Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Taking Your Q"— You don't actually "take" the Q anywhere; You put a "QU-" where a hard "C" sound should be, creating wacky answers, clued "?"-style:

Theme answers:

QUERY WASHINGTON (24A: Interrogate a founding father?)
TRENCH QUOTE (39A: "There are no atheists in foxholes"?)
BABY QUAKES (46A: Tremors?)
"HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, QUID" (72A: Comment by a Brit down to his last coin?)
QUICK BOXER (93A: One knocking out an opponent in the first round?)
PEACHY QUEEN (105A: Monarch who's fine and dandy?)
ORDER IN THE QUART (122A: Have a little ice cream delivered?)

Word of the Day: Kerry Washington (basis for QUERY WASHINGTON) —

Kerry Marisa Washington (born January 31, 1977) is an American actress. Since 2012, Washington has gained wide public recognition for starring in the ABC drama Scandal, a Shonda Rhimes series in which she plays Olivia Pope, a crisis management expert to politicians and power brokers in Washington DC, and also is a producer. For her role, she has been nominated twice for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series. (wikipedia)

• • •

The title doesn't really work. Also, this kind of simple sound-change theme only works if the results are legit funny, and ... I don't know. Seems like the clues could've been a lot more inventive. Again, with Wacky puzzles, go *Wacky* or go home. None of this tepid wackiness. Tepid wackiness is wack. All the "?" clues are actually fairly straightforward. The overall result is a very doable but very dull puzzle. The abundance of "Q"s livens up the grid a little, but not enough (some of those "Q"s are wasted on horrible stuff like ESQS and SEQS (?)). Surprised how easy this played, given how many things I didn't know, or barely knew, beginning with 1A: Big name in computer networking (CISCO). I mean, now that I look at it, yeah, sure, I've seen that. But it didn't come easily to me. Neither did MARACAIBO or MCLAREN or RABE or ROHAN or EAMONN (notice the common thread—all proper nouns). But none of those was anything more than a slight speed bump.

My biggest problems actually came from ticky-tack little bad-fill answers, most notably OSSEO- (!?!) (29A: Bone: Prefix). What the hell? OSTEO-, I know. OSTEO-, I was sure had to be the right answer. I have no doubt that there is some context in which OSSEO- applies, but wow I don't know what it is. I also have no idea about random popes and so when it started with a "P" (63D: Pope who excommunicated Elizabeth I), I wrote in PAUL and then waited for the Roman numeral. Got the "V" and thought, "Sure, why not? PAUL V!" And that's only two letters off, and one of those letters was in the horrid 71A: Suffix in Sussex, where -ASE seemed ... possible? It was finally having TRULTY at 80A: True that made me have to reinterrogate all my crosses. Thus PAUL became PIUS. This is why random Popes are so much fun.

I have so many announcements this week, where to start? First, today was the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, at which I have been a speaker and judge for several years now. Had a wonderful time, as usual. Congratulations to Jesse Lansner, who won it handily (He's a very fast solver who will be competing at next weekend's ACPT). Lots of people were there because they'd heard me talk about the tournament in the past. One woman—Mickey Schied—was there in part because she heard the episode the "Allusionist" podcast about last year's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament, then saw that *this* tournament was happening closer to her home, and she recognized my name from that same podcast, so bam, she decides to show up and compete ... and then WIN the Easy Division. Awesome.

[Jesse and his championship bracelet]

[my wife, Penelope, and Mickey Schied]

So that was fun.

Now for news you can use:

QUEER QROSSWORDS (queerqrosswords.com) — Nate Cardin organized and edited this collection of crosswords made (and edited) entirely by LGBTQ+ folks. 22 puzzles, from established pros as well as newcomers, all yours (in the form of a .PDF) when you make a new donation of at least $10 to the LGBTQ+ charity of your choice and forward the receipt to the editor. Instructions are on the website. I gave to the Southern Tier AIDS Program. Good puzzles, good cause(s), not expensive. What more do you want?

***

Also, this announcement from Ben Tausig, ed. of the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX):

Good chance to try out the best of what AVCX has to offer. You should already be a subscriber, but if you're not ... here, try these.

***

What else? Oh, I was interviewed for a podcast called "Teaching in the Arts"—it's mostly about teaching, but there's crossword content in there as well. Here's a link to the podcast page at iTunes; or you can just listen to the episode on the web, here.

***

And lastly, in crossword business news, Peter Gordon, ed. of Fireball Crosswords, just announced a 50% pay raise for constructors ($451 / puzzle), meaning that once again his independent outlet pays better than the NYT. The NYT's rates remain shamefully low, given how much profit their puzzles generate. I love that Peter is not afraid to enumerate allllll the ways that making puzzles for him is a superior experience to making them for the NYT.

Also, it goes without saying that if you like good, hard, tricky puzzles (think Thursday themes with Friday/Saturday difficulty), then you should definitely be a Fireball subscriber.

Enjoy your Sunday. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium Monday

THEME: RAINBOW (48A: What the starts of the answers to the seven starred clues constitute) — all the colors...

Theme answers:

ORANGE PEEL (17A: *Garnish for a cocktail)
INDIGO GIRLS (26A: *"Closer to Fine" folk-rock group)
YELLOW LIGHT (44A: *Caution to slow down)
GREEN ARROW (60A: *DC Comics superhero with the sidekick Speedy)
BLUE BIRDS (10D: *Symbols of happiness)
RED TAPE (23A: *Bureaucratic rigmarole)
VIOLET RAY (35D: *Antique medical device used for electrotherapy)

Word of the Day: FWIW (56A: Letters suggesting "I'll just go ahead and throw this out") —

acronym for "for what it's worth". Used mainly in computer-based conversation (instant messaging, email, text messaging, etc.) (online slang dictionary)

• • •

Well yes those are the colors of a RAINBOW ... OK. Pretty literal, pretty basic, pretty bland. Doesn't seem NYT-worthy, conceptually. No wordplay or cleverness here at all. The colors are actually the colors. The peels are orange, the birds are blue. The girls aren't actually indigo, though. That must be metaphorical. Or maybe related to denim. VIOLET RAY is almost painfully literal, in that its first word is the color and the second word relates to light. YELLOW LIGHT not doing much better. At least a YELLOW LIGHT is a thing people know. [Antique medical device used for electrotherapy]?? That is a long, grim, bygone way to go to get VIOLET RAY. The fill here is acceptable but no better. Teeters at times, but mostly stays upright. Pretty BLAND overall. Not sure why this gets made, published. Hoping for slightly more adventurous and ambitious stuff tomorrow.

INDIGO GIRLS is a smug little insidery wink (NYT loves those)—the INDIGO GIRLS were featured in the documentary "Wordplay" (2005) as one of a handful of celebrity solvers (including pitcher Mike Mussina, president Bill Clinton, and comedian Jon Stewart). They were charming, and I have always enjoyed their music. Saw them live twice when I was in college—once in Edinburgh, opening for 10,000 Maniacs; then again, headlining at the Pantages in L.A. I went to Pomona College with Emily Saliers' sister, Carrie. Annnnnnnyway, nice to see the duo's name today.

I had a lot of little trouble in this grid. Mostly it was a breeze, but I had weird blanking moments. When BAR didn't work at 25A: Place for drinks, my brain just refused to see PUB, even with the -UB in there. Was just looking at an old collection of "Li'l Abner" in the bookstore yesterday, thinking "Who the hell reads this?" And here we are with PAPPY. Abnerspeak (or "Dogpatch") is an old crossword standby. Like, really old. Never bothered to learn much about it. It mostly drifted into the mists of yore. Just not today. Balked at VIOLET RAY because wth is that? Had LOAN for LEND, as I always always do (55D: Supply temporarily). Couldn't make sense of plural GRIEFS for a while (45D: Intense sorrows). Could think only of the grieving sound of GROANS. Really really couldn't make sense of FWIW, which was clued as if it was referring to trash (56A: Letters suggesting "I'll just go ahead and throw this out"). When Green Lantern didn't fit, and Green Hornet didn't fit, I drew a blank at that last themer. Still an easy puzzle. A normal, easy, Monday puzzle. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SEASON OPENERS (53A: Much-anticipated sporting events ... or, when spoken, what 20-, 28-, 35- and 43-Across have) — spring, summer, autumn, winter ... at the beginning of each themer, respectively

Theme answers:

SPRINKLER HEAD (20A: Part of a fire safety system)
SOMERSAULTED (28A: Flipped)
OTTOMAN EMPIRE (35A: Constantinople was its capital)
WIND TURBINES (43A: Instruments of renewable energy)

Word of the Day: ROSS Douthat (42A: Op-ed writer Douthat) —

Ross Gregory Douthat (/ˈdaʊθæt/; born November 28, 1979) is an American author, blogger and New York Times columnist. (wikipedia)

• • •

Took me a non-zero amount of time after finishing the puzzle to understand what the hell the theme was. Me: "SEASON OPENERS ... so the first one is SPRINKLER HEAD ... so ... if you "sprinkle" salt on something you are "seasoning" it????" The "openers" to me are the opening words, and when you say SPRINKLE, SOMERSAULTED, OTTOMAN, and WIND in order, well, not much happens. But it's the sounds of parts of words. A small part, or a combination of parts. I dunno. When I say the themers, I kinda hear the seasons. But figuring this one out was less "Oooh!" and more "Uh ... er ... I guess?" The real noteworthy accomplishment in this puzzle is THREE-RING BINDER (7D: Loose-leaf sheet holder), a central Down that is the longest answer in the puzzle and ... has nothing to do with the theme. It just comes crashing down through all the themers, like "Oh yeah!" (that's the Kool-Aid man, for you youngsters).

It's honestly the weirdest non-theme long Down I've ever seen in a puzzle. Straight through five themers ... for no theme reason! Just a "look at me!" photobomb of an answer. Totally upstages the theme. I approve.

Tiny struggles everywhere in this one, starting at 1A: Put a cork in ... which I took as cork-specific. But no. It's just CLOSE (can't believe I'm saying this, but really could've used a "..., say" in that clue). "WE'LL pass" instead of IT'LL (6A: "___ pass"). Had SPRINKLER and no idea what could follow it. Got the "H" and went with HOSE (?). Which led to ORG at 22D: Alternative to .com (EDU). Had both DOWN and GLUM before BLUE at 19A: Feeling sad. Couldn't be convinced NIP had anything to do with eating (it's a drinking term) (47D: Light bite). I see now that the clue was talking about an actual bite, with teeth. Two "?" clues in the SE slowed things a bit too (60A: Pitch-perfect? / 66A: Old flame?). And I am not at all convinced that a STUNT SHOW is a thing, so ... that was weird (32D: "Don't try this at home" spectacle). Still, time was pretty normal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Laura Braunstein

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: animal verbs — verb phrases are clued as if they refer to groups of animals:

Theme answers:

DUCKS OUT OF VIEW (20A: Why the hunter couldn't shoot the mallards?)
FLIES IN THE FACE (25A: Reason a cow swatted herself?)
SEALS WITH A KISS (42A: Circus animal enjoying some chocolate?)
YAKS ON THE PHONE (47A: Whose conversation might be about shaggy hair and Himalayan peaks?)

Word of the Day: FIXIE (25D: Many a single-gear bike) —

noun
a single-gear bicycle that has no freewheel, so that its wheels cannot move unless power is applied to the pedals. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, it's friend-of-the-blog Laura Braunstein. Laura has written for me a bunch, so, you know, full disclosure and all that, but ... this is very solid work. Felt much, much more like a Monday or Tuesday than a Wednesday, specifically in the non-theme fill, but most Monday / Tuesday grids aren't nearly this clean. The problem with early-week / easy grids that are dominated by 3-5-letter answers is that they usually top out at boring. Like, your goals is to keep the worst junk out, and hope your theme is strong enough to carry the day. But here, not only is the theme solid, but somehow the shorter fill is also occasionally interesting. Yes, you've got old standbys like ECRU and ALOU and OLE and AER and ALII, but also FIXIE and PI DAY, which gave the grid some 'zazz. Maybe fewer partial answers (like FIVE-O and AVIV and AVANT) would've been nice. But at worst, the short fill totally holds up, and at best it's playful and fun. The theme is basic but well done. My only frowny-face moment came at the clue for FLIES IN THE FACE (25A: Reason a cow swatted herself?), which is Not Like The Others in that it not only doesn't describe the animal in question at all, but actually refers to an entirely different animal (i.e. the cow). On its own, I like the clue fine, but it does not fit with the pattern established by the other clues, and the introduction of a different animal felt slightly cheap. *But* the puzzle was so easy that this didn't matter at all. If not for the wackiness of the theme, I would've finished this in a normal Monday time. Wackiness put it at a pretty quick Tuesday. I think this should've been a Tuesday, if only to help poor Tuesday out (still the least pleasant weekday puzzle).

[kind of a weird song to have background dancers for, but ... sure, just go with it!]

Weird / interesting / good (?) to see 'HOOD clued in a way that doesn't refer to "homeboys,""homeys" or "boyz" (2D: Home turf). It's still primarily black slang, or it was originally, but it's crossed over pretty well now. Plus, seeing NYT trying to signify blackness is always slightly cringey so ... just play it straight, that works. I wouldn't have used "home" in the clue since HOME is in the grid (TAKE-HOME), but no big deal. Speaking of TAKE-HOME, the clue on that one is the only thing I really don't like about this puzzle (38D: Not-so-intimidating sort of test). As a college professor, I am familiar (I think) with all the various test types. So I was looking for something "not-so-intimidating" and ... couldn't think of what that would be. TAKE OVER? (like a do-over?). TAKE-HOME exams are not "not-so-intimidating." I've had plenty of in-class exams that were very easy compared to TAKE-HOME exams, which can be *rough*, depending on the time limit and expectations. "Not-so-intimidating" is just wrong here. Nothing inherently unintimidating about the TAKE-HOME exam. In fact, the opposite is routinely true. Boo. But hey, nice recuperation of NERD there at 53D: Put-down that nowadays may be worn as a badge of honor. It's nice to see NERD change, over the course of my lifetime, into something people proudly proclaim themselves to be. It was not ... always so. Ask me about the good ol' days some time, children ...

Til tomorrow...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium for me, time-wise, but it didn't FEEL that way...)

THEME: like, social media stuff, I think — theme clues all start [One with a lot of ...] and then the ensuing word sounds like something from social media, but the answer is actually more literal and not social media-related at all:

Theme answers:

VALLEY GIRL (17A: One with a lot of likes?)
ROCKIN' ROBIN (23A: One with a lot of tweets?)
MAJORITY OWNER (35A: One with a lot of shares?)
FENCE MENDER (49A: One with a lot of posts?)
MOTHER DUCK (57A: One with a lot of followers?)

Word of the Day: EDM (40A: Techno is a subgenre of it, for short) —

Electronic dance music (also known as EDM, dance music, club music, or simply dance) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. EDM is generally produced for playback by disc jockeys (DJs) who create seamless selections of tracks, called a mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. In Europe, EDM is more commonly called 'dance music' or simply 'dance'. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was so weird. I started out flailing and even after I got a few sections fairly quickly (the NE, the SW), I still felt like I was struggling over and over to understand the clues. You have no idea how many passes I took at YEA big, for instance, yeesh. But then I was done and my time was in the 5s (?) which is ... I don't know anymore, but probably a little on the fast side, actually. I am currently literally laughing at the young person who is trying to make sense of how a ROCKIN' ROBIN has "a lot of tweets." I mean, you really have to know that specific song, and I do, but I'm 48, and that song was well before *my* time. Also, I only really *got* it after I had it filled in. It seems like the kind of puzzle that could Really have stymied people, both because the theme is ... just ODD, with non-intuitive answers ... and because the proper nouns are dangerous. I can see MIRA, JOFFREY, EDM (not proper noun, but still...), ENRICO, ROCKIN' ROBIN, VALLEY GIRL, any of those really throwing someone off. I think the theme has a certain cleverness to it, but I don't really like when the whole "joke" of the theme is exclusively in the clues. I never got a sense of the puzzle's identity, never felt a pattern emerging. The answer set is weird. FENCE MENDER does not feel like much of a thing, and a MOTHER DUCK does not have "a lot" of followers—look:

That's less than a dozen. "A lot" compared to what? I like this suggestion for an alternative answer:

Started with SPAT for RIFT (1A: Falling-out), and then "confirmed" it with TELE (4D: Prompter or printer lead-in), ugh. Could not make any sense of 1D: Gets going (REVS UP) or 5D: Tell (SAY TO) (?) or HIGHCS (6D: Hard-to-hit pitches) or PER or EEL or even SHAPE (5A: Mold). If I hadn't eventually gotten PETRI (27A: Kind of dish), I don't know how I would even have been able to get at that whole N / NW area. The "P" from PETRI was how I knew there was an UP up there, and UP got me USE, and of course there's an "S" before UP ... and that somehow got me SILENT H (!). The rest of the puzzle was thorny but not nearly as bad as the N / NW. So this wasn't terrible but didn't really ... land, the way I like the trickiest theme puzzle of the week to Land.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Honeybee (see below)

THEME:nope

Word of the Day: POLICE BOX (18A: Cop's station in England)—

The Police Box was introduced in the United States in 1877 and was used in the United Kingdom throughout the 20^th century from the early 1920s. It is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. Unlike an ordinary callbox, its telephone was located behind a hinged door so it could be used from the outside, and the interior of the box was, in effect, a miniature police station for use by police officers to read and fill in reports, take meal breaks and even temporarily hold prisoners until the arrival of transport. (wikipedia)

**ALSO!**

Doctor Who has become so much a part of British popular culture that the shape of the police box has become associated with the TARDIS rather than with its real-world inspiration the original police box. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey there. It's your long-lost friend Amy filling in for Rex tonight. Sometimes I think about the daily puzzle and how it would fall on the Schmidt Insect Pain Index, hence the difficulty rating above. The puzzle was Friday-level mean in spots, but the pain subsided quickly enough and didn't linger or itch unnecessarily.

Erik Agard is a rising star in CrossWorld and this puzzle is a fine example of his work. He rarely falls back on formula answers and throws in some interesting phrases without being show-offy.

I dig the mixture of old and new in this puzzle. You need some old-school knowledge to enjoy an Edwin STARR (17A: Edwin of 1960s-'70s R&B) reference, but even the youngest among us should enjoy him this classic video:

It was great to see JANET MOCK (29D: Transgender rights activist and best-selling author of “Redefining Realness”) in a puzzle and I especially loved the KIBBUTZ/ZAMBONIS cross. That's some hot "Z" action, dude.

I didn’t love the “Scene + Roman numeral” obviousness of SCENE XIV (25A: Part of Act 4 of “Antony and Cleopatra in which Antony attempts suicide) or “the abbreviation nobody ever uses”EPS (6A: Series installments, for short), but those tiny clunks don't take away from the general resonance of this puzzle.

Nicely done, sir.

Signed, Amy Seidenwurm, Undersecretary of CrossWorld

[Amy is the Executive Producer of Oculus' VR for Good Creators Lab Program]

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (except SW corner, which was kind of harrowing)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ferdinand de LESSEPS (37D: Ferdinand de ___, developer of the Suez Canal) —

Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de Lesseps GCSI (French: [də lesɛps]; 19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was a French diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal, which in 1869 joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distances and times between Europe and East Asia.
He attempted to repeat this success with an effort to build a Panama Canal at sea level during the 1880s, but the project was devastated by epidemics of malaria and yellow fever in the area, as well as beset by financial problems, and the planned de Lesseps Panama Canal was never completed. Eventually, the project was bought out by the United States, which solved the medical problems and changed the design to a non-sea level canal with locks. It was completed in 1914. (wikipedia)

• • •

Usually love Byron puzzles, but this one was a little wobbly, a little too full of stuff that seemed odd, indulgent, and just not interesting to me. EPICISTS? GOPER? The NW corner didn't do much to endear me to this one. I have read Homer. I have taught Homer. I was reading the beginning of the Odyssey just this morning. Literally never heard anyone ever refer to him as an EPICIST. It is barely a word—this kind of esoterica makes me make faces when I solve. GOPER is slightly better, but not much. I guess people say that. Dunno. CLEVER DICK does nothing for me. I have never heard it and likely never will again. British slang that hasn't crossed over in any way? Shrug, not into it. MOTTLERS? Again, a specialty thing outside my ken. Then there's ALTE Oper (??), SIR SPEEDY (??), and LESSEPS (???), none of which I have ever seen before. So mainly the issue was that I just didn't know a lot of stuff. Lots of trivia. Trivia is not what I love about crosswords. There is some other good stuff in here, both answer- and clue-wise, but overall, this one didn't delight as much as I expected it would, other than the fact that it's always at least a little delightful to take a Saturday down in under 8 minutes.

I was so proud of myself that I got ALERT first thing (though I did have to think about it for a few seconds). TRADES RETILES EVITA and off we go. First real test came when I plunked down SLEIGHS at 11D: Haulers on runners (SLEDGES). I don't really know what SLEDGES are. I think they're like SLEIGHS. Hang on ... well, yeah, it's just a sled, and a sleigh is sled drawn by horses (or reindeer, I guess). Anyway, brief moment of chaos there while that answer sorted itself out. The only real Real resistance I got from this one came in the SW, where ALTE / SIR SPEEDY / LESSEPS / GMOS had me frozen. Oh, and ANGLOS for 39D: Whites didn't come easily either. Everything but LESSEPS had inferrable letters, though, which saved me, ultimately. KATEY SAGAL and CASSIS got me traction in the SE, and after a MAB-for-MUM mistake (34A: Queen ___), I was able to muddle my way through MOTTLERS and on to the end of the puzzle.

[2002-05]

I feel bad for Napoleon II, as EAGLET does not exactly convey ... power (23A: Avian epithet for Napoleon II, with "the"). Maybe he was just Adorable and never grew taller than 4'2"? Wouldn't you say "HEY, Y'ALL" before "HI, Y'ALL"? I'm way out of my depth with southernisms, but something about "HI, Y'ALL" feels weird. I loved MEAN GENE even though I have no idea who the "wrestling Hall-of-Famer" (really?) Okerlund is. I just like rhyming nicknames. Like Mean Joe Green. The Round Mound of Rebound. Hakeem the Dream. Etc.

Best of luck to everyone at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this weekend. Also, love and respect to all the kids (including my own daughter) who are participating in the #MarchForOurLives in D.C. and all over the country today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Follow the Sun"— theme answers have SUN in them, and when the answers get to SUN, the SUN goes down (sets?) in the west (!) and goes up (rises?) in the east ... just like the actual ball of sky fire!

Theme answers:

MEGATSUNAMI (26A: Catastrophic event that can be caused by a gigantic earthquake)
ACTORS' UNIONS (56A: Hollywood labor groups)
ETATS UNIS (98A: Amérique)
E PLURIBUS UNUM (102A: Only words on the front of the Great Seal of the United States)
MONKEY'S UNCLE (68A: How someone in awe might describe himself)
GOES UNDER (29A: Folds, as a business)

Word of the Day: PEDUNCLE (60A: Plant stalk) —

noun
BOTANY
the stalk bearing a flower or fruit, or the main stalk of an inflorescence.
ZOOLOGY
a stalklike part by which an organ is attached to an animal's body, or by which a barnacle or other sedentary animal is attached to a substrate. (google)

• • •

The theme was very easy to figure out—circling the SUNs gave (probably) far too much information away. Once I realized (at second themer?) that the circles were just gonna be SUNs, the difficulty level of the puzzle dropped considerably. I guess you sort of had to wait to figure out that the SUNs went the other direction in the eastern portion of the grid, but ... not really. That was pretty self-evident—themer heads east, hits a circled square, then heads ... in whatever the direction the circled squares god ... then heads east again. Mostly very intuitive, though occasionally my brain forgot that once you reach the "N" in the SUN, the answer zags back east again; I spent at least a little time wondering what a MEGATSUNG and a ETATSUNNI were. I've never heard of a MEGATSUNAMI (aren't regular ones pretty, uh, devastating), and I don't really believe that there are ACTORS' UNIONS, plural, in Hollywood (there's SAG, and then .... ?). Not too jazzed about PEDUNCLE at all (?) let alone the fact that it pretty much doubles the UNCLE content in that exact portion of the grid. Also the clue on MONKEY'S UNCLE is weird—it really needs some reference to the "I'll be" part of the phrase for it to make real sense. The clue (68A: How someone in awe might describe himself) almost sounds like it's asking for an adverb (?). It's awkward all around there. And yet I don't really care. I mean, the SUN thing is cute-ish, but mainly it's just A Theme, and the enjoyment resides in the rest of the grid, which is really pretty lovely. SUN up, SUN down, fine, but, REAL TALK, the rest of the grid was mostly a joy to move through.

The grid provided lots of happy moments, fill-wise, and how often do I say that? (A: not very). Even the ridiculous stuff (i.e. plural EARTHS) was making me laugh (87A: Planets like ours, in sci-fi). Creative cluing! Make it work! I HEART KUSHNER and AS SEEN ON TV and IT'S ON ME and T MINUS ZERO (!) and I think NERF WAR is fantastically made-up but sure, go ahead. At least it's made up in a way I can imagine. DON'T TELL! PROM DATES! MIC DROP! The grid was working, everywhere. Sun, shmun, this grid was fun. Shout-out to the great clues on ARMHOLE (21A: Sometimes hard-to-find shirt opening) (we've all been there...) and UNWED (103D: Not taken seriously?). I realize that last one is pretty gam-o-centric (or marriage-biased, if you're less lexically adventurous). I'm sure there are people who are taken (seriously) who are not married. Still, throw in that "?" clue, and the clever word play, and I'll allow the normativity at work here. PEDUNCLE seems like something you'd call a dangerous-to-children ... uncle. I really, really don't like any part of that word. Just trying saying it out loud. Is it peDUNCle? PEEduncle? Podunk + uncle, it sounds like. Let's burn it and bury it and then not mark its grave and never speak of it again.

My greatest Defy-My-Age moment was plunking down NEYO at 49D: R&B singer with the hits "So Sick" and "Mad"... but then my Nah-You're-Old moment came when I realized I didn't know how to punctuate his name. I knew there was a hyphen, but was not sure where it went (dead center, it turns out: NE-YO). I don't think KPMG is "good" fill (73A: One of the Big Four accounting firms). Totally uninferrable letters. I didn't even know the concept of a Big Four existed among accounting firms. That sounds like some accountants got a little drunk and full of themselves and said "you guys ... you guys ... you guys let's form a club, you guys!" Can you name the other three of the Big Four? I bet over half of you can't name even one without looking it up. Price Waterhouse, is that one? ... holy Krap, I'm right! Woo hoo, wild guessing FTW! Here, read about how it used to be the Big Five. And the Big Six. And before that, the Big Eight. Oh the exciting times you will have reading about this illustrious history of self-important naming!

PS Thanks to everyone who got into the streets yesterday to protest gun violence and lax gun laws. Here are some pics from the Binghamton march (photos courtesy of my wife)

[moment of silence at the memorial for the 13 people shot and killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY, in 2009]

And here's a pic of my daughter and her friends in D.C.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (my time was a tad north of normal)

THEME: vowel progression, with the last word in each themer going from LANE to LUNE through all the other long vowel sounds

Theme answers:

VICTORY LANE (17A: Site of a postrace celebration)
DAVID LEAN (26A: Director of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago")
TOE THE PARTY LINE (38A: Follow one's political group)
MICROLOAN (48A: Helping hand for a low-income entrepreneur)
CLAIR DE LUNE (60A: Classic Debussy work that translates as "Light of the Moon")

Word of the Day: ROCK CAVES (3D: Things spelunkers explore) —

[definition unfound]

• • •

I guess every constructor makes at least one of these vowel progression puzzles in their career. I know I did (STALE STEEL STYLE STOLE STOOL). Anyway, it's as good a reason as any for a (Monday) theme, as long as the theme answers are interesting in their own right (check) and the fill holds up (double check), so thumbs up. I had trouble with several of the longer answers, starting with ROCK CAVES. Are there other ... caves? Besides the Batcave? Spelunkers explore caves, that I knew, but ROCK CAVES added a level of specificity that I did not know existed. I also know of the concept of a VICTORY LAP, but VICTORY LANE ... is that the specific area where the winner pulls up his car and jumps on top of his car and like ... makes it rain milk on his crew, or something. You can see I'm a Huge racing fan. Got TOE THE and wanted LINE but had to delve into the crosses to know what the missing part was (PARTY, of course, makes sense). Front end of MICROLOAN was not clear to me. Again, needed several crosses to pick it up. Also had ICES for OFFS (45A: Does in, in mob slang), which really muffed things up (was relying on that answer to help pull me up from the south and into that SW corner, but instead of having F--CES (which would've given me FORCES immediately at 46D: Troops) I had C--CES, which gave me only CIRCES and CROCES and possibly Las CRUCES (all wrong).

Oh, and then there was ONRUSH, which I didn't understand for the Longest time, even after the puzzle was done. I look at that and see two words, e.g. "I ordered it next-day delivery ... you know, ON RUSH." But it's a noun. A deluge, an ONRUSH. The definition is apt. My familiarity with that word (in the sense of how often I actually see or hear it) is pretty low. And then there's THE NFL—I had THE, but somehow thought the clue was asking about the investigators or doctors or scientists or whatever, not the org. that actually caused the concussions (31D: Org. featured in 2015's "Concussion"). Looking at all my mistakes and misunderstandings, it's a wonder I came in as fast as I did. Played more like a Tuesday for me, but no matter. I had a good time. The puzzle is clean. Hurray.

Congratulations to my friend, a great constructor, and now, officially, the fastest crossword solver on the planet—Erik Agard! Yesterday, he became the newest American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion, *smoking* the finals puzzle in under 5 minutes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi, everyone! I'm Clare, and I'm back since it is indeed the last Tuesday of March. I'm just getting back from spring break, where I spent time with my family and, umm, curating my Netflix account. My brain has definitely been on vacation, meaning this was the most thinking I've had to do in a couple of weeks.

Constructor: Peter Koetters

Relative difficulty:Medium-Difficult for a Tuesday

THEME: Puns involving U.S. state capitals

Theme answers:

MORETHANJUNEAU (20A: "Explore Alaska! It's ___!")
FREELANSING (33A: "Writers and photographers will find Michigan a great place for ___!")
AUGUSTAWIND (39A: "Blow into Maine on ___!")
CONCORDMYFEARS (50A: "I was afraid to ski, but in New Hampshire I ___!")

Word of the Day: NEGRI (60A: Pola ___ of the silents)

Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupec; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. Negri signed with Paramount in 1922, making her the first European actor in history to be contracted in Hollywood. (Wikipedia)

• • •

The theme was clever. It's a good thing I was paying attention in fifth grade when we learned all the state capitals. I might have only memorized them because I wanted to get a higher score than a fellow classmate (looking at you, Jeff Howard), but I haven't forgotten them to this day! I can't decide which answer I like more:FREELANSING or AUGUSTAWIND. Both are fun.

I found the rest of the puzzle pretty hard, though; a lot of the fill was a bit off my wavelength. LAV could have been "loo"; ENTO could easily have been "endo"; IRANIAN could have been a more generic term for an oppressed subject; and LOT should probably have been "lots." Has anyone ever drawn one lot? There were also some just ugly answers, like: HOERS (seriously ugly), ALTI, and EDAMS as a plural. And, (I promise I'm done harping on the puzzle soon) there were a lot of clues/answers that felt hard for a Tuesday. ELAMwas a word I'd never seen before, and I had never heard of "hoarfrost" (54D) or the answer for that clue, RIME. ELAM crossingLOT crossing ALTI is an ugly middle. It actually took me a while to come up withCLEANS(47D: What a janitor does) because I convinced myself that would be way too obvious for this puzzle.

Moving on, I did actually like some of the fill:

There were a lot of clever puns outside the theme answers. 57A: Belted out of this world? as ORION and 11A: Fixer at a horse race as VET were particularly nice; I laughed when I figured out the answers.
It took me a long time to get SNOCONE because I was convinced that "treat" in the clue was being used as a verb instead of a noun. Then I wanted to hit myself on the head when I realized how obvious it was.
A crossword puzzle finally got common slang right with ACES (though that may be by accident; apparently the term is so old that it's current again)!
CRAM is something I'm definitely familiar with as a college student sitting in my DORM.
The ABC sitcom Black-ISH is a show that everyone should watch.
I got VIJAYSINGH really quickly and am mystified. I have this vivid recollection of when he was playing in a tournament that a female golfer, Annika Sörenstam, entered and said he'd withdraw rather than play with her. But that was in 2003, so I was six. He apparently really made an impression, and not a good one.
AGONY means that I'll have the song from "Into the Woods stuck in my head. Here it is so I'm not the only one (best part from 1:05-1:07. If you watch, you'll understand why):

Signed, Clare Carroll, an Eli with senioritis (Here's hoping my brain starts working before classes start for me mañana — cheers to having no classes on Mondays!)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: TEE (59D: End of each word in 17-, 27-, 43- and 54-Across — as well as every clue (and that's a fact!))— just what it says

Theme answers:

GREAT SALT DESERT (17A: Part of Iran that can get quite hot)
SAT BOLT UPRIGHT (27A: Sudenly showed interest)
KEPT QUIET ABOUT (43A: Didn't speak of, as a touchy subject)
LAST BUT NOT LEAST (54A: "Finally, though as important ...")

Word of the Day: Meir KAHANE (43D: Rabbi Meir who served in the Knesset) —

Meir David HaKohen Kahane (Hebrew: מאיר דוד כהנא‬) (/kəˈhɑːnə/; August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-Israeli ordained Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in the Israeli Knesset. His work is influential on most modern Jewish militant and far right-wing political groups. (wikipedia)

• • •

Two issues here. One, I don't really get the appeal of the TEE thing. The themers all ending in TEE is mildly interesting, but ... making all the clues end in TEE just results in tortured cluing. No one is humming along with their solving going "wow, look at how all these clues end in TEE—nice!" It's not even an amazing revelation at the end. More, "Oh *that's* why I had so much trouble interpreting the clues." There needed to be a better way to make this one Extra—to take it from the not-terribly-interesting all-words-in-themers-end-in-TEE thing to the Next Level. The clue gimmick doesn't really do it. Seems like an afterthought to make the puzzle seem (rather than actually be) layered and complex.

[Such are the cluing pleasures of the final TEE gimmick]

So the blahness of the "T" thing is one issue. The next is the proper noun assault. Peter sells an app called Celebrity (see here), a guess-the-name game that he will 100% without a doubt all the time try to rope people into playing at every crossword tournament he attends. He probably does this in real life, in random places, like the dentist's office or subway platforms, for all I know. The game is fun, but that's not the point. The point is: The Dude Knows His Famous Names. And his Sorta Famous Names. Famousish Names. I wonder if this is why he doesn't blink at putting so many marginally famous names in a Wednesday grid. I absolutely did not know three of these names—complete blank stare territory. And two other names (SLOAN Wilson, Rich AURILIA) I knew only because of my particular hobbies / passions (collecting vintage paperbacks and watching baseball, respectively). ADELEH (which I only *just* learned is actually ADELE space H.!), ALBANESE, and especially KAHANE were painful, letter-by-letter, cross-by-cross pick-ups. Brutal. Ugh. I've watched two Truffaut films just this month, but "The Story of ADELE H." ... Adele Ouch, not on my radar. There are a lot more proper nouns in the grid, but most of them seem pretty mainstream. I have never heard of the GREAT SALT DESERT (lake yes, desert no), but at least that was inferrable, unlike KAHANE, dear lord. OMG, I totally forgot about LIL MO, another laughable "???" (20A: Popular early 2000s R&B artist). The TEE gimmick also seems to have forced a NED I didn't know (9D: Nascar Hall-of-Famer Jarrett). So the theme was just there and the spate of iffily "famous" names made this kind of an unpleasant solve.

Maybe a snappy revealer or title (which I really wish weekday puzzles had) could've salvaged the theme; that meager TEE there at the end thuds more than it pops. I don't know. I'm just gonna try to file ADELEH KAHANE and ALBANESE away for future recognition purposes and move on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Claire Muscat and David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: NUTs — theme answers contain different nuts (in circled squares); the nut names are interrupted by a single letter in each case—those letters: N, U, T (respectively)

Theme answers:

LEAN CORNED BEEF (20A: Light deli offering)
BURIAL MOUND (35A: Traditional grave)
LIFE EXPECTANCY (50A: It's longer for women than it is for men)

Word of the Day: Pierre-Simon LAPLACE (38D: French astronomer / mathematician who wrote "Traité d Mécanique Céleste") —

Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (/ləˈplɑːs/; French: [pjɛʁ simɔ̃ laplas]; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statistics, physics and astronomy. He summarised and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799–1825). This work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the Bayesian interpretation of probability was developed mainly by Laplace.

• • •

But the acorn *is* the nut. The almond *is* the nut. The pecan *is* the nut. Why do they contain the letters N, U, T, respectively. What is being ... imagined / pictured / represented? A nut in its shell? Because ... that's simply not what's on the page. Without any title, without any wordplay, any clever revealer, this theme just dies. You have to work even to figure it out (or at least I did), and then the discovery feels like it's not quite right. I was like "Oh ... N, U, T ... alright then ... what else? What am I missing?" Cracked nuts? Split nuts? I figured there must be more. But I don't think there is.

This puzzle was probably easier than usual, but yeeeeeeet again I maimed myself with wrong answers. Stupid, innocuous stuff that I didn't see was wrong because it was so stupid and innocuous (actually, it wasn't "stupid" at all, I'm just mad). Got GOLF PRO and off the "P" put in ... RPM (24A: Dashletters (MPH)). Lethal. This meant I could not see 11D: Way some movies are seen (ON DEMAND) at all, even with a bunch of letters in place, because it looked like this ON-ER--D. Only way I ended up sorting that out was by eventually getting HBO NOW, which also took some work, since the only HBO-related app I know is HBOGO (that still exists, right?). I also had BRAIDS for PLAITS (37A: Twisted locks), which, as you can see, is a totally understandable error on a number of levels. Same number of letters, three letters in the same position, both answers fit the clue. Ugh. I "finished" the puzzle with BRAIDS in there, but the crosses just didn't check out. BBS is not a TV station, RAPLACE is not a French astronomer, and ARD is not any thing that I know of. Don't like [Bust, maybe] for ART. If it's a bust, it's art. If "maybe" here is supposed to mean "this is a word that can mean multiple things," then that is bogus because words mean multiple things all the time, and we know that, so what's with the "maybe" nonsense? [Bust, e.g.] = yes. [Bust, maybe] = no. [Intuit] feels not-at-all right for plain old SEE, either.

Kinda winced at SEXPOT (42D: Vamp) and definitely winced at PIZZA FACE (56A: One with serious acne, pejoratively). The one is at least vaguely sexist and objectifying, while the other is explicitly cruel and stupid. You gonna do TUB OF LARD next? I'll pass on the bullying bullshit. Oh, and a cutesy "?" clue on a terrorist organization? Hard pass (31A: An end to terrorism? => QAEDA). I did, however, like BAR FIGHT, GIANT SQUIDS, and DO SHOTS, to name a few (I also liked TO NAME A FEW). The grid mostly holds up just fine. I just wish the theme had amounted to something.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. A.D.A. today refers to the Americans with Disabilities Act (I had to look it up—ADA is a dental org. to me) (28D: Law with bldg. requirements)

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Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ZEROTH (33D: Preceder of first) —

adjective
immediately preceding what is regarded as first in a series. (google)

• • •

All pleasure from the longer stuff was drained away by displeasure with the less-long stuff, but honestly there was really only one answer in this puzzle that I'm going to remember tomorrow, and that's ZEROTH (a word that has never appeared in a NYT crossword before, he said, surprising no one). I needed every single cross and was still not convinced it was a word. I honestly couldn't even see that it was an ordinal. I flat-out didn't know what I was looking at, and was certain I had an error. Sincerely, at one point I thought the answer was ZERO TO ... like, maybe there was a phrase like "zero to sixty" only ... it's "to first"??? I went on to complete the puzzle, and the little Happy Pencil came up, so ... hurray, but still baffled by ZEROTH. Even after figuring out it was the thing that precedes first the way first is the thing that precedes second, I still had no idea in what context one would use it. I've since looked it up, and honestly nothing I read made me care. It was all technical. Blargh. ZEROTH looks like the name of a scifi character. What's worse is that "Z" from ZIP-ON, which is not a thing. Hoods are ZIP-*OFF* if they're anything. Both "zip away" and "zip off" get more hits than "ZIP ON." Because ZEROTH was a non-thing to me, I questioned every cross, and the "Z" was the most questionable. So, you see, all the NEVER FAILS and WELCOME TO MY LIFE and I'M A FAN and WELL, DAMN! and other fine answers honestly didn't mean jack to me, because ZEROTH.

Hated clue on NO-RUN too (39A: Like a three-pitch inning). A three-pitch inning would indeed, by definition, be NO-RUN, but a. a three-pitch inning is an amazing, very very rare thing, whereas a NO-RUN inning is Like Most Innings, and b. no one says "NO-RUN inning." Google ["no run inning"]. Look at number of hits. Now just change "no" to "one" ... and watch the number of hits go up 10-fold. Being off with your phrasing and jargon is so bad. Do you really say "*I* CHECK" ... it's not just "check"? I hate poker so I wouldn't know, but it felt overly formal and wrong. The phrase is "DON'T WAIT UP!" The "FOR ME" part takes it into the realm (again) of the improbably formal.

Even ENEMY SPY felt slightly wonky. What is the non-enemy spy? I mean, our allies spy on us, and they are "plants from other countries," so ... ?? ENEMY SPY, I admit, is a thing, but it also just doesn't google well—there's this volume in a kids' book series, some weird band ... no surprise that this, too (like ZEROTH) has never been in a grid before. I dunno. Stuff just did not land for me today. Time was pretty normal, and some of the longer and more colloquial stuff was OK, but off-ness is just like a broken REAR AXLE—you end up with a puzzle that might look nice in places, but it just doesn't ... work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TOTAL GRIDLOCK (52A: Nightmarish Manhattan traffic situation ... or a possible title for this puzzle) — Across and Down lines (i.e. rows and columns in the grid) alternate directions, e.g. first row runs east-to-west (i.e. backwards), second row runs west-to-east (i.e. the normal direction), third row runs back east-to-west again, etc. (and same for the Downs columns)

Theme answers:

ONE-WAY STREETS (19A: Most crosstown thoroughfares in Manhattan ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme)
SNOITCERID / LLA NI GNIOG (35A: With 41-Across, proceeding willy-nilly)

Word of the Day: Johnny OTIS (1D: Johnny nicknamed "The Godfater of Rhythm and Blues") —

Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, arranger, bandleader, talent scout, disc jockey, record producer, television show host, artist, author, journalist, minister, and impresario. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He discovered numerous artists early in their careers who went on to become highly successful in their own right, including Little Esther Phillips, Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, and The Robins (who eventually changed their name to The Coasters), among many others. Otis has become widely synonymous with being known as the original "King of Rock and Roll" and the "Godfather of Rhythm and Blues". (wikipedia)

• • •

A themed Saturday. Oy. I mean, this puzzle's hard, but what made it most hard, for me, was that it was themed, and I never look for (and also hate) themes on Saturdays. This should've been a Thursday puzzle. It's much harder, sure, but type-wise, it's a Thursday. Actually, on a Thursday, I'd've finished it much faster, because I'd've thought "what's the theme?" and would've then looked at those longer Acrosses. In tough themelesses, I generally ignore the longer answers until I've worked a lot of the smaller crosses. Smaller answers are easier to get (generally), and once I've picked a bunch of them up, then I look to the crosses to confirm. My problem was I just never looked at 19A (i.e. the first theme clue). If I had, bam, there's the tip that it's themed / tricky, so I at least know I'm striking out because Something is Up and not just because the cluing is hard. Solving in software hurts here too—if you can't see all the clues at once laid out in front of you, you're eye can't pick up the ellipses in those theme clues, which is the tip that something themey is going on. So just the fact of running this on a Saturday and not a Thursday added to its difficulty, which feels mildly cheap, frankly. Also, I have seen the "street" thing before; it's been a NYT theme before, though never TOTAL GRIDLOCK the way this one is. The one I remember had answers doing this back and forth thing, but just for Acrosses, I believe. This construction is indeed impressive, but it's a stunt puzzle, par excellence. And the theme is one that, once you pick it up, has no pleasures or revelations left for you. It's just a slog, as your brain struggles to keep up with which way which row / column is going. Lastly, GOING IN ALL / DIRECTIONS simply does not fit the theme. Grids do not go in all directions; they go in two directions. This is ... I mean, this is what defines a grid. The two-direction thing pretty much defines gridness. What the hell?

So since I was not looking at the theme clues, it took me way longer than it should have to grok the theme. I knew RED ANTS was correct (1A: Insects of the species Myrmica rubra) (let it never be said I'm *totally* science-ignorant...), right from the start, but I also knew (or thought I did) that the actor was EWAN McGregor, and both things couldn't be true (or so it seemed). So I flailed there a bunch and moved on. Also wanted 14D: Provisos to be IFS, but it seemed to *start* with "S" so that didn't work. Finally, I wrote in SPAS at 22A: Employers of masseurs and then checked the cross at 23D: Holden's younger sister in "The Catcher in the Rye"—well I absolutely positively knew that was PHOEBE. My sister and I used to make fun of this kid in one of her classes who had to read out loud from the book and kept calling her "Fobe," so that particularly literary name has Stuck Like Glue. I still mentally say "Fobe" every time I see PHOEBE written out. Anyway, SPAS couldn't work with PHOEBE ... unless ... I turned SPAS around. At *that* moment, minutes into my solve, I thought, "Wait, this isn't *$&%&ing themed, is it?" And bam. There's DEMITASSES (12D: Small coffee cups) and THO (33A: Short while?) and I'm off—creepingly off. After that, there's just the awkward work of entering half the answers backwards. Beyond the gimmick, the puzzle is totally ordinary. I mean, do you even remember any of the clues or answers? The only ones I remember are the crossing "?" clues at 37D: Turkey club? (NATO) and 43A: Back on the job? (TEBA, i.e. ABET), where I had to run the alphabet. Totally baffling, and probably the only time today when, after getting the right answer, I thought "OK, yeah, that's good. Fair play."Turkey club? Man. Both those clues are brutal and perfect (Turkey is a country in the "club" that is NATO, in case that wasn't clear) (and if you "back" or support someone in a crime, like a bank "job," then you ABET that person).

OK, it looks like Johnny Cueto is currently pitching a perfect game through six, so I have to go. I am very impressed by this puzzle, architecturally, but I can't pretend to like themed Saturdays, and I can't pretend I haven't seen a (admittedly less ambitious) version of the back-and-forth street thing before, and I especially can't pretend GOING IN ALL / DIRECTIONS makes any sense whatsoever for this particular theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Welp, looks like someone got a hit off Cueto as I was writing that last paragraph. Oh well. Still gonna go watch baseball. Because baseball is on. It's baseball season. Baseball. Bye.

P.P.S. And while I was typing the first P.S. the UConn women ... lost??? Whoa. Now I really gotta go see what's up.

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME:"1 + 1 = 5"— rebus puzzle where a "5"-letter word with AND in the middle appears in the square going Across, and just the letters on other side of the AND appear in the Down; thus:

Theme answers:

KID IN A [CANDY] STORY / MA [CY] S (both "C" and "Y" are in the square, but going Across the "and" is included in the answer (CANDY), and going Down it is not (CY))
[PANDA] EXPRESS / PA [PA] CY
ALL [HANDS] ON DECK / FUC [HS] IA
[LANDO] CALRISSIAN / BORDEL [LO]
YANKEE DOODLE [DANDY] / GO STEA [DY]
HURRICANE [SANDY] / NOT AS EA [SY]
THE AMAZING [RANDI] / [RI] GHT FIT
ELASTIC [BANDS] / DA [BS] AT
A FISH CALLED [WANDA] / RE [WA] RD

Word of the Day: IRENE Ryan (17D: Ryan of "The Beverly Hilbillies") —

Irene Ryan (born Jessie Irene Noblitt; October 17, 1902 – April 26, 1973) was an American actress who found success in vaudeville, radio, film, television, and Broadway.
Ryan is most widely known for her portrayal of Granny, the mother-in-law of Buddy Ebsen's character, on the long-running TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971), for which she was nominated for Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1963 and 1964. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, I kinda like this, but there were two main problem, for me: 1. "1 + 1 = 5" is not a saying. It's not a play on anything. It's random math nonsense. I think I've seen "2 + 2 = 5" as a joke signifying, I don't know, the "new math" (whatever that is/was), but that expression plays on the concept of "2 + 2 is 4" as an equation exemplifying simplicity. "1 + 1 = 5" plays on nothing. I get that expresses mathematically what is going on in the puzzle (i.e. 2 letters in one direction = 5 in the other), but the puzzle title is important, and its wordplay should be spot on. Naming-wise, this title feels off. Second, and this is more a technical issue: writing five letters in one square? Not ... easy. Hard enough w/ pencil, but impossible on my computer—that is, I can do it, but I can't see them all. I guess the idea was we were only supposed to write in the two letters? OK. I can see that in retrospect. Seemed like the "and" was crucial so I wrote it in. At any rate, still seems like a lot to cram into one box. The concept is clean, but the reality of its execution on paper, by the solver, is not. Too many questions about what, exactly, to write in the box, and too much stuff in the box, period. Once I figured out the gimmick (took a little while), it was kind of fun to find the ?AND? words. With HURRICANE [SANDY] and YANKEE DOODLE [DANDY], I actually found the ?AND? square first, and then wrote in the entire rest of the answer immediately. But most of the time, the hunting was a little harder. Trouble with [RI]GHT FIT because it's kinda "green paint"-y, i.e. not really a strong stand-alone answer, more a loose adj/noun pairing. And I nearly missed the [BANDS] of ELASTIC [BANDS] completely because I just had ELASTICS, which somehow seemed fine for [Stretchable wrappers]. I think just the work of figuring out the gimmick takes this one into the more challenging range.

AT THE BAT? Er, way way too long an answer to be that single-context specific. Nothing and no one else in the history of humanity has ever been AT THE BAT. Just Casey. But the grid is mostly solid, with some nice original stuff like "LEMME SEE..." and "YEAH, MAN" and BACKLOT. I had a bunch of missteps, starting with DEKES for FAKES (1D: Deceptive moves). Really struggled with A PERSON (89D: Each). Brain conked out after APOP and APIECE. GRR for GAH messed me up a little in the S/SE (101D: "This is SO frustrating!"). Second day in a row where I had a cross I had run the alphabet on (ER-ADER / OL-S) (119A: Device many use in bed / 11D: Whoops?) because nothing looked like it made sense and I thought maybe another ?AND? word was hiding in that square. Both clues were vague / tough, and ER-ADER made me think I actually had an error. But it's just a simple E-READER, which, I guess, people use in bed. And on planes. And in chairs. But yeah, beds too. Second day in a row with a very tricky theme concept. I liked this one better, mostly because I still can't forgive that GOING IN ALL / DIRECTIONS answer from yesterday, What The Hell???! GAH! I hope we've all gotten the April Fools crap out of our system. Have a Happy Easter or Passover or whatever you do or don't celebrate!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. an update from Nate Cardin, organizer and editor of Queer Qrosswords (which you can find out about here):

Queer Qrosswords has officially passed the $12,000 mark for money donated to LGBTQ+ charities on behalf of the project, thanks to 331 (!) total donations. We're continuing to expand where we're promoting the project and will have a presence at upcoming crossword tournaments as well as RuPaul's Drag Con.

The puzzles are cool. People seem really into them. Tell a friend. Give them as a gift. Spread the love.

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I wanted to start this week off with another "hello it's me Rex and I am very gruff and hate Mondays almost as much as Garfield the lasagna cat" type intro, but then I remembered that I already did that one time, and that although it's still April Fools' Day at the time I'm writing this, it will be the much less interesting April 2nd when this post is published. So I'm just going to say, hey, it's Annabel Monday!

Constructor: Jason Mueller

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: PARIS, FRANCE — Theme answers relate to the City of Love.

Theme answers:

EIFFEL TOWER (17A: 62-Across landmark)
THE LOUVRE (24A: 62-Across museum)
PONT NEUF (30A: 62-Across bridge)
SORBONNE (44A: 62-Across school)
PATRON (49D: St. Genevieve, for 62-Across)
NOTRE DAME (51A: 62-Across cathedral)
PARIS FRANCE (62A: World capital that's the theme of this puzzle)

Hope I didn't miss any, there were ATONOF theme clues this week.

Word of the Day: ANODES (15A: Battery terminals) —

An anode is an electrode through which conventional current flows into a polarized electrical device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode through which current flows out of an electrical device. A common mnemonic is ACID for "anode current into device".^[1] The direction of conventional current in a circuit is opposite to the direction of electron flow, so (negatively charged) electrons flow out the anode into the outside circuit. In Galvanic cell, the anode is the electrode, which reduction reaction occurs in.

An anode is also the wire or plate having excess positive charge.^[2] Consequently, anions will tend to move towards the anode.

• • •
(Wikipedia)

Uh, are we sure this one's a Monday? Because I've done a lot of Mondays at this point, and they don't normally lead to me gently bashing my head against the wall. I don't really know what it is, maybe there were just too many older/more obscure cultural references, or maybe my brain is just fried from eating too many chocolate Easter eggs or too much matzo and I'm having an off day. (My parents come from different faiths so I've always celebrated both Easter and Pesach to some degree, although I have been known to briefly stop observing Pesach whenever there's some cinnamon rolls or foccacia bread near me.)

Anyway, despite the puzzle's difficulty there were a few clues that were...tired. Surely there's another way to clue ENE and its cousins? And yes, I still know what ALOE vera is. I want to see more exciting fill! But not too exciting because I got stuck on the western side of the puzzle for about a million years. What can I say, I'm hard to please. DETOO made me giggle though, so score one for Jason.

The theme, fortunately, was the easiest part. ~~Total missed opportunity for TOUR as in "de France" though.~~ I got lost on the metro in Paris one time on a high school trip; me and a friend of mine got off at the wrong stop and spent two hours wandering around the next station waiting to see if our school group would reunite with us. Ended up having to navigate back to where we were staying because I was too anxious to ask someone to borrow their cellule and he didn't speak a word of French. Mais c'était une adventure!

Bullets:

ENT (6D: Suffix with differ) — If this puzzle was going to get a bit geeky with DETOO, why not go all out and clue this one after the tree creatures from Lord of the Rings? Then again, those fellows went on for so long that I quit the books about two-thirds of the way through Treebeard's scene. At least he gets a really cool name.
OGRE (42D: Shrek, e.g.) — Alternate clue: "Layered."

OLIVE (52D: Shade of green) — A friend of mine has a theory that in any given partnership (be it a couple or BFFs), only one person likes olives, so the other can give that person their unwanted olives. I have always been the latter. They're just too salty and weird! I'll pick them off my pizza and give them to whichever bizarre olive-lover is around.
SCAT (59D: Sing like Ella Fitzgerald) — Can also refer to poop, or an excellent YA book by Carl Hiaasen, or this man.

SKI-BA-BOP-BA-DOP-BOP

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (or Brutal, depending on how well you know certain names...)

THEME: THINK QUICKLY (67A: To understand this puzzle's theme, read the ends of the answers to the starred clues and ...)— the ends of the answers to the starred clues sound like the letters, Q, U, I, C, K, L, and Y, respectively:

Theme answers:

NETFLIX QUEUE (18A: *List for some binge watchers
"YES, YOU!" (25A: *Response to "Who, me?")
"MY EYE!" (29A: *"Balderdash!")
DEAD SEA (40A: *Lowest point on the earth's surface)
MARY KAY (43A: *Avon competitor)
KAL EL (53A: *Superman's alien name)
"BUT WHY?" (57A: *"For what reason, though?")

Word of the Day: LASSE Hallström (75A: "Chocolat" director Hallström)—

Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström (Swedish: [ˈla.ˈsɛ ˈhal.ˈstrœm]; born 2 June 1946) is a Swedish film director. He first became known for directing almost all music videos by pop group ABBA, and subsequently became a feature film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) (1985) and later for The Cider House Rules (1999). His other celebrated directorial works include What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Chocolat (2000). (wikipedia) [Note: he's married to double crossword threat LENA OLIN]

• • •

[d. LASSE Hallström]

I think this is pretty cute, and, thematically, well executed. Streets ahead of lots of weekday themes. It's simple, neat, tight. The revealer actually reveals something. Theme: approved. There's one major OOF here, though, and that's the names. There are going to be boatloads of people who struggle mightily, guess, and possibly even wipe out entirely (on a Tuesday?!) because of the names. I can already see people shouting on Twitter about the HALAS / LASSE cross (say that three times QUICKLY!). They are both absolutely fair game for crosswords, but mayyyybe not crossing one another. But there were lots of other only sorta famous names, like Ned YOST, or TITUS (who was emperor for only two years). And then there were the monsters from the bottom of the crosswordese trunk that you still keep in your attic for some reason: 36A: "Gil Blas" writer (LESAGE) and 51D: "___ Ben Adhem" (Leight Hunt poem) (ABOU). These would be horrifying if I hadn't been doing crosswords for 25+ years (when they roamed the grid freely); as it is, they are merely laughable, in that those clues literally make me laugh out loud, mostly at the idea that the names "Gil Blas" or "Leigh Hunt" would be some kind of *help* at getting an answer. It's like when you look up a word, and the definition contains a word you don't know, which you then have to look up—that's what those clues are like. Gil what? Leigh who? And then there's the SUNDEW, whatever that is (50A: Sticky-leaved plant that feeds on insects). Lots and lots of opportunities to fall on your face because of not-terribly-familiar names, though the HALAS / LASSE cross is the only name pitfall that seems potentially lethal to me.

[d. LASSE Hallström]

[d. LASSE Hallström]

The puzzle is over-sized at 16-wide, so if your time was a little on the slow side, that's probably, or at least possibly, the reason. I found it fairly Tuesday-easy overall, and ended with a solidly Tuesday+ time (the "+" is with the adjustment for grid size). Biggest struggles were really mundane things. Could not wrap my head aroundIN THAT (16A: Because). Needed virtually every cross there, and one of those crosses was UNQUOTE, which, while really nice, was also clued kinda hard (7D: Ending "). I briefly thought the clue was incomplete or otherwise messed up. Other strange slow-down occurred at the intersection of GAG (20A: Bit of a comic) and ROGUE (14D: Animal that has strayed from the herd). First problem there was putting in HAM before GAG. But even after I took HAM out, I wasn't sure about either GA- or RO-UE. Was really looking for a more, I don't know, "herd"y word than ROGUE (also ROGUE seems more like an adjective than a noun). And GAG seems more like a [Comic's bit] than a [Bit of a comic] (i.e. that clue is doing some late-week misdirection on a Tuesday). After that, it was only SUNDEW that slowed me down in any way. Again, really enjoyed the theme, but the names were kinda out of control (and I say this as someone who actually knew them all) (except SUNDEW) (whatever that is).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Weird Al Yankovic and Eric Berlin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: cheesy movies— old movies turned into cheese puns:

Theme answers:

"A FEW GOUDA MEN" (20A: Cheesy 1992 military drama?)
"FETA ATTRACTION" (28A: Cheesy 1987 thriller?)
"THE PELICAN BRIE" (46A: Cheesy 1993 legal drama?)
"MUENSTERS INC." (53A: Cheesy 2001 animated film?)

Word of the Day: Tom LEHRER (17A: Satirist Tom) —

Thomas Andrew Lehrer (/ˈlɛrər/; born April 9, 1928) is a retired American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lehrer’s work often parodies popular song forms, though he usually creates original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the Major-General's song from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer's early work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was. Despite their topical subjects and references, the popularity of these songs has endured; Lehrer quoted a friend's explanation: "Always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet." (wikipedia)

• • •

I love Weird Al. I grew up on Weird Al videos. I have been listening to Weird Al's "Hamilton Polka" fairly regularly for the better part of a month now. With him, the bar is pretty high as far as exceptionally clever wordplay is concerned. And these puns ... I don't know, man. Maybe these are the best cheese / movie puns out there—don't know, haven't brainstormed farther than a few low-hanging GOUDA puns. But these aren't groaners so much as shrugs. None of them seem particularly outrageous or inventive. "FETA ATTRACTION" is the clear winner of the bunch, in that GOUDA puns are old as the hills and BRIE for BRIEF is not exactly spot on, and MUENSTERS is plural, which is both awkward and not in keeping with the other cheeses. Yes, I am overthinking theme consistency here, but only because the puns are not undeniable winners. If they were, I would have to give into the force of the pun, succumb to the punniness, kneel before Punz. But because they're actually kind of tepid, their weaknesses stand out. Would've liked this much more if the puns *and the clues* had been much more outlandish. Maybe imagine the cheese titles as if they were real. The "cheesy" movie angle is clever, but it gives all the clues a bland uniformity. Better for the clues to have to imagine what "FETA ATTRACTION" or (dear god) "PELICAN BRIE" might actually look like. [1993 legal drama about the illegal trade in shorebird-flavored soft cheese?]. Think of the weird places you could've gone with titles like "BRIE ENCOUNTER" or "MUENSTER'S BALL". This version is just a little too staid, a little too dad joke, not quite Weirdish or Alish or Yankovician enough.

The fill skews a little old and a little old-fashioned, with more old-school crosswordese (ONAGER!) than I'd expect in a simple, four-theme-answers Wednesday grid. The grid design really limits the potential for interesting fill, as there are no non-theme answers longer than 7 letters, and only two of those. I am having very mixed feelings about BIC PEN, which seems both original and "original" (in the sense of weird, redundant, made-up). I mean, Bic makes pens, sure, but I'm having trouble imagining anyone saying BIC PEN in any context, nowadays. My favorite part of the puzzle is actually the inclusion of Tom LEHRER, a nice little nod from one song parodist to another. Hope you didn't think it was spelled LAHRER, and that Wall-E's love was EVA, because that would've been most unfortunate and I'm certainly glad I definitely definitely did not make that error.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Eric Berlin, this puzzle's non-Weird contributor, is one of the only people I know of making very high-quality puzzles (of all kinds) for children. You can get one (free) every week at puzzleyourkids.com, and if you wanna get your kids started on actual crossword puzzles (and, come on, you know you do), you can get a set of 20 mini-crosswords for kids for just $4.99 at Eric's store.

P.P.S. Eric is also the author of the Winston Breen series of puzzle/mystery novels, so you should probably go ahead and buy those for your kids, too.

P.P.P.S. this is what happens when you unleash the cheese pun concept on Twitter very late at night. Warning: it's not pretty.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe a little easier (time normal, but grid was oversized, so ...)

THEME: GRAND SLAM HOMERUN (62A: What will cause a walk-off win in the situation described by the answers to the starred clues) — answers to the starred clues are baseball phrases each of which has been clued super-wackily:

Theme answers:

BOTTOM OF THE NINTH (17A: *Bass part in Beethoven's "Choral" Symphony?)
BASES LOADED (22A: *Result of a lot of drinking in the army?)
TWO MEN OUT (37A: *A couple of prisoners after an escape from Leavenworth?)
FULL COUNT (43A: *Dracula, after stuffing himself?)
DOWN BY THREE (51A: *Plan for a midafternoon nap?)

Word of the Day: COTTER (34A: Fastening pin) —

noun
noun: cotter
a metal pin used to fasten two parts of a mechanism together.
a split pin that is opened out after being passed through a hole.

also

noun: cotter (in Scotland and Ireland) a farm laborer or tenant occupying a cottage in return for labor. (google)

• • •

I love baseball crosswords. I have made several myself. And the theme idea here is clever (as wacky themes go), but the theme feels botched—or at least the revealer does. Yes, a GRAND SLAM HOME RUN will cause a walk-off home run in the "situation described" by the themers, but two of the theme answers have absolutely nothing to do with with a walk-off GRAND SLAM HOME RUN. There could be zero men out, one man out, or TWO MEN OUT—absolutely doesn't matter. And the count? The bleeping count? That has even less relevance to the revealer. You can hit a walk-off grand slam with any number of outs, from any count. All the other theme answers are necessary* preconditions of the walk-off GRAND SLAM HOME RUN. The other two have been included, but they are just window dressing. No direct relationship. Cool to have extra baseball content, not at all cool to try to make the number of outs or the count relevant to the walk-off GRAND SLAM HOME RUN. It's just not baseball (which is a phrase I just invented that means roughly what "it's just not cricket" is supposed to mean ... I think; I know very little about cricket or idioms derived therefrom). I guess this is supposed to be an nth-degree situation, maximum suspense and all that, but ... I don't know, once you get down the ball/strike count, you've lost the thread a little. I realize that I am overthinking this, but that's kind of what I do. Also, I'm on spring break and the last few days have been, almost literally, half baseball and half crosswords, so I'm awash in the details right now.

[warning: probably NSFW language]

I actually don't mind the turning of basic baseball phrases into punny answers to wacky clues. The theme clues are actually pretty clever. I do have a Go Big Or Go Home policy toward wackiness, and this puzzle certainly swings for the wacky fences. I generally enjoyed the bonus baseball content, but NY MET is not among my favorite answers. "He's an NY MET!" Yeah, no, not a thing you'd say or write, especially in the singular like that. Plural BAHS for NY MET! Baseball bats are typically made from ASH, so I have nooooo idea why that answer wasn't roped into the baseballiness of this puzzle, especially when you stretched wildly to get Yogi Berra into the clue for TEN. But you do have the great LOU Brock and Nolan RYAN, and the STL Cardinals (a legit abbr.). I have never in my life heard of a COTTER, and the connection between blackboards and CAFES was not immediately apparent to me (34D: Places that may have blackboards), so even at -AFES / -OTTER I had no idea what was happening until I started to run the alphabet. Which spelling of 1D: Food cart offering did you go with at first today? I just wrote in K-B-B and let the crosses do the rest because I've given up on trying to guess what version the crossword's going to go with on any given day.

Lastly, GRAND SLAM HOME RUN just sounds redundant and awful to me. A grand slam is, by definition a home run. There are no grand slam doubles, e.g. But I can kind of hear Vin Scully saying GRAND SLAM HOME RUN in my head, so it's definitely a phrase that gets used. Ha, look, I was right:

Well if Vin said it, then I take it all back. It's fine.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*OK, not strictly "necessary." I should probably also have said that a team needn't be DOWN BY THREE for a walk-off GRAND SLAM HOME RUN to happen. I mean, you could hit a walk-off grand slam with the score tied. Also it could come in the bottom of any inning numbered 9 or higher. But at least with DOWN BY THREE, you have a paradigmatic, minimum-necessary (i.e. win-by-one) situation, and with BOTTOM OF THE NINTH, well, the 9th *is* the end of regulation, so it also feels solidly related to the theme; whereas, to reiterate, the number of outs and the ball/strike count seem totally irrelevant.

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LEVANT (35A: Part of ISIL) —

The Levant (/ləˈvænt/) is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean. In its narrowest sense it is equivalent to the historical region of Syria. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the eastern Mediterranean with its islands, that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece to Cyrenaica. (wikipedia)

• • •

O brave new world, that has such 16 stacks in't. Apparently we're just doing this now. The lid is off. The seal is broken. Bring out your 16s. Fine by me. Why not? I don't mind a super-sized puzzle. I think formal restrictions are good things, to a point. They can encourage amazing creativity. Having to execute your vision within severe limitations can push you to brilliance—or drive you to madness, I guess. If you could make the grid any shape, and symmetry weren't a consideration, and you could have unchecked squares and two-letter words whenever you wanted, etc. then no one puzzle would feel very special. Just a bunch of crossing words, like those stupid criss-cross puzzles that people continue to insist on calling "crosswords." Whoopee. But bending the rules here and there, especially when the payoffs are great, is just fine by me. And going to 16 wide on a themeless doesn't make the puzzle any easier to construct—it just opens up a whole new set of answers. So hurray. And today's are all really good, even the one with ONE'S in it (which is so commonplace and cliche in 15 stacks that just seeing it usually makes me want to throw the puzzle aside). A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE is the paradigmatic hack 15. It's a joke unto itself among constructors. Usually ONE'S is standing in for YOUR, which also usually sounds better coming out of your mouth. ONE'S always sounds oddly formal, like the YOUR version with the color drained out. But like I say, the other 16s in this puzzle. and most of the rest of the puzzle, so no biggie. A RUN FOR ONE'S MONEY? Sure, I can dig it.

ENDO sperm? OK, I'll trust you on that one. RONDEL was very rough—I teach 14-line poems regularly, and can't say as I've ever heard of a RONDEL (13D: 14-line poem with only two rhymes). I didn't really know WAR BABIES was a thing, but apparently my dad *is* one, so ... good to know (43A: Deliveries in the early 1940s). The title of the Freeman / Beach Boys / Ramones song really sounds like it should be "DO YOU WANNA DANCE?" so it took me a bit to succumb to the more formal (and apparently correct spelling). Hardest part of the puzzle for me was the whole middle section, north of SEVERE. [X] for DELETE was brutal, especially since I had the DE- and figured it was DEC- something (as in DECADE). Wanted LEVANT but did not at all trust that (mostly because I don't know what the *other* parts of ISIL stand for—I assume ... oh, is it the Islamic State In the LEVANT? Argh, no: The Islamic State of *Iraq* and the LEVANT. Oh well. Clue on MELEE was tough (wanted PUREE) (29D: Word from the French for "mixed"). ACNE / ZIT, very tough (thought "oil" the OPEC kind, and thus wanted the "unit" to be a "barrel," i.e. BBL). Trouble parsing STANDINGOODSTEAD, which I saw first as STANDING [space] OO-something, which just Had to be wrong. . . until it wasn't. PSI for PSF was an understandable error ("foot," not "inch"), and the last thing I fixed before finishing the puzzle. Would've been nice to have a kind of in memoriam clue for Rusty STAUB, who just died. Peter Gordon did just that in his recent Newsflash puzzle, with a clue that noted that STAUB's nickname when he played baseball in Montreal was "Le Grand Orange" (STAUB was a redhead).

Speaking of baseball, I sat < 20 yards from Tim Tebow earlier tonight when he did this with the very first pitch he saw in Double A ball:

[video courtesy of stunned me] [the idiot's voice you're hearing is my own]

Tebowmania has hit Binghamton, and it's actually kind of cool. We got to the ballpark super early because they were giving away fleece blankets to the first 1000 fans and I was *not* missing out.

I was not missing out because I like ballpark swag but *also* because it was blisteringly cold: 32 degrees at game time. We left in the 7th because I could no longer feel my toes. But we had a great time and my wife took some great pictures and none of this has anything to do with crosswords, but whatever. Mel OTT would've loved it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Pope who excommunicated Elizabeth I / SUN 3-18-18 / Huck Finn possessive / Judas's question to Lord / Term for whole in Swiss cheese / Metallic S-shaped piece

Antique medical device used for electrotherapy / MON 3-19-18 / Taiwanese computer brand / DC Comics superhero with sidekick Speedy / Bureaucratic rigmarole / Cowpoke's sweetie

Traditional Japanese gate / TUE 3-20-18 / Pennsylvania university that's home to the Fighting Scots / Edible succulent / Prized taste in ramen / Critical cluck

Reason cow swatted herself / WED 3-21-18 / Many single-gear bike / NLer wearing blue orange / Not so intimidating sort of test

Master of cartoon dog McBarker / THU 3-22-18 / Dutch financial giant / Relative of exempli gratia / Lucia di Lammermoor baritone

Island nation with a cross on its flag / FRI 3-23-18 / Alternative music subgenre / Agricultural commune / Beauty lesson

Avian epithet fo Napoleon II / SAT 3-24-18 / Rhyming nickname for wrestling Hall of Famer Okerlund / Oper historic concert hall in Frankfurt Germany / Oldl Tv show set on Pacific Princess / Sitcom mother portrayer 1987-97 different show 2002-05

Ancient undeciphered writing system / SUN 3-25-18 / Legal vowelless Scrabble play / Outlay that cannot be recovered / Anthropomorphic king of Celesteville / International conglomerate whose name means three stars

Ooky tv family name / MON 3-26-18 / Popularizer of Chinese tunic suit / investigator in old noir film / Site of postrace celebration

In a mischievous manner / TUES 3-27-18 / Wine server / Ancient civilization around Susa / Hoarfrost

Rabbi Meir who served in Knesset / WED 3-28-18 / Red snapper at sushi restaurant / Ballplayer Rich who started ended his 15-year career as Giant / Soprano Licia who performed hundreds of times at Met / Figs on Stanford-Binet test / Leopold's 1924 co-defendant

Powdered ingredient in sweet teas smoothies / THU 3-29-18 / French astronomer mathematician who wrote Traite de Mecanique Celeste / One with serious acne pejoratively / Facebook Messenger precursor / lion mythical hunter

Terror in Arthur Canon Doyole's Lost World / FRI 3-30-18 / Ubiquitous Chinese character / Like three-pitch inning / Italian poetic form

Realm of Queen Lucy the Valiant / SAT 3-31-18 / Myrmica rubra / Food flavorer that's not supposed to be eaten / Start of some futuristic toy names / Hang time to snowboarder / Johnny nicknamed godfater of rhythm blues / Lady first female member British parliament

Magician known for debunking paranormal claims / SUN 4-1-18 / 1988 crime comedy / Like fictional Casey / Final song in Fantasia / Big name in nail polish / Patriotic song lyric before Mind music and step / Chemicals proscribed by 70s legislation

Laurence who wrote "Tristram Shandy" / MON 4-2-2018 / Top-notch / Think up / Big name in Russian ballet / Arnaz of "I Love Lucy"

Sticky-leaved plant that feeds on insects / TUE 4-3-18 / Gil Blas writer / Mag mogul with mansion / Ben Adhem Leight Hunt poem / War-torn Syrian city

Satirist Tom / WED 4-4-18 / Shouts made with waving of white hankies / Cheesy 1992 military drama / Resuming the previous speed in music / Tolkien elf played in film by Orlando Bloom / Wall-E's love / Roman moon goddess

Trio in Plato's Republic / THU 4-5-18 / Bass part in Beethoven's choral symphony / 1982 loretta lynn song with lyric it's not easy to deceive you / Strike with pickax / Dweller on Mekong / African capital lake gulf / Bypass arteries

Ex-Expo Rusty / FRI 4-6-18 / 14-line poem with only two rhymes / Eugene in labor history / Quick way through toll plaza / Sophomoric rejoinder