Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Normal Monday

THEME: SAW (57D: Wise old saying ... like the first words of 20-, 32-, 41- and 52-Across) — first words of those answers spell out "STILL / WATERS / RUN / DEEP"

Theme answers:

STILL KICKING (20A: Not dead yet!)
WATERS DOWN (32A: Dilutes)
RUN ERRANDS (41A: Pick up dry cleaning, go to the post office, etc.)
DEEP THOUGHTS (52A: "What is life?,""Why are we here?," etc.)

Word of the Day: Katherine HEIGL (10D: Katherine of "27 Dresses") —

Katherine Marie Heigl (/ˈhaɪɡəl/; born November 24, 1978) is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She started her career as a child model with Wilhelmina Models before turning her attention to acting, making her film debut in That Night (1992) and later appearing in My Father the Hero (1994) as well as Under Siege 2: Dark Territory(1995). Heigl then landed the role of Isabel Evans on The WB television series Roswell (1999–2002), for which she received nominations for Saturn and Teen Choice Awards.
From 2005 to 2010, Heigl starred as Izzie Stevens on the ABC television medical drama Grey's Anatomy, a role which brought her significant recognition and accolades, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2007. Her best known film appearances include roles in Knocked Up (2007), 27 Dresses(2008), The Ugly Truth (2009), Killers (2010), Life As We Know It (2010), New Year's Eve (2011), The Big Wedding(2013), and Unforgettable (2017). Heigl has also starred in several films that have seen limited releases, including Jackie & Ryan (2014), Home Sweet Hell (2015), and Jenny's Wedding (2015). She also portrayed the lead role on the short-lived NBC television series State of Affairs from 2014 to 2015, and has lent her voice to the animated film The Nut Job (2014) and its 2017 sequel.
Additionally, Heigl has established herself as a cover model, appearing in numerous publications including Maxim, Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan. She is married to singer Josh Kelley, with whom she has one son and two adopted daughters. (wikipedia)

• • •

Placeholder. Nothing happening here. This is an old theme type, and a SAW is an old saying, and the fill was pretty old, and while there is nothing godawful about the grid, neither is there anything remarkable. It's a shrug. A pale three minutes. Maybe if the revealer hadn't been this sad, randomly-placed little three-letter thing, I could've mustered up some affection here. I do like how SMOLDERS kinda sidles up to AIR KISS(hoping for more?), and I kinda like GREW UP ON (despite the fact that it was the answer that gave me the most fits), but this is all just too ho-hum and basic and dated. OH GEE dated. John TESH dated. MILLI Vanilli dated. SAABS dated. Not trying hard enough, not living in this century enough. Not enough.

Flew though it quickly, but stumbled badly in two places. There was the aforementioned GREW UP ON, which I didn't even understand until I'd finished the puzzle (39D: Enjoyed frequently as a child). I think it was the "enjoyed" part that was throwing me. Growing up on something does not necessarily mean "enjoying" it; "enjoyed" led me to think of the expression "grew on," as in "the farther I got in the puzzle, the more it grew on me" (i.e. "the more I *enjoyed* it). But then of course there were four letters after GREW, not two, and then OR WORSE happened (very tough to pick up that snippet of a phrase) and so, yeah, I flailed a little, and what might've been a very fast time ended up just north of normal. I also got slowed down earlier when the the "H" in the second position at 32D: Where ships dock led me to SHORE (?!), which I then "confirmed" (??!) withROE (43A: ___ v. Wade). Blargh. Turning SHORE into WHARF cost me dearly. The rest of this puzzle was phenomenally easy, though, so it all came out to pretty normal Mondayness—yet another way in which the puzzle was utterly unremarkable. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: ROSS TRUDEAU

Relative difficulty: Pretty easy

THEME: Dreamers — Famous people known for works drawing on dreams

Theme answers:

LANGSTON HUGHES (19A: “Montage of a Dream Deferred” poet)
SIGMUND FREUD (29A: “The Interpretation of Dreams” writer)
SALVADOR DALI (29A: “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate Before Awakening” artist)
EVERLY BROTHERS (52A: “All I Have to Do Is Dream” singers)

Word of the Day: Tamarind (36D: Ingredient in Worchestire sauce) —

Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) is a leguminoustree in the familyFabaceae indigenous to tropical Africa. The genus Tamarindus is a monotypic taxon, having only a single species.
The tamarind tree produces pod-like fruit, which contain an edible pulp that is used in cuisines around the world. Other uses of the pulp include traditional medicine and metal polish. The wood can be used for woodworking, and tamarind seed oil can be extracted from the seeds. Because of the tamarind's many uses, cultivation has spread around the world in tropical and subtropical zones. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I’m baaack! I’m Clare, and I’ll be your host for the last Tuesday of every month. I’m delighted to get the chance to write about more puzzles, and I figure I might lower Rex’s blood pressure at least a bit by relieving him of having to write up quite so many Tuesday puzzles. I signed off last time as a happy Eli (I’m a senior history major at Yale), and I’ve got to say that I’m now an ecstatic Eli — I just found out that Hillary Clinton is going to be my commencement speaker this year!

This puzzle struck me as fine for a Tuesday. The long names for the theme were interesting enough to puzzle out, but I totally didn’t realize they all related to dreams until minutes after I’d finished the puzzle. Knowing the dream connection didn’t matter to the solve. And there sure were a lot of other proper names in there (SELENA, HAMM, TURTURRO and ARISTOTLE) beyond the four theme answers. It’s a bit funny to see SELENA Gomez and ARISTOTLE on the same level.

The grid was overall pretty clean. It was nice to see the G.O.A.T, Mia HAMM, in there! And, shout out to my hometown of MENLO Park (even if the clue was referring to the one in New Jersey, not the one where I grew up in California). I did have a big oops on 62A with “special intuition, for short” because I read that as “institution” at first and couldn’t get that out of my head and get to ESP. I also thought that SOYS was a pretty lame plural — I got stuck because I was trying to make the answer “soya,” instead. And, as a 21-year-old millennial, I can promise you no one says ROTFL anymore! I tried to put “lmfao” in at first (not that it’s used much anymore, either) but then realized that probably wouldn’t be PC enough to put in the puzzle.

It was also nice to see SVEN, the adorable reindeer from the movie “Frozen.” I’m ashamed to admit that my first instinct when I saw “Frozen” in the clue was to type in “Olaf” before realizing it asked for the reindeer, not the snowman. Anyway, “Tangled” is a better Disney movie than “Frozen.”

I got to use some of what I’ve learned in my classes in college in the puzzle. (See, Dad, you’re paying for my education for a reason!). Examples: PLESSY v. Ferguson; knowing SALVADOR DALI because of some art history classes; jumping right to DUEL because of a Hamilton-Jefferson class and, of course, the musical. (My professor Joanne Freeman actually compiled the book of Hamilton’s letters that Lin-Manuel Miranda used for the musical and did research on duels that he put directly into the songs! She even got to meet him, which makes me insanely jealous, because he’d definitely have a seat at my “pick three famous people, dead or alive, to have dinner with” — I’m sure he’s vying for a spot.)

For 2D, my mind immediately jumped to hamburgers as the food that symbolizes America, but I suppose APPLE PIE is pretty all-American, too. (In-N-Out would’ve been a correct answer, too, at least for those of us from the West Coast.) The Dalí painting is very… shall we say... interesting. If you figure it out, let me know.

Things I didn’t get:

“Feet slangily” is DOGS, though that seems to be a fairly common expression
“Pa Clampett of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’” is JED
I’ve never heard of the EVERLY BROTHERS, so that took some piecing together
TAMARIND took me a bit because, even though I recognized the word, before this puzzle I couldn’t have told you it was an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce

Now, I’m off to write a full draft of my senior thesis by next week. (Send help!)

Signed, Clare Carroll, an ecstatic Eli

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Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Trigonometric functions — abbrs. of trig functions embedded in themers (with TRIG embedded in center answer)

Theme answers:

STAY INSIDE (17A: Is a recluse)
TACO STAND (21A: Shell station?)
LEFT, RIGHT (35A: When repeated, marching orders?)
WACO, TEXAS (46A: City on the Brazos River)
MORSE CODE (52A: Where S is ...)
MUSIC SCHOOL (58A: Place where students are graded on a scale?)

Word of the Day: VIRNA Lisi (29D: Actress ___ Lisi of "How to Murder Your Wife") —

Virna Pieralisi (pronounced [ˈvirna pjeraˈliːzi]; 8 November 1936 – 18 December 2014), better known as Virna Lisi [ˈvirna ˈliːzi], was an Italian actress. Her film appearances included How to Murder Your Wife (1965), Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966), Beyond Good and Evil (1977), and Follow Your Heart (1996). For the 1994 film La Reine Margot, she won Best Actress at Cannes and the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. (wikipedia)

• • •

Completely unremarkable theme. The embedded abbrs. are all really common (less than desirable) crossword answers, and there was no revealer (I'd hardly call that central answer a real revealer) or wordplay or anything, so theme-wise there was no real interest here. I mean, even if you're really into math, I just don't see how there's much here for you, and from a crossword perspective, there's really nothing. You don't need the theme, don't need to know anything about trig, etc. Embedding very short letter strings in longer answers is not hard at all. The theme type is old, as is almost everything about this puzzle, which feels straight out of ... well, decades ago. VIRNA Lisi??? You always gotta be careful with your proper nouns, but especially with older, obscure proper nouns, when your puzzle is already creaking with crosswordese. VIRNA next to ENIAC next to GTOS ... says quite a lot about this puzzle's cultural center of gravity. Then there's the fill, which is very stale on the whole OSHA DIAS ECCE all abutting one another; ESSO crossing OSS; IWO ANS HOS CLIC ... it's very, very rough and stuffy. THANI? HAD ON *and* THREW ON, not just repeating "ON" but repeating the sartorial meaning of "ON"? Puzzle reminds me of the sandwich my wife was served the other night—tough and lukewarm, like it had been sitting out under an insufficiently-powered heat lamp for some time.

I did find the puzzle interesting where my own personal failures were concerned. Sometimes my brain just refuses to process information correctly. I can be humming along, destroying a puzzle, and then I hit a perfectly ordinary clue and for some reason the wheels just come off. The patch of the grid in the northwest, from LOW to VIRNA (inclusive), was quicksand for me today. VIRNA because what the hell?—getting stuck there was not surprising—but LOW? LOW did not make any sense to me until after I was done with the puzzle. I kept looking at the clue thinking "I don't get it. [Gear for going up hills]? LOW? Surely it's TOW ... like TOW bar ... LOW what? Is there some weird rebus happening here?!" I sincerely didn't think of LOW as a gear *on an automobile* until after I was finished. Skiing "gear" was the only gear my brain was entertaining. Bizarre. I don't think I've ever put an automatic transmission in LOW. Maybe it's not called LOW on my car? I remember very well using 1st or 2nd, when I had a manual transmission. Anyway, LOW as a "gear" just baffled me. Ridiculous (by which I mean *my brain* is ridiculous). I also couldn't parse HIT A NERVE to save my life. HIT AN... and I all I can think is HIT AND RUN (which fit, but of course made no sense). If the latter part of HIT A NERVE hadn't involved VIRNA, maybe I'd've gotten traction more quickly. Also had God in mind when I encountered 25D: Lord's subject (SERF), because two seconds earlier I'd encountered 23D: Lord's Prayer possessive (THY). Phew. So LOW-to-VIRNA, disastrous for me. The rest, no memory. Very, very easy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: WORD SQUARE (61A: Classic letter puzzle -- or, when parsed differently, a hint to three Down answers in this puzzle) — so in the Across you get a SQUARE inside of which you squish the word WORD, and in the Down cross for that same SQUARE you can put "W" OR "D"...

Theme answers:

FIGHTING [WORD]S / PAWS or PADS
[WORD] PROCESSOR / WRYLY or DRYLY
PUT IN A [WORD] FOR / WINING or DINING

Word of the Day: WORD SQUARE (61A) —

noun
plural noun: word squares
a puzzle requiring the discovery of a set of words of equal length written one under another to read the same down as across, e.g., too old ode. (google)

• • •

[for example...]

My first reaction was: It's startling how unimaginative this is. It is the most straightforward, hyperliteral, utterly dull rebus I've ever done. Ever. WORD SQUARE ... well, indeed, that is so. I'm not even sure that qualifies as wordplay. Nothing is really being played with there. No playing. I feel like maybe a bot made this puzzle. Like, some beta version of Crossword Constructor A.I. is just getting its feet WET. . . *Then* I read the revealer clue more carefully and noticed the whole "W or D" angle in the rebus square crosses. Which changed my enjoyment of the puzzle ... not at all. So, OK, there was more going on than I thought ... but not so's you'd notice (which is to say, I didn't, and didn't have to). And even now, noticing, I don't see the appeal. The reparsing of "Word" to "W or D" does add a tiny bit of post-solve "Ohhh..." but during the solve ... when "W" alone works just fine and appears to be the only thing going on there ... It just seemed basic beyond belief. And the fill was atrocious. Truly, genuinely bad. And from generations ago. Why, in a grid with no real theme density, am I suffering through stuff like PASEO and ENHALO and UNTUNE and MASSE, to say nothing of the RAE YSL etc. stuff that suffocates the grid? No mas! (Actually, that 41A clue was one of the highlights of this puzzle)

15A: Castle with famous steps (IRENE) deserves commendation. IRENE Castle was a dancer, kids. Look her up. (I say that like she was from *my* time, which she decidedly was not) Only a few trouble spots in this one. The first was the worst, because it was a wrong answer that dropped down into a themer that was already an insane jumble of letters—I'm speaking of course of ANYHOO, which I had as ANYHOW (after I had it as ANYWAY) (4D: "Moving right along ..."). Hard to know it's wrong when you can see from the first few letters of the themer (WPR-) that something non-standard is going on with theme answer spelling anyway, so, sure, why not WPRW- as the opening set of letters. WPR- was already weird. Eventually got FIGHTING WS, and then backed into WPROCESSOR, but didn't stop to think much about what was going on. Thought maybe the puzzle was just dropping the "ORD" for some reason (coincidence: ORD is the airport code for OHARE (53A: Where many people make connections)). But no, nothing was being dropped. Instead the W stands for "word" and it's in a square so it's a WORD ... SQUARE. Dum dum DUM!

Good night, and here's wishing us all a classic, lovable Friday crossword. Happy March!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I was entertained by this puzzle precisely once—when I started spelling three-letter body parts backwards to see if I could get a girl's name: "MRA? PIL? GEL! Who names their kid GEL!?" Etc. That was fun.

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Constructor: Rachel Maddow and Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Very Challenging (should've been a Saturday, for sure)

THEME: Officially none, I think, though it's pretty dang Maddowy

Word of the Day: COUGH BUTTON (18A: What might help a hacker go undetected?) —

cough button (plural cough buttons)
(broadcasting) A button that temporarily stops the recording and transmission of a radio show. (So called because the radio presenter might push the button when having to cough.) (google)

• • •

Whoever was in charge of SLOTTING this puzzle messed up, badly. It's quite obvious that they wanted it to run when it ran (specifically, on weekday) for promotional purposes. On weekdays, Maddow's show ends at 10pm Eastern, which is precisely when the puzzle comes out online. On Saturdays, bye bye programming synergy. Commercial considerations > normal puzzle considerations when it comes to this new celebrity-constructor kick the NYT crossword has gotten on to. This is understandable from a business POV, if annoying from a "2x my normal Friday time" POV. Fans of Maddow will love that it's such a self-involved puzzle—that is, that the answers are about the field of TV news, politics, and commentary. She is a cocktail aficionado, so SAZERAC is nice little wink to the audience, as isTV HOSTS (37A: Sean Hannity and Chris Hayes), the clue for which namechecks the anchor of her lead-in show (this was the site of my favorite wrong answer—I briefly forgot who Chris Hayes was and instead of TV HOSTS I wrote in ... COHOSTS; I can't bear cable news channels anymore, but if "Hannity & Hayes" were a show, I think I would have to watch) (and apologies to Chris Hayes for apparently confusing him with Alan Colmes ... whom I just confused with Alan Keyes, I swear to god, my brain ...). Long answers up top (COUGH BUTTON) and down below (FOIA REQUEST) contribute further to the Maddowing of the grid. I did not know what a COUGH BUTTON was and I am being serious when I say I had COUGH BUTT- and wrote in COUGH BUTTER (thinking maybe COUGH BUTTER was some kind of cough suppressant I'd never heard of ...?). Despite the fact that Friday was the wrong place for this (from a regular difficulty level standpoint), the grid itself is pretty strong, and the cluing often clever (though sometimes too clever for its own good, and frequently brutal).

I had hardly anything written in the grid after a full 2 minutes, and much of what I'd entered was wrong. CCS for 1A: Hosp. units. SOY for 14A: Kind of flour (!?). UNO for 17A: ___ grano salis (that is a terrible wrong answer and yes I am ashamed, thanks for asking). The only gimmes in this grid, for me, were AKIN, ABCS, MANN, SCUBAS, FETA, SMURF, and AHA. Seven may seem like a lot, but they're all short and spaced out, and in a difficult puzzle like this, they were not much help. Clue on 1D: Those who've seen both Europe and Asia, say (ROCK FANS) was clever, though how many people can actually claim this prestigious distinction? How many white Gen-X arena rock fanatics are there out there? Show yourselves! The bands Europe and Asia haven't had a hit between them since 1987, though both are (improbably and impressively) still making music, it looks like.

Brutality:

15A: 1965 Michael Caine spy thriller, with "The" ("IPCRESS FILE") — now that I see it, I've definitely heard of it, but when I couldn't see it ... yikes. I have watched a lot of Michael Caine movies (including, just last week, "California Suite" (1978), which also stars Alan ALDA, which was the only name popping into my head for 28A: Actor with seven Primetime Emmys, sigh))
43A: Pope when Elizabeth I took the throne (PAUL IV)— LOL I teach Renaissance literature all the time, so Elizabeth I is pretty familiar to me, but NOPE. No way. Like, no way. This is the first I'm hearing about this guy. He was pope for four years. Four. Once again, uh uh. The randomest of random pope names.
13D: Car model originally called the Sunny in Japan (SENTRA)— there have been so many Japanese car models that I just had to wait for crosses to give me some clue here. Also, I think I thought SENTRA was bygone. Like the Celica or the Supra or you see what I mean with these names, right?
21A: Kentucky's northernmost county (BOONE)— sure, if you insist, why not? I mean, thousands of other possibly interesting BOONE clues out there, but let's go with a Kentucky county (?), why not?
20D: Rosina Almaviva, in "Le Nozze di Figaro" (CONTESSA) — if you say so. After ARIA and AIDA, I'm still pretty much at the puzzle's mercy when it comes to opera stuff.
31A: Tennis player, to sportswriters (NETTER) — dear lord, is this true? In the olden days I was forced to accept that "cager" was a basketball player (when's the last time you saw that in a puzzle?), but NETTER? I've played / watched a lot of tennis ... maybe haven't read enough writing about it? NETTER? I went with NETMAN at first. NETTER? I want NETTER to go sit in the penalty box with ALER and NLER and NBAER.
11D: "Kiss my grits!" ("BITE ME!") — I love Flo from "Alice" (the sole figure in the history of humanity associated with "kiss my grits!"), but "BITE ME!" is not a phrase I can imagine her saying. It becomes popular much later. So seeing this clue and answer as equivalent took my brain a long time.
58A: Journalist's tool since '67 (FOIA REQUEST)— Freedom of Information Act. Great answer. Hard answer for many, I'm guessing. You really gotta know what that abbr. stands for. I had REQUEST but "Journalist's tool" was not nearly specific enough to point me to FOIA, so that SW corner was Dicey for me, for a bit. I can't believe I'm saying this, but ... I'd like to thank AL GORE for helping me out down there. I'd've been toast without you, buddy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ron SANTO (19A: Ron ___, nine-time All-Star from the 1960s-'70s Cubs) —

Ronald Edward Santo (February 25, 1940 – December 3, 2010) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) third baseman who played for the Chicago Cubs from 1960 through 1973 and the Chicago White Sox in 1974. In 1990, Santo became a member of the Cubs broadcasting team providing commentary for Cubs games on WGN radio and remained at that position until his death in 2010. In 1999, he was selected to the Cubs All-Century Team. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2012. (wikipedia)

• • •

Aha, so this is what happened to my Friday puzzle. It got lost and ended up on Saturday. Yesterday took me over 10 minutes, today: just over 6. As I said yesterday, yesterday was a Saturday. Today is a Friday. Both are fine puzzles, but slotting them on their proper days would have been ... let's say, nice. But I covered the manifestly commercial reasons for the mis-slotting yesterday, so—moving on. This puzzle was lovely, I thought, though we have to talk about the terrible, godawful cluing decision that the editor made on 1A: Display, as an image, using only a small number of different tones (POSTERIZE). That was not the constructor's clue. And I knew immediately after I got it that the clue wasn't the constructor's. No way. No one, least of all Damon (who makes pretty fresh puzzles, I think) is going to clue POSTERIZE in that clunky, technical way (I'm told it's a common command in Photoshop (?!)—all I know is that the clue is essentially lifted from wikipedia). No, POSTERIZE is basketball term. A common, nay, ubiquitous basketball term. It means "to dunk on someone in a way that is worthy of being depicted on a poster" (see picture, left). Google it and then hit "News" and look at all the articles, all of them about basketball, none of them about Photoshop. Search it in Twitter and see a pretty dense stream of basketball tweets. 100% basketball tweets. As a basketball term, it is dynamic, current, totally in-the-language, original, fantastic. With this (again, truly ugly) clue, it's pretty blah. Also, TONE is both in the grid (37D: Shade) and in the clue for 1A. Seriously, the editorial override on 1A was a terrible call. Should've been STETTED.

There is one pretty ugly part of the grid: it's then NE, where crosswordese ARHAT crosses crosswordese STETS and supercrosswordese TARAS (!?). MOL is up there too. Rough, rough, rough patch. Rest of the grid has a stray clunker or two, but largely stays clean. I flew through this with very few problems. Most trouble was right up front. ARKS for 1D: Bible supporters, often (PEWS). USDA for 2D: Org. with inspectors (OSHA). But R.E.M., IPO, and ZORA Neale Hurston were all gimmes, and I fixed the NW from there. "R.U.R." = gimme. ALI / ZAIRE = gimme. "SAY, SAY, SAY" = gimme. Slow spots included the SCENE in NUDE SCENE (43A: Hot take?), Ron SANTO (I have a real baseball blind spot from Maris's 61 to Fisk's home run, which seems to include almost the entirety of SANTO's career), and the last letters of EDER (9D: Linda of Broadway's "Jekyll & Hyde"), SALUD (30D: "Gesundheit!"), and SHIRE (12D: Ending with Oxford or Cambridge), respectively (for that last one, I honestly wrote in SHIRT).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 15A: Way out in space is a Great clue for ESCAPE POD.

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Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:"Character Building"— first words in theme answers go from IN to STARTLING, adding precisely one letter (i.e. "character") at each step along the way; theme answers are familiar base phrases + whatever the added letter is for that particular answer on the road from IN to STARTLING (i.e. the theme answers are wacky and get "?" clues)

Theme answers:

IN THOUGHT AS MUCH (23A: Equally pensive?) ("N" added to "I thought as much")
SIN SOME SMALL WAY (30A: Commit a peccadillo?) ("S" added to "In some small way")
SING OF OMISSION (47A: Perform the hit "Things I Should Have Said"?) ("G" added etc.)
STING IN THE SHOWER (55A: The Police frontman filming a shampoo commercial?)
STRING OPERATIONS (66A: Tying packages, securing helium balloons, etc.?)
STARING QUARTET (77A: The Beatles showing absolute amazement?)
STARTING DAGGERS (93A: First weapons used in a knife fight?)
STARTLING LINEUP (105A: Surprising group of suspects?)

Word of the Day: NOISETTE (110A: Lean fillet, as of lamb) —

noun
1.
a small round piece of lean meat, especially lamb.
2.
a chocolate made with hazelnuts.

• • •

Figured when I saw the constructor that the puzzle would be harder than normal, and that was true, mostly because there seemed to be so much open space, and the themers were often hard for me to come up with—this is what happens when you do not figure out what the hell is going on with the theme until after you are complete finished. I knew letters were being added, but I could not see why. Granted, I don't often stop to try to figure it all out when I'm mid-solve. In fact, I never do that unless I have to. But looking back, I really should've noticed, especially by the end. My feelings toward the theme are pretty neutral—which is to say, much warmer than my feelings toward most Sunday themes are. Maybe that's the secret on a Sunday (i.e. a puzzle where you have to sustain thematic interest over a too-large amount of space): keep the themers varied (and possibly wacky), keep it relative simple, make it somewhat challenging, and make the grid pretty clean / largely inoffensive. I will say that I was surprised at the amount of icky fill in this one (icky fill not being something I associate with Walden puzzles). But when I say I was surprised, I mean that my expectations were that it would be close to nil and instead it was > nil. It was still a sight better than most Sunday puzzles, especially Sunday puzzles with a relatively low word count (harder to fill cleanly). So this was perfectly acceptable, which is the highest praise I've had for a Sunday in what feels like ages.

Frowny faces to NEISSE ESIGN ENDE ANIMAS (plural?) and PSHAWS (plural!? LOL, c'mon). Smiley faces to HAT TIP, EBENEZER SCROOGE, TV MOM, and especially OH, MAMA! on top of YES, YES! That last one was, as the adjacent word suggests, STARTLING, in a good way. Do people really say VID? (35D: Snapchat posting, for short). By which I mean, do *Snapchat* users really say VID? I didn't not know MONTAG was German for "Monday" and I had no idea what a NOISETTE was. Then it turned out I have music in my iTunes by a group called the NOISETTEs ... from 2009 ... for some reason. I assume they're named after the chocolate made w/ hazelnuts and not the small round piece of lamb, but who knows? Only one part of the puzzle really made me fear I might not finish with a perfect grid, and that was when I wrote in IN AUTO instead of ON AUTO (91D: Out of control?) ... as if AUTO were a gear on a car ... which of course it isn't ... I mean, there's an AUTOmatic transmission of course, but ... annnnnyway, I was left wondering for too long how CIG could be the answer for 90A: Important but sometimes ignored piece (COG).

On Sundays I'm going to start recommending one good thing—something I read or watched or heard or used or whatever, that I really enjoyed. It might be crossword-related, but mostly it won't be. Today, it's The Prince & the Dressmaker (2018) by Jen Wang—a comic book fairy tale about a daring young dressmaker and the prince who hires her to make dresses ... for him. It's a very sweet story about non-conformity with a very original romance at its core, but the best thing about it is the cartooning. The art and design are exquisite, the colors confectionery. It's just a delightful book to hold in your hand. Really impressive.

See you ... Tuesday (tomorrow is Annabel...)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS HAT TIP (3D: Metahporic acknowledgment) can be a literal acknowledgment, obviously, but these days it's more commonly a metaphoric acknowledgment, often abbreviated online as "h/t"; for instance, if you post something that someone else turned you onto or otherwise told you about, you can acknowledge that person with an "h/t" at the end of your post.

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Hey! It's Annabel Monday again! And I'm actually extra tired this time because I'm in the middle of midterms which is, like, a lot. But it's whatever tbh, it was nice to take a break and dive into this puzzle! Anyway I hope everyone is doing well!

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DRESSING THE PART— Theme answers are two-word phrases where the second word is an article of clothing.

Word of the Day: BLUE STOCKING (27A: Woman having literary interests) —

A bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman, more specifically a member of the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu (1720–1800), the "Queen of the Blues", and including Elizabeth Vesey (1715–91), Hester Chapone(1727–1801), and the classicist Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806). In the following generation came Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741–1821), Hannah More (1745–1833), and Frances Burney (1752–1840).^[1]
(Wikipedia)

• • •

Theme answers:

CITY SLICKER (17A: Country bumpkin's counterpart)
BLUE STOCKING (27A: Woman having literary interests)
STUFFED SHIRT (43A: Pompous person)
SMARTY PANTS (57A: Know-it-all)

OK, I don't want to turn into Rex or anything, but can I just say one pet peeve I have? I'm getting tired of seeing ARIA, and with essentially the same clue every time too! I swear this is like the third month in a row, I just need a little variety! But oh well, I have nothing against opera music. I didn't have a very hard time with this one--just a bit of trouble in the bottom left corner, and having ISLET for INLET so long that I had to get my mom to go over the puzzle with me to figure out where the error was, lol. Not a whole lot to say about the fill, it was simple and good for a Monday. Like, I see what Rex doesn't like about some Mondays, but puzzles like this one are a good way for people to get into the puzzle when they're new to it! It does exactly what it needs to and sometimes that's okay. Oops I ended up ranting again. :P Anyways!

I would've appreciated some puns or an extra clue or something to tie together the theme? But other than that it was okay! I'd never heard of the Blue Stocking Society before, that's pretty cool! I'm all about cool ladies learning stuff--I am at a women's college after all. Also I always liked "stuffed shirt" as an expression. It reminds me of stuffed shells. Mmmm, between that and CURRY, I'm gonna go get some food now.

Bullets:

JUDY (37D: Children's writer Blume)— Oh I actually have a really funny story about this one! I used to be like Judy Blume's biggest fan, so my mom took me to a book signing when I was a kid. I was really excited, but then when she actually signed my book, I apparently threw a tantrum because I didn't want anyone writing in my books. :(
GAYLE (65A: King on "CBS This Morning") — This name always makes me think of one Gayle in particular: the fictional mom played by Chris Fleming. "GET RID OF THE COUCHES! WE CAN'T LET PEOPLE KNOW WE SIT!!!!"

EMCEES (31A: Hosts for roasts) — Sooo what are people's thoughts on roasts? I've never been a huge fan of them, but I've seen one or two that are funny. I like when people roast themselves, though! "Annabel thinks she's scarily good at crosswords, but the only scary thing about her is that she has a horror-movie-doll name!" Hmm... "Annabel's trying to do a roast, but she can't even make midnight ramen without burning it!" Okay, ouch!

This is them. They like taking selfies. Obviously.

AAA (55A: Motorists' org.) — AAA is also the sound I'd make if I forgot my mom's birthday. But today is her birthday!!!!! Happy birthday to my mom and her identical twin!!!!!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Constructor: Bruce Greig

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: animal + gait— theme answers follow the pattern [animal + type of leg locomotion]

Theme answers:

FROG MARCH (16A: Forced walk with arms pinned behind the back)
CHICKEN RUN (24A: Hit 2000 animated film set on a farm)
BEAR CRAWL (34A: Core-strengthening exercise performed on all fours)
TURKEY TROT (50A: Old ragtime dance)
GOOSE STEP 60A: Straight-kneed military movement)

Word of the Day: SOUTHER (39D: Wind that typically brings warmer air) —

n.
A strong wind coming from the south. (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Just one question: how does this puzzle *not* have CATWALK?!?!? I mean, BEAR CRAWL?! Wth is that? CATWALK is much much more—fantastically more—in-the-language, and colorful, and etc. And it fits the theme perfectly. And it could've sat dead center. And it might've taken a little pressure off the grid, which is straining a bit under all the whiteness, especially in the NE and SW corners. I've eaten plenty of BEAR CLAWS in my time, but this BEAR CRAWL"exercise" is new to me, and I can't believe it's as generally familiar as *any* of the other themers, and certainly not more familiar than CATWALK. Does CATWALK not fit the theme? 'Cause it really seems like it fits the theme. And it's objectively better than BEARCRAWL. I mean, CATWALK is just an objectively good answer, period. You know what I mean? On the CATWALK. On the CATWALK. Yeah.

I think the theme is a very reasonable one, BEAR CRAWL notwithstanding. The grid construction needs work, though. This is a low 74 words. Additional black squares in the NE / SW corners probably would've allowed you to come in much, much cleaner. I mean, I see you got cheaters up there (and down there) (the black squares before 9A: BALD and after 65A: ERGS, respectively), but they clearly weren't enough. You get away with it OK in the SW (though SOUTHER's not great), but BOSONS / OSMIC is yeeeesh. A little rough, esp. for a Tuesday. I had a good second or two of panic as I wondered what letter went there (I've heard of BOSONS, so ... bingo). [Relating to element #76] is really not the kind of clue you want to encounter on Tuesday, or ever.

It took a while for the puzzle to earn back my trust after foisting ABBÉS on me right off the bat. It was the first clue I looked at (1A: French clerics), and I filled ABBÉS in immediately while shaking my head and going, "Oh, god, no, not one of These puzzles..." But the puzzle did make it back. Back to neutral, anyway. A decent theme, not ideally executed, with a grid that could've used rebuilding, but resulted in an overall tolerable fillscape. In conclusion: CATWALK, I'm telling you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. also this

["The term [...] is nowadays heavily associated with Nazi Germany."—wikipedia]

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Constructor: Natan Last, Andy Kravis and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PARALLEL PARKING (57A: Driving test challenge ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — two car makes are "parked""parallel" to (i.e. directly alongside) one another three times

Theme answers:

CLAUDIUS
UPFORDISCUSSION

DOMINI
ITSHOPELESS

CHRISMARTIN
SHONDA

Word of the Day: TONG (25D: Chinese secret society) —

noun
a Chinese association or secret society in the US, frequently associated with underworld criminal activity. (google)

• • •

this is actually an AUDI next to a FORD; please respect my photo research

Winced a lot at the fill, but when I looked up at the end and saw the theme, I thought it was pretty clever. Two cars alongside each other is not, of course, PARALLEL PARKING—it's just .... parking—and the fact of parallelness is not what's remarkable about the theme—technically all Across answers are "parallel" to all others (see also Downs). But I still think the visual of two car makes, whose names are exactly the same length, pulled up right next to each other, works OK. No one in the U.S. drives an OPEL, so points off for lack of realism. SMART is not nearly, not by a long long shot, as common a make as the others, but in cities they will have a certain prominence, so I'm fine with their being here. Totally forgot CHRISMARTIN's name (42A: Lead singer of Coldplay, once married to Gwyneth Paltrow), but that's on me. I'm allergic to Coldplay. So the theme is functional and even cute, so good. The fill holds up in most places, but things started out grim with BHT over AAA, and then with DRE EEL and ESS in the next section, I worried about what kind of crosswordese hellscape I might be driving into. PSIS OTOE! But the only bit of fill that really made me shout "No!" at the puzzle was IRED (24D: Plenty angry), which should be removed from all crossword wordlists and then buried under three feet of concrete. It's a non-word holdover from darker times and I don't want to see it ever again (we all have words like this—my friend Doug *refuses* to put ÉTÉ (or worse, ÉTÉS) in his puzzles; I would submit to him that at least ÉTÉ is a real word that humans actually use, albeit only in Francophone countries). TEN-PENNY is absurd—what am I, a nail scholar?—but [Denoting a 3" nail...] reads so much like a parody of an obscure crossword clue that I kinda like it. At least it made me laugh.

Really loved "DON'T EVEN!" (41A: "You're really testing my patience right now ...") and while I didn't really love DOMINI, I really loved its clue (22A: D as in dates?) (because A.D. "in dates" stands for "anno DOMINI") (I mean, you probably knew that, but I'm explaining it anyway because not all solvers always understand all the trickiness) (and then I get mail) (I'm not talking down to you, I swear). EZINES will always be terrible (and bygone), but the clue was nice (in the sense of "cleverly misleading"). I was thinking 60A: Web issues was referring somehow to problems with my browser or internet service, not of "issues" of a maga-ZINE that come out E-lectronically. Got slowed down because I thought the gear was CAMO—couldn't accept that there was an "S" on the end (17D: Paintball gear, familiarly) (I obviously don't paintball or wear CAMO(S), ever ... no, wait—actually, my hiking boots are camo! Hunters will never see my feet! It's awesome!).

Remember, it's *OH* MY LORD but *AW* RATS. Also, apparently it's *SHA*LALA and not *TRA*LALA (learned this the hard way) (50A: Refrain syllables). OK bye. Good luck with your latest snowpocalypse, northeasterners. We're missing the brunt of it here in Binghamton (just 4" expected), but *just* east of us, yikes. Stay inside and do crosswords!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: No idea—I made every mistake a human could make and ended with almost 2x my normal time, but it can't be that hard...

THEME: two-word phrases where first word has final "N" sound changed to "-IN'" (g-dropped form of "-ing") to create wacky phrases that get wacky clues

Theme answers:

LYIN' DANCERS (19A: Deceitful ballerinas?)
MOOIN' WALKER (27A: Cow as it strolls around the pasture?)
PLAYIN' FOLKS (42A: Band members?)
BEIN' COUNTER (53A: Census bureau employee?) (wow, that one is really bad...)

Word of the Day: ANYA Taylor-Joy (35D: Actress Taylor-Joy of 2015's "The Witch") —

Anya Taylor-Joy (born April 16, 1996) is an American-born Argentine-British actress.^[2] She is best known for her starring role as Thomasin in the horror film The Witch (2015) and as Casey Cooke in the horror-thriller film Split (2016). She was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

So the theme is manifestly dreadful—you can play this little word game all day long (PAYIN' RELIEVER, SEEIN' STEALER, uh ... STOWIN' MASON? Etc.), and it never gets interesting. And there are only four of these? It just doesn't cut it. I won't remember this theme at all, but I will remember how unbelievably off this puzzle's wavelength I was. Note: this isn't why it's a bad puzzle. It's bad because, I mean, look at it. No, my ridiculous, EPIC, absurd struggles are totally my own, totally idiosyncratic, and as remarkable as they are embarrassing. I made mistakes and left them in too long and couldn't get anywhere. Over and over and over. I did a Fireball puzzle earlier in the day (those puzzles have Thursday-type themes w/ Saturday-level difficulty), and crushed it in just over six minutes, so I was feeling pretty good when I stepped up to this one. But ugh, where to begin? Well, how about with PASTA for 4D: Trattoria bowlful (PENNE), which I crossed with RTES at 16A: Routing abbr. (ATTN). How in the world did I think RTES could go there, or made any sense? Wow. Couldn't make *anything* happen in the next section over except OPS and EPA. Wanted PETR, but it was a guess and I couldn't justify it. Had OAR for ROW (21D: Do crew). And then, even with BUCS OVA and UVULA, I got nowhere in the NE. Just ... blanking. Wrote in 'ALO (!?!?!?) at 28D: Greeting in Rio (OLA), and then "confirmed" it with MERINO at 32A: Fine wool source (ALPACA), which then made me want MC-something at 32D: McDonald's offering since 1968 (APPLE PIE). At this point, having been in four different sections and gotten nowhere, I started wondering if there wasn't a rebus or some Big Gimmick that I was missing. But no.

Things really got weird when I got to *actual* PASTA at 55A: Ronzoni offering. That made me go back and take out doppelganger PASTA, eventually put in PENNE, and eventually get rolling. Once I got going, it was like the ridiculous freefall I'd been in was a bad dream. Everything started falling into place. I have no idea what perfect storm of brain fall-apart happened during the first 4-5 minutes, but I really hope it never happens again. Very disconcerting. In retrospect, I should've noticed so many things much earlier: obviously KOREA was right for 23A: Subject of reunificaiton talks, but I didn't go with it; my PETR instinct was right, and I didn't go with that, either; I'd looked at the [___ collar] clue a few times and had nothing, but did not (for a long time) *relook* at it after I got the final -EA, which made FLEA obvious, etc.); I mucked around in the SW a whole bunch without ever looking at clues for LANA and ELI—both gimmes; basic things like ERIE and AFRICAN just had (to me) inscrutable clues (49A: Classic railroad name + 39D: Like the earliest humans). I don't think of the cupcake pan as a tray (10D: Bakery trayful = CUPCAKES) ... I wouldn't have gotten BOCCE (even with the BO- in place) if I'd stared at that clue for a million years (8A: Game with a 90-foot x 13.1 foot court). ANYA someone? I'm so glad this is over, both because the theme was not good and because this was probably my single-worst solve, from a pure skill-failure perspective, in years.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Neville Fogarty and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AUBADE (2D: Poem greeting the dawn) —

An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak". (wikipedia)

• • •

Both these constructors are friends of mine. Neville is perhaps best known for coming in second (with his mother) to me and my wife in the Pairs Division of last year's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament. Doug, of course, is L.A.'s Batman. I was soooo happy to see their names on the puzzle, and they don't really make bad puzzles. It's nice that there are constructors about whom this can be said. I am usually very much on their wavelength(s), though today, right out of the gate, the whole thing went a little KABLOOEY (great answer, btw) (7D: Bad way to go). I wrote in RAT PACK right away and then hit the Downs. Me: "1D: One going against the grain? Let's see starts with "R" ... RIPSAW! (!?). OK, great. Next: 2D: Poem greeting the dawn. Starts with "A" ... ooh, I know this one ... dawn ... I think it's ... not AURORA, 'cause that means "dawn," but ... AURORE! Yes, that's it!" (no, that's not it; that's a thing from Harry Potter). I went through at least three more spellings of AUBADE before I got there, including AUDABE, all of which is very ironic considering I teach Donne's "The Sunne Rising" all the time, and *apparently* it is a paradigmatic example of the AUBADE. AUBADE, you devil!

A Juiced (up) AUBADE

Didn't read the "alphabetically" part of 17A: First world capital, alphabetically, and thought, "well, that's an ... odd ... way to clue ABU DHABI." Anyway, once I got the back ends of all the Acrosses in the NW, I slingshotted out of there and bounced around the rest of the grid like it was a Wednesday, for the most part. Slight slowdown in the NE because ADO ANNIE (like most things "musical") is out of my wheelhouse and even though I've seen her name before, I sure couldn't parse it here (12D: Musical "girl who cain't say no"). Also thought "Comeback Kid" was Joe BIDEN (!?) or ... who's that sad sack Democrat of yesteryear? ... Oh, right, Joe LIEBERMAN. Football's MONTANA wasn't even in my thoughts there (13D: Joe known as "The Comeback Kid"). I didn't know PROZAC was used to treat O.C.D. I'm glad AUTISM is in the grid, though it seems like the kind of thing people might be quite sensitive about, cluing-wise (31D: Special-education challenge). This clue seemed straightforward enough to me. The last stumbling block was literally the last block I filled in—I had SOUSED for 57A: Juiced (up). Great answer for [Juiced]; not so great for [Juiced (up)]. The answer was SOUPED (totally different kind of "juiced." And done!

Huge applause for NIGHTMARE FUEL (15D: Cause of bad dreams, in modern lingo) and, weirdly, NO SLOUCH (I say "weirdly" because it's such a strange thing to see standing on its own, and it gave me parsing fits, *but* ... when I got it, I thought a. original, b. perfect) (37D: Someone who's pretty darn good). I also loved the clue on MARSH (50A: Rail center?), though it also gave me fits—see, it's not that I don't like to be challenged, it's that when I'm challenged, I like the ultimate result to be Satisfying. Silver medalist Fogarty and Dark Knight Peterson get that.

Explainers:

a "rail" is a bird one might find in a MARSH
GROMIT is the dog from the "Wallace & GROMIT" animated films
"Helicases are a class of enzymes vital to all living organisms. Their main function is to unpackage an organism's genes." (wikipedia)

Questions:

can't a PAIR be a *very* exciting "poker holding," depending on context?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ORSON BEAN (43A: Dr. Lester portrayer in "Being John Malkovich") —

Orson Bean (born July 22, 1928) is an American film, television, and stage actor, as well as a stand-up comedian, writer, and producer. He appeared frequently on televised game shows from the 1960s through the 1980s and was a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. [...] Bean was a regular on both Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spin-off, Fernwood 2Nite. He also portrayed the shrewd businessman and storekeeper Loren Bray on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman throughout its six-year run on CBS in the 1990s. He played John Goodman's homophobic father on the sitcomNormal, Ohio. He played the main characters Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the 1977 and 1980 Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and The Return of the King. He also played Dr. Lester in Spike Jonze's 1999 film, Being John Malkovich. Bean appeared as a patient in the final two episodes of 7th Heaven's seventh season in 2003. In 2005 Bean appeared in the sitcom Two and a Half Men, in an episode titled "Does This Smell Funny to You?," playing a former playboy whose conquests included actresses Tuesday Weld and Anne Francis. He appeared in the 2007 How I Met Your Mother episode "Slapsgiving" as Robin Scherbatsky's 41-year-old boyfriend, Bob. In 2009 he was cast in the recurring role of Roy Bender, a steak salesman, who is Karen McCluskey's love interest on the ABC series Desperate Housewives. At the age of 87, Bean in 2016 appeared in "Playdates," an episode of the American TV sitcom Modern Family. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked most of this very much, though it does have two of the worst entries I've seen in a grid in some time: HAD A LISP (random verb phrase if ever there was one) and BEERYS (I've seen some plural names in my time, but this is the plural name-iest). But put those aside, and the rest of the grid really holds up. NW and SE are OK, but I really like the huge swath that makes up the rest of the grid—the stretch from SW to NE, with loads of longer, colorful answers, including two baseball answers that really tapped into my current preseason mania. I spend a good portion of my day reading detailed articles about my sure-to-be-dismal team (the Tigers). And not about the starters, either. I'm reading about pitching coaches, prospects, middle relievers ... I'm clearly thirsty. For baseball. In my head, the announcer calls a high and outside pitch "up and away" ... "Up and away, ball one," I hear him saying. Or maybe "high and outside.""Up and in," for sure. Whatever: HIGH AND AWAY is certainly legit, but it's not ... dead on. I'm just dialed in right now. The Tigers will not have any BIG BATS this year unless somehow Cabrera has an unexpected return-to-form year. Oh, what do you care? Back to this puzzle ...

[Rob is my friend. He's also the radio broadcaster for the Houston Astros.]

Opening gambit: FIESTA, OMENS, TISN'T, RAPT. Pretty much done from there. Two narrow passageways in the grid were daunting. ICE CAPADES was enough to get me clean through the first one, as I somehow guessed the seemingly made-up word CADENCED, then got DE SADE (39A: He wrote "It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure") and PET BIRD (35D: Iago vis-à-vis Jafar, in "Aladdin"), and then, improbably, ORSON BEAN (I can barely picture the guy, and I certainly don't remember him from "Being John Malkovich," but the "NB" letter sequence called his name straight to mind). Only two answers that gave me any real trouble today were GAS TAP and GEAR TRAINS—technical terms, the second word of which just wouldn't come. I normally like G&Ts, but I did not care for these. ESPY for GAPE was my only other hiccup. My weekly sacrifices to OOXTEPLERNON* paid off today, as ELIA and ERMA were both delivered unto me. "Aunt ERMA's Cope Book" was an ERMA clue staple back in the day ... and apparently is still with us (37A: "Aunt" of a 1979 best seller).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*The god of bad short fill, who first revealed himself to us in the center Across line of this grid.

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Constructor: Matthew Sewell

Relative difficulty: Challenging (my time was really high, I don't exactly know why)

THEME:"If Found, Call ..." — a LOST DOG puzzle (1A: Heading on a neighborhood poster). Half the theme answers are imagined LOST DOG poster messages from fictional people, with a hint to where the LOST DOG can be found in brackets at the end. Other half of the theme answers contain the LOST DOG names, i.e. the names of the dogs are embedded inside the answers (in circled squares):

Theme answers:

DOROTHY GALE (28A: Last seen riding in a basket. If found, call ___ [see 106-Across]) / 106A: Proceed enthusiastically (GO TO TOWN)
THE DARLINGS (44A: Last seen in the nursery. If found, call ___ [see 84-Across]) / 84A: Pretend (PUT ON AN ACT)
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE (64A: Last seen with a red-haired girl. If found, call ___ [see 119-Across]) / 119A: Algebraic variables (XS AND YS)
NICK AND NORA (86A: Last seen chasing down clues. If found, call ___ [see 24-Across]) / 24A: "1984" superstate (EAST ASIA)

Word of the Day: BANNS (72D: Marriage announcement) —

noun
a notice read out on three successive Sundays in a parish church, announcing an intended marriage and giving the opportunity for objections. (google) ["objections," LOL]

• • •

This is definitely one of the cleverer Sunday themes I've seen in a while, but for whatever reason, I could not find the handle. It took me a dog's age to finally understand the theme. I moved through the grid without getting a single theme answer for the longest time. Eventually stumbled into LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE because I got the back end of it, and the clue had "red-haired girl" in it. At that point, I had No Idea that 1A: LOST DOG was theme material. Even after that, I still flailed. Eventually got PUT ON AN ACT, and then XS AND YS, which gave me the connection to LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, and thank god it did—this is one of the rare times that I actually had to *use* my knowledge of the theme to solve the damned puzzle. I wrote in ODIE and ASTA because I already had their owners somewhere in the grid, so I knew those dogs were "missing." And man did I need that help, because YO-YO DIETER and EAST ASIA were not about to fall on their own. I had so much trouble all around those answers—around YO-YO-DIETER because of so many wrong answers in the crosses, and around EAST ASIA because ... I just couldn't get anything in there. I had TSA in the NE, and (tentatively) SEND on the west side of that NE section, and a whole lotta nothing in between. PEI? LOL, like I know what or where Charlottetown is. ONT seemed so much more likely. [High land] was way too generic for me to get NEPAL, [Snares] too vague for me to get ENTANGLES, and PHAEDRA!? Ha, I have read the damn Racine play (Phèdre) and still had no memory of her being the [Sister of Ariadne]. EMOTE, no shot (51A: Scream or bawl, e.g.). BIG TOE, no shot (34D: Hallux, more familiarly). ELI ELI (!?!?!), no shot (9D: Hebrew for "My God! My God!"). I still don't think I get ELECT (26A: Power up?). Somehow that phrase relates to giving someone power by electing them? Too clever by 3/4. Still, again, theme = good.

Deadly mistakes. NECK TIE for SILK TIE (43D: Dressy accessory). BUSH I for DUBYA (28D: 43)—that damned "U" from UNO'S (36A: Pizzeria chain, casually) was the only letter I had ... but I realize now that GWB is BUSH II, not BUSH I. Ugh. STOP BY for STOP AT (75D: Visit during a trip). Wanted CINEMA for SCREEN (96D: Moviedom). Totally baffled by 87D: Love all around? (NO SCORE). And "A TALE"?? OK, I'm supposed to know that? (79D: Subtitle of Hawthorne's "Fanshawe"). I barely even know what "Fanshawe" is. I have an English Ph.D. If A TALE were at all good fill, this kind of insanely obscure cluing wouldn't bother me quite so much. Not much to like in the puzzle besides the theme, but the theme is undeniably solid. I wish I'd enjoyed myself more, but I at least respect this puzzle's concept, which (again) is much more than I can say for recent Sunday offerings.

[this is soooo weird, but in a great way—a cover of The Roches]

My "good thing" recommendation* this week is an app for sports fans called The Athletic. My crossword friend, baseball writer Diane Firstman, turned me onto The Athletic as a place where a sports fan could get insightful articles without all of the clickbait / advertising nonsense that often comes with sports sites on line. The layout / organization of the site is clean and clear, and the writing is strong and informative. You can customize it easily so that it will show you the news you want, by sport, team, or region. It's a very convenient, non-shouty, non-stupid way to get my sports info. This is especially important during baseball season, when I need to stay informed but don't want to enter the dumb, hype-driven, male-dominated egofest that is so much sports reporting (did I mention that two of the primary Detroit Tigers writers for The Athletic are women?). Anyway, there's this beautiful little "A" on my phone and I punch it every time I have a few minutes to spare and don't want to get sucked into social media. It's a subscription app (you get what you pay for!), and so far it has been Beyond worth it. I really read them and they're really good. OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*genuine Rex opinion / not a paid ad

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Constructor: John R. O'Brien

Relative difficulty: Normal Monday

THEME: ONE / EYE (39A: With 32-Across, what the answers to the starred clues each have) — pretty self-explanatory

Theme answers:

POLYPHEMUS (18A: *Monster outsmarted by Odysseus)
SAMMY DAVIS, JR. (26A: *Rat Pack member who sang and danced)
JACK OF SPADES (42A: *Black face card whose face is seen in profile)
BAZOOKA JOE (54A: *Comic character on a gum wrapper)

Word of the Day: BAZOOKA JOE (54A) —

Bazooka Joe is a comic strip character featured on small comics included inside individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. He wears a black eyepatch, lending him a distinctive appearance. He is one of the more recognizable American advertising characters of the 20th century, due to worldwide distribution, and one of the few identifiable ones associated with a candy.
With sales of Bazooka bubble gum down, Bazooka Candy Brands announced in November 2012 that they will no longer include the comic strip in their packaging. The new wrapper will include brain teasers, instructions, and codes that can be used to unlock videos and video games. The company stated that Bazooka Joe and other characters will occasionally appear on the new packaging. (wikipedia)

• • •

SEWING NEEDLE or something that would've taken the EYE away from human beings might've been nice here, as Sammy and Bazooka both have the same kind of one-eye-ness. POLYPHEMUS was a cyclops ... and Odysseus ends up putting out his one eye, so does POLYPHEMUS have *any* eyes, really? I found the theme concept a little odd, a little bleak. I had no idea BAZOOKA JOE had only one eye. Wikipedia can say he's "one of the more recognizable American advertising characters of the 20th century," but I could not have picked him out of a line-up. I think my parents' generation might've been more familiar with him. Just like they were more familiar with SAMMY DAVIS, JR., and *their* parents were more familiar with MODEL TS (the puzzle skews toward times of YORE, is what I'm saying. YOREward, it skews). SEEGER, also parents' gen. ELSA Lanchester. The Lone Ranger. EERO Saarinen. And it's not just that all the pop cultural answers are old, it's that the fill in general is very old-school crosswordy. "ERES Tu?" There's really no excuse for EGAD and ERES in such a tiny section, in a non-demanding grid. OSAY? ATEN? HEMAL, on a Monday? The fill should be much, much, much cleaner than this. More current would be nice, but cleaner is pretty much required.

Pretty fast, which is pretty typical for this day of the week, but HADJI gave me pause (around here, I only ever hear that term used racistly), and I couldn't get ICKY off just the "I" (37D: Highly off-putting), and I got the verb tense wrong at SAW TO (wrote in SEE TO) (40D: Handled, as a task). And then there was the ITEM clue (58A: Part of a list with bullets), which ... why is the "bullets" part there? Our shopping lists, which always contain ITEMs, never contain bullets. And my bullet lists almost never contain ITEMs. Usually tasks. The whole "bullet" thing was weird—added info that only created confusion, not clarity. Overall, this was dry, and I'd like to send it back. Come on, Tuesday!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Carl Worth

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: KEY WEST (41A: Florida island ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 52- and 65-Across) — first answers of themers (i.e. the word on the "west" of the answer) is a type of keyboard "key":

Theme answers:

SHIFT GEARS (17A: Change one's approach)
ENTER SANDMAN (24A: Metallica hit with the lyric "Sleep with one eye open")
CONTROL FREAK (52A: Micromanager)
ESCAPE ROOM (65A: Series of puzzle for group solving)

Word of the Day: TARO (38D: ___ chips (trendy snack food))—

noun
a tropical Asian plant of the arum family that has edible starchy corms and edible fleshy leaves, especially a variety with a large central corm grown as a staple in the Pacific. (wikipedia)

• • •

First two words in were AJAR and APSE, and that pretty much set the tone for the whole thing. It was a very, very generic puzzle, with dull and familiar short fill everywhere. To its credit, the fill never gets painful or awkward or forced—it's quite solid. But solidly ecru. Solidly ENNUI. Part of the problem is the grid construction. It's a very choppy grid, with a preponderance of short answers. Outside of the themers, there are only four 7s and two 6s in the whole thing. Eeeeeverything else is 3, 4, and 5. I can rattle examples off, but why? Just look at your grid and you can see for yourself. The theme is pretty lifeless too—totally acceptable wordplay on the revealer, KEY WEST, but in the end, it's just a "first words do this" puzzle. Shift, enter, control, escape, zzzz. I will say that three of the four themers are very nice answers on their own (everything but SHIFT GEARS, which is, like the rest of the puzzle ... there). "ENTER SANDMAN" will get a lot of love from Metallica and Mariano Rivera fans (probably a lot more of the latter in this group, i.e. among you all). Rivera was the legendary Yankees closer, and when he'd come out to the mound, well...

Early-morning solving took its toll on me again, as what was clearly a very easy puzzle somehow took me a totally average amount of time to solve. I could feel as I was solving it that it was easier than normal, but SNEER went in for SNORT (22D: Derisive sound), and the clue on SITE just meant nothing to me (42D: Something pinned on a map) (*any* place is a potential SITE of ... something), and after having already gotten TASE, STUN would not come at all (I think it's misclued—tasing is a form of zapping, but stunning is not a form of tasing—it's vice versa, so "in a way" just doesn't work there). And the worst was TARO chips. "Trendy"? I know what TARO is, of course, but I had TA-O and could see only TACO, which was clearly wrong. Balked at JAKARTA (47D: Capital of the world's largest island country), had only the "A" at back end of ZAPPA and that clue meant zero to me (59A: Frank who performed "Watermelon in the Easter Hay"). Even PORT wouldn't come easily. So the entire east and southeast areas were clunky as hell for me—for no good reason. Morning brain. That is all. I hope that is all. OK... now, that is all. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: MARINARA (61A: Sauce made from ingredients mixed up in 16-, 24-, 37- and 49-Across) — themers have ONION, TOMATO, GARLIC, and HERBS mixed up inside them, respectively:

Theme answers:

ZERO IN ON (16A: Take dead aim at)
HOT OATMEAL (24A: Breakfast order often containing cinnamon)
ARTIFICIAL GRASS (37A: Indoor stadium surface)
BARBER SHOP (49A: A cappella genre)

Word of the Day: STACY Keach (55D: Keach of TV's "Man With a Plan") —

Walter Stacy Keach Jr. (born June 2, 1941) is an American actor of stage, film, and television. Highly prolific, he has played mainly dramatic roles throughout his career, often in law enforcement or as a private detective. His most prominent role was as Mickey Spillane's fictional detective Mike Hammer, which he played in numerous stand-alone television films and at least three different television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The role earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 1984.
He has also performed as a narrator for programs including CNBC'S American Greed(2008–) and various educational television programs. Comedic roles include his role in the Fox sitcom Titus (2000–2002) as Ken, the father of comedian Christopher Titus, and as Sergeant Stedenko in Cheech & Chong's films Up in Smoke (1978) and Nice Dreams(1981). His most recent recurring roles include two seasons as the Warden, Henry Pope, in the series Prison Break (2005–2007), "Pops", the father of the main character from the boxing drama Lights Out (2011), the elderly father Bob on the sitcom Crowded (2016) and the father of Matt LeBlanc's protagonist Adam on Man With A Plan (2015–). Keach won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for the television miniseries Hemingway (1988). (wikipedia)

• • •

Who. Is Eating. Cold Oatmeal!?!?! Try to order HOT OATMEAL next time you're at the diner. See what kind of look you get. Words-buried-inside-themers puzzles are pretty common, but they can work if done right. This one has a twist in that the words are "mixed up" inside the themers, but I think there's some confusion masquerading as wordplay. The revealer says the "ingredients" are "mixed up," which of course means "mixed together" in the case of MARINARA, but in the individual answers, of course, they aren't mixed up (with each other) at all. They're ... minced, I guess ... which, you also have to do to prepare the sauce, but still, there's a confusion of the senses of "mixed" there. "Herbs" is a little too non-specific for me, recipe-wise. Make the recipe come off as vague and generic. Biggest issue for me, theme-wise, though, was the ridiculous HOT before OATMEAL, and then ARTIFICIAL GRASS, when the much much much (etc.) more common term is ARTIFICIAL TURF.

[BARBERSHOP ... also, Dame EDNA and MOE and APU]

The non-theme stuff is actually much stronger than the theme stuff today. Unlike yesterday's all-short-answer, boring-as-heck grid, this grid has scads of long Downs streaming through it, giving it the life and color it desperately needs. PROSODIC is a weird word (6D: Pertaining to the rhythm of speech), and one that took me longer than most of the others to get. But I like it. (Here's a def. of "prosody," in case you're interested) MAKES BANK is the real winner of the day. I had M-K and my first thought was MAKES BANK, but then I thought "Nah, too slangy for this crowd" (34D: Rakes in the dough). But then bang, there it is! Ironic to have it touching MCHAMMER, who made a ton of bank and then famously went bankRupt. I'm really disappointed that this puzzle thought ZORK (?) (13A: Pioneering text adventure game) was important enough to add a *%#&ing submachine gun to the puzzle. It would be so, so easy Not to have a human-killing weapon in this puzzle. So easy. A matter of a couple squares. Here's a picture of 7000* pairs of empty shoes in front of the US Capitol yesterday: one pair for every child killed by guns since Sandy Hook. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I love that snopes fact-checked this number and called it only "Mostly True" because, well, actually, the number is probably a little higher

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Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: THE IDES (38A: Date that provides a phonetic hint to four other answers in this puzzle) — today is THE IDES of March (?) and four answers begin with "I'D" so there are many "I'D"s ... in the grid ...

Theme answers:

"I'D TAKE THAT" (3D: "Sounds like a deal")
"I'D BE HONORED" (20D: "Yes, how nice of you to offer")
"I'D RATHER NOT" (15D: "Count me out")
"I'D BETTER GO" (30D: "It's getting late")

Word of the Day: BREN (11D: Air-cooled machine gun) —

noun
a lightweight quick-firing machine gun used by the Allied Forces in World War II.
(wikipedia)

• • •

THE IDES cannot stand alone like that. I have never seen or heard THE IDES given as a "date.""Hey, what's the date?""Oh, it's THE IDES." Only in crosswords have I ever seen anyone posit that IDES might stand alone at all, as the midpoint of *any* month. If people know IDES it's in the phrase "THE IDES of March" and that is all. THE IDES, on its own, is a metric ton of preposterous. This puzzle was pretty easy, except for that "date." I had THE, and then THEI, and no idea how those letters might make a "date," and so I went from a lightning fast west half of the grid to a halting, awkward, slower east half—just because of the non-answer THE IDES. I was just lucky to know someone named NATAN, or moving in a connected fashion from the western to the eastern half of the grid might've proved totally impossible. There were answers and clues I liked in this puzzle (never heard BEAR PIT, but TAX DODGER (18A: One with a no-returns policy?), ELAINE MAY (60A: "A New Leaf" actress/director, 1971), and THE PILL (!) (42D: Sponge alternative) were very nice, but the themers almost all seemed misclued, or inadequately clued. ["Yes, how nice of you to offer"] sounds like someone offered you a ride home. Nothing about being "honored" in that clue. "I'D RATHER NOT" is at least somewhat less definitive an answer that ["Count me out"]. And "I'D TAKE THAT" barely sounds like something someone one would say at all. I see how IDES / "I'D"s is a cute thing, but the execution here, and specifically the stand-alone-ness of THE IDES, is kind of gruesome.

The fill in this one started out very rough. Tiny NW section gave me SUPE, POTTY and ETALII (ugh), and then NUTLIKE (??), so I was not hopeful, but the grid pulled out of its nosedive and ended up being reasonably clean and interesting, in the main. ROLLS DICE is not a phrase—the "THE" is kind of crucial if you want to sound plausibly human. And another day, another machine gun, I guess (BREN). This time, it's a machine gun from WWII that is just four letters long that somehow, in my god-knows-how-many years of solving, I've never seen. So we've gone deep into ancient crosswordese (I'm guessing) to bring you your machine gun today. On the day after UZI. On the day after #NationalWalkOutDay. Truly amazing timing on the NYT's part.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (with a detour into Medium territory because I made one stupid mistake that it took me far too long to undo)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BEALE Street (42D: Memphis blues street) —

Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km). It is a significant location in the city's history, as well as in the history of the blues. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major touristattractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts periodically bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. (wikipedia)

• • •

HEMOPHILIA *and* ULCER *and* HEROIN ... Kind of a downer of a day at Crossword General Hospital. Beyond that, I thought the grid was pretty delightful. Pretty clean, with some interesting, lively answers. There's very, very little in the way of obscurity here, and the whole thing played very easy *except* for the part where I tried to come out of the west into the center / bottom of the grid. I should've just kept going right across the top, swept down the east coast, and then backed into the center and SW corner. In retrospect, that would've been pretty easy. But instead I tried to come through the VEGETARIAN / WINEMAKER nexus and got bogged right down. Why? Well, you kind of need VEGETARIAN and WINEMAKER to catapult or slingshot or other action verb you into the new sections of the grid if you're coming out of the W/NW.

And things looked good. Had VEGE- and WINE-, nice head starts on the front ends of both those answers. So what do I do? Well, first, and worst, I drop VEGETABLES into the grid. This doesn't *quite* feel right, but it fits. And then with WINE-, I ... just don't know. Since the clue is looking for an "authority," I am not not not thinking a wine producer. I'm thinking a wine aficionado, a wine enthusiast, a wine ... lover!? It fits. And that, my friends, is how you drop the ball. Hit the easy overhead smash into the net. Fumble on the five yard line. Again, choose your metaphor. I eventually figured it out (MIKES to -MAKER to MESONS, huzzah!), but given how fast I did the rest of the puzzle, that VEGETABLES fiasco took me from what would've been something like a record time to something like average.

Some of the cluing I could've done without. I have "F.U." written next to 14A: Partner of 5-Across (FREE) (it is not the "partner" of EASY as EASY is defined in its clue, 5A: "Calm down, ace"; so boo) and again at 4D: Where you might hear someone say "Duck!" (POND!? That scenario is preposterous. What are you, hanging out with sheltered 3-year-olds?). Clues on BIDEN (34A: 2017 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) and CHARON (44A: Largest moon of Pluto) were just [shrugs]—you gotta be able to do better than boring trivia clues like that. CHARON is the damned ferryman! Do some punning or wordplay or Something. My worst moment of the day (after The VEGETABLES Fiasco) was having -ARDEN at 40D: Make a bed? and having absolutely no idea what word that could be. I still can't see anything but HARDEN, even with GARDEN clearly written in there).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Roland Huget

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"LE CID" (46A: Massenet opera) —

Le Cid is an opera in four acts and ten tableaux by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet, Édouard Blauand Adolphe d'Ennery. It is based on the play of the same name by Pierre Corneille.
It was first performed by a star-studded cast at the Paris Opéra on 30 November 1885 in the presence of President Grévy, with Jean de Reszke as Rodrigue. The staging was directed by Pedro Gailhard, with costumes designed by Comte Lepic, and sets by Eugène Carpezat (Act I), Enrico Robecchi and his student Amable (Act II), Auguste-Alfred Rubé, Philippe Chaperon and their student Marcel Jambon (Act III), and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (Act IV). The opera had been seen 150 times by 1919 but faded from the repertory and was not performed again in Paris until the 2015 revival at the Palais Garnier. While El Cid is not in the standard operatic repertory, the ballet suite is a popular concert and recording piece which includes dances from different regions of Spain. It was specially created by Massenet for the prima ballerina Rosita Mauri. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that was oddly easy. Tons of white space—the part in the middle looked particularly daunting—but those 15s were easy to get from just a few letters, and gave you (I hope) a foothold in every corner of the grid. Those highly secluded corners (really hate that in a grid design) can be terrifying, but again, the 15s always gave you something to work with. The problem with a grid like this is that, beyond the 15s, nothing was very interesting about it, and a few of those answers, esp. the technical ones (SHEERED?) were kind of unpleasant. It's a pretty clean grid overall. Acceptable, solid stuff. But after the 15s, which were fun, the rest just felt like work, though admittedly the work was pretty light.

Got started in a semi-weird way, I think. Took one look at 1A: Official on a Segway, maybe, and, after ruling out some intensely dumb indoor sports thing (POLO REF?), I thought "Oh, it's some kind of COP. Put in COP, bam, Down goes CLEO, OED *and* PRIORENGAGEMENT (!!).

[so weird, I stopped to take a picture]

Then "What kind of COPs are there ...? MALL!" And sis boom bah the NW corner is done and I'm zooming across the grid with the next 15! (Do not come at me with '90s-era k.d. lang, crossword!)

LOL that I'd remember the name of the captain in "Billy Budd" (VERE), but the crosses were fair, so whatever. I slowed a teeny bit in the center, largely because of DIETETICS, a word I almost never see and definitely could not parse. Had _I_TETI_S and was baffled at how a "science" (21D: Nutrition science) could end with "-I_S." It was only when I realized the first part had to be DIET that DIETETICS (which sounds too much like DIANETICS for me to take seriously) became clear. The reason I had those particular gaps in DIETETICS? I thought the "honor" in 20A: It's an honor (ODE) was an OBE (this is your brain on crosswords); I didn't know if the thing about changing course "at sea" was SHEARED or SHEERED; and I was not parsing "LE CID" at all—thought "LE-ID" was one word (one usually encounters "LE CID" in his infinitely more common Spanish form). But again, done fairly quickly, and 15s again gave me the escalator / elevator help I needed to ascend / descend into the remaining parts of the grid.

It was only the technical stuff that stalled me in any way. CAPSTAN, not a familiar thing to me (8A: Rotating part of a tape recorder). TUMBLER ... I know it *is* a part of a lock, but I honestly couldn't tell you *which* part ("a pivoted piece in a lock that holds the bolt until lifted by a key." ... OK). My favorite part of the solve was getting KNESSET off just the "K" (nice clue) (40D: Mideast diet). Only had a few moments hesitation at the dumb "letteral" clue of the day (where the clue literally points (via a jokey "?" clue) to a letter of the alphabet): 59A: Depot's terminus (SILENT T). Those corners could've been brutal, even with assistance from the 15s, but they just rolled over. I'm not disappointed, exactly. It was all just a bit anti-climactic. 15s good, rest meh. But solid and clean, so that's something.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Discontinued Swedish cars / MON 2-26-18 / Avenging spirits of Greek myth / Pianist radio host John / Simulated smooch / Katherine of 27 Dresses

Article 0

Subject of repeated warning at Woodstock / WED 2-28-18 / Actress Lisi of How to Murder Your Wife / Classical musician whose given name is toy / Canadian filling station / Position in crew informally / Cookie since 1912 / Modern prefix with warrior

Classic letter puzzle parsed differently / THU 3-1-18 / Chewed stimulant in mideast / Karakum Asian desert / Tee shot goof / Blue area on Risk board

Kentucky's northernmost county / FRI 3-2-18 / Journalist's tool since '67 / Quarry of cartoondom's Gargamel / Footwear brand since 1978 / 1965 Michael Caine spy thriller / Car model originally called Sunny in Japan / Pope when Elizabeth I took throne

Ron nine-time all star from 1960s 70s Cubs / SAT 3-3-18 / Riesling alternative familiarly / So-called Father of Zoology / Wire stickup man

German border river / SUN 3-4-18 / Title family name in old TV / Cossack weapon / Daschle's successor as Senate majority leader / Martial art with bamboo swords / Oxygen reliant organism / Metaphoric acknowledgment

Monkeys named for monks / MON 3-5-2018 / Santa ___ winds / Fierce fliers of myth / Dev who starred in 2016's "Lion" / Slammin' Sammy of golf

Straight-kneed military movement / TUE 3-6-18 / Core-strengthening exercise performed on all fours / Resource in Mesabi range / Relating to element #76

Controversial food preservative for short / WED 3-7-18 / Women's rights activist Mott / Eazy-E collaborator informally

Deceitful ballerinas / THU 3-8-18 / Word that no one has ever said before / McDonald's offering since 1968 / Bomb developed in 1950s / Classic railroad name / Golden Bears school familiarly

Poem greeting the dawn / FRI 3-9-18 / Musical gir who cain't say no / 2008 Bond girl Kurylenko / Thrill starts with grille / Animated character who graduated from Dogwarts University / Wizard of Oz farmhand / Tom Sawyer's half brother / Cause of bad dreams in modern lingo

Dr Lester portrayer in Being John Malkovich / SAT 3-10-18 / Bygone skating spectacle / Noah Wallace of old films / Warner Bros cartoon series of 1990s / Like some bad pitches in baseball lingo / Iago vis-a-vis Jafar / common material in tutus

Theme song of Milton Berle / SUN 3-11-18 / One-named Swedish singer with grammy-nominated song Dancing on My Own / Hebrew for My God My God / Start of Yale's motto / Alternative to boeuf jambon / 2000s corporate scandal subject / Modest two-piece swimsuit

Folk legend Pete / MON 3-12-18 / Monster outsmarted by Odysseus / Two-time Oscar-nominated actress Lanchester / Two mints in one sloganeer / Saint known for translating bible into latin

Metallica hit with lyric sleep with one eye open / TUE 3-13-18 / Product of Yale Medeco / chips trendy snack food / First name of two of three apple co-founders

Pioneering text adventure game / WED 3-14-18 / Pertaining to rhythm of speech / Storytelling uncle of fiction / Indian born Big Bang Theory character

Tail-shedding lizard / THU 3-15-18 / Hebrew name meaning he has given / Frenzied trading floor metaphorically / Voltaire religiously / Sponge alternative

Restaurant cook on TV's Two Broke Girls / FRI 3-16-18 / Fictional queen of Arendelle / Hepatologist's study / Product introduced in 1984 with ad titled 1984

Parsons of old Hollywood gossip / SAT 3-17-17 / Rotating part of tape recorder / Official on Segway / Epitome of completeness / Belbenoit noted escapee from Devil's Island