Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Jules P. Markey

Relative difficulty: Easy (note: grid is oversized at 15x16)

THEME: DOWN FEATHERS (11D: Warm winter coat contents ... or what is present in the answer to each starred clue?)— different birds are embedded in the long "down" answers. Birds have "feathers" ... and the answers go "down" ... so there you go.

Theme answers:

WAYNE GRETZKY (25D: *Sports legend who was an M.V.P. for eight consecutive seasons)
A GAME OF INCHES (5D: *Baseball, according to some)
"TELL ME ANOTHER ONE" (7D: *"A likely story!")
BRAVE NEW WORLD (22D: *Dystopian novel set in the year 2540)

Word of the Day: down (11-Down) —

noun
soft fine fluffy feathers that form the first covering of a young bird or an insulating layer below the contour feathers of an adult bird.
synonyms: soft feathers, fine hair; More
soft fine fluffy feathers taken from ducks or their nests and used for stuffing cushions, quilts, etc.; eiderdown.
fine soft hair on the face or body of a person.

"the little girl had a covering of golden down on her head"

• • •

This puzzle has one major (maybe not fatal, but major) flaw, and that's that the revealer is an awkward redundancy. As you can see from the Word of the Day definition, "down" *means* feathers. So ... DOWN FEATHERS ... !?!? Your revealer needs to be snappy and in-the-language and bang-on, and this one just flomps. That's when you "flop" in a "lump" on the ground, I think. DOWN FEATHERS was the answer I finished on, and unlike the rest of the puzzle, it took a bunch of work because ... again, DOWN FEATHERS, not a good phrase. "Down comforter,""down coat," etc. The word "feathers" is absurdly excessive. It's sad because there's potential to this type of embedded-word puzzle. You just need the right revealer, and this wasn't it. Also, as I've said before, with embedded words, the ideal is that every word in the theme answers touches said word, so there are no uninvolved words. WAYNE GRETZKY is a *perfect* embedded-word answer. Beautiful. Who knew EGRET was in there!? A revelation! The rest have extraneous words. A GAME, not involved, TELL ME, not involved, WORLD, not involved. And then there's the revealer. So if you solved left-to-right, as I did, this went from promising and possibly delightful to frowny-face disappointing.

The grid is chock full o'crosswordese (I mean, that first row is paradigmatic ... actually, the second row doesn't get much better ...), so that was unfortunate, but I've definitely seen worse grids. ARIOSE and LIENEE, despite being look-uppable words, are gruesome crosswordese to me (I only ever see them in crosswords, they are only here because of the favorable letter combinations they provide, not because someone thought, "ooh, that'll look nice..."). I have to say, though, that the clue on APOSTROPHE is a hall-of-famer. A perfect use of the "?" clue. Evokes one thing, actually clues something *entirely* different. Aggressively, unexpectedly literal clue. Also, I like bourbon. So that clue, like bourbon, warms my heart.

Bullets:

6A: Site of Zeno's teaching (STOA)— OK, so just now I learned that there are two Zenos. That ... hurts. (e)How did I not know that?? There's Zeno of ELEA (the answer I wanted here) (he's the ZENO of "Zeno's Paradoxes"), and then there's Zeno of Citium (!?!?!) (c. 334 – c. 262 BC), the founder of (wait for it ...) STOIcism, so-named for the place where he taught: the Stoa Poikile in Athens. STOA is here a proper noun. It is also a regular noun meaning "a classical portico or roofed colonnade" (google).
65A: Pasta used in soups and salads (ORZO) — always have to stop and think which one is ORZO and which one is OUZO (the anise-flavored Greek liqueur)
38D: Mortgagor, e.g. (LIENEE) — the clue and the answer are competing in a "who's uglier?' contest. Too close to call.
9D: Longtime Syrian strongman (ASSAD) — well, at least they called him "strongman." I'd've gone with something ... stronger. Actually, I'd probably not use him in a grid at all. Bygone tyrants, I can tolerate in my grids somewhat. Active ones, less so.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ryan McCarty and Alan Southworth

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: NO WAY (69A: "Forget it!" ... or a hint to 17-, 30-, 46- and 62-Across)— DESCRIPTION

Word of the Day:"KUBO and the Two Strings" (58D: 2016 animated film "___ and the Two Strings") —

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American 3D stop-motion fantasy action-adventure film directed and co-produced by Travis Knight (in his directorial debut), and written by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler. It stars the voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, George Takei, and Matthew McConaughey. It is Laika's fourth feature film produced. The film revolves around Kubo, who wields a magical shamisen and whose left eye was stolen in infancy. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must subdue his mother's corrupted Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather Raiden (aka, the Moon King), who stole his left eye.
Kubo premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival and was released by Focus Features in the United States on August 19 to critical acclaim and has grossed $77 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million. The film won the BAFTA for Best Animated Film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Visual Effects, becoming the second animated film ever to be nominated in the latter category following The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). (wikipedia)

• • •

Weird, we get a My Chemical Romance clue (45A: My Chemical Romance genre => EMO), but ... NO WAY?*

[*Gerard WAY is the lead singer for My Chemical Romance]

Two things about this puzzle are startling. First, the theme, which is so conceptually remedial, I have a hard time imagining its running in any majoy daily, let alone the "gold standard" puzzle. You just take WAY out? To get tepid phrases that are sometimes actual things and sometimes non-things? ONE STREET? That's funny? That's ... what is that? This is a puzzle you make early in your career and it gets rejected and then you learn to make your themes more interesting. When I got to the revealer ("NO WAY!"), I thought, "That ... that can't be it. Is that it?" It was it. And the resulting answers: HIGH ROBBERY, not a thing (unless you smoke pot and then knock over a bank, I guess), SUBSTATIONS, absolutely a thing, ONE STREET, a thing but not a standalone thing ... and then there's RUN A TRAIN. This is where I really, really wonder if anyone took any time editing this thing. The *only* reaction to this puzzle that I saw on Twitter last night involved this answer. Go ahead and google RUN A TRAIN (in quotation marks) if you don't know what that phrase means in common parlance. Let's just say that if the NYT does indeed have a "breakfast test" for its answers, this one proooooooobably doesn't pass. Surely Will's younger assistants know the slang meaning of this phrase. I wonder if the constructors thought they were being cute, or had a bet, or something. "We'll never get this by him!""Let's try!"

I found the puzzle really easy except for the far north, where BRETT (???) (6A: Lady ___ Ashley, Jake Barnes's love in "The Sun Also Rises") and BOBBER (it's not just "bob"?) (6D: Tackle box item) and especially RUBADUB (who doesn't love a partial nonsense phrase!?) (7D: Start of a children's rhyme) really gummed things up. The SW also slowed me down, as all that Cockney nonsense was unintelligible to me. Neither LONDONER (37D: Cockney, e.g.) nor 'ERE (68A: "Listen ___!" (Cockney cry)) came into view easily. I thought maybe the Cockney person (?) was saying "Listen 'A ME!" Ugh. Oh, and I forgot what a "jewel case" was (oh, these modern times!) and so CD-ROM (bygone!) was rough for me as well (53A: Jewel case insert). Also got thrown by the theme-length answer with the "?" clue that was *not* a themer (I really hate that sort of junk). CEMENT MASON is as long or longer than all themers and (like the themers) has a "?" clue, so I went looking for a missing WAY. To no avail. But the rest was a cinch and even these problem areas weren't tough to work out. But overall, this was unpleasant, in more ways than one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: BEETHOVEN (35A + 36A) on HEADPHONES (21D + 39D) — there is a note:

Word of the Day: PARADOR (8A: Spanish hotel) —

noun
a hotel in Spain owned and administered by the Spanish government. (google)

• • •

Why? Why would you do this? Fridays are the Best Days for puzzles. My favorite day. Themeless puzzles that are on the easier side. These are usually the most delightful puzzles of the week. So why would you run this Saturday+-difficulty Maleska-era-skewing wisp-of-a-joke puzzle today!? If you had to do it, do it Tomorrow. It was certainly hard enough (my time was 2x normal Friday and well above my normal Saturday). This was a whole lot of brutality just so I could notice the "H" at the end. I probably could've made the experience slightly easier if I had Bothered To Look At The Note At All, but I resent notes and never read them until after I'm done. I take it as a personal challenge. A dare. If I need your note, your puzzle's no good and I'm no good as a solver. If I'd read it, I *probably* would've pieced together that the central answers were involved, and that would've given me BEET (instead of ACAI, ugh), and that western section might've fallen a Lot sooner (it was a nightmare). But I'm not playing your stupid reindeer games on Friday. Just *seeing* the little yellow "Note" symbol in my software gave me ill will toward this puzzle. And then it was hard and full of weirdness and obscurity and "clever" cluing, and Then the payoff was ... what it was. If you absolutely had to make this "joke," why not do it inside a clean, modern, delightful grid, instead of this painfully BORESOME one (I hope I'm using that "word" right—I refuse to look it up).

No idea:

GRAB BAR (1A: Help during the fall?)— ?????????????? Brutal. Do you mean "hand rail?" What the hell is a GRABBAR!? This was the beginning of the end for me in the west, as I had 5D: Smoking GUN. And thus -R--GAR at 1-Across. Forever.
ACCORDS (1D: Grants)— Oh, it's a verb. How nice. Not how I was reading it.
BEAR (4D: Difficult thing to do, informally) — without GRABBAR, no hope
PARADOR (8A: Spanish hotel) — a what now?
ABILENE (16A: Hardin-Simmons University setting) — I teach at a university and have never heard of this university, and thus could not have known where it is located
ABASE (9D: Mortify) — Kept thinking about someone being "mortified" and just refused to accept that "abased" meant the same thing
COY (26A: Hardly fresh)— ugh these words. What decade are these gender politics from? I had CO- and had to run the alphabet. Twice
SLOPE (27A: It's not on the level) — SLANT
PIERO (28D: Renaissance artist ___ della Francesca) — cannot keep all those guys straight, and without SLOPE ... nope
BEET (35A: Healthful juice source) — ACAI, as I (a) say above

GOPRO (37A: Thrill-seeker's appurtenance — just brutal, this clue. I forgot these exist. They don't have anything to do with the "seeking" of the thrill, just the recording of it. The word "appurtenance" is a horrifically ugly thing to have to look at.
MEI (47A: ___ Lan (giant panda born at the ATLANTA zoo)) — there are so many damn zoo pandas at this point, expecting people to know the particular three-letter Chinese name part at this point is ridiculous. The cross-reference adds nothing here.
ELENA (50D: "The Vampire Diairies" protagonist") — nope, but luckily ELENA is a name that appears on crosswords a lot
ISN'T (52A: That right introduction?) — this may be the most painful "?" clue I've ever read, whereas my wrong answer is probably the best wrong answer that ever was. I had: STET. "DELE? No, that right! STET!" Me: "I don't know why the editor is talking like that, but OK."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: pomeriggio (21A: Pomeriggio follower => SERA)—

SERA = evening (Italian)

• • •

Another hard puzzle today, though today was far more in line with expectations—a proper themeless puzzle that was properly tough. Finished in less time than yesterday's abomination took me, predictably. Thought the clues on this one were trying too hard to be hard/clever in many places, and some of the fill (especially proper nouns) got weird and obscure, but the big-ticket stuff looks very good, and overall I think it's a nice example of what a typical Saturday puzzle should be like: hard and occasionally humiliating but ultimately satisfying. Some of the clues were completely unintelligible to me, even after I'd solved them (see 21A: Pomeriggio follower, for example). Also, "Blondie" knowledge that goes *that* deep. That's insane. "Blondie" is super-old. Super. Old. I teach a course on Comics and this answer was a mystery to me. Got it by inference (from Betty Boop), as I'm sure most people did. With Howdy Doody also in the comic, well, you can feel this thing skewing pretty retro. Even the hip-hop reference was retro: I haven't heard of SISTER SOULJAH since the '90s (10D: Hip-hop icon born Lisa Williamson). Also, SIST*ER*!?!?! That bit stunned me. I got the answer quickly because I started with the last -AH in place, but I spelled it SISTAH SOULJAH because ... in hip-hop ... -ER to -A(H) sound / spelling change is pretty standard. See, uh, SOULJAH, for one.

Felt like there were a Ton of "?" clues, but there were just six. Three of them are quite close together in the NW, though, so I felt like I was being bombarded. I think the puzzle gets a *little* careless with proper nouns at PELLA / AMATO. The window name I've seen (25D: Big name in windows), but couldn't recall specifically (kept wanting PEALE or PEELE), and AMATO is gibberish to me (35A: Pasquale ___, baritone at the Metropolitan Opera). I thought maybe this was a new clue for ERATO. Totally feasible that neither name will be known to a solver, and only AMATO is (fairly) inferrable with that one letter missing (-MATO). Also, ANSELMO, LOL what? The only reason I got this was that my aunt lives in San ANSELMO, and Van Morrison sings a beautiful song called "Snow in San ANSELMO.""Official character voice of Donald Duck" is like a parody of an obscure clue. Like, today? Now? Is Donald Duck being voiced anywhere? Or is this in the past? You can see I'm not looking it up. It's so weird that this is a thing the puzzle thinks I might know. (Yes, he's currently Donald's voice, and apparently "Duck Tales" is on the air somewhere, I don't know). Anyway, hope you are familiar with PACHINKO (I botched the spelling there at first) (4D: Its player may have a yen for gambling) and CMA (27D: Nashville awards org.) and POLIS (23D: Sparta, e.g.) and SISTER SOULJAH or the California city San ANSELMO. Mind your names, constructors. Mind your names.

RELEASE WAIVER felt redundant (11D: Paper signed before filming begins). Heard of signing releases and signing waivers but not RELEASE WAIVERs. SYNODAL is a word I'd be happy never to see again (see also yesterday's "appurtenance") (41A: Like certain ecclesiastical councils). I like BIG TICKET ITEM best, and I like it's clue best (12A: One taking a lot of credit, maybe?), and I like that the constructor knew enough to put the "Best" stuff right across the top of the dang grid. I was super-proud of myself that I remembered SARAI today straight away (38D: Name changed in Genesis 17:15). Less proud that I went with HAIRCUTS at 30D: Changers of locks (HAIR DYES) and thus fell in a hole that added probably a solid minute to my solving time. Pfffflert. Nothing will get you stucker longer than a wrong answer. "There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself"—Philip Marlowe, in The Long Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Victor Barocas and Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Substitutes"— theme answers up top are ordinary phrases following the pattern [___ FOR ___]; in the bottom half, theme clues ask you to "remember" one of the theme answers from the top half, and then you're supposed to make a substitution in the bottom-half theme clue by taking the "remembered" theme answers literally, i.e. swapping out the first word for the second. Thus:

Theme answers:

PLAY FOR TIME (23A: Stall) // ELIZABETHAN ERA (95A: ~~Play~~ Time of Shakespeare (remember 23-Across)) {when you "remember 23-Across," you "remember" to substitute the word PLAY for the word TIME in this clue}
NOT SAFE FOR WORK (33A: At risk of being offensive) // TELECOMMUTE (111A: ~~Not safe~~ Work at home (remember 33-Across))
CRY FOR HELP (43A: Subtle sign from the distressed) // TEMPORARY EMPLOYEE (73A: Seasonal ~~cry~~ help (remember 43-Across))
RECIPE FOR DISASTER (56A: Very bad plan) // EARTHQUAKE (87A: ~~Recipe~~ Disaster that entails a lot of shaking (remember 56-Across))

Word of the Day: ELIS (45D: Ancient land where the Olympics began) —

Elis /ˈɛlɪs/ or Eleia /ɛˈlaɪ.ə/ (Greek, Modern: Ήλιδα Ilida, Ancient: Ἦλις Ēlis; Doric: ἎλιςAlis; Elean: Ϝαλις Walis, ethnonym: Ϝαλειοι) is an ancient district that corresponds to the modern Elis regional unit. Elis is in southern Greece on the Peloponnesos peninsula, bounded on the north by Achaea, east by Arcadia, south by Messenia, and west by the Ionian Sea. Over the course of the archaic and classical periods, the polis of Elis controlled much of the region of Elis, most probably through unequal treaties with other cities, which acquired perioikic status. Thus the city-state of Elis was formed.(wikipedia)

• • •

This grid is lovely, but this theme didn't work for me at all. Any theme that is tough to explain clearly and succinctly has a good likelihood of being problematic. It's not that this one was tough to figure out, it's just that it only really affected four theme answer (i.e. the first four are just straightforward answers to straightforward clues), so it was barely there—so much so that I never bothered to "remember" anything. And who "remembers" clues? That's a weird word choice. There are something like 140 answers in this grid. Asking me to "remember" some number clue is absurd. I just ended up getting those answers from crosses / by inference. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out what. Only after I was done did I go back and try to find out what all this "remembering" was about. So it's a half-theme that doesn't even need figuring out. Even the title of the puzzle feels like it's not really trying. "Substitutes"? That's it? As I said, the grid itself is clean and lively, which is always nice. But the theme was super-off to me, and theme is kind of important on a Sunday.

GAYBORHOODS! I knew those were gay areas or districts or ... some word, but I did not see this particular neologism (!) coming. SHEDFUL made me laugh because come on, that is not a meaningful quantity (65D: Quantity of garden tools). Probably the hardest answer for me to get in this puzzle was 1A: Enjoy some rays? (SCUBA). Couldn't decide if the dog was going GRR or ARF (5D: Terrier's warning), so I needed most of the other crosses to see SCUBA (a "?" clue which, it turns out, we are getting only for the "joy" of encountering the repeat clue at 61A: Enjoys some rays (BASKS)). How is a CRY FOR HELP"subtle"? If it's a cry, it's ... by definition ... not subtle. Baffling. I had just a couple of initial mistakes today: TBONDS for TNOTES (man, that's a boring mistake) (93D: They take 2-10 yrs. to mature) and POOH BEARS / SHE-GOAT for CARE BEARS (21A: Colorful toys with symbols on their bellies) / PET (?) GOAT (14D: Nanny around the house?). I wish I had more to say about this puzzle, but I don't. Hope you enjoyed the theme more than I did.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (slightly tougher than normal, for a Monday)

THEME: EROSION (46D: Natural process illustrated by the last words of 18-, 24-, 37-, 534- and 61-Across)— Final word of first themer undergoes process of EROSION in successive themers, with one letter disappearing each time, until we go from STONE to O:

Theme answers:

EMMA STONE (18A: 2016 Best Actress Oscar winner for "La La Land")
QUARTER TONE (24A: Half of a half step in music)
METRIC TON (37A: Weight unit equal to about 2,205 pounds)
"I MEAN, COME ON!" (54A: "Puh-LEEZE!")
STANDING O (61A: Enthusiastic audience response)

Word of the Day: OBLASTS (40D: Administrative regions in Russia) —

noun
plural noun: oblasts
an administrative division or region in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and in some of its former constituent republics. (google)

• • •

STAN

Would've liked this better on Tuesday—both because this was more in line with Tuesday difficulty, and because Tuesdays often suh-uck and this did not. I feel like I've done a version of this theme before, somewhere ... but that doesn't diminish the way it's done here, with remarkably fresh and clean answers. Just lose OBLASTS (not really a Monday-level answer) and make the clues *slightly* easier, and you have a perfect Monday puzzle. As it is, you have a very good one. Once again, the puzzle's heavy reliance on colloquialisms made it tough for me to move quickly. Just the simple "OH, FUN" required many crosses, as it really could've been "OH, a lot of things" (GEE, WOW ... RAD?). Same thing with the I MEAN part of "I MEAN, COME ON!" It's a great expression, but I had the "COME ON" part and ... ??? Just wanted "Oh." I was also slowed by not considering CHALUPA a real food (I've never heard of it anywhere but in Taco Bell commercials—I figured they just made it up), and by repeatedly misparsing words. STANDINGO in particular was a disaster, as I solved it from the back end and kept wondering what was going to happen to the DINGO.

S answers that gave me trouble:

28A: Abbr. in an office address (STE) — seems a hardish clue for STE (here, an abbr. for "suite")

35D: Look down on (SCORN)— I just couldn't find the handle here, no idea why. SNORT and SNEER and various condescending faces were coming to mind, but not SCORN.

68A: Fish typically split before cooking (SCROD)— me: "Uh ... all of them?" This seems like kind of a deep cut, SCROD-knowledge-wise. [this answer appears to have a different clue in the app: [Fish often used in fish fingers] — not sure if it was always this way, or if they changed it, or what. Seems to be a lot of last-minute clue tinkering across formats lately...]

45D: Bond film after "Skyfall" ("SPECTRE") — Me: "Uh ... SKYFALL? No wait, that's in the clue. Uh ... SKYFALL?" Total blank.

19D: Sailor's patron ("ST. ELMO") — Had "STEL-" and wanted STELLA ... because it means "stars" ... and sailors ... navigate ... by those? STELLA!!!!!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (above average difficulty *for a Tuesday*)

THEME: SPREAD (68A: Apt word to follow each row of circled letters) — nonconsecutive circles in six different rows spell out a kind of "spread":

SPREADS:

WING ("wingspan" is what humans say ... C'MON)
CHEESE
MAGAZINE
MIDDLE-AGE
POINT
BED (really? really? Three meager letters and you want that to count as some kind of theme feat?)

Word of the Day: Wingspread —

Wingspread, also known as the Herbert F. Johnson House, is a historic house at 33 East Four Mile Road in Wind Point, Wisconsin. It was built in 1938–39 to a design by Frank Lloyd Wright for Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., then the president of S.C. Johnson, and was considered by Wright to be one of his most elaborate and expensive house designs to date. The property is now a conference center operated by The Johnson Foundation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. (wikipedia)

• • •

Non-consecutive, non-symmetrical, spread-all-over-hell-and-gone circles that spell ... words. These things are never, ever pleasant to solve. Just looking at the grid put me off the puzzle, and then having it be ORANGE RIND and not ORANGE PULP really locked my mood in at "Low." Encountering primo junk like ITEN, ITER, and OBOLI (jeez louise), didn't help matters. With a theme this weak, and especially early in the week, the grid needs to gleam and sparkle, and this didn't even come close. A vintage Tuezday (i.e. a total bust). I guess Tuesday was getting jealous that Sunday has taken over the "Worst Puzzle of the Week" spot. Well, game on, apparently.

Got slowed down all over by ambiguity / weirdness / badness. First the PULP thing, then the clue on ROWING left me blank (4D: Olympic sport with strokes), then 7D: Elongated, heavily armored fish should've been GAR but that didn't fit ... oh, you mean "fish" as a plural? (GARS) "Clever." I thought GAR *was* a plural, but what(so)ever. Got the WHERE in WHERESOEVER (18A: In any place) and didn't know what came next because the answer to that clue in everyday speech is clearly WHEREVER. There should've been some "quaint" or "bygone" or "in poetry" or something to clue the "SO" part of WHERESOEVER. By far the biggest hurdle, though, was (no surprise) the stupidest, bygonest, olde-tymiest, Maleskiest answer in the grid. At 19D: Coins of ancient Athens, I wrote in OBOLS. Which is by far the preferred plural for that *bygone* coin. But the puzzle wanted funky alt-ending OBOLI. And of course that was the one square that linked the NE to the E. So ... dead stop. Monday: OBLASTS. Tuesday: OBOLI. Been a weird week for OBscurities so far, and it's only Tuesday. Here's hoping for a happier Wednesday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kathy Wienberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: at, an end... — phrases have 'AT' added to the end for some reason, creating nonsense phrases

Theme answers:

MAMMOTH CAVEAT (20A: Big "but"?)
ESTATE CARAT (27A: Small diamond handed down to an heir?)
HONEY COMBAT (44A: Fight between two lovers?)
FORWARD PASSAT (55A: Futuristic Volkswagen?)

Word of the Day: AXIL (17A: Angle between a leafstalk and a stem) —

noun
BOTANY
the upper angle between a leaf stalk or branch and the stem or trunk from which it is growing. (google)

• • •

Oof. Back-to-back grim offerings. I'm startled that this theme concept passed muster. I honestly don't get it. You just shove "AT" on the end of things? There's not even an attempt at a clever revealer or anything. Completely baffling. I have a hard time imagining the LA Times running this thing, let alone the "best puzzle in the world" or whatever the NY Times calls itself. And the theme answers ... ??? I don't think I even know what an "estate car" is, so ESTATE CARAT was super-meaningless to me, and thus super-hard to get. Didn't help that I had that first letter as a "D" since 21D: Good ___ days did nothing to get me to OLE. [Note: ["good old days"] = 14.6 million hits; ["good ole days"] = 387K] And the crosswordese, dear lord. The only thing worse than RATA on its own is actually cross-referencing the full term, PRO / RATA (59D: With 9-Down, according to share), especially when you put the first part way down at the bottom of the grid and the second part at the top. I haven't seen AXIL in years, for good reason. The "informally" in that DR. WHO clue is killing me (8A: BBC sci-fi series, informally). You don't mean "informally," which implies speech, because "DR. WHO" and the correct "DOCTOR WHO" *sound the same.* You mean "in informal writing, like a text, say." Clues should be precise ... but let's move on. [Christian singer...] You can stop right there, I guarantee you I have no idea. UPENN would be a fine answer because people actually call it that. UTENN, less fine. And then there's the super-choppy grid, which means only tiny passageways between sections. Irksome.

And then of course I wanted the more common terms (what a sucker!) like STAND FIRM instead of STAND FAST (33D: Not budge) and PIANO BENCH instead of PIANO STOOL (59A: Seat for a ragtime player) ... there was literally nothing pleasant about solving this. The best answer is SCREEN TIME, and somehow the puzzle managed to mangle the clue so badly that I could barely understand it (18A: Subject of a parent's restriction for a child). [Something a parent might place limits on], that might work. Something about "subject" and the redundant "for a child" just made that clue ugly.

Wrong answers:

6D: What an oatmeal bath alleviates (ITCH) — ACHE, then RASH
3D: Prettify (PRIMP) — PREEN
1D: "Likewise" ("AS AM I") — "AS DO I"
66A: Fella (LAD)— I didn't mess this up. I just think it's wrong. "Fella" is a grown person, LAD ... isn't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: ISLAND HOPPING (33A: Yachter's itinerary, maybe ... or a hint to understanding the answers to the starred clues) — answers to starred clues "hop" island names, creating other answers, which are nowhere clued

Theme answers:

SCUBA TANK (16A: *Smelled) ... so STANK "hops" CUBA
CONCRETES (24A: *They're not pros) ... and CONS hops CRETE
VERBALISE (46A: *Poetry) ... and VERSE hops BALI
BALTIMORE (55A: *Hayloft item) ... and finally BALE hops TIMOR

Word of the Day: OTIS College of Art and Design (52D: Los Angeles's ___ College of Art and Design) —

Otis, long considered one of the major art institutions in California, began in 1918, when Los Angeles Times founder Harrison Gray Otis bequeathed his Westlake, Los Angeles, property to start the first public, independent professional school of art in Southern California. The current Otis College main campus (since Spring 1997) is located in the Westchester area of Los Angeles, close to the Los Angeles International Airport. The main building (built in 1963) was designed by architect Eliot Noyes for IBM and is famous for its computer "punched card" style windows. (wikipedia)

• • •

My daughter was just (literally, just ten minutes ago) describing to me her experience seeing "Once On This Island" in NYC at the Circle in the Square Theatre this past weekend, so that was a semi-odd coincidence. Islands! OK, this theme works fine, I think. Yeah. I mean, the resulting answers are super-random and weird and have nothing to do with anything, but the revealer is a nice play on words, and the execution of the theme is consistent, and ... yeah, sure, I"ll take it. I found the cluing off and irksome in some places, but when is that ever not true? I think the thing I object to most in the theme is the British VERBALISE, with the "S" spelling. Feels like cheating to have your final random "real" word be a spelling we don't use here. Also, plural CONCRETES? These "real" words aren't feeling so real to me half the time. But SCUBA TANK is a great discovery. You gotta "hop" to a completely different, second word to make it work, but it's my favorite of the bunch by far. I was more impressed by the overall quality of the grid, which is good, and especially by short answers that I actually liked, like O LINE (18A: Group of football blockers, in brief), BENTO (7D: Japanese meal in a box), and "OH, SNAP!" (though that clue felt very off to me—both inaccurate and not colloquial enough) (1D: "Did you just see that ?!").

I lived through the '90s and sure I remember some SKA-infused stuff but a "boomlet"?? (4D: Music boomlet of the mid-'90s). Do the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones and No Doubt constitute a "boomlet"? And is a MONOCLE an "accessory"? (27D: Accessory on a chain). I guess if it's pure affectation, then OK, but ... do some people really need it to see? Also, does anyone actually carry one at all, ever, anymore? Did they ever? The only MONOCLE-wearer that I have any familiarity with is Col. Mustard in the version of Clue that I played as a child (with the photos of the suspects), so I don't know. I just know that "accessory" never would've led me to MONOCLE if the crosses hadn't made it evident. Oh, crud, it looks like Col. Mustard was actually wearing glasses; its just that one gleamed more and so it looked like a MONOCLE (?). Bizarre. Anyway ...

DESI Arnaz was a man, not a "boy," when married to Lucille Ball, so boo (35D: Ball boy?). Took me forever to get AHEM because that clue is awfully specific (53A: "Um, don't look now, but ..."), and AHEM can signify a jillion things. I forgot that NIOBE was boastful (54A: Boastful mother of Greek myth). I just remember the crying. Hers is yet another "Do not boast to the gods unless you want your ass handed to you" morality tale. See also Arachne, Capaneus, etc.

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Constructor: Caleb Madison

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TALIA al Ghul (Batman foe) (44D) —

Talia al Ghul (Arabic: تاليا الغول) is a fictional character appearing in American comic bookspublished by DC Comics, commonly in association with Batman. The character was created by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Bob Brown, and first appeared in Detective Comics #411 (May 1971). Talia is the daughter of the supervillain Ra's al Ghul, the half-sister of Nyssa Raatko, on-and-off romantic interest of the superhero Batman, and the mother of Damian Wayne (the fifth Robin). She has alternately been depicted as an anti-hero.
Talia has appeared in over 200 individual comics issues,^[1] and has been featured in various media adaptions. The character was voiced by Helen Slater in Batman: The Animated Series, which became her first appearance in media other than the comic books. Talia was subsequently portrayed by Marion Cotillard in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, and by Lexa Doig in the television series Arrow. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was OK. Had ups and downs, high points and low points. HILO! (37D: Stud poker variation, informally) It's trying very hard to be contemporary, at least in a couple places, but in other ways (everything south of SISTER WIVES), it's kind of ordinary and dull (though I did like WET KISS and its clue, 40D: Sloppy planting job?). Difficulty-wise, it was very easy *except* for the NW corner, which threatened to stop me completely when I couldn't get Any of the longs Downs to work. I recognized Daniel LaRusso's name, but couldn't place it, and "filmdom" in the clue made me think LaRusso was an actor, not a fictional, titular character (3D: Sobriquet for filmdom's Daniel LaRusso, with "The"). And then 2D: Dead was just too vague for me to even guess at what INAN- could be. I thought maybe a phrase, like IN AN ... COMA? Something like that. Oh, and then there's WORD SALAD, which is what I had (confidently) written in at 1D: Verbal outpouring, in slang. WORD VOMIT is a. far less common than WORD SALAD, b. gross (has "VOMIT" ever appeared in the NYT!?) (A: no), and c. see a. and b. Luckily I didn't end there, because that would truly have been ending ON A DOWNER (15A: How buzzkills end things).

I know SISTER WIVES only because I'm vaguely aware that there was (is?) a TV show of that name. Like VOMIT, this isn't something that excites me. LORDE, though, is great, and I'm surprised she doesn't appear a lot lot lot more in crosswords. Short answer, favorable letters, super famous. Definitely a keeper. Just replace REUNE and all OLAF / OLAVs with LORDE wherever possible, is my suggestion. Outside of the NW, I got slowed down only in the SE, briefly, as WET KISS suddenly seemed wrong when I dropped in the definitely-right III (55D: Jr.'s son).III next to WET KISS gave me consecutive "I"s and everyone knows that's not possi- ... and then eventually I saw the clue for HAWAIIANS. And I put WET KISS back in. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: POMACE (20D: Pulpy refuse) —

noun
(especially in cider making) the pulpy residue remaining after fruit has been crushed in order to extract its juice. (google)

• • •

Wow, this was a lovely, brisk, bracing way to wake up. Usually if I'm up and solving before 6am, my solving brain is not fully warmed up and I stumble and slog through the grid in a most ungainly fashion, but I guess I gave myself a big enough pause between waking and solving—let the dog out, pet the dog, talked to the dog, made tea, read some stupid stuff online—that by the time I dug into the puzzle, I was on full alert. I usually don't try to *speed* on Fri and Sat because there are too many potholes and bad things happen and anyway it stresses me out a bit. But today I was like, "just try to pick up the pace a little." I mean, my walking speed is still pretty fast, but I wanted to try to Move a little today. And this puzzle was amenable to the experiment. Mark Diehl's stuff is usually pretty damn thorny (for me), but this one went down pretty easily. Not too easily—there were still some moments where I had to work for it—but much easier than most Diehls. More importantly, it was a delightful grid, with only a handful of clunkers and a ton of interesting fill, plus good clues. It was the kind of puzzle that was very satisfying to solve: clean, bright, and entertaining, sufficiently difficult but ultimately defeatable. A light, satisfying workout. Thumbs up.

How to start a themeless: for me, I attack the short answers, usually in the NW corner—good to start where you might get the *front* end of both Across and Down answers. Letters at the front of answers tend to be more revealing of the whole answer than letters toward the back (except when you luck into a terminal "V," say, which would sharply narrow all possibilities for the cross). Today, I threw down quickly the following: DINGER, MAC, DENT, CROW. Then I looked at the Acrosses. And despite two of those initial answers being dead wrong, the correct "D" and "C" tipped me to MID-MARCH (1A: When St. Patrick's Day is celebrated). I had looked at that clue with no letters in place and gotten nothing, which is how I know the "D" and the "C" were the key. I could somehow see the pattern through the gunk of the wrong answers. And I took off from there.

I resisted the BLOOD of BLOOD-BORNE because it seemed a little ... like it wouldn't pass the breakfast test (34A: Like the hepatitis B and C pathogens). NYT tends to avoid both bodily fluids and diseases, and this clue/answer has both. But I guess now that I've had to deal with VOMIT in a puzzle, anything goes. Anyway, BLOOD-BORNE is a perfectly fine answer that I can't imagine anyone's objecting to (unlike VOMIT). Two other answers were briefly perplexing, in different ways. I could *not* figure out what the castaway was doing with the damn coconuts (23D: Coconuts, to a maroon on an island, maybe). I kept thinking of how in movies people spell out "SOS" or some other message. I also misremembered Wilson (from "Castaway") as a coconut and so ... if your coconut could be your island companion, maybe it could also be your STEADY DATE?? Seemed kind of a dark, cruel place to go, but again I refer you to yesterday's VOMIT. And I won't be the only one, not by a long shot, to go with TEAM SPORTS instead of TEAM EVENTS at 55A: Curling and rugby, but not boxing, in the Olympics. Throw in URN for TUN (31A: Wine container) and TABU for TREF (46D: Forbidden, in a way) and that pretty much covers my mistakes. Finished with the first "A" in JANEANE, whose name I know well, though JENEANE also looks right (36D: Witty Garofalo). PAWL is not a word I know well at *all* (40A: Trigger-to-cylinder connection), but I at least knew it wasn't PEWL, so, success.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Priscilla Clark and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Surprise Endings" — movies have their last letters changed, creating wacky titles which are clued as if the wackiness is a PLOT TWIST (which is what the new letters at the end of each themer, taken sequentially, spell out)

Theme answers:

"HUSTLE AND FLOP" (23A: Pimp launches career in rap ... BUT HAS AN EPIC FAIL!)
"TAXI DRIVEL" (30A: Cabby saves prostitute ... WITH HIS BLATHERING!)
"I LOVE YOU, MAO" (43A: "Guy makes new best friend ... WHO TURNS OUT TO BE A COMMUNIST!)
"THE COLOR OF MONET" (56A: Retired pool shark returns ... TO WIN FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING!)
"ABOUT A BOT" (65A: Chap gets life lessons from kid ... WHO'S REALLY AN ANDROID!)
"BEVERLY HILLS COW" (81A: West Coast officers track wisecracking detective ... TO A BOVINE!)
"THE BIG CHILI" (90A: Friends gather for a funeral ... AND COOK UP AN ENORMOUS STEW!)
"SWAMP THINS" (107A: Bog monster emerges ... WITH A NEW LINE OF SNACK CRACKERS!)
"LICENCE TO KILT" (118A: 007 gets fired ... AND LANDS A JOB AS A SCOTTISH TAILOR!)

Word of the Day: EVIE Sands (37D: Singer Sands) —

Evie Sands (born July 18, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter and musician.
Sands' music career spans more than 50 years. She began her career as a teenager in the mid-1960s, after a rocky start, she eventually found chart success in 1969, before retiring from performing in 1979 to concentrate on writing and production. She experienced a fashionable, UK-led surge in cult popularity beginning in the 1990s and returned to live performance in mid-1998. Sands continues to write and perform. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sunday continues to sputter along miserably. A single letter changed per themer, and the net result is just PLOT TWISTS? When the title is already "Surprise Endings." It was like the revealer was an alternate title, and precisely nothing was interesting or revelatory or even funny. I think THE BIG CHILI and SWAMP THINS land OK, but the rest involve awkward, clunky grammar or awkward cluing or have some other defect that dampens their already meager wackiness. Turns out to be *a* Communist? He's MAO. That's not just *a* Communist. Since Monet actually works in "colors" (many, many colors), "THE COLOR OF MONET" comes off as nonsense. And you track a detective "to a bovine?" There's gotta be a better way of cluing "BEVERLY HILLS COW?" Maybe the detective turns out to *be* a COW? Something. I don't even know what tracking him "to" a cow means. So there's no big finish here, just a big fizzle, and the answers themselves hold little joy. Rest of the grid is average at best. I'm gonna have to go do Evan Birnholz's WaPo Sunday puzzle to get the taste of this one out of my mouth (WaPo beats NYT almost every Sunday—don't believe me, go see).

Found parts of this oddly hard. Had PO- and still had zero idea what 50A: Beverage called a "tonic" in Boston wanted. Maybe because I don't call soda *either of those things*. The idea that the "beverage" was POP? Not a thing that would ever have occurred to me. Not sure why you would clue SCAT as the animal droppings as opposed to ["Shoo!"] but you do you, I guess. ECASH, like Bitcoin, remains ridiculous. EAR WORMS instead of EAR CANDY (20A: Light, catchy tunes). Since the clue for "I LOVE YOU, MAO" was so vague ("Guy makes a new best friend'???) and I've never ever seen "I Love You, Man," that answer and everything south of its back end was harrowing. Couldn't get USO (46D: Grp. with the motto "Until every one comes home"), couldn't get ARIA (48D: Part of a score, maybe) (I had CODA), zeeeero idea about ROSIE (?) (60A: "___ Revere, Engineer" (best selling 2013 children's book)), totally forgot about the "Big Game" in college football (Stanford / CAL), so basically I had none of the MUSCLE in MUSCLE CAR (47D: Gran Torino, e.g.) and what felt like no prospects of getting it. Also [Appropriate] for USURP is pretty tricky (clue looks like an adj.). So, yikes. Rest of the puzzle was pretty normal / easy. I'm done talking about this one. Gonna drink some tea and hang out with the dogs and then watch "D.O.A." on TCM. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. hilarious update now. You know how I said Evan Birnholz's Sunday WaPo puzzle is better than the Sunday NYT on a regular basis? Well, that's true. But it turns out Evan published a puzzle in 2016 With This Exact Theme. I mean, nearly the same title ("Alternate Endings"), and *exactly* the same concept, including the bit where the final letters spell out PLOT TWIST. As you can see, Evan's grid is better, which probably would've made solving his puzzle more pleasant, but, yeah, this is kind of burn on me for touting a puzzle that had already done the very theme I claimed not to enjoy ... bigger burn on the NYT for publishing a pale, note-for-note version of another outlet's recent work ... but a burn on me, nonetheless.

P.P.S. OMG I missed an element in the Birnholz / WaPo version of this puzzle that today's NYT was totally lacking: the original final letters of the movie titles in his grid actually spelled out "CHINATOWN"!!!!!!! (a movie with an *infamous* PLOT TWIST). Whereas the original final letters of the movie titles in today's NYT spell out ... nothing. Unless "WRNYYPLGL" is a thing. So, as I was saying, WaPo > NYT. I can't stop laughing. This is the greatest Sunday ever. It's like Christmas all over again.

P.P.P.S. Go see "Lady Bird." It's wonderful.

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Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Normal Monday

THEME: DOWNSIZE (62A: Diminish the work force ... or a literal hint to the answers to the four starred clues) — starred clues are long DOWN answers that contain "sizes" ... that actually *increase* as you move across the grid, but that sink lower *in* the grid, so ... yeah OK.

Theme answers:

SMALL WORLD (3D: *"Crazy to run into you here!")
PRINT MEDIUM (6D: *Newspapers or magazines)
AT LARGE RACE (27D: *Contest for an areawide seat)
MUMBO JUMBO (31D: *Nonsense)

Word of the Day: BPA (29D: Controversial chemical in plastics, for short) —

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic synthetic compound with the chemical formula(CH₃)₂C(C₆H₄OH)₂ belonging to the group of diphenylmethane derivatives and bisphenols, with two hydroxyphenyl groups. It is a colorless solid that is soluble in organic solvents, but poorly soluble in water. It has been in commercial use since 1957. [...] The FDA states "BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods" based on extensive research, including two more studies issued by the agency in early 2014. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reviewed new scientific information on BPA in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2015: EFSA's experts concluded on each occasion that they could not identify any new evidence which would lead them to revise their opinion that the known level of exposure to BPA is safe; however, the EFSA does recognize some uncertainties, and will continue to investigate them.
In February 2016, France announced that it intends to propose BPA as a REACH Regulationcandidate substance of very high concern (SVHC). The European Chemicals Agencyagreed to the proposal in June 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

Enjoyed this puzzle despite the fact that it works on only two out of the three possible levels (i.e. the sizes appear in DOWN answers, and the sizes (small, medium, large, jumbo) literally move DOWN (i.e. lower in the grid) with each successive themer, but the sizes do *not* go DOWN (size-wise) as you move across the grid). Also JUMBO isn't anyone's idea of the fourth term in this sequence. If I said "finish this sequence: small, medium, large, ___" you'd probably say "extra large"; you might say a bunch of things, but JUMBO probably isn't one of them. And *still* I was entertained by this grid, mostly because the basic quality of the grid, overall, is just so dang good. MODEL UN! LASSI! Even BPA, which I can't really call "good," but which is at least current. Since Mondays are high-speed affairs anyway, all I want is a moderately coherent theme and then cleanness and bounce, cleanness and bounce! This thing's got only a small handful of answers I'd chuck overboard, and only a couple I really dislike: IDI (old school crosswordese + murderous tyrant = booo), and ET ALII, which is an answer I'd retire right now if I could, along with ET ALIA. No one likes having to guess at the ETALI(?) mystery letter, and no one says or even writes it out like that anyway. We all know that ET AL is the only legit abbr. here, so let's ditch the ET ALI(?) twins for good, OK? Oh, and TGI? Come on, that's horrible. But let's focus on the positive, which is virtually everything else about this grid.

I had only one hiccup: ACRE for SITE (12D: Building lot). I had the "E" in place and ACRE was the first thing that popped in my head. I also struggled a bit to come up with PRINT MEDIUM, since the plural "print media" is by *far* the more common phrase. I saw a giant window display of REDDI-WIP just last night up in Ithaca (15A: Dessert topper from a can). The store had fashioned a giant bottle, and then used some kind of batting or cotton to simulate the "wip"ped cream, but if you looked at it up close it was kind of dingy and had dead bugs in it, so maybe not the greatest way to hock your Valentine's Day wares. I think maybe it was a lingerie store, so, yeah, dead bugs in a fake giant REDDI-WIP display don't really put me in the underwear-buying mood, but maybe ladies are different. Luckily the rest of our Ithaca jaunt ("Lady Bird," the pan-Asian restaurant Mia) was quite nice and dead bug-free. On that note, goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Medium+ (slightly north of normal)

THEME: HOUSEBROKEN (57A: Like most pet dogs ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — circled letters spell out types of "houses" that are "broken" across two answers on different but adjacent rows:

The Houses:

A-F/RAME
RAN/CH
DUP/LEX
CHAL/ET

Word of the Day: MOW (25A: Part of a barn where hay is stored) —

noun
NORTH AMERICANdialect
a stack of hay, grain, or other similar crop.

"the hay mow"
a place in a barn where a stack of hay or grain is put. (google)

• • •

Quick write-up today, as Tuesdays are bonkers for me this semester. I like this theme idea. My main question is whether stepping the houses up or down like that really suggests "broken." To me, they are SPLIT-LEVEL houses. The letters are actually contiguous, so they don't look so much "broken" as two-tiered. It's possible that a simple "broken across one black square" concept would've worked better, and then maybe another "house" could've been included. But I also think it works OK as is. The concept is at least coherent, and the execution is unusual—sometimes unusualness alone has merit.

I flailed in many parts of this puzzle. Let's start with AM TOO for AM NOT (god how I hate the "playground retort" variety of crossword answer—has anyone ever used NUH-UH! in a grid; it feels more authentic than some of the stuff passing for playground retorts). And then ADMAN for ADREP (should've seen that coming, what with "Men" in the clue) (34D: "Mad Men" type, informally). Totally forgot there was such a thing as a hay MOW. If you ask me for the [Part of a barn where hay is stored], I'm going to offer LOFT and then when that's wrong I'm going to fold. [Feeling down] is SAD, to me, not ILL. Wrote in I GOT YOU! instead of I GOTCHA (wouldn't you just say GOTCHA!) (10D: "Ha! You fell for my trick!"). Finished up somewhere around KALAMATA, which is crossed by two answers that drove me nuts: THRACE (which drove me nuts 'cause I totally forgot it existed and would never have associated it with the word "Balkan") (33D: Ancient Balkan region), and KEYHOLE (which drove me nuts because I tried EYEHOLE and then after NYY went in I tried SPYHOLE ... clearly looking through a KEYHOLE makes no sense to me because I live in the modern world where every KEYHOLE I know is essentially unlookthroughable ... or are those "slots" and "hole" is something bigger / older?) (43D: Peeper's vantage point). Fill on this one feels a little stale, but the longer answers are nice. Mixed feelings about this one overall, but it comes out in the black, I think.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Josh Radnor and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (theme pretty challenging / fill pretty easy)

THEME: PREMEDITATED (50A: Calculated ... or a punny hint to 18-, 24-, 32- and 44-Across) — regular phrases have the meditation chant sound "OM" added to the beginning of them, creating wacky phrases:

Theme answers:

OMAHA MOMENTS (18A: Some wonderful times in Nebraska?)
O'MALLEY CATS (24A: Good name for politico Martin's jazz band?)
OMEN VOGUE (32A: Portentous fashion magazine?)
OMITS NO JOKE (44A: Makes an unabridged humor book?)

Word of the Day: En Vogue (See 32A) —

En Vogue is an American R&B/Pop vocal group whose original lineup consisted of singers Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones. Formed in Oakland, California in 1989, En Vogue reached number two on the US Hot 100 with the single "Hold On", which was taken from their 1990 debut album Born To Sing. The group's 1992 follow-up album Funky Divas reached the top 10 in both the US and UK, and included their second US number two hit "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)", plus the US top 10 hits "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" and "Free Your Mind". (wikipedia)

• • •

I was really distracted by the little yellow "Note" icon on my puzzle:

These notes often have some extra bit of information about what's happening in the puzzle, what to look for, etc., and I don't read them. I don't want help. I just want to solve the puzzle. But there's always that nagging feeling, as I'm solving, that the note is gonna be *necessary* to comprehending what's going on, so when I get hung up, anywhere, I eye that little yellow rectangle resentfully, like, "this better not be *you*." And I had that feeling several times today, as none of themers would budge. I was cleaning up on the west side of the grid, but I couldn't find my way across to the east because themers were giving me no help *and* the only way to get from west to east is via the themers (those passageways are tiny!). OMAHA [stop]. O'MALLEY ? [stop]. Eventually hopped the center line and did the short Downs that ran through VOGUE, and got OMEN VOGUE (?) but somehow still didn't notice the three "OM"s. In fact, I never saw the pattern until I hit the revealer, and then something weird happened, something good that's supposed to happen all the time but rarely does. Well, two things. A. I had an honest-to-god (non-OM) aha moment at the revealer, and B. it made all my earlier frustration melt away into something like admiration. It's a good theme.

Grid is weirdly crammed with olde-tymey crossword names—LEN, LOM, ERMA, and ... hey, it's ENYA. Haven't seen her yet this year. Welcome back.

But otherwise, the grid is pretty clean. Almost all my struggle with this puzzle came with trying to comprehend the themers. Otherwise, nothing too hard here. Wanted UBER (actually 49A) for AVIS (9A: Company that acquired Zipcar in 2013) and OCTOPUS for OCTOPOD (47A: Multi-armed mollusk). Both O'MALLEY CATS and OMITS NO JOKE were super-hard to parse in part because of the very good but absolutely brutal clue on COVET (28D: Extremely fancy?). I had to get it down to -OVET before I could see what was going on. "Fancy" as a verb! So irritating! But approval must be granted! Grudgingly granted! Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: real, REAL easy (personal best Thursday for me)

THEME: INITIALLY (54A: At the start ... or how the first two letters of each starred clue relate to the answer?) -- clues for themed answers only make sense when their first two letters are broken off as initials, at which point they become dead giveaways, basically.

Theme answers:

RYAN O'NEAL (17A: Roman of Hollywood?)
LINDA EVANS (24A: Legal acting in a 1980s prime-time soap opera?)
MARIE ANTOINETTE (34A: Malady of French history?)
ROGER EBERT (46A: Regent of film criticism?)

Word of the Day: ROLFE (46D: John of colonial Jamestown) —

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. (wikipedia)

• • •

AND he married Pocahontas! How does that fact get lower billing than the tobacco thing, or Rolfe being "of colonial Jamestown"? I'm not a big fan of defining people by their choice of spouse, but I do think a fair rule is this: if you marry someone, and Disney makes a movie about that person 350 years later, you get to be "Mr. Pocahontas" thereafter. Yes, I realize this means that by 2340 or so, Jay-Z will be known exclusively as "Mr. Beyonce." I am fine with that.

Anyway: hi, everyone! Pleased to meet you and Happy February! I'm Ken Walczak. I usually write about booze or yammer about David Lynch on the Internet, but tonight I'm filling in for Rex while he catches up on [/consults notes] screaming into the void. Oh wait, sorry. I mean, "screaming into OBLIVION." My mistake.

I breezed through this one, and even shaved a few seconds off my personal best Thursday time, thanks to a pedestrian theme (Rex notes that the initial gimmick has been used before, and less than two years ago, by the NYT) that revealed its secrets super quick.

Man, that theme, though. The first themed clue--"Roman of Hollywood?"--juts right out on to the thinnest of ice. I mean: it's February 1, 2018, during that brief hopeful window between Oscar nominations and the Oscar telecast, but also right smack in the middle of #MeToo and #TimesUp and a burgeoning awareness about the horrible deeds of horrible men in every industry but famously and perhaps especially in Hollywood ... and the most famous crossword puzzle in the country chooses a clue that will surely elicit, for many people, the immediate first guess: "Polanski."

As in: Roman Polanski, the director whose films have won eight Academy Awards, six of them after he fled the United States to escape sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Gross.

And then RYAN O'NEAL, the answer that apparently could not have been clued any other way than with "Roman of Hollywood?", because Ryan is after all a "man of Hollywood" with the initials R.O., crosses ... OGLE. "Roman of Hollywood?" + OGLE. Very gross.

Less SORELY vexing, but still notable: 24 across. We all love Linda Evans (speaking of which, Wonder Woman: 28 fewer nominations than films by Roman Polanski) but "legal acting" is ... not a phrase. Not a thing. Is the alternative "illegal acting"? #LegalizeActing! No. Maladies, regents, Romans: all nouns one might use in a clue that would be intelligible on its own, i.e. without this "initialism" gimmick. "Legal acting" is not.

Qualms about the theme aside, the fill was solid overall. It would have been pointless to expect sparkling answers in the scrawny 3 x 4 corners (NW and SE), but nothing there was truly awful ... and ECHELONS, OBLIVION, PRETAX, and STEM CELLS all get a ROGER EBERT memorial thumbs-up from me.

Other Gripes, Even Though I Liked the Puzzle Overall and Had Fun:

19A: Pretend (LET ON) — Webster has "pretend" as a third definition for this phrase, and ... sure/maybe/I guess??!? ... but I cannot think of a single time anyone has ever used it that way in conversation. Here in real life, "let on" always means "admit" to me. As in: "he still won't LET ON, but that senator knows exactly what Trump said about Africa."

20A: Shoe company based in Southern California (LA GEAR) — Can we retire this one, please? I have not seen a pair of L.A. Gears on a living human being's feet in more than a decade. The last athlete L.A. Gear signed to an endorsement contract was, hand to Wikipedia, Ron Artest. Not even "Metta World Peace" yet! Famous Original Ron Artest! Yet LAGEAR, persists, endures, crops up roughly twice a month. Please stop.

22D: Average guy (SCHMO) — I think of calling someone a "schmo" as a bit more pejorative than just calling them "average", and it's a bit odd to see SCHMO clued without a "Joe" anywhere in sight. NBD, though, as the kids (and constructors needing to fill a 3 x 4 corner) say.

39A: Really binges, in brief (ODS)— Way overused, inevitably clued in some cutesy way like "binges" to evoke "ODing" on potato chips or Netflix. Invariably makes me think of hard drugs anyway. Would love to see it ICEd (oh yeah, "clinch" for "ice" also strikes me as odd!) but I do try to set realistic expectations.

Oh man, this was super fun! Hopefully Rex lets me do it again some time.

Signed, Ken Walczak, BARFLY of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: — none

Word of the Day: UNCAS (7D: Last of the Mohicans) —

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. // It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel.The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the more numerous British colonists. // The novel is primarily set in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the former of whom is the novel's title character. [...]

Chingachgook (usually pronounced chin-GATCH-gook): last chief of the Mohican tribe, escort to the Munro sisters. Father to Uncas, and after his death,the eponymous "Last of the Mohicans". His name was a Unami Delaware word meaning "Big Snake."^[6]
Uncas – the son of Chingachgook and called by him "Last of the Mohicans", as there were no pure-blooded Mohican women for him to marry.^[7] He is also known as "Le Cerf Agile", the Bounding Elk. (wikipedia) (emph mine)

• • •

Er, no thanks. This is quite [Stale] and full of old / weak fill that could / should've been cleaned right up. There are some interesting answers here and there ("E! NEWS" and DOG SPAS, for two), but mainly it's a lot of AMALIE / TATAS / BIS / IED / ADOSE / UNCAS / etc. for very little payoff. Speaking of UNCAS (7D: Last of the Mohicans), I haven't read that novel in almost 30 years, but wikipedia is telling me that UNCAS dies before his dad and that even within the novel, Chingachgook (not UNCAS) is specifically referred to as the Last of the Mohicans. I think maybe Chingachgook calls UNCAS that before UNCAS dies, but ... I do not think the clue is technically accurate. You could lawyer it, but it's not good. And yet it appears to the best standard clue for UNCAS, so I have no idea what the hell is going on. Good luck getting CHINGACHGOOK into a grid. The JIVES clue was also off-seeming to me. I guess it's a verb here, and OK, you can "jive" someone in the sense of "taunt" them, but "gibe" is the far more common / better term for [Taunts] (both as verb and noun). From m-w.com, re: gibe / jibe / jive:

Here is your shorter holiday checklist for these three words:
Gibe is almost always used to refer to taunts, or to the act of taunting.
Jibe may be also used to mean “to taunt,” but it is the only one of the three that should be used to mean “is in accord with” (as in “That doesn’t jibe with what I thought”).
Jive is the one of the three that should be used to indicate a manner of speech, or perhaps by swing dancers.

Though this one was mostly painful, it wasn't too far out of my wheelhouse. DONAT is olde-tymey, but I watch a lot of TCM, so no problem. I just learned ESTATE CAR the other day, from a crossword puzzle, so that was interesting, if not particularly pleasant. I had AGAVES before GUAVAS (11D: Sources of jam, jelly and juice) and SUM UP beforeRUN TO (16A: Total). SW corner was easily the toughest corner for me, as I couldn't remember what the word was that came before EYES with the marbles (39A: Some marbles => CAT'S EYES), and I thought ROGET's first name would be something French, and so it took a while to get any of the longer Downs there. SEXCAPADE might be an acceptable answer, but that clue, ew and yuck. "Lovers"? I mean ... what "lovers" are going to use that "portmanteau"? Precisely none of them. The very word "lovers" (meaning people who have sex) is so weirdly '70s. Virginia is for lovers. Portmanteaus are for lexicographers. I don't know who SEXCAPADEs are for. I feel like it's a thing one person does, over a series of days, with a series of people, in a Cinemax movie circa 1981.

Lastly, you can *shove* [Biased investigation] / WITCH HUNT right now. Shove. It.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy birthday to my father, who is 77, and currently in India (?!)

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALICE FAYE (2D: 1930-'40s film star with the signature song "You'll Never Know") —

Alice Faye (born Alice Jeane Leppert; May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, described by The New York Times as "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career".^[2] She was the second wife of actor and comedian Phil Harris.
She is often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard "You'll Never Know", which she introduced in the 1943 musical film Hello, Frisco, Hello. (wikipedia)

• • •

I was thinking of Byron Walden (one of today's constructors) just yesterday. If this sounds weird, it is. But I was. I was walking down Court Street in Binghamton, looked up, and saw that one of the buildings was named the "Waldron Building." It looks like this (you can see WALDRON if you look real hard, up top):

I have known Byron Walden for years, and so my brain then started bouncing "Waldron" and "Walden" around. Then started treating Byron's name like some weird theme answer where you move the "R" from his first to his last name, BYON WALDREN, and I mean, why would you do that? But this is what a constantly crosswording brain does when it's idling. It's both stupid and horrifying. Take words, break them apart, move letters around, read them backwards, etc. Your brain just abuses the words it encounters in the hopes of squeezing some kind of puzzle concept out of them. Most of that time is wasted. It's great!

This was a beautiful puzzle that I really enjoyed solving—except. Except for those one or two terrifying seconds at the very end, when I had to make a largely blind stab at the final letter. I soared through almost all of this thing until I finally had it cornered in the SW, but ... then nothing MAP part of AREA CODE MAP not clear (22D: Feature in a telephone directory), COOKED part of COOKED KALE *really* not clear (I eat lots of kale, never heard it /seen its cookedness specified in the title) (49A: Vitamin-rich green side dish). And so this stupid little corner was gonna try to fight me, eh? Fine, let's go. Wrote in NONET for 42D: The planets, e.g., remembered the Pluto demotion, then couldn't decide between OCTET or OCTAD, but the "O" got me OTB, and I just knew TORII (thank you, OOXTEPLERNON, God of Crosswordese, May His Name Fill Eternity). Bing bam boom I'm down to AIR-AM and KU-U (56A: Front spoiler on a car / 50D: Spiral-horned antelope) . . . and, yeah, there I am. I seriously consider "J" (my brain is doing this by way of RAMJET, which is ... some other crossword thing I've seen). But then I think, "DAM," sure, that's better than AIRJAM, for sure ... I think." And I guess "D" and ... success. But oh, man, AIRDAM / KUDU ... that's pushing it. I mean, EYEHAND was pushing it too, but not in a way that was going to make me tank the puzzle!

I watch TCM like a mad man and was baffled when I couldn't get the '30s-'40s film star, even as her name kept getting filled in. Finished getting it, and still had no idea. Thought, "I have never seen her in anything," but then looked her up and realized I had seen Preminger's film noir "Fallen Angel," and she's in that. Still, though, so weird that her name was a total blank to me, considering I watched 200+ movies in 2017, 90% of them on TCM, 75% of those from the '30s-'40s. There were a few other odd proper nouns here and there (PIBB XTRA? Who drinks that!?), but nothing too obscure. The good longer answers are too many to name; they start with the wonderfully clued HALL PASS (1A: Toilet paper?) and go from there. The "G" in the 9-square was involved in the only two answers (besides EYEHAND) that caused me to make a face: GAPPY, because that's just silly, and GO ASK ANYONE, because of course you would never say the "GO" part. "ASK ANYONE!" Yes. If you add the "GO," you have to GO ASK ALICE.

Started with SERRA because I grew up in California and learned all that mission stuff in elementary school. Then I followed with another California answer: ICE-T. Actually, both those answers just confirmed HOPIS which was what I wanted right away at 1D: Pueblo Revolt participants. The only real obstacle between initial traction and final stumbling over the finish line was TRAVEL BLOG, which I had as TRAVELOGUE and then TRAVEL BOOK before I finally got to where I was going. Thwarted by BLOG. How ... something.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. what the hell is a "cannonball" that holds KNEES? Is it the part of a desk where your KNEES go? Looking up now ... wow. Wow. Man, did I misread that. *You* hold your KNEES when you do a "cannonball" into the swimming pool. Of course you do. I know that. I grew up in California, with a swimming pool in my backyard, and I still didn't understand this! And yesterday I fell on the ice and smashed my knee and wrist. Ugh. The northeast is ruining me.

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Constructor: David Levinson Wilk

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME:"Cracking Wise" — answers all relate to comedy AND the "Y"s in the answers are "cracked" to become "V" and "I" in the crosses:

Theme answers:

THAT'S HYSTERICAL (23A: "Stop! You're killing me!") / VINE
FUNNY OR DIE (31A: Internet home to "Between Two Ferns") / AVIAS
DRY SENSE OF HUMOR (50A: A person skilled at deadpan has one) / ELVIS
EVERYBODY'S A COMEDIAN (67A: Unimpressed response to someone's one-liner) / AVIS + OVID
THE LAUGH FACTORY (86A: Stand-up chain started in Los Angeles) / E-VITE
YO MAMA JOKE (100A: It might involve someone being "so poor" or "so old") / VICTOR
I WAS ONLY KIDDING (115A: "Jeez ... lighten up!") / DEVISE

Word of the Day: DEREK Walcott (78D:___ Walcott, Nobel Prize-winning poet)—

Sir Derek Alton Walcott, KCSL, OBE, OCC (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex from 2010 to 2013. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature,^[3] the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015. (wikipedia)

• • •

I imagine this puzzle will have some fans today, both because the theme has a cleverness about it and because it was super duper easy, so people will feel warmly disposed toward it. I would also have enjoyed the puzzle, I think, if it had a. been smaller (say, a W or a Th) and b. had cleaner fill (there's just too much NEROS ISE RICAN ACARD-type stuff). If the title had been a revealer in a smaller puzzle with clean fill, I would be singing its praises. But the theme wore thin for me—felt like being bludgeoned by the same concept over and over and over—and there wasn't enough about the fill to compensate for the bludgeoning. I like that the "cracking wise" concept related not just to the cracking of the letter "Y" into two letters (in the Downs) but also to the comedy theme throughout. It felt a teeny bit like cheating when non-comedy words, like "factory" or "Yo" or "only," were the ones with the "Y" that was cracked, but you gotta do what you gotta do, especially on a Sunday when you've got a Gigantic grid to fill. I want to acknowledge, and praise, the fact that there are no uncracked "Y"s in the entire grid. That would've bummed me out.

Since the puzzle was so easy, I didn't see the comedy theme at all until very late. Got the "Y" gag at "YNE" (24D: Poison ivy, e.g.) (me: "YNE ... wtf is YNE? That's not a word, f---! Check cross ... check cross, yep ... check cross ... they're all correct. YNE!" I was "Y"-ning. Then I saw the VINE, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the VINE. And so the rest of the puzzle was just a sprint with a few "Y" / "VI" booby traps thrown in. But because I didn't see the comedy theme, I had real trouble imagining what the hell kind of FACTORY it could be. My knowledge of FACTORY chains ends at THE CHEESECAKE. But all I had to do was run the short Downs—LIRE / ADO / USO—and THE LAUGH came into view. PIA was scary because even though all the crosses checked, it felt wrong. But it worked. No bumps, no bruises. Too many plural names (AARONS, RENES, NEROS) and too many A-something partials (ACARD, AHERO), and even though there's only one -STER, that's really one too many. I think Sundays are just hard to do well all the way through. If everything's not perfect, there's just ... more. More answers, more space, more room to screw things up. This one just went on too long and wasn't quite strong enough. A smaller version might've worked fine. Here, I got tired. OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. gah, I *knew* I'd seen the "VI"-for-"Y" gimmick before, but didn't bother to go hunting. Luckily my friend Erin did, and it was the NYT itself that ran the puzzle ... and just two years ago (second time in recent days that the NYT has recycled a puzzle concept less than 2 years old ...). Here's that grid, from the Thursday, Sep. 29, 2016 puzzle (as you can see there's a "DD"-for-"B" thing going on too...):

Puzzle by Jonathan Kaye
Screenshot from crosswordfiend.com

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Ohmygod I can't believe we're a month into 2018. What in heck happened to January? Anyways, it's Annabel Monday!

Constructor: ALAN ARBESFELD

Relative difficulty: EASY

THEME: MOON PHASES—Theme answers started with phases of the moon.

Word of the Day: ELKS (38D: Civic-minded group) —

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE; also often known as the Elks Lodge or simply The Elks) is an American fraternal order founded in 1868 originally as a social club in New York City. Today headquartered at Elks National Veterans Memorial in Chicago, Illinois, it is one of the leading fraternal orders in the United States, claiming nearly one million members.^[3]

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Theme answers:

HALF (1D: 50%)
NEW YEAR'S EVE (18A: Traditional night for partying)
CRESCENT ROLL (29A: Curved Pillsbury item)
QUARTERBACKS (47A: Ones calling the plays)
FULL TIME JOB (61A: 40-hour-a-week work)
MOON (60D: It has phases that are represented by the start of 18-, 29-, 47- and 61-Across...and by 1-Down)

For a good while I was wondering why there weren't more Super Bowl clues in this one, since I was doing it as the Super Bowl was playing...and then I remembered it was the Monday puzzle, not the Sunday puzzle. D'oh! It's all the same to me though, I don't really follow football so I flipped over to the Puppy Bowl as soon as I could.

"Good Morning, Sam!"

Anyways, I think I've gotten off track. The puzzle was okay! One of my fastest Mondays yet (which is to say a little over twelve minutes - I'm still no Rex), and I didn't really get stuck anywhere for once. I wasn't super impressed with the fill, but at least it didn't feel like I had to sacrifice a LAMB to an IDOL to figure anything out, although now I am kind of hungry for CEREAL and ORANGE juice, and breakfast doesn't open for another twelve hours. Oh well...

The theme was okay, and pretty timely - did anyone else see the blue super blood moon? I thought it was really pretty. I kind of just went outside and stared at it for awhile TBH. It was nice! Oh, and MOON was also a really good movie that came out in 2009.

Bullets:

YANK (37A: Pull hard)— Just wanted to say that as a Bostonian it really should not have taken me this long to get this one.
WERE (34A: "The way we...")— As in WEREwolf? Or as in THEREwolf?

OREO (59D: Nabisco snack since 1912)— OHMYGOD THIS IS THE MILLIONTH TIME I'VE HAD THIS AS AN ANSWER. Which wouldn't be a problem but every time I get it I want to start how-to-eat-Oreos discourse again. Lately I've just been dipping 'em in milk and letting them get soggy...
CLAM (29D: Tight-lipped sort)— "Mmm, steamed clams."

Also: a belated Happy Birthday to my dad!! His birthday was on Groundhog Day. :)

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Site of Zeno's teaching / WED 1-17-18 / Dystopian novel set in year 2540 / Close-fitting head covering / Longtime Syrian strongman

Foot baby-style / THU 1-18-18 / Jewel case insert / Group rallied by Mao Zedong / Lady Ashley Jake Barnes's love in Sun Also Rises / Some roles in Jack Benny film College Holiday

Thrill seeker's appurtenance / FRI 1-19-18 / Third largest city in Switzerland / Last new Beatles track before their split in 1970 / 1966 Pulitzer-winning Edward Albee play

Pomerrigio follower / SAT 1-20-18 / Hop hop icon born Lisa Williamson / Blondie's maiden name / Nocturnal predators of fiction / Tony official character voice of Donald Duck / Setup for Netflix film say

1941 siege target / SUN 1-21-18 / Old Parlophone parent / Fan publications informally / Trickster of Navajo mythology / Chemical source of fruit flavor / Colorful toys with symbols on their bellies / Make out at Hogwarts / Pagtron of Archdiocese of New York briefly / Shoulderless sleeveless garment

Administrative regions in Russia / MON 1-22-18 / Stoic politician of ancient Rome / Wallace co-founder of Reader's Digest / Fish typically split before cooking

Coins of ancient Athens / TUE 1-23-18 / Subtext of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit / Strip discussed in Oslo Accords / Elongated heavily armored fish / Film editor's gradual transition

Angle between leafstalk stem / WED 1-24-18 / Christian singer Tornquist / Futuristic Volkswagen / Immune response trigger / BBC sci-fi series informally

Yachter's itinerary / THU 1-25-18 / Boastful mother of Greek myth / 1950s service site / Music boomlet of mid-90s / Japanese meal in box

Sobriquet for filmdom's Daniel LaRusso / FRI 1-26-18 / Stud poker variation informally / Ursine sci-fi creature / Atom with electronic imbalance / Verbal outpouring in slang / Life instinct in psychology

Trigger to cylinder connection / SAT 1-27-18 / Title girl in 1961 Ricky Nelson hit / Pulpy refuse / Coconuts to maroon on island maybe

Beverage called tonic in Boston / SUN 1-28-18 / Revere engineer best selling 2013 children's book / Skynet's T-800s e.g. / One side in college football's big game

Asian yogurt drink / MON 1-29-18 / Students simulation of global diplomacy / Dessert topper from can / Contest for areawide seat

Ancient Balkan region / TUE 1-30-18 / Wisconsin city that's home to Lawrence University / Piglet producer / Japanese soup tidbit

Reggae persona for noted rapper / WED 1-31-18 / Some wonderful times in Nebraska / Sort of person heavily into eyeliner / Lead-in to mensch / Vitamin brand with hypen between its last two letters

Velvety growth / "The Simpsons" bus driver / The void / Subjects of the Second Commandment / Barfly

Portmanteau for lovers / FRI 2-2-18 / Long-running pop culture show / Robert who played filmdom's Mr. Chips / Laura of Star Wars last jedi / Pharmacy brand / Upscale kennels

Spiral-horned antelope / SAT 2-3-18 / Ethnic group whose name means wanderers / Any man boy biblically / Fancify oneself / Things held in cannonball

Stand-up chain started in Los Angeles / SUN 2-4-18 / Condition for filmdom's Rain Man / Brass instrument with mellow sound / Novo Ogaryovo is official one of Russian president

Thomas ____, "Rule, Britannia" composer / MON 2-5-2018 / "Yeah, right!" / Actress Falco of "Nurse Jackie" / Apple on a desk / Fixes, as shoelaces