Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: BLADE— a word ladder that goes from BLUNT to SHARP through BLADE—which helps clue two answers on the W and E edges of the puzzle, respectively: RAZOR (24D: Item with a 39-Across) and KNIFE (36D: Item with a 39-Across)

Theme answers:

BLUNT
BLURT
BLART
BLARE
BLADE
SLADE
SHADE
SHARE
SHARP

Word of the Day: CUTTLE (54A: Sea creature with eight arms) —

noun
noun: cuttle; plural noun: cuttles
a cuttlefish. (google) (seriously, that is the full definition) (because "cuttlefish" is what people actually call them)

• • •

This is what puzzle used to be like, kids. This is what used to pass for a gimmick, this is what used to pass for fill. Very 20th century. I thought AN ERA (ugh) had been put on an ice floe circa Y2K. And that stupid money slang that *nobody* has used since Bugs Bunny, but that still finds its garbage way into garbage puzzles!? DOREMI, clued as [Cabbage or kale]? No. Pass. Hard to express how unpleasant, bordering on painful, it was to solve this thing. By the time I was done, I was stunned to see my time was only in the mid-4s. It felt grueling. I expected to see a time about half again as long. I got complete stuck at least once, and for a few ugly seconds I wasn't sure I was going to get the far east at all. I kept hitting groaner after groaner (both clues and answers). And for what? A word ladder—the stupidest and most hated of crossword gimmicks. Were you happy to see Paul BLART? No, who would be? But you gotta go through BLART (*apparently*) to get the precious word ladder to work. *Only* a veteran constructor could've gotten this thing published. At least I hope so. Kids. Please. Don't do this. (I actually don't think a kid is capable of conceiving a puzzle like this, so much does it belong to AN ERA of yore)

Stopped following the NFL because [so many reasons, too tired to get into] so I totally forgot DEREK Carr existed. This made the east very hard, as I never knew Mayella EWELL existed (and I've read the book), and I don't know what a CUTTLE is. I know very well what a CUTTLEfish is, as I have seen the documentaries and oohed and aahed at the shape-shifting and what not. CUTTLE? No. Further blanking on Latin (!?), and a cutesy clue on the terrible RELET (34D: Filled again, in a way), meant bad bad things for me over there. Still not sure how I extricated myself. I resent clues like 6D: Rep. or Dem., e.g. (ABBR.)—where the clue's like some obnoxious kid going "ha ha, gotcha," when all they've done is hit you with an EGG (i.e. Nothing Clever).

How many different answers did you try for 22A: No longer in bed? I tried at least three, I think: ARISEN, AWOKEN ... OK, two. So the anchor is "no longer" in the sea "bed"—AWEIGH! Great. That, and the insane / Saturdayish clue on STAPLES (27A: The "L" in this store's log hints at the store's name), made the NE hard as well. Oh, and I had EGO (11A: It may be coddled) instead of EGG, of course. The last thing you want a word ladder (again, ugh) to be is unnecessarily fussy and hard. Since there is Zero joy in the theme ITSELF, you gotta be very careful elsewhere. This wasn't. There is more not to love in this (ICERS, FIERI, BARRE, ELA, bleeping ZEB!?!?!) but I'm hungry and still groggy from being [No longer in bed?]. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Zachary Spitz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (once you get the gimmick)

THEME: CORNER / OFFICE (31A: With 44-Across, V.I.P. area represented four times in this puzzle)— rebus puzzle where corner squares are all words that can precede "OFFICE":

Offices:

BOX (NW)
POST (NE)
OVAL (SW)
HOME (SE)

Word of the Day: YAKITORI (38D: Japanese style of chicken) —

noun
noun: yakitori
a Japanese dish of chicken pieces grilled on a skewer. (google)

• • •

This puzzle is relatively easy. Also, hey, puzzle, don't get cute with me, or wink at me, or joke with me about how hard or easy the puzzle is. You don't know me. Stay in your lane. Just be a puzzle. If I say you're relatively easy, that's that. Zip it. This theme was not at all tough to uncover. NW came together fast, so the BOX corner went in early, and it was a short trip from there to the revealer, which only needed a couple crosses to become evident—plus it was a two-answer revealer, which really opened the grid right up. So ... different types of offices go in the corners, and I knew this inside the first minute. The puzzle definitely toughened up in places. The OVAL and (especially) the POSTER boxes were much tougher to figure out than the other two. I didn't know what YAKITORI was, so that took every single cross, and thus made that SW corner harder to work out (FDA APPR(OVAL) was a doozy of a themer—probably the best of the bunch). And I had everything *but* the corner at 13D: Archetype and still couldn't get it. Stared at -ER CHILD but the only thing I could imagine was (INN)ER CHILD. Also BRAIN CHILD, but that didn't fit. Cross wasn't much help, as I had TMAN instead of GMAN (9D: F.B.I. agent, informally), and couldn't figure out what the hell a [Conjunction in a rebus puzzle] was supposed to be (kept wanting NOR) (??). Also misspelled AMBIENCE (thusly), but that's par for the course. Anyway, theme easy, overall cluing, a little less so.

Proper nouns of yore were probably over-represented here and *definitely* were not thoughtfully dealt with. Most egregious: non-gun-related, alphabet-souped NRA crossing "Love Boat" actor Gavin insanely-spelled MACLEOD (I had to look at the grid twice to spell it just now). I guarantee you that "A" roughs up tons of people (I know this because it roughed me up and I already know of two confirmed other cases and the puzzle hasn't even been out that long).

[true fact] [9A: Kicker's target]

I mean, come on, if you're gonna drive NRA through a very bygone actor's name, make it a non-bygone NRA. Common courtesy / decent editing. Also, LeRoy NEIMAN hasn't been famous since he did those Burger King / summer Olympics posters when I was a kid (so, yeah, like, 1976). I didn't mind DIANE over ANKARA, though, because I just watched the "Cheers" episode where a guy comes into the bar and pretends to be a spy but DIANE sees right through him because the guy seems to believe that ANKARA is in Bulgaria. So, yeah, DIANE over ANKARA is never going to seem more right than it does at this very moment.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just 'cause of the proper nouns I had Never seen, and some confusing cluing)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CEBU (39A: Pacific island Magellan visited in 1521) —

Cebu (/seˈbuː/; Cebuano: Lalawigan sa Sugbu, Filipino: Lalawigan ng Cebu) is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas(Region VII)region, and consisting of the main island itself and 167 surrounding islands and islets. Its capital is Cebu City, the oldest city and first capital of the Philippines, which is politically independent from the provincial government. Cebu City forms part of the Cebu Metropolitan Area together with four neighboring cities (Danao City, Lapu-Lapu City, Mandaue City and Talisay City) and eight other local government units. Mactan-Cebu International Airport, located in Mactan Island, is the second busiest airport in the Philippines. (wikipedia)

• • •

Just too much stuff I'd never heard of to be really enjoyable, and this is coming from someone who Nailed 1D: Alistair ___, "The Guns of Navarone" novelist (MACLEAN) (ugh). My proper noun ignorance is really not your or anyone else's problem, and this grid is, in most ways, quite lovely and elegant, especially through the middle. But I've never heard of KORBEL, ever, or of CEBU, ever, so struggling to get them and eventually getting them did not leave an "aha!" feeling, but rather ... there was more of a dull thud sound. And then you try to convince me that TRINI is something other than old-school crosswordese [Singer Lopez]? (3D: Certain Caribbean islander, informally) I don't know. It's a very well-made grid, but Berry's puzzles are starting to feel old to me. Not old bad or old stale, but old ... like, GEORGE WILL old (33A: Newspaper columnist who wrote the book "Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball"). Culturally centered in a bygone era. Not PAX ROMANA bygone, but back there somewhere. So I admire their architectural beauty but increasingly don't really want to live inside them.

[10D: Unlikely winner at the Masters]

There's a METHANOL now? Inferred that one only after getting several crosses (1-Across struggle often means overall struggle). Totally doubted MACLEAN and thought briefly 17A: Clytemnestra's half sister (HELEN) was MEDEA. And I am literally in the middle of a New Yorker article that discusses the Oresteia at length, so botching a clue with Clytemnestra in it really hurts. I also literally said PAX ROMANA out loud today in class (13A: Period ushered in by Augustus), but somehow failed to look at the clue early (when it would've helped me), so despite dropping 1- and 2-Down in quickly, the NW was a mess. And then, because KORBEL meant nothing to me, I couldn't really turn the corner effectively into the center. And then of course I had TOM for JIM (9D: Huck's pal), so that was unfun. I have never heard anyone say MARKER PEN (32A: Soft-headed writer?), so that one just hurts (my ears and eyes and sensibilities). Thank god GEORGE WILL was a gimme, or I might still be doing this puzzle. Had ENSNARL at 41A: Become tangled (SNARL UP), which Really hurt, because it led to GULLS at 37D: Easy marks (DUPES). OPERA BOXES aren't anything I'm familiar with, so they were hard to get to from 49A: What a theater's grand tier is divided into. Had RTE instead of ETA at 50D: GPS guess. I basically stepped in every hole I could, and when you add that to the hot KORBEL-CEBU action, the result is a rather limping and anemic effort on my part.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. speaking of the old feel of this puzzle: AMC is absolutely not not not a 5D: Cable channel for cinephiles. It *used* to be that, but its programming took a significantly different turn FIFTEEN YEARS AGO ... ugh. Cinephiles watch TCM and FilmStruck. I know because ... I just know.

P.P.S. phrasing on the clue at 38A: What the ancient Greeks called the Hyrcanian Ocean is wicked confusing. Makes it sound like "Hyrcanian Ocean" is a current thing that we're supposed to guess the ancient Greek name of, not vice versa. [Ancient Greeks called it "the Hyrcanian Ocean"]. Confusion, eliminated.

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Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:none

Word of the Day: CRICKET (1D: Fair play) —

1: a game played with a ball and bat by two sides of usually 11 players each on a large field centering upon two wickets each defended by a batsman
2: fair and honorable behavior it wasn't cricket for her to break her contract — Gerry Nadel (m-w)

• • •

This felt really tough, but my time came out normal, so ... normal! It's lovely, for a low-word-count grid (64 words). I am not a big fan of low-word-count grids, largely because you end up with more ickiness than a nice 68-to-72-worder will give you. Below 68, and the pressure starts to take its toll. RESAT and LEERAT and SAVETO and LLD are all kind of unpleasant, as are the longer words loaded with common letters, like ADDRESSES and ENROLLEE and ETAGERES. But, again, this is *very good* for a 64-worder. Cleaner than many NYT grids that are far less demanding. I like Erik's puzzles because they are wide-ranging and current, and also because they remind you, vividly, how very white the normal NYT POV is. Black people figure strongly in today's puzzle. You've got LAUREN London and Ava DuVernay's "QUEEN SUGAR" and ... well, I guess virtually all the SOUTH SUDANESE. In fact, you've got a good mix of everyone/thing: PAT BENATAR and THE STONES and REGGAE and PUERTO Rico and the WNBA's SAN ANTONIO Stars and SEMINOLE and RICE BEER etc. It's an impressively inclusive puzzle, in addition to being an impressively slick one.

There was one major cluing problem, though. How is DEICED [Cleared for landing?]? If you are deicing a plane, it is already on the ground. You are "clearing" it (of ice) for *take-off*. Right? I think so. I thought there was another cluing problem at 1D: Fair play (CRICKET), but no, that's apparently just a thing that CRICKET can mean, which I'm just learning now, in the middle of year 48 on this planet and year 47 speaking English. OK then.

There were a lot of tricky / "?" clues, but they didn't irk me the way they often can when they come in bulk. I got stuck in odd places, like putting in POKE AT instead of PECK AT (6D: Eat with no enthusiasm), and then falling right into the AVER / RUG trap at 49A: Profess (AVOW) / 50D: Removable locks (WIG). Not having any clue about that CRICKET definition, the NW was toughest for me, and the last part of the puzzle to fall. Tough clever clues on AIR TAXIS (2D: They might be used in making hops) and EX-COP (25A: Person who came out of the blue?) also added difficulty up in there. Overall, a solid, entertaining workout. Just about exactly what a Saturday oughta be.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty: Challenging (based solely on the NE corner)

THEME:"United Kingdom"— actually a puzzle about ANIMAL MAGNETISM (110A: Sex appeal ... or a hint to the answers to the six starred clues), where the circled squares inside each theme answer spell out two animals (I guess they are "magnetically" attracted to each other ?):

Theme answers:

BOAR DINGO / FFICER (23A: *Law enforcer with the Coast Guard)
INT / ERNE TROUT / ER (33A: *It passes on some bits of information)
IMMANU / ELK ANT (48A: *Philosopher who wrote "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made")
GOODWIL / LAMB ASS / ADORS (66A: *Celebrities working for the U.N., perhaps)
IN / STAG RAM / MER (ugh) (85A: *Certain photo poster)
CORPO / RAT EEL / ITE (not a thing) (99A: *Business bigwigs)

Word of the Day: NINJA LOANS (76A: Low-quality bank offerings whose acronym suggests stealthiness) —

A NINJA loan is a nickname for very low-quality subprime loans. It was a play on NINA, which in turn is based on the notation scheme for the level of documentation the mortgage originator required. It was described as a no income, no job, [and] no assets loan because the only thing an applicant had to show was his/her credit rating, which was presumed to reflect willingness and ability to pay. The term was popularized by Charles R. Morris in his 2008 book The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown, though the acronym had been publicly used by some subprime mortgage lenders for some years. They were especially prominent during the United States housing bubble circa 2003-2007 but have gained wider notoriety due to the subprime mortgage crisis in July/August 2007 as a prime example of poor lending practices. The term grew in usage during the 2008 financial crisis as the sub prime mortgage crisis was blamed on such loans. It works on two levels – as an acronym; and allusion to the fact that NINJA loans are often defaulted on, with the borrower disappearing like a ninja. // The term was also popularized in the 2010 US film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps by the character Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas.

• • •

No, no thank you. Two animals stuck together ... ish? I'm just not feeling this concept. First because it just feels simplistic, second because the execution of the theme results in some terribly unsatisfying stuff like BOARDING OFFICER (?) and CORPORATE ELITE (which is just not a thing—I nearly threw the puzzle across the room at that point; I *know* I exclaimed "Not a thing!" as I continued solving...). This just wasn't to my taste, at all ever. It also contained many things I'd just never heard of. Like BOARDING OFFICER. Also, NINJA LOANS (me: which ... part of that ... is a bleeping "acronym"!?), though I think that answer is fine, unlike SWAROVSKI, which I think is stem-to-stern garbage. That NE corner was basically a puzzle unto itself, 10x harder than the entire rest of the grid. If you don't know that stupid proper noun (wtf is "crystal jewelry" anyway?) then every single letter is a guess, and thus Every Single Cross is necessary. And then those crosses, ouch. So many of them were just really, really hard. So you up the difficulty *right* at the point that you've plunked stupid SWAROVSKI down!? Yeah, screw this entire corner and the horse it rode in on. Here is where I was when the wheels totally came off:

Clue on INTERNET ROUTER, hard. On ARCHIVE, hard. We've already established that SWAROVSKI is gibberish. I had 22A: Prince of TIDES (not WALES). Clue on STRAW (44A: Little sucker?), hard ("?" clue + how exactly is a STRAW"little"??? Compared to what?). "OK, SURE" coulda been many things (I had "OH, SURE" at one point). Whole thing was just Brutal. And for no payoff. No aha. Just ... ugh. What the hell is the clue on WEED!? (47D: Wacky tobacky, in part) If you'd just said [Wacky tobacky] then OK, SURE, but "in part"!?!?! Then what the actual F is "Wacky tobacky"? Given its name, I seriously doubt the recipe is very, uh, standardized. God I hate that clue. It had me IN A PET (note to constructors: ritually burn this bleeping answer out of your word list). The Penn State logo is the profile of a Nittany Lion (whatever that is). I see them all over the place. So PAW PRINT can **** off. Man, is there anything I enjoyed here? I guess the central themer is pretty sweet (if you're in to LAMB ASS ... he said ROGUISHLY). Else, nay. Sundays are really really hard to pull off. If theme is merely average (or worse), then it's just tediously long. Gotta be special. "Best Puzzle in the World," after all. Should live up to that name. More often, anyway.

[h/t Erik Agard]

A few reminders. First, if you want to get the Lollapuzzoola play-at-home puzzle pack (all the puzzles from last month's tournament, which was fantastic), then you need to do that now. Like, today. Here. Go get 'em. Second, once you have finished those puzzles, please listen to this episode of "The Allusionist" podcast, in which Helen Zaltzman gives you an inside look at the tournament and its attendees, including me (and my wife! and at least half a dozen other people I know and like! Saturday's constructor Erik Agard is in there!). I've read / listened to a lot of crossword journalism, and this is probably the coolest outsider's-view take on crossword culture that I've come across. Worth your 25 min. Also worth your 25 (+ another 15) minutes: my "On the Grid" podcast with Lena Webb, the latest episode of which is now up (004: "MOÉT / ASTI"). We talk about good clues for bad fill (including an extended discussion of ELOPE clues like 106A: Tie up quickly?), and then we drink bubbly and talk about MOËT and ASTI. So there you go, lots of homework for you. Enjoy!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I've got lots of people, including at least one Chemistry Ph.D., telling me they've never heard of AMATOL (98D: Big bang creator). I also have never heard of this (outside of crosswords), but I never trust my own judgment on sciencey stuff.

P.P.S. my wife is *furious* at 27A: More decisive (SURER), which may seem weird, until you realize she was stuck in that corner and *refused to consider* SURER because, well ... the word had already turned up in the grid! (53A: "Works for me" => "OK, SURE"). I have to agree, that is a pretty crappy dupe. Little words are no big deal, but otherwise, you shouldn't be duplicating words (or different versions of the same word). It is reasonable for solvers to assume that most words (esp. 4+-letter words) won't be duplicated within a grid. Duping SURE(R) here is bad form.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

It's Annabel, back at college and hopefully going to a Labor Day BBQtonight! This one was actually somewhat harder than I'd bargained for, so I'm coming to you a little bit LATH - er, late - DUH. Hopefully your heart did not ACHE from my absence.

Constructor: TRACY GRAY

Relative difficulty: PRETTY HARD FOR A MONDAY TBH

THEME: BBQ— The last word of each theme answer is something you might find at a BBQ.

Theme answers:

WAITS IN THE WINGS (17A: Is ready for one's star turn, say)
RESERVOIR DOGS (23A: 1992 Tarantino crime thriller)
MILITARY BRATS (52A: Children of armed forces personnel, slangily)
BACK DOOR SLIDERS (58A: Fast, sharp-breaking curveballs)
BBQ (38A: Cookout, briefly...or a hint to the ends of 17-, 23-, 52- and 58-Across)

Word of the Day: ERIES (34D: Iroquois foes) —

The Erie people (also Erieehronon, Eriechronon, Riquéronon, Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were a Native Americanpeople historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian group, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio before 1658.^[1] They were destroyed in the mid-17th century by five years of prolonged warfare with the neighboring Iroquois, especially the Seneca, for helping the Huron in the Beaver Wars for control of the fur trade."^[1]
Their villages were burned as a lesson to those who dare oppose the Iroquois, adding to their loss of life and likely forcing emigration. The Iroquoian confederacies were known for adopting others into their tribes, and true to form, the remaining defeated Erie are believed to have been absorbed by other Iroquoian tribes, particularly the Seneca, and possibly their kindred Susquehannocks with whom they shared the hunting grounds of the Allegheny Plateau and the Amerindian paths through the gaps of the Allegheny. Whatever their individual fates, the remnant tribes^[2] living among the Iroquois, gradually lost their independent identity.
(Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi! By the time I'm working on next month's Annabel Monday, I'll officially be a junior in college! Which I honestly cannot believe even a little bit. Wasn't I just a freshman, like, two seconds ago? Ahem - puzzle!

I got stuck all over the place on this one. Both bottom corners tripped me up, and I was so convinced that SUET was actually SEED. I also took issue with some of the clues - how am I supposed to know so much about sports like baseball and tennis for 61D, 58A, and others? Also, what the heck is a gimlet? Maybe it's just me, though. I did love the fill itself - LATH and TSLOT were both totally new for me, and I didn't run into any of those overused crossword words.

The theme was OK. Seasonal, I guess. I'm a little annoyed BURGERS didn't make it in there, and neither did POTATO SALAD or PASTA SALAD, because those are the really iconic BBQ foods. I would like to know if anyone has ever actually eaten potato salad at a BBQ. I always take a little to be nice and then eat like maybe a bite of it because honestly potato salad isn't really that good? I don't know why people are always bringing it.

Bullets:

ORGY (69A: Anything goes-party)— First of all, I think Tracy Gray knew exactly what she was doing making this one #69, so props to that. Second of all: seriously?!?! "Anything-goes party"? That's uuuuusually not what "anything goes" means. I dunno.

There probably really was a swan coming for me
and it probably looked exactly like this
EVIL

DUCKS (5A: Birds that waddle) — We don't have ducks on campus, but we do have geese. And swans. I once was hanging out with a group of friends by the lake on campus, thought I heard a swan noise, and immediately bolted away from all of them because I was worried a swan was going to come attack me. Those birds are ruthless, I tell you.

SKI (10D: Hit the slopes)— I think everyone who's ever skied before has an embarrassing story about it, so here's mine! The first time I was learning to ski, when I was like 5, I swear I didn't fall down once...until I was getting off the slop and some equally-young snowboarder ran over me. I had to be carried off the slopes by, I guess, ski medics? Is that a thing? Anyway, that was the end of my skiing vacation, I just watched winter sports movies for the rest of the trip.
GLEE (21A: Exuberance)— There's only one thing this word makes me think of at this point. Curse you, Ryan Murphy, for doing this to the 2010s!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Constructor: Michelle Kenney and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (also, oversized / 16-wide)

THEME: INTERMISSION (37A: Break ... such as at the middle of 18-, 27-, 50- or 58-Across?)— circled letters in themers spell out name of famous Broadway production, and since those names are "broken" (split between beginning and end of answers), then the gap between the circled letters ... is an INTERMISSION? Yes. That must be it.

Theme answers:

HAWAIIAN AIR (18A: Honolulu-based carrier, informally)
GREEK VASE (27A: Piece of pottery featuring Achilles, say)
CAMO PANTS (50A: Military bottoms, informally)
WISECRACKED (58A: Made snappy comments)

Word of the Day: RUDI Gernreich (28D: Fashion designer Gernreich) —

Rudolf "Rudi" Gernreich (August 8, 1922 – April 21, 1985) was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion. (wikipedia)

• • •

Many things wrong here, most notably the wording of the revealer clue. If you ask me to look "at the middle of" those themers, what I see is *gibberish*. WAIIANA! EKV! SECRA! Or my favorite, MOPAN! There's just a structural problem, where the INTERMISSION is the place between, and the place between is just a letter string that is nonsensical on its own. Also, this whole embedding non-consecutive letters as part of your themer is pretty rudimentary, and definitely not worth bloating the grid to 16-wide. Further, I just don't like the themers. They don't have much appeal on their own. Then there's the fussiness of so many multi-word half-colloquialisms. I like BE THAT WAY!, but a lot of the rest of it felt like forced attempts at slanginess. DID A SET is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. A notch down from READ A BOOK and a notch up from ATE SOME TOAST. I like GOD NO! pretty well, but it was brutally hard to get (esp. for a Tuesday) (26D: Emphatic rejection). Clue was just too vague / broad. Also, count the number of "comma informally" clues in this puzzle. One is OK. Two should be the max. There are two among themers alone. And then another at 9D: Utmost, informally (DARNEDEST). What the hell? Maybe do a little more to vary your cluing language. Flawed theme concept + just OK fill = not great. Might be above average for a Tuesday, but that bar is low. Too low.

Bullets:

ABCTV (10D: "Fresh Off the Boat" network)— yeah no one calls TV networks blahblahblahTV so please stop.
SINKER (47D: Baseball pitch that suddenly drops)— well, this is better than yesterday's baseball pitch clue, which referred to a "slider" as a "curveball" (!?), but like a good fastball, these baseball clues should have a little life on them. Baseball is fun—give us something less literal and workmanlike.
NIETO (64A: Enrique Peña ___, Mexican president beginning in 2012)— I'm having trouble making his name stick. Don't know why. Maybe because he's not as charismatic as Vincente Fox? Maybe because I don't see his name very much (in news or in crosswords)? Dunno.
GINKGO (6D: Tree whose leaves appear in many Chinese fossils)— forever I will misspell this word. Forever. Oh, GINGKO, I just can't quit you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Y" sound [so ... 'yuh'?] added to familiar answers to get wacky answers, clued wackily—

Theme answers:

FJORD EXPLORER (20A: One traveling around Scandinavia?) (Ford)
BEAUTY CALL (35A: Visit to the salon?) (booty!)
FINGER FEUD (40A: Argument that involves pointing?) (food)
MILITARY QUEUE (49A: Soldiers in line formation) (coup)

Word of the Day: Pic de Rochebrune (42A: France's Pic De Rochebrune => MONT) —

The Pic de Rochebrune (or Grand Rochebrune or, simply, Rochebrune) is a mountain in the Cottian Alps belonging to the French department of Hautes-Alpes. // The mountain is the highest summit of the Central Cottian Alps.

The Cottian Alps (/ˈkɒtiənˈælps/; French: Alpes Cottiennes[alp kɔtjɛn]; Italian: Alpi Cozie[ˈalpi ˈkɔttsje]); are a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps. They form the border between France (Hautes-Alpes and Savoie) and Italy (Piedmont). The Fréjus Road Tunnel and Fréjus Rail Tunnel between Modane and Susa are important transportation arteries between France (Lyon, Grenoble) and Italy (Turin). (wikipedia)

• • •

This started very, very badly. So badly, I stopped to take a picture (usually on a Wednesday, I don't have the time / inclination to do this, but that opening corner was horrific):

Trouble begins with the "J" in the terminal position, and then cascades from there. I have to endure HADJ and then get the worst kind of dated crosswordese (EZIO) in the bargain, and *then* run into the why why why!? III (23A: Senior's grandson). If you're dropping EZIO, you better be getting a Lot in return. Here, you're not. Also, DIF🙁 Also the clue on RETRIAL there is wrong, or at least misleading / incomplete (4D: Result of a deadlocked jury).

So I'm pretty much done with this thing before I've even properly started. Fill does *not* improve much. It's not that URB and SMS etc are So terrible on their own, it's just ... we shouldn't be seeing this much fill that's this weak. URB and SMS are answers I'm using only out of desperation. They're OK, but I don't want them. I can probably make any corner they're in (in this non-demanding grid) better. The bottom of the grid is a perfect example of the problem of relying on merely adequate, I've-seen-it-before-so-it-must-be-OK fill. RIVE, LO-RES*, AGAR, DOGIT—all of those are answers I would try to keep out if I could. Yet they are *all* here. In a tiny 4x5 section. Please try (a lot) harder. AGAR and DOGIT are a notch better than RIVE and LO-RES*, which are not really in use and really stupid-looking, respectively. Again, the problem here is a cumulative one. One of these answers in a corner—I don't blink, Two, I blink. Three+, I just close my eyes and smh.

Had no appreciation for the theme until I was done, at which point ... I appreciated it somewhat, I guess. I especially admire that boldness of using BOOTY CALL as your base phrase (35A). I also like seeing ROBYN, and, strangely, AGGREGATOR (not a pretty word, but a very real, modern ... thing). Mostly the puzzle was easy, though the eastern seaboard really smacked me around for a bit. Couldn't drop RILING or OF LATE off of ROMERO, and so needed a lot of hacking and flailing to finally fill those in. I think TIA was the only cross I was certain of. BIG IF was really, really difficultly clued (33A: Significant qualification), in that "qualification" commonly means something like "asset" and so I never considered its other meaning. I was like "... BIG UP?" Also, I thought the Pic de Rochebrune was a bridge 🙁

I think the theme is just OK, and the fill is weak-to-dire, so overall it's a no.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Mail suggests LORES is indecipherable to many of you (one more reason never to use it). It's short for "lo(w)-resolution."

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ABC (1D: Kind of order ... or a hint to this puzzle's unusual construction)— all the Across answers are in alphabetical (aka "ABC"@!?) order:

Word of the Day: CITO Gaston (19D: ___ Gaston, first African-American manager to win a World Series) —

Clarence Edwin "Cito" Gaston (/ˈsiːtoʊˈɡæstən/; born March 17, 1944) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder and manager. His major league career as a player lasted from 1967 to 1978, most notably for the San Diego Padres and the Atlanta Braves. He spent his entire managerial career with the Toronto Blue Jays, becoming the first African-American manager in Major League history to win a World Series title. // Cito Gaston managed the Toronto Blue Jays from 1989 to 1997, and again from 2008 to 2010. During this time, he managed the Blue Jays to four American League East division titles (1989, 1991, 1992 and 1993), two American League pennants (1992 and 1993) and two World Series titles (1992 and 1993). (wikipedia)

• • •

This was so unpleasant that I'm not gonna spend much time dwelling on it. Truly painful, in *exactly* the way you would expect a stunt-puzzle like this to be painful—the quality of the fill. The actual words in the grid. That you are filling. Ostensibly, for pleasure. Enjoyment. There are maybe a handful of answers that get anywhere near enjoyable. For the most part, it's a garbage heap of crosswordese and subsubcrosswordese, and for what. Alphabeticality!? Let's start with the fact that "ABC order" is not a thing (1D: Kind of order... => ABC). Not not. Not. "Can you put these in ABC order?" asked no one ever except maybe a kindergarten teacher (?). So the revealer is nonsensical. Can we just start (and, in an ideal world, stop) there?? Do you want an sizable but incomplete list of the gunky fill in this thing? No? Too bad:

House of Pain:

SOARTO
CITO
ABLUSH
INUP (!?)
EYDIE
ESS
TIEA (!?)
VSO
REA
IROCS
BBL
COL
HOI
CRTS
HEE
ROLEO
IFI (....*$&^)
NEU
LETTERA
MEDO (me don't!)
ROWR

All so we can get Acrosses in ABC (so-called) order. I don't understand how anyone could think this puzzle (with this fill) could be fun to solve. LUCAS ARTS, I liked (42A: Maker of Star Wars and Indiana Jones video games). That was nice. And I enjoy TINA FEY, sure (65A: Former "Weekend Update" co-anchor). But once you grok the theme, there's just nothing to find or discover, and not much to enjoy. At one point early on, I thought I might get through the grid without encountering too much gruesome fill, but then:

When INUP crosses TIEA, then, well, I'LL SEE YOU (in hell)! Nothing here was too difficult, though how the hell am I supposed to know Lady Bird Johnson's name was CLAUDIA?? (17A: Lady Bird Johnson's real given name). I guess there are no famous CLAUDIAs?? That and my TITO-for-CITO mistake mad the NE a little challenging. And my inability to see TINA FEY (I was looking for a single last name) in the SE also resulted in some struggle. Her first and last letters were very late in coming, as the "adjunct" in 60D: Barnyard adjunct made me "??" and the clue on GYM was just hard (63D: It might precede a shower).

I despise all bridge-related clues, but that's just a matter of (good) taste. I won't hold it against the puzzle. But the rest of it, I do hold. Against. Very much. And honestly, that fake lion sound should be RAWR, imo. Just changing the "A" in ROAR to a "W" seems hardly worth it. (Oh look, I'm right, it's RAWR, the end)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SCAR (22A: Bare place on the side of a mountain) —

Definition of scar
1: an isolated or protruding rock
2: a steep rocky eminence : a bare place on the side of a mountain (M-W)

• • •

Didn't feel that great about my opening—felt like I was cheating my way into the grid with crosswordese (TAFT to TATAR to ALIA). But once I got going, things started feeling a little better. Answers got more interesting, clues provided a little more resistance. Then I dropped the double-Q QUEEQUEG (off the initial "Q," of course), and realized "oh, it's gonna be one of *those* puzzle (meaning "those puzzles that throw All The Scrabble Tiles at you). And then immediately came the confirmation, with BUZZFEED QUIZZES and MIKE PIAZZA. Often *those* puzzles go south, buckling under the weight of their own misguided ambition, but today's actually ended up kinda nice. Lots of unusual fill—modern phrases and items, slang and colloquialisms. Things stayed varied and interesting throughout, and the gruesome fill was pretty minimal (though I'm never gonna forget FIDOS, which becomes the new paradigmatic example of Absurd Plural Names).

"Wheelchair-bound" is a pretty shitty way to refer to someone in a wheelchair (33A: Wheelchair-bopund "Glee" character), mostly because it reinforces a lot of stupid, negative stereotypes. People in wheelchairs aren't tragic figures. The chair is enabling, not stigmatizing. Just google "wheelchair bound" and you'll see—It's a term that's been flagged as ableist for many years now. So stop it. Once again, maybe a *teeny* bit of diversity in the editing corps would help prevent tin-eared stuff like this from slipping through. I'm not *terribly* offended (I mean ... like ... I'm not FIDOS-offended), but some will be, and I don't blame them.

Bullets:

3D: Trading hub (PORT)— I had MART. Only other misstep was SQFT for SQIN (19A: Abbr. in many an area measure)
22A: Bare place on the side of a mountain (SCAR)— wow, I just do not know this word. Kind of embarrassing, but ... nope, it just missed me, somehow.
5D: Hit sci-fi video game set around the 26th century (STARCRAFT)— also don't know this, but don't feel that bad about it. You can't know everything.
49A: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" detective Diaz (ROSA)— Like this. Don't know this. Shrug. You work in out from crosses, move along.
61A: "D'oh!" ("I'M AMORON")— this borders on contrived, but ... I'll accept it, I guess.
25A: Live, in a way (UNTAPED)— this seems even more contrived ... :(
54D: Not a candidate for the invoking of the 25th Amendment, say (SANE)— too soon, NYT! Or maybe not soon enough, I'm not sure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. probably not the greatest idea to have "buzzkill" in a clue (41A) and BUZZFEED in the grid

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Constructor: John Guzzetta and Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium (11:44)

THEME: THEMEless

Word of the Day: ROLFE (41A: Son-in-law of Chief Powhatan) —

John Rolfe (1585–1622) was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Rex has a night off to GET REST (14D: Recharge, so to speak) and recover from a cold, so you get me (Laura) to woMAN (60D: Staff) the blog. A DEAL'S A DEAL (13D: "We agreed to it, so you'd better deliver"), said Rex, trusting that I would not RUN RIOT (57A: With 10-Down, go wild; 10D: See 57-Across), and create a PR NIGHTMARE (64A: Big headache for a company rep). I found this appropriately challenging, with a few misdirections, and decent stacks in each corner. Took a ZONE DEFENSE (12D: 2-3 or 1-2-2, in basketball) approach, working through the NE and then reverse-diagonally across to the SW, then SE (favorite of the four corner stacks) back up to the NW, where things got MARSHY (47D: Boggy). I had ITUNES RADIO fooling me for a while -- I've used APPS like (53D: Pandora and Spotify) (as well as the revived Napster), and had only vaguely heard of I HEART RADIO (15A: Alternative to Pandora or Spotify). Also had BOA instead of WIG for 1D: Drag accessory.

If you 17A, Robert Palmer apologizes (h/t @BenMSmith).

One would have to have a TIN EAR (20A: Difficulty picking up subtleties) not to notice both GOT TURNED ON (17A: Became excited) and FLACCID (42D: Like a wet noodle) in the same grid; while I'm all for what the movie ratings people call "adult themes" and "raunchy comedy," perhaps a touch of ARTINESS (30A: Pretension) would've kept that juxtaposition from seeming like the work of a couple of ADOLESCENTS (24D: Minority group) wanting to HORSE AROUND (23D: Goof off). OHO! ODE to ANI and TONI. EEE! RUN! ORCA! ADD TAR, TEE TNT.

Bullets:

Dude, you're getting a DELL (51A: Inspiron maker)
6D: Fireon from above (STRAFE) and 50D: Counterpart of a blitz (SIEGE): I'll take "War Tactics" for $500, Alex.
40A: Oxford designation (EEE)— Oxford as in the shoe type, which is sometimes manufactured in the extra-wide EEE size.
33A: Loyalty, old-style (TROTH)— Always makes me think of a cartoon by the genius Sandra Boynton.

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

[Follow Laura on Twitter]

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Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Size Matters"— sound "sigh" is added to familiar phrases creating wacky phrases etc:

Theme answers:

STATIC CYCLING (22A: Spin class activity?)
SILO FREQUENCY (32A: Number of appearances in a grain holder?)
PC CYCLONES (50A: Storms that don't offend?)
DRAWS SINAI (86A: Makes a quick map of an Egyptian peninsula?)
SILENT SUPPORT (100A: Opening performers that are all mimes?)
SAIGON FISHING (116A: Rod-and-reel event in old Vietnam?)
SHARK, SIPHON SOUP (awk) (3D: Order to a pool hustler to suck up some broth?)
SCION COMMISSION (48D: Government group on offspring?)

Word of the Day: LADOGA (83A: Europe's largest lake) —

Lake Ladoga (Russian: Ла́дожское о́зеро, tr.Ladozhskoye ozero; IPA: [ˈladəʂskəjə ˈozʲɪrə] or Russian: Ла́дога, tr.Ladoga; IPA: [ˈladəgə]; Finnish: Laatokka [earlier in Finnish Nevajärvi]; Livvi-Karelian: Luadogu; Veps: Ladog, Ladoganjärv) is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia just outside the outskirts of Saint Petersburg. // It is the largest lake entirely in Europe, and the 14th largest freshwater lake by area in the world. Ladoga Lacus, a methane lake on Saturn's moon Titan, is named after the lake. (wikipedia)

• • •

So the title is a penis joke? I mean, if you google "Size matters," the first hit you get is this video:

Anyway, the "sighs"matter in this grid. This is a very typical add-a-sound puzzle, with very typical (for me) results, i.e. most answers are corny at best, and some of the phrasing / cluing feels quite awkward or forced. The "phon" in "siphon" and the "fin" in "shark fin soup" (gross) do not have the same sound, so that one klunked. "Lent support" is a super weak base phrase, as is "On commission." Your wordplay word should be more stable / significant than that. Changing "on" feels like ... not much. And "lent support" is just a verb phrase. Not remarkable. Are "PC clones" still things in the 21st century. No one thinks that way about PCs now. Oh, look: wikipedia: " The use of the term "PC clone" to describe IBM PC compatible computers fell out of use in the 1990s; the class of machines it now describes are simply called PCs." Thanks, wik.

Fill doesn't do much for me either. It's just fine, but there's not much that's remarkable. Probably too much of the "please delete it from your wordlist" junk like ONENO (hate So Much), GAI (crossing MAI, crossing MMES!), UIE, AAR, LALAS (no), YLEM🙁. We do get treated (if that's the right word) to a non-Katarina WITT (56D: Alicia of "Urban Legend," 1998) and a non-judge, non-baritone, non-Colorado Park ESTES (2D: Photorealist painter Richard). Neither of those clues will stick, but they are different, I'll give them that.

Two things—that episode of "The Allusionist" podcast that was taped at Lollapuzzoola last month (featuring me and my wife and many, many other crossword types) was named one of the 20 best podcast episodes of the summer by Indiewire. It also generated so much interest in Lollapuzzoola that they *reopened* their solve-at-home sales. So you can get the tournament puzzles again if you somehow missed the first window. Listen to the podcast, solve the puzzles ... maybe in reverse order? Not sure. Anyway, in whatever order, do both.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Erik Agard and Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LALA / LAND (53D: With 58-Down, head-in-the-clouds place ... or a hint to each answer that has four circles)— two-word themers where both words contain letter pairing "LA":

Theme answers:

MALAY PENINSULA (16A: Kuala Lumpur's locale)
TORTILLA FLAT (22A: Titular California district in a Steinbeck novel)
LAKE PLACID (29D: 1980 Winter Olympics host)
WALLA WALLA (31D: Washington city with a repetitive name)

Word of the Day: Dominque DAWES (30A: Dominique ___, 1996 Olympic gymnastics gold medalist) —

Dominique Margaux Dawes-Thompson (born November 20, 1976) is a retired American artistic gymnast. Known in the gymnastics community as 'Awesome Dawesome,' she was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, the 1994 U.S. all-around senior National Champion, a three-time Olympian, a World Championship silver and bronze medalist, and a member of the gold-medal-winning team "Magnificent Seven" at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. [...] She is also one of only three female American gymnasts, along with Muriel Grossfeld and Linda Metheny-Mulvihill, to compete in three Olympics and was part of their medal-winning teams: Barcelona 1992 (bronze), Atlanta 1996 (gold), and Sydney 2000 (bronze). Dawes is the first female gymnast to be a part of three Olympic-medal-winning teams since Lyudmila Turischeva won gold in Mexico City (1968), Munich (1972), and Montreal (1976). Since Dawes, Svetlana Khorkina is the only gymnast to accomplish this feat, winning silver in Atlanta (1996) and Sydney (2000), and bronze in Athens (2004). (wikipedia)

• • •

I mean, the *concept* isn't exactly wow, but on a Monday, I don't care that much. As long as the theme answer's not forced and fill is not garbage and puzzle is pretty easy, I'm happy. And here, the themers are actually great, just as answers on their own, and the fill is tight. I worry about the few of you who got Naticked at DAWES / SXSW— I figure there gotta be a few of you out there. Crossing two not-enormously-famous proper nouns at a not-terribly-inferrable letter is dicey. But at DAWE-, what else is gonna go there? And honestly both DAWES and SXSW are pretty well known at this point. You should know one of them, at least, probably. I probably wouldn't have risked this cross, but I knew both DAWES and SXSW, so I have no beef. I really dig the weird-sized grid (14x16), as well as the unusual mirror (as opposed to rotational symmetry). I'm not at all surprised that this is entertaining and smooth. Both these constructors are great on their own, so together ... how are they gonna miss? Unlikely.

Blew through this very quickly, with only SOSPAD (briefly) giving me any grief. I doubted AFROED for a bit, because ... well, that's a an adjectived noun that I haven't seen in puzzles before. But then I thought "these guys ... would do that." I think the whole idea of a PERFECT GPA has lost all meaning, esp on the 4.0 point scale. High-school-aged daughter gets number grades (out of 100) and then those usually get this ridiculous bump if they're advanced classes, so you end up with grades over 100 (?), which is ridiculous. I think in lots of places, you can technically have a GPA over 4.0, so from a contemporary accuracy standpoint, not sure about PERFECT GPA (Paolo is my daughter's age, so he surely knows all this). Please notice that there is no junk fill in this grid. None. Nada. Zip. If you want to know "What Does He Want?!" when I complain about all the mediocre to shitty grids I gripe about: this. This is what I want. Try harder, older folks, because the young are outcrafting you on a regular basis (I am older than these two constructors put together!!!!!!). Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: something and one somethings ... — clue is a number of some entity? and the number is a roman numeral followed by that entity, which combined constitute an unclued word:

Theme answers:

MI STRESSES (17A: 1,001 causes of anxeity?)
CI STERNS (26A: 101 rear ends?)
LI FELINES (37A: 51 cats?)
VI EWINGS (53A: Six members of a "Dallas" family?)
DI VERSIONS (61A: 501 renditions?)

Word of the Day: OMRI (14A: Father of Ahab in the Bible) —

The Omrides, Omrids or House of Omri were a ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) founded by King Omri. According to the Bible, the Omride rulers of Israel were Omri, Ahab and Ahab's sons Ahaziah and Jehoram. Ahab's daughter (or perhaps sister) Athaliah also became queen regnant of the Kingdom of Judah. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm still trying to figure out how I solved a Tuesday puzzle with this strange a theme, with all long-Down corners, in slightly under my normal Tuesday time, especially when the entire NW felt like a takeoff disaster. I guess once I locked onto the theme, I took off like a shot. But if the whole puzzle had gone the way it began, this would've ended up Challenging. So the thing about long-Down corners is they are somehow tougher on average than long-Across corners. With the latter, all the short Downs are lined up in a row and you can pick a bunch off and then have at the longer Acrosses, but in long-Down corners, you gotta eyeskip all over to find the short *Acrosses* to help you with those Downs, and that always goes less well. Anyway, today, HOMELAB IMINAWE PRSTUNT were a mini-wall of pain, esp. crossed by OMRI (who?) and "AW, NUTS" (which is fine fill, but toughish to pick up).

That wall of pain was also crossed by the first themer, and though maybe I should've, I did not see the Roman numeral gimmick up front, so I needed Every Single Cross to get MISTRESSES, and even then was like "??? ... Dude, if your mistress is causing you anxiety, maybe you shouldn't have one (let alone one thousand and one)." Somehow the "LI" at the front of LIFELINES jumped out as a Roman numeral after I read its clue (37A: 51 cats?), but even then I wasn't sure what was happening; I got most of LIFELINES from crosses, and after realizing "LI" was the "51" in question, I (of course) assumed it was in play *twice* in that answer (i.e. I didn't see LI FELINES, I saw LI FE / LI NES). That themer is absolutely terrible for that reason. I'm still stunned that you'd go with this theme and then choose an answer that has the Roman numeral in it twice, and both times at the *beginning* of words (LIFE and LINE). Bad form. But I figured out what was going on and from there, the puzzle skewed Easy.

It's always slightly weird to end up with words in the grid that haven't been (literally) clued at all. Bothers some people. Doesn't exactly bother me, but it would be nice if a stronger gimmick were in play here. This one's just ... curious. Interesting. Answer themselves aren't exciting. Grid as a whole is OK, with perhaps too much OMRI (my new word—today only!—for short gunk like GYNT and ETTE and ATTA and OMRI).

Theme has me reparsing all the answers in search of new possibilities.

[Puts the wrong wig on a performer?]
[Seabirds whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth?]
[Long island train routes for shipping iron?]
["Get in the competition, mysteriously long-running NBC TV show from the '90s!"]
[Wetsuit wearer's charged particles?]

Well that was at least as fun as solving the puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Daniel Mauer

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: THE LITTLE THINGS (62A: They're what really count, so it's said ... or a hint to the multilingual answers to the starred clues)— three phrases begin with foreign terms for "a/the little"

Theme answers:

LE PETIT DEJEUNER (17A: *Breakfast, in Burgundy)
EINE KLEINE / NACHTMUSIK (23A: *With 52-Across, 1787 Mozart composition)
UNA POCA DE GRACIA (40A: *Repeated lyric in "La Bamba")

Word of the Day: ORANGINA (41D: Fizzy citrus beverage) —

Orangina (French pronunciation: [ɔʁɑ̃ʒina]) is a lightly carbonated beverage made from carbonated water, 12% citrus juice, (10% from concentrated orange, 2% from a combination of concentrated lemon, concentrated mandarin, and concentrated grapefruit juices) as well as 2% orange pulp. Orangina is sweetened with sugar or high fructose corn syrup (glucose-fructose) and natural flavors are added. // Orangina was invented at a trade fair in France, developed by Dr. Augustin Trigo Mirallès from Spain, and first sold in French Algeria by Léon Beton in 1935. Today it is a popular beverage in Europe, Japan, northern Africa, and to a lesser extent in North America. (emph. mine) (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was feeling stuffy from 1A: Hairdressers' challenges (MOPS). Something about that slang feels strangely dated to me—something you'd say about some Dennis the Menace-type's hair in the '50s. You'd probably also call the kid "impish." The kid would play marbles. You get my drift. But that was just a harbinger, an omen, boding ... not evidence of stuffiness. Evidence came later in an onslaught of overfamiliar short gunk (or OMRI, as I'm now calling it, for the second day in a row). This puzzle is seriously awash in it. HOTSY *and* EENIE? And then a dozen other things I've seen scores of times in the 25+ years I've been solving? (OPEL! SRI! Multiple OLES!) Sigh. But the theme? What of the charming theme, you maybe ask. Well it just doesn't work. I don't know why sticking the landing doesn't appear to be important to people. But it's important. It is. And LE PETIT DEJEUNER just doesn't work here, for at least two reasons. First, the other two are "a little" where this one is "the little." Yes, that matters. But what matters more is that the other two translate perfectly as "a little" (A Little Night Music, a little bit of grace), whereas no one but no one would translate LE PETIT DEJEUNER as "the little lunch" (though that is the *literal* meaning of those words). It's just ... breakfast. Also, why are these multilingual? And why doesn't the revealer have any relation to multilinguality? This just isn't tight. It's a slim idea, meekly executed. It does have I AM SO DEAD, which, ironically, is the answer that is in the least amount of trouble with me.

Here's a little more trouble for you, re: 24D: McDonald's founder Ray:

Wikipedia concurs, noting that, "It was founded in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California." And also: "Controversially, Kroc would present himself as the founder of McDonald's during his later life" (emph. mine both times). Can't wait for the correction on that one. Wife just walked in, indignant about HOTSY. "Who says HOTSY-totsy? Have you ever said HOTSY-totsy?" I was like, "No, but I think I know what it means." But then I didn't. Ugh, HOTSY. Anyway, one upside of this puzzle is I solved it fast. EINE KLEINE / NACHTMUSIK was a lot of real estate to just give away, and the grid was chopped up into tiny, easy-to-get answers, so I finished in about the same time I had yesterday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: DIASTEMA (52A: Formal term for the gap suggested by 17/18-, 35/37- and 54/57-Across)— it means a gap between the teeth; each theme answer has a "gap" in the middle of the word TOOTH (which is embedded in each answer):

Theme answers:

TOOT / HIS OWN HORN (17A: With 18-Across, what a boastful guy might do)
DO UNTO / OTHERS (35A: With 37-Across, start of an ethical rule)
SPREAD TOO / THIN (54A: With 57-Across, overextended)

Word of the Day: DIASTEMA—

noun
a gap between the teeth, in particular.
Zoology
a space separating teeth of different functions, especially that between the biting teeth (incisors and canines) and grinding teeth (premolars and molars) in rodents and ungulates.
noun: diastema; plural noun: diastemata
a gap between a person's two upper front teeth. (google)

• • •

This is a good idea poorly executed. Two very major problems. First, the revealer ... how do I say this? ... To have your revealer be a hyper-obscure term (I'm sorry, "Formal term") is maybe not the greatest idea if you have any intention of having the solver's experience result in a final "AHA! Ooh! Satisfying!" Or if you want your solver to understand your puzzle *at all* without the aid of a dictionary. So this ended with all the pleasure of ... googling the answer. Only then did see what was going on in the themers—which brings me to the second major problem. Maybe you can see this for yourself. Just look at the way the theme is played out, visually. Now consider what DIASTEMA means. See a problem? If the ****ing ridiculous obscurantist nightmare term your using as a revealer means "space between teeth" then that damned space better come between some damned teeth. But no. We just get busted, cracked teeth. I looked up a word for this? No. No thanks.

Only trouble in this grid is gonna come from the revealer and (surprise!) proper nouns. I happen to know DUMONT but many under 70 won't, and let's hope they're football fans because that "M" crosses MADDEN (27A: ___ NFL (video game franchise)). OROSCO will be very familiar to older (i.e. roughly my age and older) baseball fans, particularly '86 Mets fans. But a whole cross-section of solverdom will need ever cross there. NESSUS is bonkers, in that I teach stuff that he's mentioned in and even I forgot his damned name (44D: Centaur who was killed by Hercules). Personally, I died at the SHYEST/RYDELL crossing. I had an "I" there. Put it there because I thought that was how you spelled SHIEST. And then left it in for RIDELL. It's not that I didn't know the name of the "Grease" high school. I've seen the movie a billion times. But once that "I" went in, RYDELL wasn't gonna knock it out. It's a pretty bad cross, since SHIEST is acceptable and RYDELL is a proper noun. But whatever. It's fine. My bad.

Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go tie up a single LOOSE END (2D: Something to tie up).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: John von NEUMANN (32A: Computer science pioneer John von ___) —

John von Neumann (/vɒnˈnɔɪmən/; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos, pronounced [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, inventor, computer scientist, and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, representation theory, operator algebras, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and quantum statistical mechanics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, context / inflection means everything on a clue like 27A: "Seriously!" I thought it was being said like "I MEAN IT!" not like "I KNOW, RIGHT?" (which is a real thing people say and a great answer). That is, I thought "Seriously!" was an exclamation of insistence, not an exclamation of agreement. Beyond that, I had the -NGER and wanted DÖPPELGANGER at 6D: Look-alike (DEAD RINGER), and I confidently wrote in MEDIA CIRCUS for 21A: Atmosphere around a celebrity trial, say (MEDIA FRENZY). Wanted AVEO for NOVA and then *got* AVEO later on. Weird. Wouldn't [Nutso] be CRAZED, and [Semi-nutso]HALF-CRAZED? (29D). Do people really remember Peter Fonda's *character's* name from "Easy Rider'? Needed most of the crosses to get WYATT. Grew up in California and know all the [University of California campus site]s but somehow blanked on the only one that anyone in my family actually attended! (SANTA CRUZ). And I had the "Z"! I think I saw the "Z" and my first thought was "Oh, there must be a campus site I don't know," instead of thinking, "Oh, it's where your ****ing stepbrother went to college, idiot!"

["... 'cause we can't see EYE-TO-EYE ..."]

There's nothing wrong with this puzzle, but it felt a little flat. I think my standards for themelesses are starting to rise, as I know they're much easier to fill with interesting answers than themed puzzles (which have serious restrictions by nature). It's not shocking that I have historically liked Fri and Sat puzzles much better than those from other days of the week.

[from "Did Rex Parker like the puzzle?"]

Good themes are hard to pull off, and *especially* hard to pull off without dragging the non-theme fill down. Good themelesses, while they can be challenging to make, are generally easier to make *interesting* / splashy than themed puzzles are. So something like today's themeless puzzle, which is merely solid, leaves me a little cold. Without theme restrictions, you should be able to do a little dazzling with the fill. You can always dazzle with the cluing. But this clue dazzles on neither front. Again, it is not weak or bad. But I want art. Or cheap thrills. Or both. Something. I dunno. Maybe if the cluing were much better, it would've felt less like a warm-up puzzle and more like a Main Event.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Natan Last, Finn Vigeland and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CHAYOTE (40D: Gourd also known as a vegetable pear) —

noun
noun: chayote; plural noun: chayotes
1.
a green pear-shaped tropical fruit that resembles cucumber in flavor.
2.
the tropical American vine that yields the chayote, also producing an edible yamlike tuberous root. (google)

• • •

The grid is sprinkled with some lovely answers, though the loveliness is undercut somewhat by a rather strong dose of crosswordese (on a couple occasions, plural crosswordese), and a SE corner that's been bombarded with obscurities: a clue for TARA that was popular with Farrar, Weng, and Maleska, but has hardly been seen at all in the past quarter century (54A: Hill of ___, site of Ireland's Lia Fáil); something called TTY, which has only appeared in the NYTX three times, and is apparently somewhat dated nowadays (it's short for "teletypewriter"); and then CHAYOTE, which has never been in the NYTX before today, and which I'm seeing right now for the first time in my life. Yes, sure, learning new things is great, blah blah blah, but CHAYOTE nearly abutting TTY just reeks of bygone puzzles that sought to test your knowledge rather than to entertain. TTY in particular is weak (the meaning of those letters is totally uninferrable) (58D: Communication device for the deaf: Abbr.). You want people leaving your puzzle going "wow," not "wha?" Lastly, in that same corner, why am I *watching* the gap. I *mind* the gap. That's the famous expression, right? Is it a Brit v. US thing. "Mind the gap" is a snappy, coherent, in-the-language phrase. "Watch the gap" ... appears to be NYC-specific.

The NW is the real winner of a section here today (located, fittingly, on the opposite side of the grid from the SE, aka "SATAN's Corner"). Those Acrosses are a lovely way to open the puzzle, though they were somewhat hard to get at, given that two of them had "?" clues on them. I would throw ERTES and EER and ELAL and even PSYOPS back if I could, but on the whole, that corner is nice. EMERGEN-C and "SHARK TANK" give the puzzle a needed jolt of modernity, but ... what the hell is going on with that RYAN clue? (55A: "The O.C." protagonist). Of allllllllll the RYANs in the word, both last names and first names, you go to the protagonist of a show that's been off the air for a decade, whose name no one but die-hard fans would've known to begin with? I watched at least a season of that damn thing and ... RYAN? If you say so. I will never understand *that* clue for *that* name in *this* year.

I have no idea what a PANIC BAR is. "Door part"? Wikipedia says: "Crash bar (also known as a panicexit device, panic bar, or push bar) is a type of door opening mechanism which allows users to open a door by pushing a bar. While originally conceived as a way to prevent stampedes in an emergency, crash bars are now used as the primary door opening mechanism in many commercial buildings." So ... it's just that bar part that you push (un-panickedly, in my experience) to get in and out of many kinds of commercial buildings? I clearly don't share much of a cultural frame of reference with this puzzle. It's a solid effort with some standout answers. Not to my taste, but certainly acceptable work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Mark MacLachlan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Super Looper"— themers have a mini loop in them (signified by circles), so answer goes up one back one down one and then resumes its Across path:

Theme answers:

LOBSTER THERMIDOR (23A:S Fancy French shellfish dish)
BEVERAGE ROOM (oh come on, that is not a thing) (25A: Beer parlor)
UNDER ONE ROOF (49A: All together, as a family)
BLACKBOARD ERASER (51A: Classroom item)
CONCERT SERIES (69A: Central Park's SummerStage, e.g.)
COMPUTER OPERATOR (86A: Tech overseer)
SPOILER ALERT (91A: Reason to stop reading)
ROLE REVERSAL (116A: Premise of the film "Freaky Friday")
BATTERY TERMINALS (118A: Some positives and negatives)

Word of the Day: Karin ENKE (38D: Speed skater Karin who won eight Olympic medals) —

Karin Enke-Richter (née Enke, formerly Busch and Kania, born 20 June 1961) is a former speed skater, one of the most dominant of the 1980s. She is a three-time Olympic gold medallist, winning the 500 metres in 1980, the 1000 metres in 1984 and the 1500 metres in 1984. She won a total of eight Olympic medals. (wikipedia)

• • •

Has the NYT just given up on the Sunday puzzle? You'd think they'd put a Lot more effort into recruiting great Sunday work, instead of this parade of tedium we've been getting. Either it's some cornball wacky theme (add a letter? change a sound?) with groaner dad humor from 1984, or it's some thin concept (like today) where nothing happens that is at all interesting. The loops do nothing but loop. Why do they loop? Who knows? Who cares? What do the looped letters spell out? Gibberish? What's the revealer? There is none. What does the title even mean? Uh ... it's a pun on this?

I honestly don't know. I just know that this puzzle was very easy and utterly without interest, in either the themers or the fill. Here's what I remember: I don't know how to spell "Thermidor." THERMADOR seemed so much more plausible. That error was the main contributing factor to the difficulty I had in that one small, northern section of the puzzle—along with the yucky / impossible-to-parse UT-AUSTIN (32A: Rex Tillerson's alma mater, for short) (Shortz's love affair with this White House continues apace ...). EM DASH and FAIR USE (both fine answers) were not the easiest things in the world to uncover and so that little area east of STRUT and west of TORTILLA was memorable for its thorniness. The rest of the puzzle was barely there. Provided all the resistance of a light mist—a mist polluted by such small particles as LLANOS ESA HEME ARIE ETH OOM SIE ELMST OSO OLES EEN and ENKE (?). Who says ON A SLOPE? ON A SLANT, maybe. SLOPE? Nope. My favorite part of the puzzle was actually an error I made: faced with the clue 86D: ___ wolf (three letters, starting "C"), I went with ... COY! It's a thing!

Look how coy that wolf is. It looks all innocent, but ... it knows.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:color-bodyparted— themers follow that basic pattern:

Theme answers:

WHITE-KNUCKLED (20A: Visibly tense)
GREEN-EYED (32A: Extremely jealous)
RED-HANDED (44A: In the very act)
YELLOW-BELLIED (56A: Deplorably cowardly)

Word of the Day: EUROPA (25A: Figure in Greek myth after whom a continent is named) —

Europa, in Greek mythology, the daughter either of Phoenix or of Agenor, king of Phoenicia. The beauty of Europa inspired the love of Zeus, who approached her in the form of a white bull and carried her away from Phoenicia to Crete. There she bore Zeus three sons: Minos, ruler of Crete; Rhadamanthys, ruler of the Cyclades Islands; and, according to some legends, Sarpedon, ruler of Lycia. She later married Asterius, the king of Crete, who adopted her sons, and she was worshipped under the name of Hellotis in Crete, where the festival Hellotia was held in her honour. (britannica)

• • •

If you like gated communities and grinding your teeth and modern Republican politics, welcome. Here is your puzzle. I wrote yesterday that the editor had a little love affair with the current White House. Then I briefly felt bad about that joke. I no longer feel bad about that joke. And RUBIO to boot? Gross. I'm all for the puzzle's reflecting the world at large, but when the world at large is this ****ing dystopic, I think it's reasonable not to feed the Publicity Obsessed White Supremacist in the White House With Yet More Publicity. I can barely even look at 11-Down. It's disgusting that anyone ever thought "let's give it a nickname, it'll be cute."

This seems like a theme that's been done, but not with these words, or in this exact way, I guess. YELLOW-BELLIED is the only one I really like. The only one that stands strong alone. RED-HANDED needs somebody who's been "caught,"WHITE-KNUCKLED needs to ditch the "D" and then put itself before "RIDE," and GREEN-EYED needs "MONSTER" to be anything close to plausible. I never got a good solving rhythm going—felt like I was all over the place, and also solving my way through mud. But then the clock said 2:39 which is a well-below-average time for me. Weird.

Wife is annoyed at how frequently KNEEL is clued in relation to knighthood (21D: Prepare to be knighted). "Where's the Kaepernick clue!?" Good question.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Grandpa Walton for short / WED 8-30-17 / Cyber Monday business

Transporter with sliding doors / THU 8-31-17 / FDR created program with slogan we do our part / Rapper who famously feuded with Jay-Z / Locale of hostile criticism metaphorically / City with famous bell tower

Pacific island Magellan visited in 1521 / FRI 9-1-17 / What ancient Greeks called Hyrcanian Ocean / Period ushered in by Augustus

Actress London of TV's Game / SAT 9-2-17 / Enemy of CONTROL on Get Smart / Oprah Winfrey network show about family farm / Female singer with second video ever shown on MTV / Jedi knight's rival / Targets of 1932 war in Australia

Crystal jewelry company with swan in its logo / SUN 9-3-17 / Constellation next to Corona Australis / International fusion restaurant chain / Low-quality bank offerings whose acronym suggests stealthiness / Hoppy quaff briefly / wacky tobacky in part / one-third of B-52 cocktail

Bird feeder material / MON 9-4-17 / Degs. held by Bloomberg and George W. Bush / Miso bean / Mythical 100-eyed giant

Rose petal oil / TUE 9-5-17 / Tree whose leaves appear in many Chinese fossils / Honolulu based carrier informally / Early Uber policty unpopular with drivers / Military bottoms informally

Late journalist Ifill / WED 9-6-17 / One-named Swedish singer with 1997 hit Show Me Love

Scarlet stigma / THU 9-7-17 / Old TV screens for short / Kingston dude / Modern educational acronym / Setting of Hercules first labor

Wheelchair-bound Glee character / FRI 9-8-17 / Comics character seen on gum wrappers / First principal character encountered by Ishmael in Moby-Dick / Hit sci-fi video game set around 26th century

Definition of scar

Alternative to Spotify or Pandora / SAT 9-9-17 / Collette of "United States of Tara" / Son-in-law of Chief Powhatan / "Governator" / C.S. Lewis symbol of Jesus / President Clinton hosted one in 2000 / Inspiron maker

Primordial universe matter / SUN 9-10-17 / Getaway for meditation / War su boneless chicken dish / Prince Edward's earldom / Lush's favorite radio station / Rapper with music streaming service Tidal / Fruit with greenish yellow rinds / Citroen competitor

Issa who stars on HBO's insecure / MON 9-11-17 / Titular California district in Steinbeck novel / Animal whose name is synonym of parrot / Pitchfork-shaped letter

Father of Ahab in Bible / 1001 causes of anxiety / 51 cats / Relative of snowboard / Strangely repulsive sort / Composer whose name is Italian for green

Otis's feline pal / WED 9-13-17 / Fizzy citrus beverage / 1787 Mozart composition / Repeated Lyric in La Bamba

Centaur who was killed by Hercules / THU 9-14-17 / Burrowing South Amercain rodent / Jesse who pitched in record 1252 major league games

Canadian crooner Michael / FRI 9-15-17 / Basic beverage in baby talk / Parker so-called queen of indies

Gourd also known as vegetable pear / SAT 9-16-17 / O.C. protagonist / Underground activity in '50s / 1950s TV personality who appeared in Grease / Many 1920s Harper's Bazaar covers

Fancy French shellfish dish / SUN 9-17-17 / Speed skater Karin who won eight Olympic medals / Pigment in red blood cells / Music genre for Weezer Shins Old outdoor dance sights / 1428 horror film address / Celestial object that emits radio waves

Ogden Nash's two-l beast / MON 9-18-17 / Start end of Greek spelling of Athena / ex of marla ivana informally