong and dumb and unfun. I mean ... who the hell has a "favorite road sign"? The very concept is idiotic. Further, let's talk about words and what they mean. First, "chivalry." There is nothing—literally nothing—"chivalrous" about PERMIT ME. See, chivalry relates to horses and horsemanship and (actual) knightly conduct; affected archaisms from goateed dudes in fedoras and cargo shorts Do Not count as "chivalrous." Also, anyone could say PERMIT ME? Also, No One Says PERMIT ME? Maybe, *Maybe*, ALLOW ME. That answer/clue was so bad I almost didn't notice the pitiful ELIE/ELKE cross. And the nearby ALAS BNAI ADMEN STPAT NEE make-it-stop. But back to definitions. Second, MOLESTS... look, I get that the theme kind of pens you in down there, but MOLESTS? With *that* clue?! (42D: Pesters repeatedly). Again, No One uses it that way. Dictionary says "Dated" for a reason. Disingenuous clue only serves to highlight the fact that you've got MOLESTS in your grid. 99% of solvers are going to have a moment of "Really?!?" right at the word MOLESTS? How, from a design standpoint, is that smart? Now it's not the SEATTLE puzzle, it's the MOLESTS puzzle? Are you happy? No, you're not happy. Nobody's happy.

Ah(h), it's good to be back. See ya tomorrow. And big, big thanks to Laura Braunstein (on Twitter @laurabrarian) for holding (down) the fort during my absence.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. ELKS🙁 🦌🦌🦌

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Constructor: Jay Kaskel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Shocking!"— all theme clues are ["Shocking!," to a [somebody]] and then the answer is a phrase meaning "Shocking!" (in really olde-timey lingo) that is also a pun on the [somebody]:

Theme answers:

"OH, MY STARS!" (17A: "Shocking!," to an astronomer?) (that "OH" is totally contrived, boo, no)
"HOLY TOLEDO!" (25A: "Shocking!," to an Ohio tourist?)
"I'LL BE DARNED!" (36A: "Shocking!," to a seamstress?) (the seamstress herself would not be darned ... just factually speaking)
"WELL I NEVER!" (50A: "Shocking!," to a teetotaler?)
"GOOD GRAVY!" (59A: "Shocking!," to a Thanksgiving guest?)

Word of the Day: ADT (5D: Big letters in home security) —

The ADT Corporation is an American corporation that provides residential and small business electronic security, fire protection and other related alarm monitoring services in 35 countries. The corporate head office is located in Boca Raton, Florida. In February 2016, the company was acquired by Apollo Global Management for $6.9 billion in a leveraged buyout. (wikipedia)

• • •

"Shocking!," to the cast of "The Andy Griffith Show." These expressions are all hilariously old. Like, OLD NAG old. Older-than-WKRP old. Not quite DINOS old. But old. Made this XER (ugh, that "word") feel waaaay too young for this puzzle. Almost like a teen AGER (ugh, that non-word). The concept almost works, except for the DARNED answer (see above), but it's all too cornball for me. The fill generally matches the theme, i.e. not from this century in any way shape or form. Grid is crowded with tired, old fill / crosswordese. There is a minor cute factor in the theme, if you're into that kind of thing, but the mustiness of the whole endeavor is rather too much for me. Rather! None of this, however, is shocking.

Puzzle was mercifully easy, though. The only hold-ups involved cheap stupid ambiguities like at 15A: "See you!"—I had ADI- and went ADIEU instead of ADIOS, and again at 39A: Childish comeback where I had AM TOO instead of IS TOO. See, fun, right? Sigh. The most interesting mistake I made came at the most interesting answer in the grid (interesting, in that it felt not at all in keeping with the mindset / humor / frame of reference of the Entire rest of the puzzle): HERB (25D: Marijuana, slangily). Had the "H-" and quickly wrote in HASH (seemed more like what someone who uses the expression "OH, MY STARS!" would call marijuana). This puzzle doesn't really warrant further comment.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: words / phrases that can mean their own opposite:

Theme answers:

HOLD UP (1A: Support ... or impede)
CONTINUE (7A: Go on with ... or postpone)
FIGHT WITH (23A: Go to battle alongside ... or struggle against)
TOSS OUT (40A: Offer for consideration .k.. or remove from consideration)
WEATHER (42A: Withstand ... or deteriorate)
OVERSIGHT (53A: Watchful care ... or careless mistake)
SANCTION (71A: Give approval to ... or express disapproval of)
RESIGN (72:A Quit ... or agree to keep going)

Word of the Day: KOI (19A: Backyard pond dweller) —

noun
noun: koi; plural noun: koi; noun: koi carp; plural noun: koi carp
a common carp of a large ornamental variety, originally bred in Japan. (google)

• • •

All the themers came from a Mental Floss list / article. You can see it here. I mean, the English language does cool things, sure, woo hoo, fun. But you get No credit for simply finding a list and then cherry-picking the list for words that fit symmetrically in a grid, particular when you totally fail to mention that fact in your self-serving Constructor Notes (on the NYT's in-house blog). No. Credit. Also, the fill is somehow still dull-to-bad. I practically choked on ESS / SHH / HEHS (the worst), to say nothing of OEN- -INI ETDS AGARS. And then there's almost nothing genuinely fun or entertaining. I do like "WE COOL?", and to a lesser extent "SURE DO!" and HAS-BEEN. But I can't endorse this cut-and-paste approach to crossword themes, especially when it's not acknowledged, and overall there's just too much mediocrity in the grid. MAY I GO? Pfffffft, OK, maybe I can write a little more.

Isn't it the chicken that's CRUSTED?? (7D: Like Parmesan on baked chicken, typically). I got terribly hung up on this answer because I had no idea what word would be modifying the damn cheese. "I'm going to crust the Parmesan?" What? The Parmesan forms the crust *of the chicken*. Panko-crusted salmon is salmon CRUSTED with panko, come on! Didn't have many other struggles, except WHOA for WHEW (25D: "That was close!"). Also, I wouldn't know anything about what you do with FURS in the summer, since I don't know anyone who wears them, so coming up with that answer was a minor struggle. Clue on REARMOST seems awfully wrong (16A: Like nosebleed-section seats, usually), since you might be emphatically in "nosebleed" territory but very much in the frontmost part of your section; that is, "nosebleed" indicates altitude and REARMOST, well, doesn't. Should tossed that clue out. Or sanctioned it. Or fought with it. Who knows?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Medium, leaning Medium-Challenging? (no idea—I had an ultra-slow time due almost entirely to a spelling error ... and then Another Spelling Error)

THEME: BELT LOOP (61A: Waistband site ... or what 20-, 39- and 55-Across each have?)— circled letters contain types of belts, and those belts (AMMO, LAP, TOOL) "loop" from the east side of the grid back to the west.

Word of the Day: VOIT (10A: Basketball brand) —

The Voit Corporation is a sporting goods company founded by German American entrepreneur William J. Voit of Worthington, Indiana (1880–1946). // Voit began in Los Angeles in 1922 as a tire retreading products factory. In the late 1920s Voit developed and patented the first full-molded, all-rubber inflatable ball and the first needle-type air retention valves. (wikipedia)

• • •

My brain just came unglued during this one, not because the concept was so tough to grasp (it wasn't), but because I committed to multiple misspellings. The last one, PIMIENTO, was the least bad. I went PIMENTO (and then ELSA instead of ILSA, just like in all my crossword-confusion nightmares!!!), but in pretty short time realized that that wasn't going to work. I had the theme by then and could approach those circled letters more methodically. But the first misspelling, holy moly. I figured if something is like unto wool it is WOOLY. Blogger just red-underlined it, so obviously it's wrong. Its STEELY, it's MOODY, dagnabbit it should be WOOLY! So anyway I had WOOLYMAMM written in there and just ... died. *Died*. Basketball brand? Total blank. ILIAD, from *that* stupid generic clue? No way (12D: Long, old yarn). And don't get me started on the clue for CAL (16D: Nutritional label abbr.). There are so many amazing CAL options, how in the &$(^#$ing world do you make it an abbr., and the most boring abbr. imaginable. Ugh. Eventually, somehow, I realized that the circled squares were probably connected somehow, and MMMO made no sense, but AMMO did. So I went to WOOLLY and whaddya know, everything fell into place.

I dig the weird-shaped grid, but the overall theme concept is kind of a letdown. The wraparound conceit is well-worn, and I found this particular incarnation kinda anti-climactic. Just three ... belts, only one of which really really lands (TOOL). Is an AMMO belt like a bandolier? LAP belts barely exist any more, except in old cars, in the back seat. SEAT is more in-language. GARTER mighta been nice. Coulda gone BLACK. Coulda gone metaphorical and tried RUST or BIBLE. Shrug. Three belts. And we have to endure non-answers like STOCKSCOLL (that was my first "what do I have wrong!?" moment). Cluing overall seemed pretty hard. LIVES as [Video game *units*] was rough. Same with clue on VENT (53D: Magma conduit) and ONSET (26D: Dawn) and KABOOM (14A: Big report) and on and on. Very Friday/Saturday, this cluing. Which is fine. Got totally confused on ASK NO quarter (29D: ___ quarter (refuse mercy)) because I was reading "refuse mercy" as "refuse to extend mercy," not "refuse to be the beneficiary of mercy." So this was just rough for me all over, with no real pleasure spots. It's conceptually OK, and the grid shape is innovative. I dunno. Neither good nor bad for me today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I am being told that the grid is supposed to be a graphic depiction of a belt. Huh ... nope. Not seeing it. I'm seeing something vaguely beltish, maybe, but only because someone told me to look for it. Therefore: graphic fail (assuming it was even a graphic attempt).

P.P.S. TEDS LOL no (66A: Spreads, as straw). I'm so glad I never saw that answer because that is one stupid word.

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TSAR ALEXANDER II (48A: Autocrat known as "the Liberator") —

Alexander II (Russian: Алекса́ндр II Никола́евич, tr.Aleksandr II Nikolaevich; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ftɐˈroj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ]; 29 April [O.S. 17 April] 1818 in Moscow – 13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1881 in Saint Petersburg) was the Emperor of Russia from 2 March 1855 until his assassination on 13 March 1881. He was also the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland. // Alexander's most significant reform as emperor was emancipation of Russia's serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator (Russian: Алекса́ндр Освободи́тель, tr.Aleksandr Osvoboditel; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɐsvəbɐˈdʲitʲɪlʲ]). The tsar was responsible for other reforms, including reorganizing the judicial system, setting up elected local judges, abolishing corporal punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some privileges of the nobility, and promoting university education. // In foreign policy, Alexander sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, fearing the remote colony would fall into British hands if there were another war. He sought peace, moved away from bellicose France when Napoleon III fell in 1871, and in 1872 joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors that stabilized the European situation. Despite his otherwise pacifist foreign policy, he fought a brief war with Turkey in 1877–78, pursued further expansion into Siberia and the Caucasus, and conquered Turkestan. Although disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Alexander abided by that agreement. Among his greatest domestic challenges was an uprising in Poland in 1863, to which he responded by stripping that land of its separate constitution and incorporating it directly into Russia. (wikipedia)

• • •

This started out so bad, but then got good and even very good, then briefly went stupid, then very good again. So good overall, I think. You just never want to have a NW corner like this one. BSS x/w BIGA (!?!). So, so ugly. Or maybe you do want to start that horribly, so that the bounce up to your stack of long answers feels incredible. I HAD NO IDEA over GIG ECONOMY really pulls the puzzle out of the muck, and the plane mostly stays airborne from there (I'm just gonna veer among several metaphors today, so just try to hang on). Long answers stay mostly interesting, short fill stays mostly under control. DC AREA is always bad, esp. when you say some specific entity is *based* there. NIH is headquartered in Bethesda, MD. It's a well-known, specific place. Also, [___ number] is a godawful clue for CELL. God. Awful. CALL number seemed so so so much better. Fill-in-the-blanks generally suck, but they should at least be spot-on. CELL number is just too vague. [___ phone], better. [___ block], better. Hell, [T-___], better. LOPER is of course absurd, and TSAR ALEXANDER II is King of Ridiculousness. Putting the TSAR up front takes the answer into super-stilted, awkward, horrible territory. He's just Alexander II. Stop the madness. I don't know what wordlist you've purchased, but constructors, please, delete TSAR ALEXANDER II immediately. Thanks.

But I've spent too long on the bad. The good is real good. I had forgotten about PERESTROIKA (32A: Historic "restructuring"). I had not forgotten about the SAY HEY KID, but loved seeing him here. PLAYMAKER is a nice sports colloquialism (though if you're not into sports, I'm guessing "nice sports colloquialism" is oxymoronic). RONNY Chieng is funny; glad he got the RONNY clue. I think the high point of this puzzle is EXOPLANETS / SEXPISTOLS. Again, a delightful stack of long answers makes the short fill groan a bit on the corner, but this time I hardly noticed. I had fun and I came in under 6 minutes. I'll take that.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NOE Valley (9D: San Francisco's ___ Valley) —

Noe Valley (/ˈnoʊ.i/NOH-ee) is an affluent neighborhood in the central part of San Francisco, California. // Roughly speaking, Noe Valley is bounded by 21st Street to the north, 30th Street to the south, Dolores Street to the east, and Grand View Avenue to the west. The Castro (Eureka Valley) is north of Noe Valley; the Mission District is east. (wikipedia)

• • •

Look, except for -URE (er...) and PANTO (lol no), there is nothing wrong with this puzzle. Fill is clean, many answers are lively, or livelyish. So why did it leave me so cold. I had neither positive or negative feelings. It was just 7+ minutes of time spent filling in boxes. No laughs, no groans, no joy, no wincing. Something about it feels ... like a facsimile. Like a simulacrum of a puzzle. Like a sample puzzle, maybe in the background of a sitcom or something, and totally feels plausible and real, but ... you don't really care what's in it. It doesn't move you. Like books in the background of remote TV interviews. Whose books are those? Where are these people? Staged libraries? Their own offices? What was I talking about? Oh yes, the totally believable puzzleness of this puzzle. ESTE ENOKI NIGER SNORE. I feel like that stack of words is about representative of the Excitement Level I felt while solving. Lots of "?" clues, all of them fine, none of them great. Several colloquialisms, all of them fine, none of them great. Nothing very marquee about any of the longer answers. Stuff like NTH POWER and EAR DOCTOR feels like it should be NTH DEGREE and OTOLOGIST (or ENT). This puzzle was smooth, polished, somewhat antiseptic. Like a well-maintained Ramada Inn.

Nice clue on PEACE SIGN (1A: Double-digit figure?). Happy to learn (and undoubtedly immediately forget) "pogonologists" (51D: Things studied by pogonologists => BEARDS). My former student Libby Cudmore wrote a mystery novel that revolves around a MIXTAPE (available here). I miss MIXTAPEs. Took me forever to understand clue on BITES (52A: On-line jerks?). The "line" is a fishing line. Also took me a while to understand 53A: Draft picks? (OXEN). Had the "O" and wanted ... OLYS, to be honest. Do they have Oly on draft? In the NW, maybe? Does Oly even exist any more. Not sure. Dumbest thing I did with this puzzle was get JAPAN and then immediately jump over and write in ... [drum roll] ... SUMO. I had already seen the clue and misremembered it as saying [National *sport* of 10-Across]. And SUMO is correct for that imaginary clue. Just not for the actual clue. Only other major muff was HORA for HULA (?) (30D: Dance with strong percussion).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Anchors Away!"— boat puns, (ah)oy...

Theme answers:

GALLEONS OF MILK (gallons) (24A: Sailing vessels that Cap'n Crunch might commandeer?)
WARSHIPS AT THE ALTAR (worships) (31A: Heavily armored vessels getting married?)
ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM ROWBOATS (robots) (54A: Kids' game in which small vessels attack each other?)
SEMI TRAWLER (trailer) (66A: Fishing vessel that can pull only half a net behind it?)
AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YACHT (yet) (76A: Recreational vessel that's never left the harbor?)
DIRTY DOUBLE CRUISER (crosser) (100A: Luxury vessel with a pair of decks, both of which need swabbing?)
APPLE FREIGHTER (fritter) (111A: Cargo vessel full of iPads?)

Word of the Day: Neal BOORTZ (12D: Libertarian pundit Neal) —

Neal A Boortz, Jr. (born April 6, 1945) is an American author, attorney, and former Libertarian radio host. His nationally syndicated talk show, The Neal Boortz Show, which ended in 2013, was carried throughout the United States. It was ranked seventh in overall listeners, with more than 4.25 million per week. The content of the show included politics, current events, social issues, and topics of interest, which Boortz discussed with callers, correspondents and guests. Boortz touched on many controversial topics and referred to himself as an "equal opportunity offender." [ooh, original] (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, this is startlingly mediocre work from the Best Constructor On The Planet™. Terrible boat puns. Just ... off. Unfunny. Dumb. I guess ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM ROWBOATS has some charm, but SEMI-TRAWLER? GALLEONS OF MILK? These are bad. Come on. They are. Even if you like puns, you shouldn't like these that much. This is the kind of puzzle I associate with people whose skills never made it out of the '80s. AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YACHT doesn't even make sense grammatically. Also, if it's AIN'T, then it's NOTHIN', that's the rule. The worst part for me, from a purely personal taste standpoint, was that the place I struggled most was made strugglesome by some libertarian guy I'd never heard of. "He has [...] caused a stir among some Southerners, by coining the term "Flaggots" during his frequent jabs at them and at Confederate issues (such as governmental support of the Confederate flag)" (wikipedia). Great. Great. Sure. Lovely. Wonderful. "He has repeatedly stated his belief that global climate change is not man-made" (wikipedia). Wow, you don't say. Fascinating. Keep these wonderful folks coming, NYT. They make the puzzle delightful. (sidenote: if the puzzle had been better overall, I wouldn't have had the time or inclination to care about one stupid name).

Beyond BOORTZ, that NE corner was rough for me. Stupidly put in AMA at 26D: Pharma watchdog (FDA). Couldn't make sense of [Testing times]'s frame of reference (ORDEALS). Couldn't parse NUMEROUNO. Thought it was D.C.'s National PARK (baseball?) (15D: MALL). Rough all over. But the rest was pretty dang easy. No idea what "soubise" meant, so ONIONY took some doing (64D: Like soubise sauce). No idea Houdini's actual last name was WEISS (69D: Ehrich ___ ak.a. Houdini). Never thought of SEARS as particular hurt by Amazon, any more than every other retailer on the planet has been "hurt by Amazon." Had SAKE on my mind (from yesterday's puzzle) so I managed to put that in instead of SUMO this time (119A: Staple of Shinto rituals). Best clue / answer was probably 77D: It may help remove a curse (TAPE DELAY). Very tricky, very satisfying wordplay. Bravo. You can scuttle the rest of this puzzle, though.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hiii! It's the last Annabel Monday before my internship at ThinkProgress ends, so I'll be slightly less tired next time. ...Maybe. (Seriously, though, my summer has been awesome.)

Constructor: KEVIN CHRISTIAN

Relative difficulty: EASY

THEME: FILM DIRECTOR— The second words of the first, second and third words of the theme clues are, respectively, "LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!"

Theme answers:

BRIGHT LIGHTS (20A: Feature of the big city)
CANDID CAMERA (28A: Practical joke show first aired in 1948)
COVERT ACTION (44A: Secret military operation)
FILM DIRECTOR (53A: Speaker of the last words of 20-, 28- and 44-Across)

Word of the Day: MOTET (61A: Sacred choral work) —

In western music, a motet is a mainly vocal musical composition, of highly varied form and style, from the late medieval era to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond.^[1]The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts".^[2]

(Wikipedia)

• • •

OK, I'll be honest, I listed this one as easy because most of it was, but I got stuck in the bottom forever. Who thinks TAN when they hear "something that gets picked up at the beach?" I assumed it would be something like a shell or a rock. And does ARTSY always mean pretentious? Maybe I'm mistaken in assuming this was hard for anyone else, but to ERR is human, I guess. If so, MY BAD.

Loved having FLOTSAM and JETSAM next to each other - did you know those were the names of Ursula's eels in The Little Mermaid? Man, she's easily the best Disney villain in my book.

The theme was simple. The same could be said for the whole puzzle, actually (other than the bottom where I got stuck!). It wasn't drowning in movie star names or obscure novelists, the clues were almost too straightforward (again, with a few exceptions), it was basically the ideal Monday. I'm sure Rex was bored out of his mind for the two minutes or so it took him to do it, though.

Bullets:

They frolic in streams and they love each other

KEVIN (26D: Actor Costner or Spacey) — I cannot believe they forgot Bacon. Come on.
OTTER (19A: Animal that frolics in streams) — I love whenever this word comes up especially with such a cute clue because did you know otters hold hands when they sleep
POKEMON (43D: Character on a collectible card) — Possibly the only Pokémon reference this year that wasn't a snarky comment about Pokémon Go, so, props for that.
SIRI (7D: iPhone assistant) — One of Siri's lesser-known capabilities: musical collaboration.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired high school student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Dan Flanagan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: no. / no.— clues all look like fractions that = 1 (i.e. one number over itself) but they all have different meanings...

Theme answers:

17A: 4/4 (COMMON TIME)
27A: 11/11 (VETERANS DAY)
44A: 20/20 (GREAT VISION)
60A: 50/50 (EVEN STEVEN)

Word of the Day: COMMON TIME (17A: 4/4) —

com·mon time
ˈkämən tīm/
noun
Music
noun: common time
a rhythmic pattern in which there are four beats, especially four quarter notes, in a measure. This pattern occurs often in classical music and is the norm in rock, jazz, country, and bluegrass. (google)

• • •

Huh. OK, I like that the numbers involved go up. That's a nice feature. I'd never heard of COMMON TIME before—I was glad to see it was a thing, 'cause when I googled it I thought the answer just meant "common time signature," or "time signature one hears in a lot of songs." That is, I thought the answer was using "common" commonly, not specifically. But nope, COMMON TIME is a real, coherent thing. An actual term. Learning! But GREAT VISION ... yeah, that wasn't so great. For me. It's just an arbitrary term. COMMON TIME, specific term, VETERANS DAY, specific, GREAT VISION ... a subjective concept used here to describe vision that is commonly (!) considered very good. Swing, miss. EVEN STEVEN also feels like some cobbled together junk, i.e. it's a turn of phrase, a colloquialism. Too cutesy. So the first two themers work for me, the others feel jury-rigged for reasons of symmetry. Not nearly as precise. Thus, a letdown. I've done (much) worse Tuesday puzzles, for sure. But this one's just OK. Neither good nor bad. It hits and it misses.

Fill was also just OK. Some nice stuff, like NAMEDROP and QUICKSAND, but lots and lots of common (!!) stuff; you know, ECO ERES ADELE. Swing a cat and you'll hit a ton of it. ARAL AERO IOTA URSA PAAR ISTO UAE. On and on and on. SSN! The more I look at the grid, the less I like it. Lesson: stop looking! My only holdups today involved themers: COMMON TIME (because I didn't know what that was) and GREAT VISION (because that is not a specific thing, as we have been over). I also blanked (for seconds, which felt like minutes) on 39A: "Great Expectations" protagonist ... and I had -IP in place! I knew the answer, of course, but my brain tried to feed me the Dickens pseudonym (which I know only 'cause of crosswords), BOZ, and so the answer came out BIP, but ... I knew that wasn't right. So there was this weird giant pause right in the middle of my otherwise lightning-fast solve (just broke 3 minutes). So at least it went by quickly. Good for a Tuesday, but since that bar is so low, it's still just OK overall.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. TOE is in the grid, and [Tiptoe] is a clue (40A). A no(e)-no(e).

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (proper noun issues...)

THEME:"Where a [sounds like a poker hand] can beat a [sounds like a poker hand]"— the answers have nothing to do with poker:

Theme answers:

CHESS MATCH (17A: Where a queen can beat a king)
DOUBLES TENNIS (39A: Where an ace can beat a pair)
SOCK DRAWER (61A: Where two pair beats three of a kind)

Word of the Day: Onetime English poet laureate Henry James PYE (47A) —

Henry James Pye (/paɪ/; 10 February 1744 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet. Pye was Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce of Canary wine (though it was still a fairly nominal payment; then as now the Poet Laureate had to look to extra sales generated by the prestige of the office to make significant money from the Laureateship).

• • •

There is a cuteness and cleverness in back of this theme, but the whole shebang is pretty wobbly, for a number of reasons. The reorientation from poker to a CHESS MATCH is pretty clear, pretty straightfoward. It's a game, the "beat" make a kind of sense, even if you'd never ever say a queen "beat" a king if you were referring to actual chess. But fine. Association between clue and answer gets softer in the next themer, DOUBLES TENNIS, as "a pair" makes no sense here. You only ever serve to one human in DOUBLES TENNIS, and unless it's match point, an ace "beats" precisely no one. Also, association between "pair" and doubles team is not strong. But OK, you're playing a little word game, we'll give you Super Duper leeway. Finally there's SOCK DRAWER, which is both the funniest (if this kind of humor is your thing) and the weakest of the bunch. If I open my SOCK DRAWER and see three of a kind, I still have socks for the day. True, I will have to find that fourth sock by tomorrow, but today I'm good. It's a tie.

The fill is where this one gets rough, and occasionally unbearable. There are too many proper nouns of dubious fame here. Yes, constant solvers will have seen LEHAR and BEHAN and BINET, but probably Only In Crosswords because they get Overused because of their odd letter patterns (esp. those first two—having LEHAR and BEHAN in the same grid should cause it to implode or otherwise collapse; they're essentially the same name to me, the "holy crap I have -EHA- in my grid how do I make it work!?" (REHAB would of course be the ideal fix, but ...). Crossing BEHAN and BINET is just cruel. LEHAR and BEHAN are both known for precisely one work apiece. You gotta be better at handling proper nouns. Crossword addiction can convince you that today's names are far, far, far more commonly known than they are. Also, I grew up in CA and have never heard of the EEL River, so that is a beast of a clue (57A: California's ___ River). Also, a word about *&$&ing PYE: Literally no one knows who Henry James PYE is. I have an English Ph.D. and have been around English Ph.D.s most of my life, I've barely if ever heard of him. He was "poet laureate" over 200 years ago. He wrote nothing anyone has heard of. I love this line from wikipedia: "As a prose writer, Pye was far from contemptible." It is both stupid and sadistic to clue PYE this way.

Other slowness came from ONE instead of YOU in the central Down answer, and CRAFT instead of CARVE at 34A: Sculpt. Very choppy grid meant lots of short stuff meant less-than-lovely answers, most of the time, though GO TO THE DOGS and LAME-BRAINED are winners, for sure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Ankh-holding deity / SAT 7-22-17 / cartoon avatars on Snapchat / single serve coffee holders / Wearer of h inscribed hat / Lead female role on Netflix's House of Cards / Big-box store founded in 1946 / Sportscaster Rich

1943 French novella / SUN 7-23-17 / Pacific capital / The Big Pineapple / Dance craze 2010s / Agency Human Genome Project / Bert who sang "If I Only Had the Nerve" / 1990 Nobelist Octavio

Green condiment / MON 7-24-17 / George Rumble in the Jungle / Ke$ha TiK / Ouzo flavoring / Taj Mahal city / Muppet with wings / Milo Verdict

Discharge as from a volcano / TUE 7-25-17 / Protective embankment / Ambient music as ignorable as interesting / Zoë Avatar / Jason's vessel / House of Elizabeth II / Variety show host 1951-71 / Ibsen's Gabler / Captain Nemo's vessel

Common Sense pampleteer / WED 7-26-17 / Rambler maker / 2006 Supreme Court nominee / Mineral in kale / Peter Paul and / Queen of the Nile / Jack's love Titanic / Typeface similar to Helvetica

Game animals to some / THU 7-27-17 / Out of place obstetric / Nabisco brand since 1912 / Genre for Philip K. Dick / Singer DiFranco / Cleopatra's Mines / Right-hand page / Sunshine Skyway Bridge / "Wind in the Willows" creature / "Playboy of the Western World" playwright

Award for "Hairspray" but not "Hair" / FRI 7-28-17 / Famous 1980s movie quote / The Divine Miss M / Some lipstick shades / Lamp Chop puppeteer / Lug nut hiders / Burl who sang about Rudolph / Coppola film family name

Floored / SAT 7-27-17 / First cover 1970 Dynamite Afros / 1984 Summer Olympics star / Ayn Rand hero / Rapper role 2015 film Dope / Dinar spenders / Fitness legend Jack / Eli Manning's team / 2015 NFL MVP / Sunset eg

Last Scottish king to die in battle / SUN 7-30-17 / Mideast royal name / Funny Gasteyer / NFC North rivals Bears / Cellphone chip holder / Loren of "Marriage Italian-Style" / Northern Indiana county seat /

Mathematician whose name sounds like fuel ship / MON 7-31-17 / Radioer's word after Roger / Pesters repeatedly / Liberal's favorite road sign

Big letters in home security / TUE 8-1-17 / Marijuana slangily / Net that netted Dory in Finding Nemo / Zin altnerative / Onetime Ron Howard role

Ice cream thickeners / WED 8-2-17 / Muscular Japanese dog / Nabisco's answer to Hydrox / Sneaky little snickers

Nemesis of Clanton gang / THU 8-3-17 / Modern home of ancient Tripolitania / Drawings seen in France's Rouffignac cave / President whose initials were also his dog's name / Code broken by rats

White Cloud competitor / FRI 8-4-17 / Historic restructuring / Sour fermented milk drink / Labor market short on long-term work / 3 year old in 2015 sports news / Autocrat known as Liberator

Silent dramatic performance to Brits / SAT 8-5-17 / Mace-wielding DC Comics superhero / Word on bouteille de vin

Libertarian pundit Neal / SUN 8-6-17 / Malodorous animal / Governess at Thornfield / 1997 action film set on plane / Fruit mentioned in Odyssey / Choice for online gamer / Pharma watchdog / Chicago based fraternal order / Longtime retailer hurt by Amazon / Revolver in roaring twenties slang

A lot of them can be found on a lot / MON 8-7-17 / Something that might be picked up at the beach / Character on a collectible card / Inn, informally / Pretentious

Onetime HBO series set in New Orleans / TUE 8-8-17 / Great Expectations protagonist / Kleenex of cotton swabs

Onetime English poet laureate Henry James / WED 8-9-17 / Flock loser of rhyme / What Rick called Ilsa / Forbidden fragrance in old ads