Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Gary Larson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: UP THE ANTE (55A: Increase what is at stake ... or a hint to answering 20-, 30- and 46-Across)— letter string "ANTE" goes up (instead of continuing Across) in the three theme answers:

Theme answers:

E
T
N
WADPOSTER (20A: Where you might see a criminal)

     E
     T
     N
DEBUTABALL (30A: Coming-out party)

E
T
N
DASINFERNO (46A: Account of a hellish trip?)

Word of the Day: Abe BEAME (1A: 1970s New York City mayor) —

Abraham David "Abe" Beame (March 20, 1906 – February 10, 2001) was the 104th Mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977. As mayor, he presided over the city during its fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, during which the city was almost forced to declare bankruptcy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not too hard to uncover this theme, and not too fun to uncover either. Feels like cheating to have one of the upped ANTEs be just ANTE in reverse, i.e. ETNA. I mean, the least you can do is disguise all the damn ANTEs inside other words. Also, very weird to have ACADEMICS and TURNABOUT just sitting there, same length as the adjacent themers but, you know, not themers. Those answers are in theme answer positions ... but aren't. So that was odd and disappointing. Actual theme answers in the grid are gibberish—nothing wacky about them. More disappointment. Fill is average to below average. There are some mildly interesting bits (IN DISARRAY, DRINKATHON), but mostly this is pretty bland fare. The only real inventive part involved finding places to put the upped ANTE. I don't count ETNA as "inventive," but PET NAMES and WETNAP work. "ETNA," it turns out, is not an easy letter string to work with. Still, would've liked this puzzle at least a tiny bit better if VIETNAM could've been worked in somehow (instead of ETNA).

My NYC mayor knowledge does not go back to BEAME, so even though I've seen his name before, I needed almost every cross (1A: 1970s New York City mayor). Had no idea there was a [Soviet nuclear-powered submarine] called ALFA. I'm assuming Gary Larson is 10-to-20 years older than I am, given his frame of reference (and heavy reliance on old-school crossword answers, e.g. SWIT, ROC, AGAR, ESAU, RAU, etc.) Slowed myself way down with adjacent wrong letter guesses at 37A: J.F.K. posting, for short and 42A: Something a Mississippi cheerleader repeatedly calls for. ETA / ANS instead of ETD / ANI. Yet another thing that did not endear me to this puzzle. Wrong guesses are a part of solving life, but when they pile up, and they are in bad fill, pleasure diminishes. OK, gotta go make sure all the teenagers are out of my house now, i.e be the annoying dad, i.e. be myself. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Erika SLEZAK (46D: Erika with six Daytime Emmys) —

Erika Alma Hermina Slezak (/ˈsleɪzæk/; born August 5, 1946) is an American actress, best known for her role as Victoria Lord on the American daytime soap operaOne Life to Live from 1971 through the television finale in 2012 and again in the online revival in 2013. She is one of the longest-serving serial actors in American media.

• • •

Today was a day I got a lot of help from my winter vacation TV-viewing habits. Just yesterday I watched the godawful "Babes in Toyland" (1934) starring Laurel & Hardy (I thought they were supposed to be funny) and one of the main figures in Toyland—the female lead, in fact: BO PEEP (1D: Children's character associated with a crook). Plunked her down without hesitation. Later on, when I was very stuck in the only part of the puzzle that was at all hard, I was able to bail myself out because the TV show I've been devouring for the past couple weeks—the one set primarily at a country club in *New Jersey*—is called "RED OAKs" (44D: New Jersey's state tree). If only I played Nintendo or watched a lot of daytime television, I might've set a Friday record. As it was, pretty average. Puzzle quality, however, was above average for sure. Lots of entertaining and unusual fill, with EVIL GRIN being probably my favorite. I have to say, though, that having OXYCONTIN in the puzzle, in the middle of an opioid epidemic—especially when the NYT's own top-of-the-home-page story today is about how the opioid epidemic has overwhelmed the foster care system—that was depressing. Total downer of a way to start off. Obviously it's a useful prescription medication, a morally neutral term, but the context of the current crisis made it taste pretty bad.

Here's where the wheels came off, or started to wobble, at any rate:

This is after a brief struggle with KONG (??) (34D: Diddy ___ (peanut-shooting Nintendo character)) and DENT (I had WELT) (41A: Bad impression?). Looking back, I regret that a. I put in SLEZAK (must've rung a bell) but then revoked it when nothing happened. I never ever should've put DEN in there at 60D: Leopard spot (ZOO). Wrong guesses kill, folks. The secret to fast solving is uncommitting to wrong answers. ("Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error": CICERO) See how nothing wants to touch DEN? There's a reason! Also, I confused "successor" and "predecessor" in my head and so completely misunderstood 40D: Whigs' successor, briefly. I wanted GOP right away, but a. obviously they did not come before the Whigs, and b. GOP would've conflicted with GLUE, which really felt like the right answer at 43A: Stick it to? (GORE). I also entered and retracted CURD at some point (56D: Bean ___). Pulled DEN and finally got GOP / GORE to work, and thus REPEAT (50A Do over), and then (finally!) a breakthough with TABBY, which made LAMB and OKEY both (eventually) visible. That "Y" in DEARY ME was lethal. I know "DEAR ME!" which seems a pretty good equivalent for ["Heavens to Betsy!"]. I sat there forever with "DEAR ... !?!?!?$@#&%^!" That "Y" was the key to everything. Oh, and that SPORTY clue was brutal, too (48D: Containing a spoiler) (spoilers are those little raised attachments on the back of SPORTY cars that are supposed to decrease drag) (not to be confused with a "wing," which increases drag ... or so I'm told).

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:none

Word of the Day: Leon CZOLGOSZ (34D: McKinley's assassin)—

Leon Frank Czolgosz (Polish: Czołgosz[ˈt͡ʂɔwɡɔʂ]; May 5, 1873 – October 29, 1901) was an American anarchist and former steel worker who assassinated U.S. President William McKinley in September 1901. Czolgosz was executed just over seven weeks later.

• • •

If you knew CZOLGOSZwithout ever having seen the musical "Assassins," congratulations. To me, that name is just someone slamming their face into the keyboard, so that corner was horrendously tough, in a puzzle that was already pretty tough. Pop culture was all beyond me. AL PACINO was in "Merchant of Venice"? OK. Someone named INI Kamoze exists? If you say so. Didn't know Durocher was talking about OTT. Barely knew that Hemingway's old man was SANTIAGO (needed a bunch of crosses for that to come back to me). No idea what ALNICO is (except basically AL PACINO minus the PA). Would not have spelled FOGY without an "E". Point SUR? Nope. An URN is a "base"? Nope. EMU oil? Really? Wow. Poor EMU. Didn't know ANN meant "grace" (???). And on and on. RUN-DMC and KING JAMES were about the only proper nouns on my wavelength today. Oh, and MC ESCHER wasn't too hard. And J-DATE. But overall this was the bad kind of hard—hard because of proper nouns and tenuous clues.

ALTAR BOYS ring bells??

NOT VALID could've gone so many ways but it goes this dumb math way. NOT VALID is something you say about a license or a coupon. [Cracks] [Range] [Snag] are successive Across clues. This is sadistic. Write a clue. Piling up vague one-word clues is not good cluing. Top-level trivia buffs probably destroyed this, as so much of it is, well, trivial. I want something more from puzzles than just "do you know these names?" On the plus side, because I was so slow overall, I had only one real mistake. Wrote in LEANS / NOLO instead of TENDS / DARE (11D: Inclines / 22A: Option for people who can't handle the truth?).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS [Pioneering rap trio with mathematically inspired works?] = RUN-DMC ESCHER

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Constructor: John Lampkin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New"—themers are wacky phrases where "O"s have been removed (in the top half) or added (in the bottom half) to ordinary phrases ... "Happy" New Year!

Theme answers:

LAST TANG IN PARIS (22A: Result of a French powdered drink shortage?)
CELL RECITAL (35A: List of things said by Siri?)
POL GROUNDS (55A: Washington, D.C.?)
I NEED A HUGO (76A: Struggling sci-fi writer's plea for recognition?)
URANIUM OREO (96A: Treat that gives a glowing complexion?)
SEVEN DAYS IN MAYO (113A: Weeklong Irish vacation?)
SUM WRESTLER (15D: One having trouble with basic arithmetic?)
FLOPPY DISCO (64D: Some loose dancing?)
CAM GEAR (34D: Photog's bagful?)
MAD CAPO (65D: Godfather after being double-crossed?)

Word of the Day: CCC (4A: New Deal org.) —

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men. Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the first director of the agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death. The CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state, and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000. Over the course of its nine years in operation, 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 (about $547 in 2015^[2]) per month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families). (wikipedia)

• • •

I tried, you guys. I really did. I went in to this like, "Damn it, I am going to *like* a Sunday puzzle. This has been a terrible, terrible year for Sunday puzzles, but by gum (!), I'm gonna enjoy this one." And then the puzzle proceeded to hold up its middle finger at me for 11-12 minutes. It's inexplicable, this incredible decline. This grotesque charade. This completely uninventive and unclever and sad thing that the Sunday puzzle—the marquee puzzle of the week!—has become.

Add a letter, drop a letter, wacky wacky wacky, piles of crosswordese ... in 2017, with as much constructing talent as there is out there, it's baffling. The slimmest, frailest of concepts—it's a play on "ring," get it!?—is supposed to carry you through an entire 21x21 grid? Perhaps with a truly talented clue writer, a concept like this might be salvaged, might be carried out over a giant grid without becoming supremely tiresome. But instead: [Some loose dancing?] for FLOPPY DISCO!? That's it? That's your clue? And SEVEN DAYS IN MAYO gets [Weeklong Irish vacation?]? Can you not feeeeeel how boring that clue is. When your theme concept is this thin (add/subtract a single letter), and is entirely reliant on the wackiness really *landing*, then you better step up and make those themers and clues hum. You need to work. Care. Craft. Something! Anything! But no. It's all workmanlike. And then the fill: ERLE, BAIO, SPOSE, NEH, ENS, and on and on and on. Up the pay to $3000 for a Sunday (a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what they make off a single Sunday puzzle), give the puzzle the editorial care it deserves, and maybe some of the talent you've lost in the past few years will start to come back (there are Big Names you haven't seen in forever ... for a reason). Until then, loyalists will continue to create OK puzzles and the rest of the time, we'll get ... this.

Though the theme is weak, the worst part of this puzzle—the memory that so many are going to be left with—is the unforgivably atrocious crossing of 4A and 4D. Never. Ever. Ever cross answers at a letter that is an abbr. In Both Directions. And *especially* don't do it when neither abbr. is a common term. I honestly couldn't tell you what either CCC or CWT stand for, and the *only* reason I guessed the letter there successfully is that I'd seen CWT somewhere in a puzzle before. That's all. That's it. The only reasonable thing to do if you absolutely insist on going to press with a CCC / CWT crossing is to clue CCC as a Roman numeral. It's 300. The idea that people in 2017 should know the Civilian Conservation Corps is absurd. Let me be clear: it's not that it's not "worth knowing." It's that it's generally not at all well known any more. And when you give it the remarkably lazy and vague [New Deal org.] clue ... it's all so contemptuous of solvers who care about (not to mention pay for) the "greatest puzzle in the world." Constructors should sniff out bad crosses like this, and editors *especially* should sniff them out.

Toughest part for me was the NW, where NOSE BLEED (3D: Result of a haymaker, maybe) and STEALTH (19D: Good hunting skill) and TROOP (31D: Batch of Brownies?) (all abutting one another) all were clued in ways I couldn't decipher. And then of course there's the CCC / CWT thing right there. Is "camo gear" a real phrase? That feels phenomenally weak as a self-standing phrase. Also, I was not looking for a theme answer on those seven-letter Downs—not when you've got nine-letter Downs that *aren't* themed. MAD CAPO and CAM GEAR therefore gave me more trouble than all the other themers by far (because I didn't know they were themers). Other major slow-down came, unfortunately but somewhat predictably, at a very weak answer—the partial A HINT (92A: "Give me ___"). I had AH-N- and without hesitation wrote in A HAND. Pfffffft. It's one thing to be fooled into a wrong answer by a clever clue, when the answer itself is at least a real, even if not particularly interesting, word. But to get snagged by a fill-in-the-blank partial? It's just not fun. I'll give A HINT one thing—it's stronger than A LION (!?!) (37D). But still, fool me with cleverness, if you're gonna fool me. I won't bother enumerating all the tired, hackneyed short stuff here. You can see it all over, from ARP to SOLER to OTERO. May the New Year bring you, and me, better Sunday puzzles. This Is My Sincere Wish.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. "Floppy disk" is spelled With a "K" ... it really is. Type "floppy di..." into google and see what predictive text gives you. Go ahead, I'll wait. No, I won't wait—it's all "disks." Therefore FLOPPY DISCO is, to borrow a phrase from yesterday's puzzle, NOT VALID. I have no idea what this puzzle thinks it's doing.

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Constructor: Matthew Sewell

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday ... it's over-sized, so maybe it's just Medium)

THEME:"torch songs"— famous song titles that in some way involve "fire" are clued as "torch songs" ...

Theme answers:

"BLAZE OF GLORY" (17A: Jon Bon Jovi torch song?)
"BURNING LOVE" (29A: Elvis Presley torch song?)
"ETERNAL FLAME" (36A: Bangles torch song?)
"LIGHT MY FIRE" (45A: The Doors torch song?)
"DISCO INFERNO" (59A: The Trammps torch song?)

Word of the Day:"Inside LLEWYN Davis"(39D: "Inside ___ Davis" (Coen brothers film)) —

Inside Llewyn Davis/ˈluː.ɪn deɪvɪs/ is a 2013 American black comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1961, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac in his breakthrough role, a folk singer struggling to achieve musical success while keeping his life in order. It co-stars Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, and Justin Timberlake. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a solid idea. The "torch song" thing, with its winky little "?" clues, is cute. Nice play on the word "torch." This set of themers feels awfully loose—a bunch of nouns that are rough synonyms for "fire" (incl. "fire" itself) and then the adjectival outlier "burning." Also, the Trammps!? I mean, everyone knows the song "DISCO INFERNO," but the Trammps? Despite knowing the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack like the back of my hand, I had no idea who the Trammps were. All the other musical acts are phenomenally famous, so once again, we have an outlier themer. But it's Monday, and the theme is probably tight *enough*, and certainly the song"DISCO INFERNO" is iconic *enough*, so OK. If you sat on this theme for a bit, you could probably eventually come up with a better set of answers—maybe a set that doesn't force you to go 16 wide with your grid?—but who knows? Not great, but good enough.

There is a problem, though, with grid construction. Those NE / SW corners are ridiculously enormous, which make the puzzle a. slightly tougher than a Monday should be, and b. slightly rougher (fill-wise) than a Monday should be. HAR / ENE / STD—that's the dregs at the bottom of your BELEAGUERED SW corner. In the opposite corner, ICE CAVE is "???" and GAGSTER is almost literally painful. Grid construction is tough business, and this grid has resulted in a certain level of unfortunateness. Things I would try desperately to cut from my own grids: ONLOAN, AAAA, PFC, HAR, ENE, IBEAMS, OYS, DHL, OMS, ICECAVE, GAGSTER, SHH, ANAT. Also OIL SANDS, but mostly just 'cause I barely know what those are. That answer definitely made this harder. But OIL SANDS isn't bad per se. The other stuff, OK, maybe I couldn't ultimately kill off all of it, but seriously, it should Eat At You, when there's that much crud in your grid. Publishing stuff like this just encourages constructorial complacency. Oh, and LLEWYN ... I'm calling foul there, too. I get that that was a fairly major movie, but good lord, Welsh, forget about it. In my head I heard "Loo ell ynn" and so ... yeah, that was all just crosses. In short—fine theme, not a good enough reason to go 16 wide, grid oddly built, which encouraged more junk fill than anyone wants to see. OK. So, first puzzle of 2018 gets a low pass. Coulda been worse!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS crossing INFERNO and INFER? No.

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Hey guess what? This might sound crazy, but it's Annabel!! This year, my New Year's resolution is to try new things. And one thing I've never tried is doing a Tuesday puzzle! ~~Also Rex and I both totally forgot that yesterday was the first Monday of the month because of the holiday. Whoops.~~ Rex will be back tomorrow of course, and I'll be back to Mondays next month, but for now, hooray for trying new things!

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Uhhhh medium I guess? I don't really have any other Tuesdays to measure it against but it wasn't as hard as I thought it was gonna be

THEME: DISOBEDIENT— Theme answer clues were in the form of "Disobey a ___ order?"

THEME ANSWERS:

TAKE IT SLOW (17A: Disobey a rush order?)
MOVE AHEAD (31A: Disobey a stop order?)
HAVE A SEAT (49A: Disobey a standing order?)
STEAL A KISS (65A: Disobey a pecking order?)

Word of the Day: VOLGA (20A: Longest river in Europe) —

The Volga (Russian: Во́лга, IPA: [ˈvoɫɡə] ( listen)) is the longest river in Europe. It is also Europe's largest river in terms of discharge and watershed. The river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea, and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia.
Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga's watershed.
Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga) in Russian literature and folklore.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Like I mentioned above, Tuesday was actually way less hard than I was afraid it was going to be! Or maybe it's just this puzzle? It seemed to fit in pretty okay with the Mondays I've written up. Didn't get stuck too many places, except wanting ASIA to be more specific ("why won't TIBET, JAPAN or INDIA fit?!?") and having PRES instead of ADAM in 44A's spot for a pretty long time. As an English major I was a little disappointed with the clue for STANZA - they could have made a poetry reference!! - but that was more than made up for by the Zora NEALE Hurston reference. Plus, all the sea life in this puzzle was awesome. MAKO, EEL, ORCAS - it was like going scuba diving!

Honestly I thought the theme was just okay - and I'm not sure STEAL A KISS was worth the "pecking order" pun (although to be fair, it is a pretty great pun). Don't steal kisses if you're ordered not to! *Ahem* anyways, I just wish the words themselves had been connected in some way, not just the clues. That's always way more fun. But hey, I'm not trying to SLAM the constructor, it was just fine for an early in the week puzzle.

Bullets:

ERNEST (46A: Author Hemingway)— I've read and watched "The Importance of Being Earnest" about a million times in various classes, and now I can't read any variation on the word or name "Ernest" without hearing it drawled out in an overdramatic British accent in my head. "My ideal has aaaaaaalways been to love someone of the name of Eeeeeeeeeeernest....."
PATIO (69A: Setting for an outdoor party)— For some reason whenever I sit on the patio I can only think about this:

ISPS (58D: AOL and MSN, for two)— Obligatory comment about Net Neutrality. :P
EEL (43A: Fish with more than 100 vertebrae in its spine)— Reptile people: how many vertebrae do snakes have? Or is it different depending on the size of the snake? I love reptiles and fish of any kind, so I love learning about them! I don't know what it is about cold-blooded animals, I just like 'em. I have a friend who owns a bearded dragon who likes to climb on people's shoulders and it's the cutest thing on the entire planet. My mom, on the other hand, hates snakes and probably hates that I even thought of asking this question.

This eel looks so friendly though!!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Easy (I think ... I stopped in disappointment / disgust after the first themer, and then came back to it, so I don't have a valid solving time, but it felt fast)

THEME: some stupid ****ing food puns

Theme answers:

16A: "Don't worry about my cheesy chip"? ("IT'S NACHO PROBLEM")
24A: "We should discuss your Qdoba order"? ("LET'S TACO BOUT IT")
42A: "Should we settle this dispute over toppings outside"? ("YA WANNA PIZZA ME?") [YA????? man, that is weak]
55A: "That Italian dessert truly boggles the mind"? ("I CANNOLI IMAGINE")

Word of the Day: CATO the Elder (23A: "Elder" Roman statesman) —

Cato the Elder (/ˈkeɪtoʊ/; Latin: Cato Major; 234 BC – 149 BC), born Marcus Porcius Cato and also known as Cato the Censor (Cato Censorius), Cato the Wise (Cato Sapiens), and Cato the Ancient (Cato Priscus), was a Roman senator and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He was the first to write history in Latin. // He came from an ancient Plebeian family who were noted for their military service. Like his forefathers, Cato was devoted to agriculture when not serving in the army. Having attracted the attention of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome and began to follow the cursus honorum: he was successively military tribune (214 BC), quaestor (204 BC), aedile (199 BC), praetor (198 BC), junior consul (195 BC) together with Flaccus, and censor (184 BC). As praetor, he expelled usurers from Sardinia. As censor, he tried to preserve Rome's ancestral customs and combat "degenerate"Hellenistic influences. His epithet "Elder" distinguishes him from his equally famous great-grandson Cato the Younger, who opposed Julius Caesar. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a genuine train wreck. Puns are one thing—they may not be my cup of tea, but if done well, they're certainly a legitimate form of crossword wordplay and a fine concept to hang a puzzle on. But these ... this ridiculous, motley assortment of nonsense ... I'm at a loss. The first pun is so tired, so dumb, so old, I actually lost the will to go on once I filled it in (and I filled it in with just IT'S NAC- in place). "That's nacho cheese!" hahahahaha we all laughed in 3rd grade, which for me was the late '70s. So I literally took a time-out—something I almost never do mid-solve—and came back after a few minutes of trying to regain my will to go on. The next themer almost made me walk away again. It stayed in the Mexican food arena, so that's good, I guess, but in the process it just invented a word like it was no big deal. BOUT? You can't have BOUT just sitting there on its own. NACHO = "not your"; PIZZA = "piece of"; CANNOLI = "can only"; TACO = "talk a-" ... what the hell is free-standing BOUT supposed to be. LET'S TACO BOUT IT sounds like you're challenging someone to a fight using only hurled tacos. TACO BOUT! And then somehow, in the bottom portion of the grid, the food puns go Italian. Why? Who knows? They just do. Unbelievable how dashed-off, dumb, and lazy this is. Again, to be clear, this is not about whether pun puzzles are good or bad—they're totally acceptable as a form. It's just that *this* particular version of the form is an abomination. Puns are lazy / nonsensical, theme assortment lacks any kind of reasonable coherence. Blech.

How is VARIABLY the answer for 8D: Hit or miss, say!? I don't see how you get to an adverb from that clue.** I also don't get how CHIMP is acceptable as an answer for 26D: Pioneer in space. I mean, I know that we sent a damn CHIMP to space, but ... just CHIMP? Is [Pioneer in space] also an acceptable clue for DOG? HUMAN? Was anyone on duty when this thing got edited / proofed? The fill on this one is largely unremarkable. Dull, but not abysmal. Can't believe INONE couldn't have been avoided. You can see how INANE would get you TAN crossing TANS, but ... I mean, that's a problem *you* created, and one that you could *uncreate* if you really wanted to. But I don't feel like anyone involved with the creation of this puzzle *really wanted* anything except to just crank another puzzle out and hope no one notices the shoddiness.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

**someone looked it up and :(

Huh. OK.

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Constructor: Daniel Mauer

Relative difficulty: Challenging (well, until you *get it*—non-theme stuff is actually pretty easy)

THEME: (4)WARDING ADDRESS (38A: Something to leave at the post office ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme?)— Four different clues are actually answers found elsewhere in the grid. You find them via their "forwarding addresses," which are the apparent answers to the clues (which are not actually answers, but written-out clue numbers). So ...

Theme answers:

1A: Ten cents (12 DOWN) (12-Down = TEN CENTS)
13D: Macarena (18 ACROSS) (18-Across = MACARENA)
38D: Allowed in (44 ACROSS) (44-Across = ALLOWED IN)
70A: Sea cow (48 DOWN) (48-Down = SEA COW)

In the crosses for the numerals in the various clue answers (e.g. for the "1" and "2" in 12 DOWN), the numerals must be sounded out for the answers to make sense:

The crosses:

1SIES (1D: Toddlers' attire)
2TORED (2D: Gave private lessons to)
ACT1 (booooo!) (10A: When a messenger from Godot arrives in "Waiting for Godot")
CRE8 (16A: Make)
VIED4 (51D: Tried to win, as a title)
INM8 (58D: Prisoner)
4WARDINGADDRESS
4AGE (42A: Gather food)

Word of the Day: CREATINE (11D: Powder supplement for bodybuilders) —

noun
Biochemistry
noun: creatine
a compound formed in protein metabolism and present in much living tissue. It is involved in the supply of energy for muscular contraction. (google)

• • •

Well, this puzzle is at least trying, so good for it. This is very inventive, but also pointless, arbitrary, and just plain weird. A clear case of "oooooh I have this idea" and then stopping at nothing to implement it, including the little voice in your head going, "shouldn't there be some rhyme or reason to any of this? Shouldn't there be a modicum of theme coherence? Shouldn't answers maybe tie into ... something or ... something? And should clues really be, just ... literal answers?" Etc. Nope, it's mad scientist time, sound judgment and scruples be damned! So, yeah, it's original, and very hard (getting close to 2x my normal Thursday time), but hard solely because of the theme. Parts of the grid not implicated in the theme were pretty dang easy—it's just that there weren't that many of said places. I got -WARDING ADDRESS before I got any other theme answer, but never considered that the "FOR-" had been transformed into a number. I mostly just bumbled around the grid filling in what I could and leaving assorted spaces blank until I noticed my first [Answer found elsewhere] clue. I could tell 44A was going to be ALLOWED IN, which ... didn't I just see that as a clue? Yes. 38D: Allowed in. What the? But even then, the number thing didn't sink in, mostly because --ACROSS looked like it might be a plausible answer to [Allowed in]. GOT ACROSS? PUT ACROSS? FOR-something ACROSS? It wasn't until NE corner, where --ACROSS clearly was *not* a plausible answer for [Macarena], that I saw what was going on. After that, it was just a matter of going around grid and quickly cleaning up.

So the most irksome part of this puzzle isn't the replication of clues as answers, or the totally arbitrary set of theme answers. It's the fact that all of the "forwarding address" answers appear in the same corner as the addresses themselves *EXCEPT* in the NW, where 12DOWN sits all alone, with the actual 12-Down way on the other side of the grid. This is super inelegant. You have a clear pattern going with the other theme answers, but then just randomly break it? Once? No. Also, because the one corner that doesn't follow the pattern is the NW (i.e. the corner where I, like a lot of people, start), I didn't encounter the giveaway clue-as-answer phenomenon until very late in the solve. This is more irritating than it is "bad."ENTERER, now that's bad. Also, LATENED.

[23A = "Scary and Sporty..."]

I nearly died at VIED4, as I have no idea where Henderson is and I thought NEBraska. And initially, I thought 51D: Tried to win, as a title was BID ON. So ... I had NEB / BID ON. Felt right. And I mean, come on—[Last pope named Pius]?? Go to hell. Bad enough that you RRN* me, but ya wanna gratuitously pope me too? That's hostile. How the hell do I know how many damn Piuseseses there were? Anyway, this puzzle gets a thumbs-up for insane ambition. Despite its many flaws, it's better than most recent NYT fare, and is at least trying to live up to the NYT's own ad slogan, "The Best Puzzle in the World."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Random Roman Numeral

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ned White

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Leon AMES (12D: Actor Leon of "The Postman Always Rings Twice") —

Leon Ames (January 20, 1902 – October 12, 1993) was a prolific American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing father figures in such films as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) with Judy Garland as one of his daughters, Little Women (1949), On Moonlight Bay (1951), and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953). The fathers whom Ames portrayed were often somewhat stuffy and exasperated by the younger generation, but ultimately kind and understanding. His most famous role came as DA Kyle Sackett from the film The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). (wikipedia)

• • •

This just isn't special enough. It's solid, adequate, but nowhere near what a *NYT* Friday should be. Maybe less time on vanity (i.e. making sure your full name is in the grid—see 9D, 10D), more time on filling the grid with fresh and interesting answers. The stacks in the NW and SE are just OK, and the long Downs are soporific (WHITE SALES ... HEAD COUNTS ... zzz). If NOT SPAM (?) is your idea of modern and fresh, you can have it back. There's nothing particularly bad about this puzzle. It's easy, so people are going to tolerate it just fine. But there's just too much crosswordesey stuff here for how little wonderful stuff there is. Plural KIRS!? "PTUI!"? ACRO ROTOS OPORTO. BAH. IT'S SAD. Yesterday's puzzle was at least ambitious. There's nothing particularly ambitious or thoughtful here. Without the restriction of a theme, a grid should SizZle. If WHITE SALES are your idea of a sizzling time, well, lucky you, I guess.

[40A]

I feel bad for anyone who's never heard of ROTOS (i.e. anyone who was like me before I stumbled on that "word" in a crossword a decade or so ago) (63A: Old newspaper photo sections). I feel bad because it is decidedly *not* gettable from crosses. BOOB fits the clue at 52-Down ([Yahoo]) as well if not better than BOOR, and while BOTOS may look ridiculous, so does ROTOS if you've never seen it before. I almost got crushed by a word I don't really like or understand: STANDEE. I wrote in STANDER, because that is how English normally works. I've never gotten STANDEE. You're a bystandER, not a bystandEE. Is there an analogous verb where the doer gets -EE instead of -ER or -OR? TRUSTEE and TUTEE are both very different. -EE seems passive to me. Something's being done *to* you. But if I stand ... I'm a STANDEE? English, man. Anyway, thankfully, HORSR was manifestly wrong, and I corrected my "mistake." Other hiccups: no idea who that AMES guy is (and I have watched "Postman" many, many times—AMES isn't even one of the three principle actors); wanted CACAO BEAN before CACAO TREE; needed many crosses to get NOT SPAM; needed many crosses to get STRAY (1D: Drift) ... even these mistakes are boring.

I don't understand how 6D: "Dancers at the Bar" painter is an acceptable clue when the title of the painting is "Dancers at the Barre" most places I look (and in my memory). I guess translator has discretion, but ... yeah, didn't like that. Because of "Bar"-not-"Barre," I briefly bypassed DEGAS in favor of MANET (?!). Nothing about the IRENE clue suggests the answer will be a first name. Could just as easily have been ADLER (18A: The "she" in the line "To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman"). It was also super duper weird to see RHINEGOLD spelled like that. I speak no German and no jack squat about opera and even I know it (exclusively) as "Das Rheingold." It's fair enough, it's just kinda pfft, which is my general feeling about the whole grid (PFFT being better than PTUI, but not a lot better).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CADENT (19A: Rhythmic) —

adj.
1. Havingcadence or rhythm.
2. ArchaicFalling, as water or tears. (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Woo hoo. Nice to end the week on a high note. Lots of lovely fill here, and that center section is really impressive—a stagger-stack of 11s crossed by a 3-wide block of 7s, and everything squeaky clean! That's just nice. The only thing that made me even half-grimace today was the weird word forms like CADENT and INCANT, which are much more familiar to me as *other* words (specifically "cadence" and "incantation"). But they're just unusual, not bad, and most everything else in this grid is either solid or sparkling. DIGICAMS feels like one of those neologisms no one actually uses. They're "digital cameras." That's how they're sold, that's what people call them. DIGICAMS sounds like your dad trying to sound with-it. Maybe I coulda done without so much definite article-ness. THE FEDS! THE BEEB! Two THEs is probably one past my THE limit. But at this point I'm actively *trying* to be a HATER, when actually I am a lover ... of this puzzle.

My time might've been much faster if I hadn't succumbed to frustration mulishness—this is when I know that I know something but can't remember it, but instead of moving on and coming back, I just sit there staring at blanks and getting angry at myself that my stupid brain won't work right. This happened right off the bat today, as I was certain I knew the mascot of Ohio University (1D: Ohio University player). I wanted FLYER ... and then something to do with tires or rubber, but that was some dumb Akron trivia interfering with my reasoning. So it turns out that Dayton (a city in Ohio!) is the FLYERS, and, well, Ohio University = the BOBCATs, and so ... yeah, I didn't know that at all, so my frustration mulishness was (as it always is) misguided. Once I let it go (finally), whaddya know, I got every single Down I looked at from TEN over to ZEDS and that NW corner opened right up. Could've saved myself some time and GRIEF if I'd just moved away from the Ohio U clue and let the rest of the grid help me out. But no.

Center was oddly easy to get into. Got both EGO TRIP and ENROBED off their first letters, and only MAJOR and DART gave me any trouble (had back ends of those answers, but needed help coming up with the fronts). SW corner was Tuesday-easy, but I screwed up turning the corner into the SE—couldn't get anything from the "T" at 50D: What suggestive dialogue may result in. Considered the dreadful and possibly not real TEHE (shortened tee hee), and semi-confirmed it with EBONY at 61A: Black piano key (G FLAT). But then nothing worked. Had to go and ride "EASY RIDER" down into that section, which then became much, much easier. Finished up in the NE corner, which, like its SW counterpart, was ridiculously easy (HATER AZERA ZAHN EPEE ... the whole thing went down fast).

Bullets:

22A: Chaser of un trago de tequila (AGUA)— I wanted LIMA here (is that Spanish for "lime"?), and then I wanted whatever the Spanish word for "salt" is. "Trago" means "drink" (or "gulp," but not "shot," which is apparently "chupito," unless Google Translate is lying to me)
44A: Writing form even more constrained than a tweet (HAIKU)— this is not nearly precise enough. How can you compare a letter-count constraint with a syllabic constraint? Apple, meet orange.
24D: Something only I can go on? (EGO TRIP)— man, I love this clue. Love it.

56D: "Wide-staring" one in a Wordsworth poem (OWL)— found out earlier today that Arden Reed, the professor who taught me Romantic poetry (including Wordsworth), died on Dec. 20 from an aggressive form of cancer. His criticism of my writing was invaluable, and his encouragement gave me the confidence to pursue a Ph.D. and become an English professor myself. I'm very sad that he's gone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (the "Challenging" part is more due to the fussiness of dealing with the two-letters-per-square thing, not actual difficulty)

THEME:"Vowel Play"— themers have anywhere from 2 to 5 squares that contain two letters; in the themers themselves, the clues are doubled, so the 2 letters function in an either/or kind of way, whereas in the crosses, both letters are required to complete the answer.

Theme answers:

DEAL-A-MEAL / DAILY MAIL (22A: Richard Simmons diet regimen / London tabloid)
SPICY FOOD / SPECIFIED (29A: What a red pepper on a menu may signal / Made clear)
FOUL CALL / FUEL CELL (43A: Preceder of free throws / Juice container?)
TRICKSTER / TRACK STAR (69A: Fooler / Summer Olympics standout)
CHO CHANG / CHA-CHING (94A: Harry Potter's ex-girlfriend / Register sound)
WHAT A TOOL! / WHITE TAIL (110A: "He's so lame!" / Deer variety)
STRING TIE / STRONG TEA (118A: Thin neckwear / Assam or Earl Grey)
MINT OREOS / MANTA RAYS (42D: Cookies filled with green creme / Flattish sea creatures)
DANGEROUS / DUNGAREES (47D: Risky / Denim attire)

Word of the Day: SUBGUM (65A: Chow mein relative) —

Subgum or sub gum (traditional: 什錦; simplified: 什锦; Cantonese: sap⁶ gam²; pinyin: shí jǐn; literally "numerous and varied") is a type of American Chinese dish in which one or more meats or seafood are mixed with vegetables, and sometimes also noodles, rice, or soup. It originates from Cantonese cuisine and is a commonly encountered dish on the menus of Chinese restaurants in North America. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, solvers. It's early January, which means it's time for my once-a-year, week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. To be clear—there are no major expenses involved in writing a blog. There's just my time. A lot of it. Every day (well, usually night), solving, writing, hunting down pictures and videos of various degrees of relevance and usefulness, chatting with folks and answering puzzle questions via email and social media, gathering and disseminating crossword-related information of various kinds, etc. It's a second job. My making this pitch means I'm all in for another calendar year of puzzle revelry with all y'all. I'm excited about the year. I've got my own crossword construction project I want to get off the ground, and I'm hoping to take a more active role (along with some crossword friends) in recruiting and mentoring new and aspiring constructors. But the bulk of my work will be the same as ever: I'll be here with a new post every single day. Solve, write, repeat. Despite my occasional (or, OK, maybe frequent) consternation with the State of The Puzzle, the crossword community continues to give me great joy, and I'm proud to run an independent, ad-free blog where people can find someone to commiserate with, someone to yell at, or, you know, someone who'll just give them the damn answers. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Second, a mailing address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are "Women In Science"—Rachel Ignotofsky's beautiful cartoon portraits of women scientists from antiquity to the present. I've heard of a few of these women (mostly crossword names like ADA Lovelace, Marie CURIE, MAE Jemison) but most of these names are entirely new to me, so I'm excited to learn about them as I write my thank-you notes. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD. As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

• • •

So, some warnings / notifications up front. First, the L(IO)NS clue (114D: Only N.F.L. team ever to go 0-16 for a season) is incorrect as of 12/31—the Cleveland Browns just completed their own 0-16 season, and so two NFL teams now hold the dubious distinction of Worst Regular Season Record Ever. I am not pointing this out to be spiteful. It was pointed out to me, days ago, by the NYT's own Deb Amlen. So, it was a known issue, but just not "known" early enough to change the clue in print. Not sure why it couldn't have been changed in the .puz version, but whatever. I hear it got changed on the app. Next, if you solved digitally, the grid looks different than it does in print. Here is the print grid:

Divided squares would've made things visually clearer, but whaddyagonnado? I managed fine with the circled squares, though, like I said—fussy. Lastly, if you solve in the app, you may have encountered a mild-to-extremely infuriating glitch—with two of the squares, the vowels must be entered *in reverse* in order for your grid to be accepted as "correct."

Perhaps that glitch has been fixed by now. Perhaps not. Anyway, now you know.

I'm not sure I enjoyed this puzzle, but I definitely enjoyed it more than I've been enjoying Sundays of late. It was more of a grind than a joy, but at least it was inventive and had some teeth. Weird coincidence: the Newsday Friday crossword had this same title ("Vowel Play"). I remember this a. because I just did it this morning, completing my week-long (M-F) streak of solving both the Newsday and the LA Times Downs-only (#bragbrag), and b. I spent a few seconds wondering what the hell the pun was (it's "Foul Play," of course). Needless to say, this puzzle is far more elaborate than the Newsday (which was fine, but just involved a simple sound change from one theme answer to the next (PROUST, PRESSED, PRIEST)). Why am I blogging the Newsday puzzle? Not my job.

I think maybe this puzzle went to the Latinate-plural well once too often. LAMINAE *and* TOGAE? WHO AM I, Caesar? The CAR FIRES clue was cute (13D: Flare-ups in the hood?), but briefly confusing / disturbing, as I thought the clue was trying to tell me that CAR FIRES are mostly associated with "the 'hood," i.e. black neighborhoods. Then I realized the "hood" was a car hood. OK. My favorite mistake, By Far, involved my repeatedly misreading [Risky / Denim attire] as [Risky denim attire], which resulted in my trying to make MOM JEANS work. I also still can't spell ICHOR (ICHER!) (88D: Olympian blood), and, despite wikipedia's claim that it's a "commonly encountered dish on Chinese restaurant menus in North America," I have somehow made it perilously close to age 50 without ever having seen SUBGUM on any menu ever in my life. So that was weird.

Bullets:

1D: Jerusalem's onetime kingdom (JUDAH)— slow start up top there, as I tried SEP for 1A: Start of the third qtr. (JUL), and then SYRIA for this clue. That is so much Wrong in so little time.
98D: Actress Ronan of "Lady Bird" (SAOIRSE)— I've finally learned how to say this. I went from "????" to "SORE-shuh" to the correct "SER- (or SEER-) shuh." Here she is, trying to pronounce other celebrity names:

74D: Crime-fighting mom of 1980s TV (LACEY)— Aw, I miss this show. So much so that I can't remember which one was Cagney and which one was LACEY (I do know which one was Sharon Gless and which one was Tyne Daly, so that's something)
89D: Like some German wines (RHENISH)— so "of the Rhine and the regions adjoining it" is RHENISH? Not RHINISH? Or RHEINISH? This is almost as confusing as spelling "The Rhinegold" was the other day. Too many spelling variables, Germania. Work on it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just a bit on the slow side, for a Monday, for me)

THEME: O, Hey!— themers all end in the with two-syllable "O [c] AY" sound, where [c] represents a consonant (or digraph, in the case of "sh")

Theme answers:

"IS THAT OKAY?" (17A: "Would you mind?")
GLASS OF OJ (22A: Informal breakfast beverage order) (we'll just ignore the fact that "orange" is in the grid (41D))
"YOU WILL OBEY..." (33A: Hypnotist's command)
MILO O'SHEA (51A: "Ulysses" star, 1967)
CAFÉ AU LAIT (57A: Cappuccino relative)

Word of the Day: KLATCH (11D: Coffee get-together) —

noun
North American
noun: klatch; plural noun: klatches; noun: klatsch; plural noun: klatsches
a social gathering, especially for coffee and conversation.

• • •

I like this theme a lot—I like Monday themes that are essentially loose, dopey, sound-driven things where the themers are bouncy and the rest of the grid is clean and interesting. But I really don't like crossword clues that can be many things, or several things, or two things and you have to wait for crosses ... and man did I trip over some of those today. Let's start with AHAS!, for which I entered OHOS! No, not OHOS! but yes, UHOH, and DODO, and (improbably) HIHOS! (plural??), to say nothing of ORTHO (which is a prefix or a mattress to me, not a branch of dentistry). So between AHAS and HIHOS I fell on my face like thrice, at least. But the real stumbling block was that central themer. Had the initial couple of letters, took one look at the clue—33A: Hypnotist's command—and immediately wrote in "YOU'RE SLEEPY..." Worse, even after I figured out that was wrong, and got the YOU WILL OBE- (!), I kept misreading it as "YOU WILL BE..." and I was like "you will be ... a single letter!? What will you be!?" Also, lastly, I would never have put "YOU WILL OBEY" with "hypnotist." Ever. What kind of creepy hypnotists are y'all going to. I just want to quit smoking.*

I find that the things I trip over most are colloquial equivalency clues; you know, the ones where the clue is a spoken phrase, in quotation marks, and the answer is another spoken phrase that's allegedly a match. So stuff like ["Would you mind?"] can drive me bonkers because lots of phrases present themselves, and sometimes little vagaries of phrasing—inclusion / exclusion of prepositions, contractions and what not—can send me sprawling. I don't dislike these clues; they can be fun. I just wipe out on them a lot. Also, I will never remember who MILO O'SHEA is. I remember his *name* fine, 'cause, you know, I've been doing crosswords for a million years. But I am a TCM addict—for real: over 200 movies watched in 2017 (yes, I keep track. What?)—and I could not tell you what he looks like. Also, "Ulysses"? That's a movie? Man, with some notable exceptions, that decade from like '57 to '67 is a trough, movie-wise. Flickchart gives you a bar graph of every movie you've watched by decade, and on mine there's this massive dip at the 1960s. 80% of what I watch is either '40s/'50s or '70s/'80s. Where was I? Oh yeah, Milo. Uh oh. Hiho. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*jk I don't smoke please no letters

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (fast but not whoosh fast)

THEME: MEET IN THE MIDDLE (39A: Compromise ... or a phonetic hint to this puzzle's circled squares)— types of "meat" (phonetic!) are embedded in the themers inside the circled squares:

Theme answers:

NORTH AMERICA (20A: Big part of the New World)
LIVE A LIE (24A: Present oneself falsely)
CLAMBAKE (51A: Seaside cookout)
STROBE EFFECT (56A: Flashing light phenomenon)

Word of the Day: some information that you won't remember on stellar classification (9A: Cool, giant sun (S-STAR)) —

In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the rainbow of colors interspersed with spectral lines. Each line indicates a particular chemical element or molecule, with the line strength indicating the abundance of that element. The strengths of the different spectral lines vary mainly due to the temperature of the photosphere, although in some cases there are true abundance differences. The spectral class of a star is a short code primarily summarizing the ionization state, giving an objective measure of the photosphere's temperature. // Most stars are currently classified under the Morgan-Keenan (MK) system using the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, a sequence from the hottest (O type) to the coolest (M type). Each letter class is then subdivided using a numeric digit with 0 being hottest and 9 being coolest (e.g. A8, A9, F0, and F1 form a sequence from hotter to cooler). The sequence has been expanded with classes for other stars and star-like objects that do not fit in the classical system, such as class D for white dwarfs and classes S and C for carbon stars. (wikipedia)

• • •

Puzzle lost my good will at 1-Down and never got it back, despite the fact that it's technically fine—a typical example of the embedded word-type theme, with a little punny wordplay in the revealer. There's not much beyond that little semi-chuckle of a pun, though. The themers don't have anything going for them, excitement-wise, and though the grid is not bad, it's not interesting, either. The one attempt to be interesting—the inclusion of SPACEX—resulted in the very worst part of the puzzle—the inclusion of SSTAR. The What Letter Will It Be-STAR variety of answer is entirely loathsome and should be discarded by every reasonable constructor immediately, save for those very rare moments where you are *very* desperate to make a *very* good idea work out. Would've been nice to see livelier fill overall (see yesterday's puzzle). Too much SDS ITALIA ITE RET ENT ARPEL SNO EOS IOS (both?) ESME ILE etc. going on here.

Where were the solving snags today? I honestly didn't know the president's* middle name, so that, combined with stunned disappointment that Will keeps gratuitously shoehorning a serial sexual assailant into the crossword, caused me to be slow right out of the gate. But then I went from SLOTH to whatever the opposite of SLOTH is. Cheetah? After I got done being totally befuddled by the clue on SLAT (5A: Airplane wing feature) (was looking for FLAP), I tore through this thing pretty easily.

You can be forgiven not knowing SSTAR. As I say, that answer type is terrible. Nothing else here seems too outré. Took me a little work to get ANTITANK, as 35A: Like some missiles is pretty vague. I thought the clue on EURO was prettttttty iffy. [Tip of France?]? I get that "tip" = money and the currency in France is the EURO, but ... "Tip of France" isn't even wordplay. Does France have geographical tips? There's gotta be a better "?" clue waiting for EURO.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sen. Joe Donnelly and Michael S. Maurer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (a tick on the tough side, for a Wednesday)

THEME: basketball terms with wacky, non-basketball clues

Theme answers:

BANK SHOT (15A: Warning during a heist?)
ALLEY OOPS (18A: Gutterball?)
FAST BREAK (37A: Dinner at the end of Ramadan?)
FREE THROW (57A: Rug store promotion?)
FOUL LINE (64A: Something bleeped out for television?)

Word of the Day: Eric SEVAREID (33A: Eric of old CBS News) —

Arnold Eric Sevareid (November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992) was an American author and CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents hired by pioneering CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, and thus dubbed "Murrow's Boys". He was the first to report the fall of Paris when it was captured by the Germans during World War II. Traveling into Burma during World War II, his aircraft was shot down and he was rescued from behind enemy lines by a search and rescue teamestablished for that purpose. He was the final journalist to interview Adlai Stevensonbefore his death. After a long and distinguished career, he followed in Murrow's footsteps as a commentator on the CBS Evening News for 12 years for which he was recognized with Emmy and Peabody Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

These kinds of themes, where terms from some field are given wacky clues unrelated to that field, can be fun. But this wasn't. Usually, when we have one of these "celebrity" / constructor pairings, the constructor can be relied upon to build a workable grid and make sure that the theme, even if it's fairly straightforward or simple, really comes off. This grid, however, is a mess. This is a Monday or Tuesday concept that's running on a Wednesday, it seems, largely because the grid is really poorly built, and so theme answers get visually buried and and the whole solve just comes off clunky. There's some pretty terrible fill in there too (OPCIT, GIE!?), but it's this 74-word grid, with its oddly large NW and SE corners, and its strange placement of themers in the NE and SW corners, that's really the problem. This should've been a clean, quick, easy puzzle. Instead—well, it's reasonably easy, but it's fussy, and just doesn't highlight the theme the way it should. For example, look at BANK SHOT. Why is that themer right on top of another non-theme answer with just as many squares (ORNATELY), and right *under* an answer that's nearly as long, and is somehow also "?"-clued (WISE ASS) (7A: Smart farm animal?)? Theme answers are supposed to stand out, especially in a simple theme like this. But this one (BANK SHOT) looks too much like the answer above it (both are "?"-clued) and too much like the one below it (both the same length). Even SEVAREID and LINSEEDS are kind of crowding the central themer, FAST BREAK. Let the theme answers stand out and breathe, esp. on a conceptually simple theme like this. This current layout is just ... Bizarre.

Because of the weird plural on ALLEY OOPS, it took me forever even to see the theme. I thought the "S" had been added for comic effect. Add an "S," get a goof. But no, it's just a straight basketball term. Pluralized. The puzzle took forever (for me) to come together as a *basketball* theme, so stuff like BANK SHOT and FOUL LINE, given their "?" clues, were hard to come up with, or even fathom. Do people really fire warning shots during heists, outside of the movies? I thought the law were the ones who fired "warning" shots. Grid needed to be better, clues needed to be snappier. Fine concept, but execution was rough. But hey, you got ASS andARSE in the same grid, so that's something.

Bullets:

DIALOG (1A: Exchange of words) — a personal idiosyncacy: I *hate* this "UE"-less spelling with the power of several suns (but not SSTARS, as those are "cool," as I understand it)
SEVAREID (33A: Eric of old CBS News) — knew the name. Did not know how to spell the name. So I had SEVER EID. Oh, hey, look at that, the celebration to mark the end of Ramadan (Eid) is sitting right on top of [Dinner at the end of Ramadan?]. This is by far the greatest thing about this puzzle.
RIFLE (38D: Part of N.R.A.)— I had ASSOC., largely because I had [Dinner at the end of Ramadan?] as FAST BALLS for an embarrassing period of time.
CAKE (32D: One might say "Happy Birthday"— that is a damn good trap. I can't be the only one who got the initial letter or two and wrote in CARD.
GMC (28A: Yukon or Sierra) — I had SUV. But the Sierra is a pickup. FYI, a TAHOE (which is in the Sierra Nevada) is an SUV ... so there.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS the more I think about the clue on WISEASS (7A: Smart farm animal?), the more it bugs me. That's more a theme-type clue, not a normal "?" clue. Normal "?" clues have wordplay, sure, but they're interpretable in way that is ultimately literal. [The end of the British monarchy?], for instance, isn't the Greatest clue for ZED, but you can see that it's interpretable literally, i.e. ZED is, literally, the "end" of the alphabet for the British monarchy, as well as all other Brits, presumably. Likewise, 1D: Works with pupils?, despite looking like it's about teaching, is actually literally accurate (in an ophthamological context) as a clue for DILATES. Whereas [Smart farm animal?] gives you know way to get to the actual term WISEASS. It's just an imagined different meaning. I guess you could say a WISEASS is "Smart" in the sense of sass-mouthed, but ... that still leaves a *&$^ing farm animal sitting there. Plus "Smart" seems to be just standing in as a synonym for "wise," so ... yeah, this clue isn't as cute or good as someone clearly thought it was.

PPS nice doubling of that [The end of the British monarchy?] clue. ARSE ZED!

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Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: [Line from someone who's been interrupted]— that's the clue on three themers. The answers all run clear across the grid and then continue on the next line, the idea being that the line has been "interrupted" (said interruption is signified by a hyphen):

Interrupted lines:

"PLEASE LET ME FIN- / ISH"
"DO I LOOK LIKE I'M D- / ONE"
"QUIET, I WAS SPEAK- / ING"

Word of the Day: BOP IT (5A: Hasbro toy that involves pulling and twisting) —

Bop It toys are a line of audio games where play consists of following a series of commands issued through speakers by the toy, which has multiple inputs including pressable buttons, pull handles, twisting cranks, spinnable wheels, flickable switches - with pace speeding up as the player progresses. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeah, this doesn't really work, for a few reasons. First, the hyphens, which are allegedly what I was supposed to put in those final themer boxes. This is crosswords. I put HIC and NONO into crosswords all the time. I mean, jeez, look at ATEAM (52A: Elite group). Look At It. In the real world, of course, that gets a hyphen. But in a crossword? No. So those "hyphens" are all essentially unchecked squares. Absurd. Further, A-Z is not at all a valid answer to 35D: The whole shebang. You say A TO Z. You do not say "A-Z." And, again, if you solve crosswords regularly (as some of us do), you've seen ATOZ in puzzle approximately one bajillion times. A TO Z, A TO Z, A TO Z. Not only can I not imaging saying "A-Z" (w/o the "TO"), I can't imagine writing it. And please don't tell me the hyphen stands for "TO." It's not HI TO C or NO TO NO, so it's not A TO Z. Lastly, the actual interrupted phrases are kinda contrived (to get all the themers to be exactly the same length). First one reads OK, But second one ... I dunno. "LOOK"? You're talking, not miming. "DO I SOUND LIKE I'M DONE?" is the only plausible phrase. "QUIET, I WAS SPEAKING" ... I mean, fine, but that's just made up. "PLEASE LET ME FINISH" is at least close to a phrase that can stand on its own. The others are inapt and arbitrary, respectively.

I'm gonna start a recurring segment called Fire Your Fill (FYF), in which I ~~order~~ ask all constructors to get rid of some egregious bit of crossword garbage that should've been ice floed long ago. Today's FYF target is ABRA (1A: Start of a magic incantation). I will accept the full incantation, but this arbitrarily lopped-off first part? No. AGRA, yes. ABRA, no. I'm not too fond of ABLUSH either (I had AFLUSH, which really feels more like a thing...) (59A: Visibly embarrassed). And what's with MRI SCAN? Isn't that redundant? Are there MRIs that are *not* SCANs? I did enjoy TALKS TRASH and OPEN A TAB. Those are answers I can relate to. I patted myself hard on the back for remembering BELAY—my nautical nauledge is roughly zero. Never ever heard of BOP IT, so thank god BELAY was in my memory banks. Only made one initial error today: GIST for PITH (7D: Crux).

Bullets:

14A: Celebrating Hanukkah, say (JEWISH)— [Jewish celebration] fo HANUKKAH makes sense. [Celebrating Hanukkah, say] for JEWISH feels weird and backward. It's like [Tagging up, say] for PLAYING BASEBALL. Like, the clue is way too specific for the general answer.
43A: Square figure? (TWO)— presumably because "2" is the exponent that signifies squaring.
9D: Co-written best seller (THE BIBLE)— I hate-like this clue. It's trying So Hard to be clever, so it's hard to stay mad at it.
26D: Provider of global support? (ATLAS) — me, at first: "An ATLAS is a book ... how is that 'support'?" Me, later: "Oh, *ATLAS* ..."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HARAM (2D: Not halal, in Arab cuisine) —

Haram (/ˈhɛərəm, ˈhær-/; Arabic: حَرَام‎ ḥarām [ħaˈraːm]) is an Arabic term meaning "forbidden". Thus it may refer to: either something sacred to which access is forbidden to the people who are not in a state of purity or who are not initiated into the sacred knowledge; or to an evil thus "sinful action that is forbidden to be done". The term also denotes something "set aside", thus being the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew concept קָדוֹש‬ qadoš, and the concept of sacer (cf. sacred) in Roman law and religion. In Islamic jurisprudence, haram is used to refer to any act that is forbidden by Allah, and is one of five Islamic commandments (الأحكام الخمسة‎ (al-ahkam al-khamsah)) that define the morality of human action. (wikipedia)

• • •

Saw the quad stack and thought "ugh." Then saw that the grid had a cool mirror symmetry that was not going to force me to indure* two quad stacks, and my mood perked up a bit. Stack ended up being so easy that the infelicities it entailed (in the crosses) barely registered, and overall, the solve was fairly lively and entertaining, despite some significant bumps. My favorite thing about this puzzle is the grid design. Going with mirror symmetry on themelesses really opens up interesting possibilities. It frees you up. Above all, it just gives a new look. You see rotationally symmetrical themeless grids hundreds of times, they all look so familiar. Even the low word-count puzzles and the quadstack puzzles, which can be visually arresting, are a *type* by now. But this grid just *looks* fresh. It also looks like a mask, in a way. The fill is hit-or-miss. The long Acrosses are all right on the money, which is as it should be—you don't go all showy like this if you have to include A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE or some other 15-letter junk to make your stack work. ACAKE is not great and ANIF is violence, but nothing else up there is offensive (except THIEL, of course, dear lord, is there no respite?).

[19-Across]

I admit to being stumped by some of the non-anglo-american stuff up top, specifically HARAM (which if I knew it, I forgot it) and DOSAS (ditto). I managed ATIEMPO just fine, despite not speaking Spanish. I think that's too long for a foreign phrase that hasn't entered common English parlance (can't think of any such foreignism of equivalent length that I've seen in crossword before), but it's totally inferrable, or was to me, at any rate. EACH ONE TEACH ONE appears to be a concept that came out of slavery, where black people who were denied access to education (specifically literacy) took it upon themselves to teach themselves. Wikipedia's got it as an "African-American proverb." I had no idea.

[60-Across]

The only parts of this puzzle that gave me any troublewere EDISON (I had the "E" and just ... blanked) (23D: Motion picture pioneer), PAN (I was like, "ooh, I know this ... it's ... p ... p ... poly?") (27D: Attracted to people of all genders, in modern lingo), and INDEPENDENCE AVE, because I came at it from the back, and it looked like it was going to end with "CONCEIVE" or something like that (58A: D.C. thoroughfare with the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum). Otherwise, this was an easy puzzle. The grid looks great, and I generally enjoyed the nice mix of answers (high culture, pop culture, multiple cultures).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alan Derkazarian

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Charles HAID (31A: Charles of "Hill Street Blues") —

Charles Maurice Haid III (born June 2, 1943) is an American actor and director, with notable work in both movies and television. He is best known for his portrayal of Officer Andy Renko in Hill Street Blues. [...] Haid is a cousin of television talk show host and Jeopardy! creator Merv Griffin. (wikpedia)

• • •

Back-to-back easy themeless puzzles. Also, back-to-back puzzles with very diverse content. Old, new, black, white, queer ... not everyone may notice this, NYT, but I do, and I appreciate it. I like to see *everyone* having a good time. Thanks for listening to those of us who have raised the breadth-of-representation issue these past few years. And, you know, please continue. You could toughen up these late-week puzzles a little, though. Blew through this one in roughly the same time it took me to do yesterday's, and yesterday's was already easy. Had a roughish time in the eastern region (where I finished) because ... well, a host of reasons, which I'll get into, but otherwise, my only hesitations / hiccups were misspelling FELIZ (FELIX!) and going with IRISH at first for 53A: Like an eisteddfod festival (WELSH).

For the most part I'M IMPRESSED with this grid, though the heavy reliance on -ERs (REARER, MAKER, FUELERS) was a notable SORE SPOT, as was whatever the hell AREOLAR is supposed to be. That answer started out as AREOLIC and then went several other ways before finally landing where it needed to land. The ending on that word was the beginning of my troubles in the east. Also couldn't fathom 29A: London or Manchester (WRITER). I know who Jack London is, but who the hell is this alleged writer, "Manchester?" I google [writer Manchester] and I just get some biographer I've never heard of. I resent this kind of trickery. I mean, I love the trickery, but the other city (besides London) should be a recognizable writer. Heading down the grid from WRITER: no idea at all who HAID is, so needed every cross there, and BIT SEC ... I mean, it's inferrable, but not a term I've heard. I stared at --TER DOG for a bit wondering "How Do You Not Know This? Is It OTTER DOG!?!?" (29D: Newfoundland or golden retriever). And then I got it, and then that area started to cave. But this was the only drama of the solve, and it didn't last long, actually. I can see how some solvers might struggle with a few of the proper nouns (HAID for sure, and possibly SOLANGE and EL DUQUE), but I'm still guessing this played far easier than average for most of you. "A Seat at the Table" is a great album, by the way. Give it a shot.

Today I remembered that there was a prime minister named EDEN. Huge win for me. Non-Churchill, pre-Thatcher PMs are like popes to me, i.e. shrug. I did learn ATTLEE at one point, though. Had to. Look at those letters. You're definitely going to see ATTLEE, if you haven't already. EDEN usually gets a much softer clue, so you don't see the PM often, but you do sometimes, and I remembered him, so so self-high-five! Favorite clue of the day was probably the deceptively simple [Field work] for "NORMA RAE" (14D). Not an easy title to parse if you're coming at it piecemeal and don't know you're looking for a movie. OK that's all for today, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Supreme Intelligence" — central answer is OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE (67A: Illegal interference ... or what can be found in ths puzzle's 1st, 3rd, 7th, 15th, 19th and 21st rows?). The idea is that on all the lines mentioned in the central answers's clue, you can find the complete name of a Supreme Court justice—a name that gets "obstructed" (interrupted by black squares) twice.

Theme answers:

line 1: ANTONI / N SC / ALIA
line 3: ABE / FORT / AS
line 7: EARL / WAR / REN
line 15: ELEN / A KA / GAN
line 19: SONIA / SOTO / MAYOR
line 21: STEP / HEN / BREYER

Word of the Day: Mike D'ANTONI (1A: Mike who was the 2017 N.B.A. Coach of the Year) —

Michael Andrew D'Antoni (born May 8, 1951) is an American-Italian professional basketball coach who was formerly a professional basketball player. He is currently the head coach of the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). While head coach of the NBA's Phoenix Suns, he won NBA Coach of the Year honors for the 2004–05 NBA season after the Suns posted 33 more wins than the previous season. He coached the New York Knicks starting in 2008 before resigning in 2012. He was hired by the Lakers after seven games into the 2012–13 season. D'Antoni, who holds American and Italian dual citizenship, is known for favoring a fast-paced, offense-oriented system. On June 1, 2016, D'Antoni was named as the new head coach for the Houston Rockets. (wikipedia)

• • •

THANK YOU to all who contributed to my blog this past week. It's been lovely to hear from so many different people from around the country (the world, even). I have no good way of gauging how many readers I have or where they are, so it's nice to have a week where people check in from all over. You are of course free to contribute at any time during the year—you can always find the PayPal button and snail mail address in the sidebar of this blog. But this is the last time I'll put this info in the body of my write-up until 2019:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp

54 Matthews St

Binghamton, NY 13905

As one of my favorite readers wrote me this week, "Here's to a Natick-free 2018!" May the puzzles get better and your solving skills get stronger. Now—onward. Puzzleward!

• • •

This is a show-off puzzle—it's designed entirely to be looked at once it's completed, and in no way designed to be enjoyable while you are actually solving it. Or, rather, it is intermittently enjoyable, in the way that a large themeless puzzle might be, but without any theme answers save that central one ... it's like there's no there there. Or, rather, there is a there there, but while you're actually doing the activity of solving, it's largely if not entirely invisible. It's possible—just possible—that you got so bogged down in that SW corner that you *needed* to discover what the theme was in order to complete this thing, but it seems like most people would just solve the thing without paying much attention to the theme or bothering to stop to figure out what was going on. I almost didn't see that the *first* names of the justices were involved, and, in fact, would *never* have seen it if BREYER hadn't been un-"obstructed." That made me notice STEP / HEN, which then made me realize that all the justices were complete names. That, of course, made the puzzle more impressive, architecturally. Sadly, I could not go back in time and make it relevant to my solving experience in any way. Not yet, anyway! Crossword Time Machine still has kinks.

Weirdly small grid. Well, "weird" in the sense of "rarely seen." It actually makes perfect sense for this theme, since OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE is 20 squares. Thus the grid is 20x21 instead of the standard 21x21. All of my fill complaints / questions involve highly thematic portions of the grid—the most complaint-worthy of which is the SW, where "TO HELEN,"OTRANTO, and ANSONIA (!?) team up to make a weird proper noun Bermuda non-triangle. HOP STEP also eluded me—and I've been watching a Ton of NBA Channel (118A: Evasive basketball move). I thought it was "jump step," but maybe when it's tiny it's a HOP STEP. Anyhoo, that corner, yikes. I know the gothic novel "The Castle of OTRANTO," so I was able to navigate the corner OK, but it definitely felt dicey. Oh, and I also know GANYMEDE pretty well from mythology (less well from astronomy). His name appears early on in the Aeneid as one of the many indignities Juno has had to endure (Jupiter lusted for young Ganymede and so raped him, which was kind of Jupiter's thing). Only a couple of other proper nouns seemed likely to cause trouble: IBANEZ (whom I know better as a former baseball player, though that's IBAÑEZ) and ORIENTE (which ... I got entirely from crosses. Never heard of it) (59D: Cuban province where the Castros were born).

Bullets:

"Supreme Intelligence"— I don't really understand the title of this puzzle. I get "Supreme" alright, but "Intelligence"? How is that relevant?
53A: "I knew that would happen!" ("CALLED IT!") — I had "NAILED IT!," which feels at least slightly defensible as an answer.
105A: Hooded cloak (CAPUCHIN) — I know the monkey, and the monks (... hey ... I just got that! ... oh, no, wait, they're technically friars ... nevermind), but did not know the hood thing. It looks like the friars wore "sharp, pointed hoods," and yet the garment definition of CAPUCHIN reads: "a hooded cloak for women" (my emph.). No word on what the monkeys prefer to wear.
107D: What has casts of thousands? (IMDB)— probably the toughest answer for me to get, and it's a "gateway" answer (i.e. one of those answers that gives you access to an entirely new section), so I had to jump into the SE corner and work my way back out.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Agnes Davidson and Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "FREE AT LAST" (61A: Final words of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech ... or a hint to the endings of 17-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across)— "last" words of all the theme answers can also be verbs meaning "Free":

Theme answers:

NEW RELEASE (17A: Singer's latest)
TAX EXEMPT (24A: Like religious institutions vis-à-vis the I.R.S.)
"THE COAST IS CLEAR" (39A: "We can go safely now")
"BEG PARDON?" (49A: "Excuse me?")

Word of the Day: COSPLAYS (40D: Dresses up for a comic con, say) —

cos·play
ˈkäzˌplā,ˈkäsˌplā/
noun
1.
the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, or video game, especially one from the Japanese genres of manga and anime.
verb
1.
engage in cosplay. (google)

• • •

Thank God Almighty! A good puzzle! It's a holiday puzzle appearing *on* the actual holiday (holiday-adjacent holiday puzzles are always disappointing), and it manages to be appropriate to the day while still being playful and entertaining (instead of pious or somber). It was also easy as heck, so everyone will be feeling quite triumphant today. Fun for all! Nothing much here to irk or gall. From a constructing perspective, I'm wondering why *two* cheater squares were needed in the NW (and SE) corner (these are the black squares under 1D: SIN and after 1A: STP, as well as the corresponding black squares in the SE—black squares that do not add to the word count; they're generally used only to make a grid easier to fill). The grid doesn't seem that demanding ... theme's not that dense. But no big deal. I'll take a clean grid, however you get there, over an unclean one any day.

Not that many hesitations today. Briefly thought maybe 7D: Shout at Fenway Park was BOSOX instead of "GO SOX!" I don't really think about umbrella parts that much, so I was slightly more hesitant on RIB than I should've been, despite the fact that it's the word my brain threw up first. Took me a while to get GALLS (51D: Vexes) because my brain (stupid brain!) doesn't think "gall" and "vex" are synonyms. I associate the former with anger and the latter with frustration, which, I know, is splitting hairs, but that's what the brain does, what can I tell you? I hit that vacuum cleaner clue and thought "Ooh, you know this!" then with through ORACH and ORKIN and DYSON and the rest of my Rolodex of 5-letter things that start with "O" *or* are vacuum-related. Then I just got it from crosses. Yes, I've heard of ORECK, no, I would never have gotten it today without help. Also had BED for SPA (69A: Resting place?). Bed is more of a non-"?" answer. And thus ends my litany of trouble spots.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: FOUR-LETTER WORDS (39A: Curses ... or what 18-, 20-, 26-, 48-, 57- and 63-Across are, literally— answers in question are formed from a total of four letters ... at least I think that's it. I hope that's it. It's very early in the morning ...

Theme answers:

SASSAFRAS (18A: Its root was once used in root beer) (SASF)
SENESCENCE (20A: Process of aging) (SENC)
LOLLIPOP (26A: What always deserves a good licking?) (LOIP)
NONSENSE (48A: Poppycock) (NOSE)
TATTLETALE (57A: Snitch) (TALE)
RECHERCHE (63A: Exotic) (RECH)

Word of the Day: ZUMBA (68A: Dance-based fitness program) —

noun
trademark
an aerobic fitness program featuring movements inspired by various styles of Latin American dance and performed primarily to Latin American dance music. (google)

• • •

This grid is a lovely bit of fun, but I confess I don't really get the theme. I mean, I *get* it (I think), but aren't ... a lot of words FOUR-LETTER WORDS, in the sense that they are made up of a total of four different letters of the alphabet? Yes, SASSAFRAS uses only SAFR, but, for instance, SENSEI uses only SENI, and ... so? I guess I just don't know how special these kinds of four-letter words are. Obviously the longer the word gets, the more unusual the four-letterness, but that still doesn't feel special enough to build a theme around. I like the idea of playing around with the meaning of FOUR-LETTER WORDS, but this particular play feels flimsy. But as I say, taken as a themeless, just for the pleasure of the words in the grid alone, I enjoyed this once. It bounced, and (for a Tuesday in particular) was very, very clean (with only OTTOI mucking things up—adding that guy to my Retire Your Fill! (RYF) list).

The bounciness was also the only thing challenging about the puzzle. It took a little thinking to parse stuff like K-TOWN (short for Koreatown) (17A: Neighborhood where kimchi might be found, informally) andBAD PR (6A: What a divorce may generate for a celeb) and "OH, WELL" (4D: "That's a bummer"). Easier for me to get something like PESETA than EHOW, which I had as ETSY at first (ETSY involves people selling things they make themselves, EHOW involves showing people how to do do things themselves). ZUMBA makes me think how little I've seen TAEBO in puzzles lately, which puzzles deserve commendation for. I hereby grant you a five-year license to use ZUMBA; we'll check back in in 2023 to see if ZUMBA still warrants it (68A: Dance-based fitness program). The toughest answer for me to get was PITON, because they have spikes so I always think there's a "K" in there, and then I think the answer's more literal, like GRIP ON, and ... I don't know, it's not a word I encounter anywhere but crosswords, and no other word looks like it (nothing very common fits -ITON, or P-TON, or PI-ON, or PIT-N, or PITO- ... it's weird), so I just have trouble slotting it in my brain properly.

Bullets:

14A: Pharmaceutical giant that makes Valium (ROCHE) — can't keep my pharmaceutical giants straight, and totally forgot this one today. LILLY, PFIZER, MERCK ... where were you when I needed you!?
49D: Slimeball (SLEAZE) — wrote in SLEAZO because I really thought the NYT had tried in the past to convince me that was a term, but then I realized I was thinking of CREEPO
64D: Org. concerned with soil and water (EPA) — LOL not anymore. This clue is at least a year old.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I didn't understand the theme until I was done; while I was solving, I thought it had something to do with "stuff you say instead of swearing," like SASSAFRAS! and NONSENSE! (you know, instead of "bullshit!")

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Soviet nuclear-powered submarine / THU 12-28-17 / Affair for bingers / Ancient kingdom east of Dead Sea

Diddy peanut shooting Nintendo character / FRI 12-29-17 / Swirly sweet seller / TV spinoff beginning in 2004 / Letters before Q /

Elephant rider's seat / SAT 12-20-17 / Pioneering hip-hop trio / Bayou genre / Subject of Durocher's nice guys finish last sentiment / Matchmaking site available in Hebrew

1/20 of a ton abbr. / SUN 12-31-17 / County in New Mexico Colorado / Three-foot 1980s sitcom character / Hip-hop's Shakur / Film director C Kenton / Historic Mesopotamian city / Kyrgyz city / Result of French powdered drink shortage

Onetime Dr Pepper rival / MON 1-1-18 / Some canadian petroleum deposits / Trammps torch song / Letter shaped girders

Singer Lovett / MON 1-2-18 / Red Sea peninsula / Like a half-moon tide / "Gotta run," in a text / Amazon IDs

Northern Florida county seat / WED 1-3-18 / Lead-in to cumulus / Longtime Boston Symphony maestro

Recurring melodic phrase / THU 1-4-18 / Nickname shared by two Spice Girls / Capital of Osterreich

Old newspaper photo sections informally / FRI 1-5-18 / 1980s skiing champ Phil / Spittoon sound / Staple feature of Groucho Marx's you bet your life / Professional wrestling program since 1999 / Southwestern casseroled with cornbread crust

Popular pricing game on Price is Right / SAT 1-6-18 / Wide-staring one in Wordsworth poem / Blue-striped ball / Chaser of un trago de tequila / Main feature of Gmail logo

Flattish sea creatures / SUN 1-7-18 / Caninelike animal more closely related to cat than dog / Jerusalem's onetime kingdom / Crime-fighting mom of 1980s TV / Often-oval floor decor

Ulysses star 1967 / MON 1-8-18 / Antlered Yellowstone denizens / Hypnotist's command / Michigan Ontario border river / Container for oolong chai

Cool giant sun / TUE 1-9-18 / Falcon rocket launcher / Game craze of late 1980s '90s / Intradermal diagnostic for short / Popular Belgian beer for short

Eric of old CBS news / WED 1-10-18 / Bowery boozer / Beauty product line with slogan Ageless / Site of 1955 pact / Punta del Uruguayan resort / Filler ads in brief

Hasbro toy that involves pulling twisting / THU 1-11-18 / Line from someone who's been interrupted / George Vermont senator for 34 years / Co-written best seller

South Indian pancakes / FRI 1-12-18 / Rhyming educational proverb / Pastries similar to long john doughnuts / Not halal in Arab cuisine / Attracted to all genders in modern lingo

Shakespearean fencer / SAT 1-13-18 / Neighbor of Allemagne / Pertaining to colored rings / Measure of data transfer speed for short / Like eisteddfod festival / 1940 Fonda role

Italian castle town / SUN 1-14-18 / Comics superhero with filed-off horns / Connecticut city near New Haven / Steinbeck novella set in La Paz / Creator of Planet Money podcast

French president's palace / MON 1-15-18 / Cruet filler at Italian restaurant

Dance-based fitness program / TUE 1-16-18 / Weightless state informally / Chichi chihuahua accessory / Yankees great dubbed Old Perfessor / neighborhood where kimchi might be found informally