Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TETANY (9D: Condition caused by abnormal calcium levels) —

Tetany or tetany seizure is a medical sign consisting of the involuntary contraction of muscles, which may be caused by disease or other conditions that increase the action potential frequency of muscle cells or the nerves that innervate them. Muscle cramps which are caused by the disease tetanus are not classified as tetany; rather, they are due to a lack of inhibition to the neurons that supply muscles. [???] [wikipedia]

• • •

This is why I should never try to solve the Saturday puzzle in the morning. Roll out of bed at 5:30am and come face to face with this? No. Would not willingly relive. Took me > 2x my normal Saturday time, and most of that was spent staring at a grid that wouldn't budge. Repeatedly wouldn't budge. It wasn't just the difficulty that was frustrating; it's that some of the tough clues had such deeply, profoundly unsatisfying answers (MENU PAGES???) and too many of the clues were difficult by means of vagueness. Also names names names. Was pretty sure about Jermaine O'NEAL (2D: Jermaine ___, six-time N.B.A. All-Star of the early 2000s), but a. that's Shaquille's name, and b. I thought maybe O'NEIL, so I left it. No idea on RANKIN (19A: Jeannette ___, first U.S. congressowoman). John of Plymouth Colony is something I should know, but I wanted John ROLFE, which also fit, but which, sadly, was the Wrong Colony. I still barely know who EBAN is, and I have no idea what an "Israel Prize" is, so ??? on 6D: 2001 Israel Prize winner. No idea about TETANY *at all*, and the wikipedia definition ... doesn't help, in that it both does and doesn't establish a relationship to tetanus? Baffling. Why are TANDEMS"big rigs"? Like, the bikes? Are there other TANDEMS? [Fix a flat for?], ugh, so many different wordplays for "flat" (never thought of the music one, only the British apartment one and the shoe one). BEERGARITA = never heard of it in any context ever (17A: Corona with tequila and fruit juice, e.g.). I mean, I seeeeee the portmanteauiness of it all, now, but that answer (and drink, I assume) is barf. Why would you pollute your tequila like that?

Almost every answer was a grind. Got started (finally).in the east with LEGO / ENO / ETON and was never so glad to encounter crosswordese in my life. I thought when I dropped ZENO'S PARADOX I was set (21D: Early example of reductio ad absurdum). But no. That SE corner wouldn't move. At all. Even with the "X" in it. If I hadn't just woken up, Nouvelle RICHE probably would've occurred to me (literally yelled at myself when I finally got it—could think only of filmdom's "Nouvelle VAGUE"). ERNST, forgot it. CNOTE, wanted CSPOT. TRAM ROUTES ... ugh, see MENU PAGES (i.e. Made-Up Phrase, Not A Thing). The killer, though, was DUST PAN. I had DUST MOP—The End. Adjacent letters looked OK, so it took me literally minutes to question it. Pffff. The worst, though, was the SW, where I had -AGES at 31D: They're flipped at diners) and -DICE at 35D: Things that can't be loaded and -CESS at 43A: Spin like a gyroscope, and ... nothing. No Thing. PRECESS? Not a word I've ever seen. FAIR DICE?!?!? That is the epitome of Green Paint (i.e. phrase in no way strong enough to stand alone). You expect dice to be "fair." When they're not, they're loaded. LOADED DICE is a thing. FAIR DICE ARE JUST DICE. I considered FAIR, but also TRUE, REAL ... what the hell? And MENU PAGES, LOL, no. BOOK PAGES, also no. PAMPHLET PAGES, similarly, no. YELLOW PAGES, yes! LEAFLET PAGES, DICTIONARY PAGES, all no.

Finally somehow figured out IRAQ / SQUIB, and then RIPS, and RIM (29A: Goaltending spot) (really thought "goaltending" was just the act of tending goal, not the specific basketball penalty wherein a player block the downward progress of a shot ball or otherwise interferes with the ball when it's above the RIM) (again, I own that half of the misery of solving this thing was a function of my trying to solve it with sleep in my eyes). Even stupid little stuff like 16A: Shortly after was killing me. Wanted SOON and ANON and never considered UPON until I got the "P." Just a horrible experience, with very few pleasing highlights. How would I know where a PANAMA hat originated? I'm looking this over and trying to find cleverness, and don't see much of it. It's just hard. Old-school hard. It's a fine enough grid, but unless you're impressed by BEERGARITA, there's not much pleasure here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. TETANY sounds like something people are going to start naming their daughters in 3, 2, ...

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Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (very easy except for the actual spoonerisms)

THEME:"Triple Spoonerisms"— Three-word phrases (not including incidental words like "of" and "the") are spoonerized in this weird way where the initial consonant sound of each word is pushed down the line one notch, so ...

Theme answers:

"Streak of bad luck" becomes BEAK OF LAD STRUCK (24A: What caused the nosebleed on the playground?)
"The buck stops here" becomes THE STUCK HOPS BEER (30A: Tagline in an ad for Elmer's Glue-Ale?)
"Hail Mary pass" becomes PALE HAIRY MASS (60A: Description of a yeti?) (if you've got white FUR, you're not "pale," exactly ...)
"Bearer of glad tidings" becomes TERROR OF BAD GLIDINGS (67A: Novice parasailer's fear?)
"Stock car races" becomes ROCK STAR CASES (76A: Containers for electric guitars?)
"The Santa Fe Trail" becomes THE FANTA TRAY SALE (106A: Best place to buy a platter of fruit-flavored sodas?)
"Feel right at home" becomes HEAL FIGHT AT ROME (114A: Mend fences after Caesar's civil war?)

Word of the Day: Lash LARUE (57A: Lash with a bullwhip) —

Alfred "Lash" LaRue (June 15, 1917–May 21, 1996) was a popular western motion picture star of the 1940s and 1950s. He had exceptional skill with the bullwhip and taught Harrison Ford how to use a bullwhip for the Indiana Jones movies. LaRue was one of the first recipients of the Golden Boot Awards in 1983. (wikipedia)

• • •

I learned something about spoonerisms today. Now, I love Spoonerisms. I keep an ongoing list of baseball's All-Spoonerism team (ask me about starting pitcher Hill Fuse—he's a firecracker on the mound!). Spoonerisms are fun. Half my day is doing spoonerisms in my head (the other half is anagrams). So I didn't think I had anything to learn about them, but I did, and here it is: they don't work in triplicate. A spoonerism is something you grok immediately, it's pitch perfect, and it is completely dependent on the one-for-one swap. Sound-for-sound. Passing sounds down the chain ... not nearly as satisfying. Also, if my solving and post-solving experience today are any indication, not at all easy to understand. It was like homework trying to figure out what half of these damn themers were supposed to be spoonerisms *of*. It's not that they're not (mostly) clever, it's that I have to *work* to figure them out, which pretty voids the spoonerism of its spoonerismness. The raucous guffaw of instant recognition is replaced by the pale aha of scribble games. Spoonerisms rule, triple spoonerisms ... rule somewhat less.

And a couple of slightly irksome things about the theme execution on this one. These are definitely peas under the mattress, but ... I can't help being sensitive. First, I got really irked that, in order to find the pre-spoonerized phrase, you *sometimes* had to start with the initial consonant sound on the third word (as with BEAK OF LAD STRUCK), and *sometimes* had to start with the initial consonant sound on the SECOND WORD (as with TERROR OF BAD GLIDINGS). This is nails on chalkboard stuff to me, not just because there's a lack of uniformity, but also because that non-uniformity has no pattern. No symmetry. If first, middle, and last had started on the third word but the rest had started on the second, I could've lived with it. But as it is—it's chaos, man. Then there's THE FANTA TRAY SALE, which is actually one of three winners in today's themer group. But that clue: 106A: Best place to buy a platter of fruit-flavored sodas? ... a SALE is not a "place"!!! It's an event! "Where are you going?""To the sale.""Uh ... the sale WHERE!?" End scene. I had so much trouble with this answer, for this reason, and also because I had SNORT for 84D: Mock sound of disinterest (SNORE). This left me with THE FANTA TRAY SALT, which I really, really couldn't get despoonerized. I had somehow convinced myself that a SALT was a place ... where you SALT things away? Maybe I'm thinking of "saltcellar," which, it turns out (spoiler alert), is not an actual cellar. At any rate, a SALE is an event, not a place, I have spoken.

The rest of this grid is just fine. Smooth, nice good. I have nothing to say about it because it is all awfully straightforward, and there's nothing particularly scintillating about the fill, though the clue on PENAL CODE is an unquestionmarked doozy (83D: Rules for forming sentences). I had DEPOSE beforeDEPORT (51D: Kick out), and TRASH HEAP before TRASH PILE (2D: It's a bunch of garbage). HEAP's better. I have no idea why the simple word RESET has this absolutely contorted B.S. "D.C.-speak" clue (5D: Complete policy overhaul, in D.C.-speak). I left the spaces after RE- empty until I got them all from crosses because I couldn't accept that an answer with a clue that dumbly specific could have an answer so basic.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (a Medium Tuesday time for me)

THEME: SILVER SCREEN (52A: Setting for the answers to the three starred clues—appropriately enough, given their initials)— initials of themers are AG, the symbol for the element silver:

Theme answers:

ALEC GUINNESS (20A: *Actor in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957))
ANDY GARCIA (27A: *Actor in "Ocean's Eleven" (2001))
AVA GARDNER (46A: *Actress in "Mogambo" (1953)) (why are the years in these clues?)

Word of the Day: SWAGSURF (39D: Rhythmic group dance of the 2010s)—

Produced by K.E. on tha Track, "Swag Surfin" was one of the biggest hood dance records of 2009. The song's video debuts the dance, which is also a literal one: all you have to do is just move like you're surfing...with some "swag." The song was remade that same year by Lil Wayne as the opener to his critically acclaimed mixtape No Ceilings, and the remix to the original song featured Maino, Fabolous, Red Caf̩ and Juelz Santana. (complex.com)

[It's an extremely big deal among black college students, especially at HBCU. See, for instance...]

• • •

Ten-minutes-ago me:"What the hell is this SWAG SURF *&$^%?!"
Current me: [Binge-watching SWAG SURF videos, swag surfing at my desk, etc.]

My ten minutes of SWAG SURF expertise has led to me to two conclusions, one of which is "swag surfin" is a far more common way to refer to the dance than SWAG SURF, and the other of which is someone needs to write a concise definition / history of the damn dance, 'cause there's not a good one out there. Anything this widespread and joyous deserves proper documentation.

Even before I hit SWAG SURF (for which I needed every cross), this felt tougher than a normal Monday crossword to me. Not tough tough, just tougher than normal. TAKEACUT, not easy. Had TAKE, still no idea. Really wanted ONCE MORE for 23A: "Encore!"; ONE MORE ended up feeling odd. "Heck, yeah" seems more likely than HECK, YES. NIGIRI is known to me but not so known that I could just plunk it down. I never think of the "I" in "business" as "silent." I thought the "letters" in 48D: Letters of support, for short (RECS) were actual letters, like R, E, C ... something? D? Oh, and I know ANDY GARCIA, but I had no idea he was in (the remake of) "Ocean's 11"—doesn't feel like an iconic role, but I'm not sure if he actually has one, actually. Also, the other roles aren't exactly iconic either. "Mogambo"!? LOL, I saw that once 20+ years ago and the only reason I'd even heard of it was because of my Grace Kelly obsession. What's AVA Gardner's iconic role? Does she have one? Is she the ANDY GARCIA of actresses (i.e. famous but not for any particular part)? The theme I liked fine. It's clever. Only three themers (+ revealer), so it's a little thin, but that doesn't take away from its charm, and also gives the other answers in the grid some space to breathe (which is to say, the grid has somewhat more interesting fill than it might have if it were more theme-dense). OK, that's all, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy (faster than yesterday)

THEME: In a pig'S EYE (OINK!)— all themers begin with same sound, spelled differently in each case:

Theme answers:

CYBERSPACE (17A: The online world)
SILENT NIGHT (26A: Song whose first verse ends "Sleep in heavenly peace")
SAYONARA (33A: Japanese farewell)
CITATION (46A: 1948 Triple Crown winner)
SCIENCE FAIR (52A: Big school event attended by parents)
PSYCHED OUT (63A: Undermined the confidence of)

Word of the Day: ATRI (42D: Longfellos's bell town) —

Atri (Greek: Ἀδρία or Ἀτρία; Latin: Adria, Atria, Hadria, or Hatria) is a comune in the Province of Teramo in the Abruzzo region of Italy. In 2001, it had a population of over 11,500. Atri is the setting of the poem, The Bell of Atri, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Its name is the origin of the name of the Emperor Hadrian. (wikipedia)

• • •

Head-snapping reversal from yesterday's puzzle—this one was not bad, but it skewed Way older, and, for me, a person who is increasingly old, way easier. Theme type is more common, fill more common. Maybe "established" is a better way to say it than "old." Although ... a 1960 "hitmaker" ... a 1955 labor merger ... a 1948 Triple Crown winner ... the PIPs ... the Stones ... John HERSEY ... TISH Addams ... I mean, its cultural center of gravity is pretty objectively "old" (note: I didn't say "bad"). It was almost embarrassingly how easily I filled in 85% of this grid, including stuff no non-solving human knows, like ATRI. Even though yesterday's puzzle took more effort, I enjoyed it more, mostly because I hadn't seen it all before. But honestly, this one, with the exception of ATRI, is absolutely solid. Concept is tight and well executed—I'm not wondering "Where's ___!?" or "Why did they use ___ instead!?" I don't think there are any stray "sigh" sounds out there that they missed. Uh oh, SAIGON? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone thinking about it, but I did, and there's SAIGON, SAIGON, S-S-S-S-SAIGON.

Tough to get a good themer for SAIGON, though. Maybe just SAIGON, VIETNAM? There is a band called SAIGON KICK. I can't recall any of their songs offhand, but I suddenly feel a deep yearning to hear them. [This one is either much more or much less depressing than "19," depending on how you look at it.]

I always confuse ATRI with ATLI because I Have Done Too Many Crosswords In My Life. ATLI is a figure from Norse mythology, "loosely based on Attila the Hun" (per wikipedia). You don't see either of these guys in puzzles much any more because, well, puzzles have gotten better. They can come in handy in a late-week puzzle with a demanding grid, but I'd rather not see either of them on a Tuesday. I decided to read Longfellow's "The Bell of Atri" just now (you can too; it's not that long). It's about an abused and neglected horse who brings communal justice down on her terrible miserly owner by ringing the bell at the center of town (which it does by pulling the bell rope with its teeth). The upshot of it seems to be that you should look out for those who have no voice, those whom the letter of the law fails to protect ("creatures dumb and unknown to the laws"). Don't ask me if I know any other horse poems because the answer ... is NAY (2D: "I vote no").

Those damned NE and SW corners were really hard to get into (by which I mean they connect to the rest of the grid only through the narrowest of passages). I had TAZA for the tea (TAZO is the tea; TAZA is the chocolate I eat almost daily). I blanked briefly on the SPACE of CYBERSPACE because, well, it's not 1996 anymore. I had ENNATE at first at 29D: Present at birth (INNATE) because my brain assumed some alt-crosswordy spelling. Had to leave the second letter of RIATA blank for a bit, as usual (it can be "E" or "I") (25D: Cowboy's lasso). Balked at SCAPES because yuck (49D: Scenic vistas, briefly). Garlic SCAPES are a thing. I'd prefer those in my grid, since no one actually calls vistas "SCAPES." That's all I've got to say on this one.

SIgned, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Keiran King

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: search for words that punfully make up the names of composers why don't you —

Theme answers:

"BARBER OF SEVILLE" (15A: Classic work by 16-, 31- and 51-Down, so to speak?) (ROWE / SCENE / KNEE)
"CANON IN D" (24A: Classic work by 11-, 9- and 8-Down, so to speak?) (PACK / ELLE / BELL)
NOCTURNE (39A: Classic work by 50- and 23-Down, so to speak?) (SHOW / PAN)
"MOONLIGHT SONATA" (52A: Classic work by 45-, 35- and 28-Down, so to speak?) (BATE / HOE / VENN)

Word of the Day: CANON IN D —

Pachelbel's Canon is the common name for a canon by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel in his Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo (German: Kanon und Gigue für 3 Violinen mit Generalbaß) (PWC 37, T. 337, PC 358), sometimes referred to as Canon and Gigue in D or simply Canon in D. Neither the date nor the circumstances of its composition are known (suggested dates range from 1680 to 1706), and the oldest surviving manuscript copy of the piece dates from the 19th century.
Pachelbel's Canon, like his other works, although popular during his lifetime, soon went out of style, and remained in obscurity for centuries. A 1968 arrangement and recording of it by the Jean-François Paillard chamber orchestra gained popularity over the next decade, and in the 1970s the piece began to be recorded by many ensembles; by the early 1980s its presence as background music was deemed inescapable.^[1]From the 1970s to the early 2000s, elements of the piece, especially its chord progression, were used in a variety of pop songs. Since the 1980s, it has also been used frequently in weddings and funeral ceremonies in the Western world. (wikipedia)

• • •

Oh, so *that's* why I had to endure the ridiculous BATE. OK got it thanks. I mean, the word is ABATE, but yeah, thanks.

[23A: What makes ale pale?] (PEE)

So many issues. From a solving standpoint, the idea that I want to look around to other answers in the grid ELEVEN times ... to find answers that I Haven't Even Filled In Yet ... I don't see how anyone thought that was a plausible let alone pleasurable activity. The only way I solved this was by taking ever themer as just [Famous music thingie] and getting each one from crosses. This proved semi-brutal when I tried to get the IND part of CANONIND because I thought maybe CANON was the front end of some work I'd not heard of, like, er, CANONADE or some such (?). Also I thought the [Big "G" for Google, e.g.] (25A) was a LOGO, not an ICON. Also, I (swear to god I) confused Giza with Pisa and wrote in ARNO at 26D: It flows past Giza (NILE). Also forgot that DAYS Inn exists (27D: ___ Inn). I sincerely can't believe that anyone solved this puzzle as it appears to want to be solved, i.e. where you actually look at all those Downs and figure out the pun and *then* write in the work title. Cross-references are death, and 11 are 11 deaths. Also, the puns are super-weak. Well, PACK ELLE BELL is, anyway. Maybe if you're British that vowel sound in "PACK" is right, but this is an American puzzle so nope. Lastly, where the theme is concerned, a single NOCTURNE is not in any way at all parallel to the other works, which are complete and famous in their own right, not just one of a set of works. Chopin wrote a bunch of NOCTURNEs. You can't just have one sitting there all by its lonesome. It would the equivalent of having just SONATA for the Beethoven one. No no no. How do people not see this? This seems elementary.

31D: "And ... ___!" (director's cry)] (SCENE)

And then the fill, I mean, it's fine, but the grid is necessarily choppy as heck (kind of a demanding theme—getting all those pun parts in there can't have been easy). Nothing bothered me much about the fill. But I do think this puzzle has a king-size bad idea in the cluing department. Truly, sincerely, one of the worst clue progressions I have ever seen: 35D: Tool for tilling (HOE)—that one's fine. But to follow it with 37D: Tool for telling? (QUILL)!?!? Whaaaaat is that? I needed every single cross to get QUILL and still had to ask a friend after I was done what it meant. I thought maybe William Tell (?) was involved. But no, apparently (and I'm not entirely sure), you "tell" people things ... in writing ... with your QUILL? ... because you live in the 18th century? I've never been a huge fan of the clue progression, since I solve like a reasonable person, i.e. *not* by reading the clues in order, and so the whole "effect" is often lost on me; also, the "progression" is often tortured. But this one ... this one makes "torture" sound nice. [Tool for telling?] Man, that is an epic bad call.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. what is with the "lands" in 55A: One of 14 lands neighboring China (LAOS)???? Are there 14 LAOSes neighboring China? 'Cause that is what the clue appears to be suggesting. [China neighbor] = look how easy that was. Or, if you must be absurdly verbose, [One of 14 countries neighboring China]. "Lands," my god ... I need to tell the world how bad this clue is. Fetch me my telling QUILL!

P.P.S. Someone tried to convince me that in that QUILL clue, "telling" referred to the thing that Ebeneezer Scrooge did, because he ran a "counting house" and so "telling" is supposed to refer to the verrrrry last definition of "tell" (2.4), here:

LOL OK, sure. Brilliant. The problem is that definition 1.1 is "communicate information, facts, or news to someone in spoken or written words." So whatever your little intended archaic wordplay joke was here, the ordinary definition of "tell" is kinda standing in your way. In fact, I'm not at all convinced that this "count" definition was the intended one. Feels like something the clue's lawyer dug up to try to excuse its behavior. "Your honor, if I may beg the indulgence of the court..." [GAVEL SOUNDS] [dramatic pause] "You may not."

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Constructor: Jules Markey

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: CABLE BOXES (64A: TV adjuncts ... or a hint to four squares in this puzzle)— rebus puzzle with the 3-letter abbr. of four different "cable" channels hidden in boxes throughout the grid:

Theme answers:

DREAM CATCHER / TEAM CREST (what the???) (17A: Native American charm made with a willow hoop / 4D: Image on a soccer jersey)
"UGLY BETTY" / GLOBE THEATER (21A: Popular TV dramedy based on a Colombian telenovela / 11D: Setting for Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar")
WISHBONES / DASHBOARD (39A: Some gridiron formations / 24D: Place for a clock or a radio)
"SAUSAGE PARTY" / GENIUS AT WORK (47A: 2016 comedy that takes place mainly in a supermarket / 28D: Facetious sign in a lab or office)

Word of the Day:"SAUSAGE PARTY" (47A: 2016 comedy that takes place mainly in a supermarket) —

Sausage Party is a 2016 American-Canadian adult computer-animated comedy filmdirected by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It features the voices of Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek. The film, which is a spoof of Disney and Pixar films,^[8] follows a sausage named Frank who tries to discover the truth about his existence and goes on a journey with his friends to escape their fate while also facing his own arch-nemesis, a ruthless and murderous douche who intends to kill him and his friends.
It was the first American CGI-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA. The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest and the film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016, by Columbia Pictures. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this one fine. Any time you've got a rebus where the contents of the rebus squares are different, and not symmetrical, the whole grid becomes a kind of minefield, and gets a whole lot tougher even if the clues themselves aren't particularly hard. I was able to track 3 of them down pretty easily, but the GENIUS AT WORK / "SAUSAGE PARTY" one took a lot of doing. I really had to pin that last rebus square (USA) down before it would reveal itself—it was just about the last square I filled in. Never saw "SAUSAGE PARTY," but I certainly knew it existed, and *might* have had a shot at it if the words "animated" or "Seth Rogen" or "anthropomorphic food" had appeared anywhere in the clue. And GENIUS AT WORK, forget about it. Tough enough as a straight clue/answer, virtually impossible with an invisible rebus square somewhere inside it. I should say that both these answers are original and inventive. The placement of the rebus square just made them tough. I figured the rebus square would be in the symmetrical Across answer (so, in AS WE SAY, to parallel the one in UGLY BETTY), but I guess the idea is that the long Downs (11D, 28D) are the primary theme answers, i.e. parallel to one another the way DREAM CATCHER and CABLE BOXES are. Thus there is symmetry in the involved answers, if not in the actual boxes themselves.

I was totally thrown by there not being a rebus square in IN A PIG'S EYE, but now I see why. The phrase CABLE BOXES fairly screams "make a rebus puzzle based on me," so I'm slightly surprised someone hadn't done it sooner. DREAM CATCHER was mercifully easy, so I knew there was some kind of rebus pretty early on (after stumbling with STAT instead of ODDS at 1D: Sports figures, plural!!!). I hesitated in stunned disbelief that for the second time this month I was going to be asked to write in BIC PEN (???) (6D: Product advertised withthe slogan "Writes first time, every time"). I wrote the goddess of peace as IRENA and then couldn't figure out the D&D characters (ELVES) and even second-guessed IN A PIG'S EYE, thinking maybe it was in his EAR (...something about a sow's ear...) (29A: "Fat chance!"). Not too many tricky things here, besides the rebuses. Oh, there will undoubtedly be some solvers asking this question:

Just pick up your phone and look at the number keypad. Specifically at the number "8"—voilà! Our phones pretty much dial themselves now, so general familiarity with the concept the keypad and its features is diminishing precipitously, I'd imagine.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SEA RAVEN (43A: Spiny fish named after a bird) —

Sea ravens are a family, the Hemitripteridae, of scorpaeniform fish. They are bottom-dwelling fish that feed on small invertebrates, found in the northwest Atlantic and north Pacific Oceans. They are covered in small spines (modified scales). (wikipedia)

• • •

I have been so happy in recent years to see the low-word-count puzzle fade in prominence. They're not just tough (which I don't mind) but the resulting fill is often unpleasant. Stuff like APTERAL and VETOER and FROE (real examples). For a while there it seemed like a lot of constructors (all men) were in some kind of low-word-count arms race: Look how low mine is! Oh, yeah, well look at mine, it's lower! They became architectural stunts / pissing contests, but solving them? Yeesh, no. No fun. So when I first looked at this one, I wasn't too thrilled, especially since it's *Friday*, which is my fun day—the day when the puzzles are (ideally) reasonably breezy and wildly inventive. Saturdays are supposed to put you through the wringer, but Fridays?! Fridays want to take you to frolic on the beach and then get ice cream. Good ol' Fridays. Anyway, this Friday didn't look at all like what I wanted, but it was very doable, and ended up being far less painful than I'd feared at the outset. Not a fan of the highly-segmented, four-in-one type puzzle—the quadragon—because you have to get new traction in each quadrant. You better slide through the narrow opening into each quadrant or Good Luck. Today, the sliding was not hard. Well, 3/4 not hard... we'll talk about ZIPPERED later.

1A: One talking a blue streak? (CUSSER)—that's a good clue, but it's also the last thing I got up there. I thought maybe STYLER (as in, your hair STYLER (?) might "talk" to you about getting a "blue streak" ... in your hair?), and that was absurd but the -ER did suggest RESOLE (the first thing in the grid) (6D: Do some cobbling work on). Then I got lucky—my sister drives a Dodge DURANGO. Or she did. Not sure if her latest SUV is still a Durango, but that hardly matters to you. What matters is she loved the original Durango and talked about it affectionately and drove it into the ground, so while I don't know all the SUV models out there, DURANGOS, I know. From that, got the -UP at the end of STORES UP, and the MORE at the end of TAKE MORE. Then PENTA. So that corner was pretty much taken care of.

[PENTAgram]

Then took HOW SO into the SW. Actually, I might've thrown GAZELLES across, then dropped ZIP down, then put SIP at the end of HAVE A SIP (which I thought was SMALL SIP at first), but it's HOW SO that really propelled me into that corner. Very proud that I got WEASELED off just the "W" and threw BOREAL (!) across off just the "A"—finally, teaching poetry for umpteen thousand years pays off! This corner ended up being the easiest by far. I remember very clearly adding RONDA and ROUSEY to my crossword wordlist, so she was a gimme. Only SALE DAYS (?) proved at all eely. NE might've been very tough but I got ACQUIRED / TASTES off just the -ED in ACQUIRED (7D: With 12-Down, blue cheese and black coffee, typically). Also, QUINNS would've been a gimme anyway, and probably ROBLES too. Took a little time to give sideeye to UNNAILED (?) but got out of that corner in pretty good time, which left only the SE ... sigh.

[UMLAUT]

So for some reason I could not come up with the letters that followed ZIP at 26D: Like many coats with liners (ZIPPERED). We had recently seen ZIP-ON, I think, and so I went looking for some kind of compound word. I even considered ZIPPABLE (what the ...?). Finally just dove into the corner blind and lucked onto EARN IT (36D: Deserve something through hard work), and then immediately double-lucked onto DIVE BAR (49A: Seedy establishment). As with WEASELED, I couldn't believe my first guess ended up being the right guess. Also, I knew GREAVE! Somehow! Total D'oh! moment when ZIPPERED finally fell in, and, well, Quoth the SEA RAVEN, "There's no more!" ... puzzle to solve. Finished. Not my favorite kind of Friday puzz, but doable and enjoyable nonetheless. Huge applause for 20A: High points? (UMLAUT). That is a hell of a clue. Super wordplay, plus the fake plural? Mwah! Good stuff.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALI PASHA (55A: Ottoman ruler referenced in "The Count of Monte Cristo") —

Ali Pasha (1740 – 24 January 1822), variously referred to as of Tepelena or of Janina/Yannina/Ioannina, or the Lion of Yannina, was an Ottoman Albanian ruler who served as pasha of a large part of western Rumelia, the Ottoman Empire's European territories, which was referred to as the Pashalik of Yanina. His court was in Ioannina, and the territory he governed incorporated most of Epirus and the western parts of Thessaly and Greek Macedonia. Ali had three sons: Muhtar Pasha, who served in the 1809 war against the Russians, Veli Pasha, who became pasha of the Morea Eyalet and Salih Pasha, governor of Vlore.
Ali first appears in historical accounts as the leader of a band of brigands who became involved in many confrontations with Ottoman state officials in Albania and Epirus. He joined the administrative-military apparatus of the Ottoman Empire, holding various posts until 1788 when he was appointed pasha, ruler of the sanjak of Ioannina. His diplomatic and administrative skills, his interest in modernist ideas and concepts, his popular piety, his religious neutrality, his suppression of banditry, his vengefulness and harshness in imposing law and order, and his looting practices towards persons and communities in order to increase his proceeds caused both the admiration and the criticism of his contemporaries, as well as an ongoing controversy among historians regarding his personality. Finally falling foul of the Ottoman central government, Ali Pasha was declared a rebel in 1820, and was killed in 1822 at the age of 81 or 82. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sometimes the urge to come up with *Brand! New!* fill should be resisted. Constructors should always be on the alert (ALERT!) for new, current, interesting stuff, but ... well, not ECOLABEL (15A: "Non-G.M.O." or "Dolphin-safe"). I have never been a big believer in the ECO- prefix period (I mean, ECOCAR? Who says that?). I think I'd take all your normal ECO-s (e.g. -logical, -nomical, etc.), and probably -tourism, -friendly ... there are a number that are definitely in-the-language. But ECOLABEL isn't one of them. It's just a label. The label pseudopsientifically psuggests that you are doing something ECO-logical by buying the labeled product, but the label itself is not ECO- and I just don't believe this nonsense is an actual category. ROIDED is also super suspect as clued. "ROIDED out" is an adjectival phrase, but ROIDED as a verb on its own ... I don't know. Simply using PEDs would not be called ROIDing. That word usually implies not just use but a certain kind of effect or reaction, e.g. roid rage. MICROUSB is OK, though I keep parsing it MICROUS B, and I didn't even know that's what my charger was called.

I want to maximally object to DOT CO DOT UK, a garbage heap posing as a monument to cleverness. Like, if you put DOTORG in a puzzle, it would be barfy, and you know it would, so yeah, this DOT CO etc. stuff is nth degree barfy. As if *pieces* of a URL = good xword material. I mean, original, sure, but ... no. Oh, and the single MYTHBUSTER? WTF? (27D: Conductor of science experiments on TV) It's a TV show, and it's plural. One MYTHBUSTER is ... a non-answer. Oh, and the damn "inits."ACA were not "debated" in the 2010s (34D: Much-debated inits. in 2010s politics). Nobody debated the initials. They debated the legislation. Boo. Oh, and do people still NETSURF? On the Information Superhighway, maybe? I got it immediately, but I didn't feel good about it.

["COULD IT BE...?"]

Proper noun gimmes in all corners of the grid made this pretty easy to take down. Robinson CANO, gimme. SACHA Baron Cohen, bigger gimme. Hank AZARIA, biggest gimme. Jessica BIEL should've been a gimme (13D: Jessica of "The Book of Love"), but somehow I confused her and Jessica ALBA and it came out Jessica ABEL (who, it turns out, is a comic book author I know of, so ... that was all very weird). I also did my usual OUZO-for-ORZO screw-up (53D: Minestrone soup ingredient). I usually recoil from bodily fluid clues, but I think the clue on SLOBBER is really clever (8D: Baby pool?). There are lots of good answers here, too, like MASH NOTES and CUBS FAN and CUP OF TEA and FREE-STYLE (esp. as clued) (32A: Like some laps and raps). Started at ALERT (4DD: Reason to check one's phone) and ended atSCAB (52D: Provider of protective coverage), with no major hang-ups along the way.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Hey, if you're looking for another free daily puzzle to fill the void in your miserable life, or the free time in your joyous life, I suppose, here is a site where you can download all the Wall Street Journal puzzles from this year (.puz versions, regularly updated). If you want the .PDF, you can just go to the WSJ puzzle site, but their .PDFs are for left-handed people (grids on the left, wtf?!), so I'm sticking with the .puz.

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Constructor: Alex Bajcz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Preposition Proposition" — verb phrases that are modeled (verb + preposition) are reimagined as hyphenated noun phrases, with resulting wackiness:

Theme answers:

PULL-UP STAKES (23A: Wagers for a gym exercise?)
PICK-UP STEAM (33A: Bad thing to see under a truck's hood?)
WALK-ON WATER (48A: Unrecruited athlete's bottleful?)
DEAD-ON ARRIVAL (64A: Timely entrance?)
STAND-IN LINE (82:A Understudy's delivery?)
PUT-ON NOTICE (97A: Scam alert?)
RUN-IN CIRCLES (112A: Fight clubs?)
SET-TO MUSIC (37D: Soundtrack for a brawl?)
GO-TO PIECES (44D: Compositions often chosen for encores?)

Word of the Day: TONNEAU (20A: Rear seating compartment in old automobiles) —

noun
the part of an automobile, typically an open car, occupied by the back seats.
short for tonneau cover. (google)

• • •

It's a simple concept, and it is ... executed. I mean, it does what it does. More of a "hey ... interesting" -type theme than an "ooooh"-type theme, but OK. There is a certain (perhaps numbing) consistency to the structure of these themers. The clues very rarely get to the level of wackiness normally required for me to enjoy wacky puzzles. And man oh man, with a puzzle saturated with prepositions (in the themers), it would be great if it were not also saturated with prepositions generally. I mean, yikes and EEKS. You've got PUSH IN, TOSSES TO, FLIES TO, OD ON, not to mention ONA and ATA ... it's a lot. It's possible I missed one. Don't really feel like checking thoroughly. The theme is very dense, which ... why? It's not like I"m clamoring for more of this theme. If you've seen 7, you've seen 9. I'd prefer a cleaner / more interesting overall grid to more theme stuff. Sometimes themes seem to try to compensate for mediocrity with density. I don't recommend this. I recommend starting with a baseline of non-mediocrity. I have nothing much against this puzzle, but nothing much for it, either. I really like PINCHRAN (21A: Replaced someone on a base). Is that weird? Probably. I'm just really into baseball right now, despite my team's being abysmal. Longer fill is normally a chance for a grid to shine, but today there's some really awkward stuff, like MISSES A CUE and STEP OUT OF (more prepositions!), and it just doesn't Do much to enliven the grid. ATE RIGHT, that's pretty good. In-the-language, original. More of that would've been nice.

I flew right through this one, and didn't notice much worth commenting on. I found that bank of Downs up top—APEAK, DISGUSTED, ENCIPHER—pretty tough, first because I forgot APEAK and wrote in ABEAM, second because the clue for DISGUSTED did not really seem like it was looking for an adjective (13D: Saying "Ewww!," say), and third because ENCIPHER ... I'd say DECIPHER, but ENCRYPT. So ENCIPHER just took some patience and acceptance. Your boy ANKA is back for another go 'round. Let's hear more of his pop warblings, shall we?

And now a word about GO OK. In the grid there is no space between GO and OK, and so you get an answer that looks like a racial slur, and while I didn't even blink at this (I was going too fast to think about parsing), lots of people did, in fact, blink:

I know the answer is totally defensible (it's not clued in a racial way, etc.), I think it's reasonable to ditch the answer entirely in the interest of not having an apparent racial slur hanging out in your grid. It's not as if GO OK is such great fill. As Evan Birnholz rightly pointed out to me, you lose Nothing in terms of puzzle quality by going with AREN'T / ROOK instead of AGENT / GO OK. Without having a big fight over this issue, please consider deleting this letter sequence from your wordlist. It costs you nothing, zip, nil, zero, and eliminates a possibility for people's taking offense, or even just being mildly put off. It's not as if GO OK is beloved—losing it is not a hardship.

Also, this from sportswriter / radio host Dan Bernstein, re: 48A: Unrecruited athlete's bottleful? (WALK-ON WATER):

[*athletes]

So there you go. Enjoy your Sunday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Woolf

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:34) (slowish for a Monday)

THEME: EYE CONTACT (62A: Asset for a public speaker ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 37- and 52-Across)— themers all have two "I"s next to each other (i.e. making "contact" in the grid)

Theme answers:

SUNNI ISLAM (17A: World's largest religious denomination)
SETI INSTITUTE (24A: Org. looking for aliens)
ANTI-IMMIGRATION (37A: Supporting nativist policies)
SKI INSTRUCTOR (52A: One teaching pizza slices and S-turns)

Word of the Day: GIMBAL (23D: Stabilizing part of a ship's compass) —

noun
a mechanism, typically consisting of rings pivoted at right angles, for keeping an instrument such as a compass or chronometer horizontal in a moving vessel or aircraft. (google)

• • •

So yesterday we had GOOK (well, GO space OK, but come on...) and today, right in the middle of the grid, the longest answer in the puzzle: ANTI-IMMIGRATION. And with an adorably innocuous clue, too. Oooh, *and* it's crossing NRA! Fun. Keep up the ... work, NYT.

[This is where the party ends / I can't stand here listening to you / And your 37A Friend!]

I think the theme is pretty clever, actually. You don't see "I"s next to each other very much in English, so having all the answers do that, and then punning on "eye," yes, that works. I got SUNNI ISLAM easy, but SETI institute was slightly tougher (knew SETI, from crosswords, of course, but ... never thought there was a word or term that followed it). Also slightly misread the clue on ANTI-IMMIGRATION—my brain was thinking Native American policies, not the racist white "nativist" policies, perhaps because my brain was wishfully thinking that racist garbage wouldn't be front and center in the puzzle again. Yeah, the problem is definitely with me. I also couldn't make heads or tails of the clue on SKI INSTRUCTOR (52A: One teaching pizza slices and S-turns). Like ... gibberish to me. Further, no idea what a GIMBAL is (needed every cross and still wasn't sure), no idea (until I got the very last letter) what 26D: Still uninformed was getting at (I stared for seconds at NOWISE- thinking that maybe the last letter was "E"??? NOW I SEE?), and weirdly this is the very first I'm hearing of the either Daisy or RIDLEY or Daisy RIDLEY, despite having seen her in the role in question (48D: Daisy who plays Rey in "Star Wars" movies). Weird. So, yeah, allllll of that made me slower than normal today. Oh, and I somehow also totally misread 7D: Cartoonist Keane (BIL) as ... well, I don't really know, but I ended up thinking of an old Nickelodeon TV show and writing in KEL, that's how lost I was.

I'm sure YAO Ming is, in fact, "worth millions," but that's still a super-weird clue for him (63D: Ming worth millions of dollars). When I think of him, I think of basketball, not how wealthy he is. Lots of athletes are far wealthier than him (I mean, I'm pretty sure). I think the clue wanted to alliterate (??) but it should have resisted that urge. And even then, why not just [Ming worth millions]??? I mean, I'm on record as hating cross-reference clues, but NBA *is* in the (damn) grid, so... if you wanted to annoy me with your clue, you had other, better options.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS "Dancing with the Stars" judge?? (29D) Once again, an LOL "no way" from me. So many absolute whiffs for a Monday. Bizarre.

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Constructor: Wren Schultz

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:01)

THEME: VOWEL (65A: Every other letter in this puzzle's grid(!)) — that's the theme; pretty self-explanatory

Theme answers:

All of them

Word of the Day: KIWI (57D: New Zealand bird) —

noun
1.
a flightless New Zealand bird with hairlike feathers, having a long down-curved bill with sensitive nostrils at the tip.
2.
informal
a New Zealander, especially a soldier or member of a national sports team.

[Actual solving outfit]

• • •

I have no idea how hard or easy this is to do, and I don't really care. You'd never notice the gimmick unless someone told you about it, and it has no relevance to the solving process. I guess if you somehow got really stuck and knew the "every other letter" = vowel gimmick, you could maybe narrow down your letter choices, but in a puzzle this easy, that seems highly unlikely. It's basically a profoundly easy and pretty dull themeless, with a very weak one-word revealer that points out an invisible stunt. If a stunt falls in the woods and there's no one ... etc. I genuinely don't understand this. Or, rather, I don't understand going forward with this when you have no zippy wordplay, no revealer, no phrase that you're reimagining. The punchline is just ... VOWEL. It would be great if the NYT thought for a dang second about what it would be like to solve this thing. You're humming along, it's easy, there's absolutely no discernible pattern or theme but you don't care 'cause you're crushing it, and then you hit dum dum DUM ... VOWEL. And you look at the grid and you see that indeed every other letter is a VOWEL but also it looks like any other blah crossword except w/o the pesky theme, I guess. But at least you got to see ODER and BOLA and ONED and NAGAT, though, so at least you've got that going for you.

I nearly broke 3 minutes on a Tuesday, which hasn't happened for me in a long while. I was half a minute faster today than yesterday. I had almost zero areas of trouble, and very few times when I looked at a clue and didn't know immediately what the answer was. ODER required crosses, but other than that, every answer seemed to just fall before me, without my having to do much of anything. At the very end (NE corner) I lost a few seconds because I hesitated at ___ DEPOSIT (10D: Lode). Figured it was ORE, but wanted confirmation. Then didn't get DEVO at first pass (11D: Rock band known for its "energy domes") and then of course fell in the old COLA / SODA trap at 9A: Pizza party drink (SODA). And so, 3:01. Really, really want those two seconds back. Curse you SODA! I shall never drink thee again ... I mean, I don't drink thee now, but ... moreso!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Peter A. Collins and Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Easy (oversized and I still got in under 4) (3:57)

THEME:"I PUT A SPELL ON YOU" (61A: Much-covered 1956 Screamin' Jay Hawkins song ... hinting at what happens three times in this puzzle's solution) — HEX appears directly on top of YOU three times in the grid

Word of the Day: NON U (59D: Like Cockneys, in British lingo) —

adjective
BRITISHinformal
(of language or social behavior) not characteristic of the upper social classes; not socially acceptable to certain people. (google)

• • •

Pfffffffffft, OK, so the basic theme is kind of cute. Very literal take on the song title. Or, fairly literal take, as HEX (not SPELL) is placed on top of YOU. And here lies the (or a) problem: that "XU" string that you've got to negotiate not once not twice but thrice in this grid. It gets you into some rough places. In one corner, you're forced into CDE and NON-U to make it work. In the middle you actually get away OK—OLES and ESAS aren't ideal, but they're not horrific, either. What is horrific, however, and what should've been a deal-breaker, is EOUS. I mean ... just look at that thing. It's a monster. It's an unholy gob of letters that can only be held in that particular configuration by a curse OMG I UNDERSTAND THE THEME NOW. Someone hailed Satan and put a spell on that answer to make those letters stay in that disgusting arrangement; and apparently someone put a spell on the puzzle-makers so that they would think -EOUS was a fine thing to perpetrate on the solving public. I mean, if they can take NONU and ENRY and AIT, surely they can choke down -EOUS! There are lots of synonyms for SPELL—why not try out some of them in addition to HEX. Or stay with your little HEX plan, but make a grid that works. Look at this thing. So horrifically pockmarked with black squares in the middle that the NE / SW corners end up ridiculously bloated just to keep this thing at a reasonable word limit. I mean, huge banks of three 8s and a 7, in a themed puzzle, having no relation to the theme at all? It's bizarre.

I knew TACHYON from having read Watchmen (once again) last month (46D: Hypothetical particle that travels faster than light). TACHYONs play a weirdly imporant role in the plot toward the end of the book. I don't know what an ASTROPOP is, but it was highly inferrable (38D: Colorful, conical candy on a stick). None of the other answers seem like ones that might present problems. EIRE is crosswordese, AIT is crosswordese, NITTI is crosswordese, CNET is crosswordese, UTNE, ASTI, NON U ... —if you didn't know those, you really should. I wish the constructors had been able to execute the theme better, with clean fill and a non-clownish grid, because the concept is pretty tight. Oh well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS this video put a spell on me. She's ****ing magic.

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Constructor: Todd Gross

Relative difficulty: Easyish (4:48)

THEME: COUNT THE SQUARES (35A: How to find out what "this many" is in 17-, 21-, 52- and 57-Across) — themers have "this many" as part of their clues, and "this many" = number of letters in the answer:

Theme answers:

BEETHOVEN (17A: He wrote this many symphonies)
MISSOURI (21A: It borders this many other states)
ARACHNID (52A: It has this many legs)
MARK SPITZ (57A: He won this many Olympic gold medals)

Word of the Day: KEENAN Wynn (3D: Actor Wynn of "Dr. Strangelove") —

Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn (July 27, 1916 – October 14, 1986) was an American character actor. His expressive face was his stock-in-trade; and, though he rarely carried the lead role, he had prominent billing in most of his film and television roles. (wikipedia)

• • •

This feels underbaked. Four pretty short themers, and a revealer that is not ... a thing people say. Not a stand-alone phrase. Not wordplayesque. Painfully literal instructions. Just not a lot of there there. Also, the number of letters is pretty iconic for three of the themers (BEETHOVEN's symphonies, spider's legs, Spitz's medals), but number of states that MISSOURI borders? It's an interesting piece of trivia (MO is tied with TN for state that borders most other states) but when I think Missouri I do not think "Oh, sure ... eight." The whole thing just doesn't quite come together on the thematic level. There's some quite delightful fill, though. AE HOUSMAN (10D: "A Shropshire Lad" author) and CROUPIER (11D: Casino employee) in the NE, ULULATES (37D: Grieves loudly) and SNEETCHES (33D: Seuss's star-bellied creatures) in the SW. I like those. Those were by far my favorite things about this puzzle. But the theme is kinda sorta very important on Thursdays, of all days, and outside those longer Downs the rest of the fill is OK but actually a bit on the weak side, so it's hard not to feel a tad disappointed by this one.

Started stupidly slow on this one. I blame POKE, which is horribly clued (1A: Slow sort, informally). Uh, I've heard "slow POKE," but never POKE on its own. The "slow" is necessary to make POKE make any sense, and "slow" is already in the clue, so ... yuck. I'm sure there's some example somewhere of POKE standing on its own, but come on. The phrase is "slow POKE" and everyone knows that so stop getting cute. Better to have [Slow ___], honestly. Hard, and accurate. Forgot KEENAN, never considered OREO OS, and thought 1D: Classic Milwaukee brews (PABSTS) could be lotsa things. Worst of all, I dropped ELENA into 20A: First name on the Supreme Court (SONIA) without hesitation. Dead certain. Whoops. Besides SSN, I didn't get a damn thing until I picked up UNO, and then the whole north section, and then backed into BEETHOVEN (without really understanding why—just saw ----OVEN and "symphonies" and plunked down the obvious answer). I thought maybe the clue number was the "this many," and so MISSOURI was a revelation. "21 states!? Wow ... I have completely misremembered my US map." Even after COUNT THE SQUARES, I didn't really put things together (this often happens when I'm flying). It was only at ARACHNID that I was like, "OK, hey, even I know spiders don't have 52 legs..." I did (very briefly) think some creature did, though, because I just had the -NID when I read the clue. "52 legs!? What ... the hell creature ... is that?" Only *then* did the full meaning of COUNT THE SQUARES hit me. So in went ARACHNID, and that heretofore pesky SW corner folded, and I was done.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Man, I'm slow when I roll-out-of-bed-solve... (9-something)

THEME: sadly, yes

Theme answers:

TWENTY-FIVE / THOUSANDTH (10D: With 26-Down, the place of today's puzzle among all New York Times crosswords)

Word of the Day: HOLT (6D: Otter's den) —

noun
1.
the den of an animal, especially that of an otter.
2.
NORTH AMERICANdialect
a grip or hold. (google)

• • •

ELEPHANT, in room, not forgetting

Firstly, you can shove this self-congratulatory bullshit and start paying constructors somewhere, anywhere near what the puzzles are worth to you, NYT. The peanuts-level pay (fractions of a penny per dollar profit) remains a fantastic embarrassment and ensures that puzzle-making remains largely the purview of a smallish clique of (mostly) white (mostly) guys who would and could do it for nothing. Already well-off white dudes are the Best because they don't harsh your buzz with talk about *money*, ick, how déclassé. And the Powers That Be have always been dismissive and condescending (and largely silent) on this issue. Extremely so. I've got friends who complain all day long (*as they should*) that women and people of color are underrepresented in the world of crossword constructors and editors, but never make a peep about fair pay. About selling your work to a giant corporation, with no hope of residuals, and being paid largely in "hey, look, your name's in the paper!" Why anyone sells to the NYT for less than $750 for a daily is beyond me (it's currently a laughable $300, with a secret $350 level for the oft-published favorites—by comparison, Peter Gordon's *independent* Fireball Crosswords pays $451). I have no problem with the NYT's using the crossword to help fund "real" news? But come on. They could double, triple, quadruple the pay rate and stil just be printing money. TWENTY-FIVE THOUSANDTH crossword? So? What? I mean, this is an institution that took years and years to Put The Constructor's Name On The Puzzle, then even more years to Put The Name Where People Can See It. See, you're supposed to worship the Institution, and the Editor. Constructor shmonstructor. I would love for an honest accounting of just how much money there is, and where the money goes, crosswordwise. Let everyone see. Go ahead. I dare you.

Secondly, and more strongly, you can take DEEP STATE (58A: Entrenched network inside a government), and everything you've done to normalize this racist, conspiracy-theory-driven administration, and shove it very, very far.

Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I know it's 4/20, but I swear I did not write this high.

P.P.S. Here, please enjoy this puzzle from Brendan Emmett Quigley and 2018 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion Erik Agard?

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Constructor: Daniel Nierenberg

Relative difficulty: Easy (mid-6s, but that's with ~30 seconds of "taking screenshots" time—uninterrupted time would've easily been somewhere in the 5s)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ron KOVIC (46D: Ron who wrote "Born on the Fourth of July") —

Ronald Lawrence "Ron" Kovic (born July 4, 1946) is an American anti-war activist, writer, and former United States Marine Corps sergeant, who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. He is best known as the author of his 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film in 1989 directed by Oliver Stone.
Kovic received the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay on January 20, 1990, 22 years to the day that he was wounded in Vietnam, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow. This was easy. Eerily easy. I did my usual thing of throwing down all the short Downs I could make fit at first guess in the NW, and then checking to see where I was at with the long Acrosses. Shockingly, with the exception of ITSY for ITTY (ick), allll of my first guesses up there were right, and all of the long Acrosses fell pretty much immediately. Here's my very first pass at the NW:

And then it just Kept Going. This was a very open grid, with lots of ways to get at every corner, so there really was no getting stuck. Once I committed to ORALIST (I might've ... gagged on that one, a little) and -LYSIS (definitely gagged there), moving down into the rest of the grid was quite easy. The only slight roadblocks were: I wanted SURE for SOLD (25A: Convinced) and then wanted NOT ART for NON-ART (21D: Dada, to its critics), which is a non-answer as far as I'm concerned, but that's non of my business, moving on. I probably had more trouble with CLARET than with anything else in the grid, which is really strange given that I know the word. I think of it as wine and not color, I guess. Just couldn't come up with it. Honestly, there's no more resistance in this puzzle. I could've written in GAY MARRIAGE for 58A: Subject of the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges with no crosses if I'd had to, but I didn't even have to do that, as I'd already plunked THE EYE and DIORAMA down there. No idea about RIGGS (44D: One of the detectives in "Lethal Weapon"), but it hardly mattered—it just filled itself in from crosses. I actually liked most of this grid, just not the ITTY ORALISTLYSIS up top. BRAE is some old school crosswordese (51D: Landform near a loch), but it felt like an old friend more than a nuisance today. If I'm not being bombarded by crosswordese and otherwise bad fill, I'm remarkably cool with the stray quaint old term. An ETUI here, an ASTA there, just fine with me.

Anyway, today I did not NEED HELP. Everything just clicked. I'm definitely much faster solving at night than solving in the morning. And I've also found that if I do a hardish puzzle right before I do the NYT, it helps a lot. Today's pre-NYT warm-up puzzle was Peter Gordon's latest Fireball Newsflash puzzle; these are always replete with very recent and newsy answers—brutal proper nouns, but always crossed fairly. Anyway, it helped me keep up with some current events *and* got me in fighting shape for this puzzle, which I destroyed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Challenging (14:50) (I've had a ballgame beer and a martini, tho, so ... !)

THEME: Pluses and Minuses [read: Plus E's and Minus E's] — familiar phrases have E's added to one word and dropped from another word, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily:

Theme answers:

STARES AND STRIPS (23A: Makes eye contact before undressing?)
FATHER IN ONE'S CAPE (39A: Parent wearing your Superman costume?)
NOTE A MOMENT TO SPAR (54A: Script suggestion about starting the fight scene?)
JETE-PROPELLED PLAN (78A: Ballet choreography?)
HAD LESS HORSE MANE (96A: Was harder for the bronco buster to hold on to?)
LEAST BUT NOT LAST (115A: Like the digit "0" in 2018?)

Word of the Day: SEA OOZE (62A: Ocean buildup) —

1.Same as Sea mud
(thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

ERM, no. I mean, specifically, ERM is a terrible answer, and also, no, I didn't really enjoy working out this theme. Every answer felt painful. Like ... E is dropped where? And added where? Why are there Other Random Es In These Answers?! Shouldn't themers like this have two and only two Es? I will give props to the title, which is perfect, but ugh, slog city, working this thing out. I also think SMALL OJ and SEA OOZE (!?) are just junk. I mean, they seem like they came from a purchased wordlist, something a computer recommended and the constructor failed to override. SMALL OJ might've been ok if it had been clued differently, perhaps with reference to, I don't know, its *abbreviatedness* or *beverageness* or anything. Took Forever to get that, and since it intersected two already-hard-to-get themers, ugh, the slogginess. Not knowing the tail end of HYPNOS also complicated things. SEA OOZE, also, come on. And lying right alongside a themer, man, that was rough. Ugh, and with [Giggle syllable] in there (worst crossword clue type ever, could be a jillion things), and the totally enigmatic 50D: Tip of the tongue? (ESE) (!?) (because languages, or "tongues," end ... in -ESE ...), yeesh, that central area was a bear. And for what? NOTE A MOMENT TO SPAR? Pfffft, and I was having such a nice day up to this point. Got some great records this morning because it's Record Store Day 2018! And went to a baseball game this afternoon and saw a Tigers prospect with a great name (Funkhouser!) who struck out Tebow, twice. And it's sunnnnnnny for the first time since, I think, 1936, so ... yeah, my mood was good. And now it's less good. But the martini is still kinda working its magic, *and* I'm listening to Talking Heads "Remain in Light," so ... OK, things could be worse.

Got upended all over the place. Misspelled DIEZ as DIES, which made GRAZE super duper hard to pick up (69A: Eat a little here, a little there). I honestly, repeatedly considered ERASE. Also thought SADIES at first, not SALLYS (111A: Actresses Field and Hawkins). Sally Hawkins was in "The Shape of Water." Which I saw. I just ... Hawkins made me go SADIE. Reflex. I also totally tanked the southern part of the grid, everything around ORIANA, whose name I forgot and botched like nine times before I got it right. ALOP? Oy, no. PIANO, no. IS APT TO, ouch. Is it AS DO I or AS AM I??? Again, all of this stuff crossed *two* themers, so ... Slog City. Maybe some of the theme answers end up being clever or cute ... I guess I can see that. But getting there was awfully painful work. I did love "LA CUCARACHA," though!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (the "Medium" is almost solely for a themer I've never heard of) (2:53)

THEME: GO FIRST (38A: Lead off ... or a hint to the circled letters)— words meaning "Go!" are contained in the circled letters, which are the first letters in the themers:

Theme answers:

SCATTER RUG (17A: Small floor covering)
SCRAMBLED EGGS (23A: Standard breakfast order)
LEAVENED BREAD (50A: Passover no-no)
SHOOT HOOPS (61A: Play H-O-R-S-E)

Word of the Day: SCATTER RUG (17A) —

noun
another term for throw rug. (google)

• • •

This is pretty classic fare from Lynn Lempel: simple theme, lively answers, clean fill. The revealer is spot-on. My only beef, which is not one, is that SCATTER RUG meant zilch to me. Zero, nada. I guessed the RUG part because, well, there were three letters left and the clue had "floor covering" in it, but that term means nothing to me. Is it a regionalism? An older ... ism? "Throw rug," I've heard of. And it's the same thing, so ... shrug, no idea. I also stumbled out of the gate by thinking 1A: Engaged in country-to-country combat (AT WAR) wanted a perfect-tense verb, and then by thinking that 1D: Likewise (ALSO) was SAME! Non-auspicious beginning, and yet I finished under 3, which tells me the puzzle was, in the main, quite easy. Monday easy, maybe even easier than usual. Once I got out of the NW, I paused only a handful of times while writing in answers, and lost time only because I remain the world's worst, most fat-fingered and clumsy keyboard navigator. I'm all typos and misplaced cursors and other nonsense, especially at high speeds.

[LIE TO]

My favorite corner was the NE, both because it's got the star of "Bullitt," which is one of the greatest movies of all time (I know it's not *that* Steve MCQUEEN, but try telling my "Bullitt"-loving brain that); it's also got Irene DUNNE, whom I adore, especially opposite Cary Grant (see "The Awful Truth,""My Favorite Wife,""Penny Serenade"). And finally, the corner has its own fabulous soundtrack: Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T."! Pretty YOUNG THING! He tells you what the letters mean in the song. He also tells you that TLC means Tender Lovin' Care, so it's a song both danceable and informative.

I am hopelessly DEVOTED to LAURA Linney forever and ever no matter what amen, so it was NICE to see her name here today. Ooh, and Johnny MATHIS. I finally finished cataloguing my LP collection, and there were two or three of his in there, including this ultra-cool one where he's smoking on the cover. I know smoking's bad blah blah blah but it's dumb to pretend some people don't make it look cool.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Hi, crossworders! It's Clare, and I'm back for yet another Tuesday puzzle. By the time we meet again at the end of May, I'll have graduated! Maybe I'll even have figured out where I'm going to law school by then. As it is, I've turned my thesis in and have just one week of classes left, so it's now a battle between my senioritis and me.

Constructor:Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty:Medium-Difficult for a Tuesday

THEME: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND (55A: John Donne quote disproved by 17-, 25- and 43-across?) — Parts of the names of the theme answers are also islands

Theme answers:

BRET EASTON ELLIS (17A: Author of "American Psycho")
CUBA GOODING JR (25A: "Jerry Maguire" Oscar Winner)
IDRIS ELBA(43A: Star of "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom")

Word of the Day: GRIZABELLA (29D)

Grizabella is the "Glamour Cat" in the musical production Cats... Grizabella is, at the time of her appearance, a very old cat, withered by her age to the point that she no longer resembles the proud, carefree, flamboyant dancer of her youth... Possibly because of this, it is Grizabella whom Old Deuteronomy consigns to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn. During her change, Grizabella sings the song "Memory," which has been thought of by audiences as a very emotionally touching, profound, and even mysterious composition. It has been recorded by over 150 different artists, including Barry Manilow, Michael Crawford, Barbra Streisand, and Kikki Danielsson. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I thought the theme was clever. It didn't help me solve the puzzle at all, but it was a fun "aha" moment when I looked back after I had finished. Elba has just a brief role in history, but it did provide for that nice Napoleon palindrome, "Able was I ere I saw Elba." (As an aside, IDRIS ELBA definitely has my vote to be the next James Bond).

So, there were lots and lots of names in this puzzle — SO many names. Beyond the names in the themers, there's GARR (32A), ERMA (18D), OLGA (36A), and GRIZABELLA (29D). Even JAKE (30D), although it's clued as an expression and not a person. (The term is such an old-fashioned way to describe hunky-dory that, gasp, it isn't even in Urban Dictionary.) I got so caught up in the names that I convinced myself that 60A: Mortise's partner (TENON) was going to be talking about an old crime show duo or something, not a way to form a joint.

There was also a fair amount of obscurity (by Tuesday standards). The cluing for SERTA (33A) felt pretty strange — I had no idea they were known for numbered sheep plush toys. HD TV SETS (24D: Modern hotel room item) are not really a modern contraption. The old way of talking about them is often "tv sets," and the new way is "HD TVs" or just "TVs," but certainly not combining the terms. CRUDITY (40D: primitiveness) seemed like it was making fun of itself — that word is a crudity. NONCE? ANON?Those are so old that they weren't a big problem; they just provided a musty air for the puzzle.

I had trouble in the SW corner. It seems odd to describe Mao and Xi asICONS (47D) in China. Leaders, sure, but icons? DR MOM (48D: She might check for a fever with her hand) is a weird way to talk about something every Mom (and Dad) does. It also took me a little while to figure out that 46A: Approach furtively, with "to" was SIDLE UP and not "sneak up." Mix all those in with a 60-plus-year-old Patti Page song, I CRIED,and I stared at the screen for a while. (In the interest of improving this millennial's culture, I listened to I CRIED on YouTube after this puzzle, and it's a very nice jazz song!)

Bullets:

Why do crosswords love the color ECRU (2D) so much? I swear there are many more interesting colors than that. Maybe try chartreuse next time?
I'm starting to feel bad for ORCAS! They're usually described as killer whales, but this puzzles says they're 28A: Menaces of the deep, which is kind of sad. They're just trying to survive in a dark and dangerous ocean!
The new racing bike attachment is clipless pedals; definitely not TOE CLIPS (23D). Those went out of fashion for racers a long time ago.
5D is clever (They're likely to get into hot water: TEABAGS) but felt like it should have a question mark at the end of the clue because it seemed pretty punny.
A 13th anniversary gift is LACE (61A)? Who came up with these lists anyway? When I get married, I'm certainly not going to be getting my husband lead for our 7th anniversary... (And just imagine if he tries to give me some)
My thesis is on the Confederados, the thousands of Southerners who fled after the Civil War and settled in Brazil, so I was glad to see I'm not the only one with BRAZILIANS (27D) on my mind.

Hope you all have a great week!

Signed, Clare Carroll, an almost-done-with-college Eli.

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Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:01)

THEME: angles — circled letters both form and spell out angle types, and then there's a revealer clue: 36A: Is an expert on this puzzle's theme? (KNOWS EVERY ANGLE)

Word of the Day: Diana RIGG (10D: Diana ___, 1969 Bond girl) —

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She is known for playing Emma Peel in the 1960s TV series The Avengers (1965–68), and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013–17). She has also had an extensive career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama. (wikipedia)

• • •

Adam Perl writes the crosswords for the annual Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, so I've solved many of his puzzles and worked with him at the tournament for several years now. I typically find his puzzles slightly challenging, in that I just operate on a different wavelength for some reason, but this one actually went down easier than normal, perhaps because the theme had almost no effect on my solve. I finally got KNOWS EVERY ANGLE (after dropping in KNOWS EVERYTHING at first), and then somewhere in the back of my brain a little voice went "uh, so, those circled squares probably form angles or something" but the bigger voice in the front of my brain went "shhh, I'm working here!" Knowing the theme might've helped me a little, but it's more likely that it would've distracted me and taken me out of my rhythm. I usually find that if I try to get ahead of myself and fill in themers early (i.e. before I get to their section of the grid via normal progress), I don't actually gain time at all. I think if I'd been thinking straight, I might've been able to pick up a few seconds in the SW by putting in the letters in ACUTE, but it's just as likely I would've lost those seconds and more trying to figure out what the hell the letters in the SE were doing—I'd've wanted to write in OBTUSE, but of course that's already in the grid in the NW. If I ever knew what a REFLEX angle was, I completely forgot. Thus, keeping my head down and just plowing ahead without much attention to the theme was probably the smart move.

Having the revealer be in a third-person verb phrase is *slightly* awkward, and honestly REFLEX and OBTUSE look identical, so it's hard to appreciate the distinction. It's an OK theme with an OK revealer. The fill gets wobbly in places (ROBT, UNS, PARAS, ALIENEE (the longest crosswordese?), NATANT (!)), but mostly it just gets very old-fashioned and familiar: EER OED ETNA MPAA ATT INT ORU OGEE etc. But the longer Acrosses in the NW / SE keep things interesting, as do the long Downs (loved ANGIE'S LIST in particular) (28D: Online aid for finding a contractor), and PIROGI are delicious (8D: Ravioli relative), so while this puzzle wasn't exactly to my taste, it also wasn't particularly off-putting. It was a puzzle!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Explainers:

16A: Kings' guards may be taken in it (NBA DRAFT)—the Sacramento Kings are an NBA team
62D: "Towering" regulatory grp.? (FAA)—because they oversee control ... towers ... I assume
8A: Legal assistants, for short (PARAS)—as in "PARAlegalS"

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium (or brutal, depending on how you navigated that ridiculous proper noun crossing at 28A/23D)

THEME:"with respect to this answer's location"— themers are phrases where the number of the clue is the first part of the phrase; theme clues refer you to other answers in the grid, which provide the real clues. Thus:

Theme answers:

1A: 5-Across, with respect to this answer's location ((1) OVER) — because 1 (the number of the clue) OVER is a BOGEY, which is the answer to 5-Across: Golf score
24A: 22-Across, with respect to this answer's location ((24) SEVEN) (22A: Without stopping = ENDLESSLY)
40A: 41-Across, with respect to this answer's location ((40) WINKS) (41A: Time out? = NAP)
50A: 46-Across, with respect to this answer's location ((50) FIFTY) (46A: In fairness = EQUALLY)

Word of the Day: LENE Hau, pioneering physicist from Denmark (23D) —

Lene Vestergaard Hau (born November 13, 1959 in Vejle, Denmark) is a Danish physicistwith a PhD from Aarhus University. In 1999, she led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose-Einstein condensate, succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 metres per second, and, in 2001, was able to stop a beam completely. Later work based on these experiments led to the transfer of light to matter, then from matter back into light, a process with important implications for quantum encryption and quantum computing. More recent work has involved research into novel interactions between ultracold atoms and nanoscopic-scale systems. In addition to teaching physics and applied physics, she has taught Energy Science at Harvard, involving photovoltaic cells, nuclear power, batteries, and photosynthesis. As well as her own experiments and research, she is often invited to speak at international conferences, and is involved in structuring the science policies of various institutions. She was keynote speaker at EliteForsk-konferencen 2013 ("Elite Research Conference") in Copenhagen, which was attended by government ministers, as well as senior science policy and research developers in Denmark (wikipedia)

• • •

Not hard to understand this theme, but weirdly awkward to describe. I think of "this answer's location" as referring to its position in physical space, not its clue number, so the theme clue phrasing was hard to understand at first. I saw that OVER was just to the left of, or before, or adjacent to BOGEY, and I didn't quite get how OVER's"location" was relevant. Also, OVER itself seemed to want to be a direction. I quickly saw, though, that its clue number was relevant. Anyway, "location" is not the most helpful or accurate word to use in the theme clues, but like I said, you can suss out the meaning without too much trouble, I think. I liked the theme fine. The rest of the grid, though, had some major issues, the biggest of which is a proper noun crossing which should be Lit Up Neon for any constructor, any editor, any proofreader, dear lord, somebody intervene. RYN / LENE is a goshdarn absurdity. Everyone knows Rembrandt, but that "van RYN" part is far far less well known, and when you cross the "N" with LENE ... holy moses, that is rough. LENE Hau sounds remarkably accomplished, but a. she's hugely obscure, as crossword names go (if she weren't, you'd've seen HAU by now), b. her name is highly uncommon, c. her name is largely uninferrable. That *entire* NW corner should've been gutted and redone. I see that there is the little problem of *two* different theme answers being involved, but when you end up with RYN / LENE, *and* you have ANSE (!?!?!), which is possibly more obscure than LENE, I mean ... you really oughta rethink what you're doing here. I beg all constructors to erase ANSE from your wordlists. It's rank obscurantism and makes people want to punch their crosswords (even / especially those of us who know it).

Always tricky to figure out verb phrases that end in prepositions. Should be a word for that wincey hesitation that comes when you write, say, OPENS ... INTO? ... er ... ONTO ... no? ... how about ... oh, really, IN ON? Huh. EASED BY was less difficult to figure out, though even then I considered "IN" before "BY." I had trouble with the Japanese airport NARITA (27A: Airport serving greater Tokyo) because I now have an interference problem from the popular manga NARUTO, which I have also seen (though far less commonly) in crosswords. But beyond that, and the entire WNW area, there weren't many snags in this one. Pretty smooth sailing. Theme was complicated-seeming, but honestly didn't cause many STRUGGLES. I liked it, but I wish constructors would understand that your clever theme won't be what people remember if you can't handle the fill in the rest of the grid. One **** crossing like RYN / LENE, and the whole thing blows up in your face.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Here is a hilarious bit of editorial self-defense from the *last* time the NYT tried to foist LENE on the solving public (h/t Andy Kravis). For the record, I prefer *this* LENE, but mostly I prefer no LENE.

P.P.S. ALL is duped in this grid (7D: GO ALL / 42D: ALL HERE), which isn't great form, but someone else pointed it out to me, so I can't get too mad about it.

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Headache for Ranger Smith / SAT 4-7-18 / Nestle product first sold in 1961 / Early example of reductio ad absurdum / Country formed by 1964 merger / Corona with tequila fruit juice / Bondn villain Stavro Blofeld

Rhythmic group dance of the 2010s / MON 4-9-18 / Sush consisting of thing slices of fish over rice / Fourth letter of business

Grp in 1955 labor merger / TUE 4-10-18 / 1948 Triple Crown winner / Puppy Love hitmaker, 1960

Lowest broadcast TV channel / WED 4-11-18 / One of 14 lands neighboring China / Old AT&T symbol

Issuer of ukases / THU 4-12-18 / King in 1922 headlines / 2003 Afghani film that won Golden Globe / Facetious sign in lab office / Where Flash Gordon played polo / Native American charm made with willow hoop / Popular TV dramedy based on Colombian telenovela

Spiny fish named after bird / FRI 4-13-18 / Layout with little concern for privacy / Many Youtube video upload / Render undrinkable as alcohol / Piece of armor worn over shin

Muse symbolized by globe compass / SAT 4-14-18 / One-eighth set in statistics / Writer who called New York City Baghdad on Subway / Collaborator with Sedaka Cooke on 1964 album 3 Great Guys / Hip-hop radio/tv host charlamagne god

Rear seating compartment in old automobiels / Purple smoothie flavorer / Org that's nearly one fourth Canadian / Portrayer of Mr Chips / Spring river breakup

Stabilizing part of ship's compass / MON 4-16-18 / Supporting nativist policies

Rock band known for its energy domes / TUE 4-17-18 / Archipelago west of Portugal / Bruece Lee role based on old radio character / Loosening of government controls for short / Giant four-legged combat walker in Star Wars films

Hypothetical particle that travels faster than light / WED 4-18-18 / Much-covered 1956 Screamin' Jay Hawkins song ./ Like Cockneys in British lingo / Colorful conical candy on stick

Seuss's star-bellied creatures / THU 4-19-18 / Word before Johnny Lucy / Disney movie set in Arendelle / Chocolaty breakfast cereal

Kepler's contemporary assistant / FRI 4-20-18 / Topic of mnemonic Eat Apple As Nighttime Snack / Desperately in need of approval in modern slang

Fourth god to exist in Greek myth / SAT 4-21-18 / Currency unit equal to 100 kurus / Teacher of lip-reading to deaf / Wite-Out manufacturer

Ocean buildup / SUN 4-22-18 / Title city in 1960 #1 song / 1899 gold rush destination / Script suggestion about starting fight scene / Tally in Britain / Supergiant in Cygnus / Early Chinese dynasty / Root beer brand since 1937

Suffragist Carrie Chapman / MON 4-23-18 / sea snail with mother of pearl shell / Irene of old Hollywood / Semiconductor device with two terminals

Furniture superstore / TUES 4-24-2018 / Polish seaport / Hunky-dory / Mortise's partner

Diana 1969 Bond girl / WED 4-25-18 / Toffee candy bar / Christian inst in Tulsa / Office inappropriate briefly / Online aid for finding contractor

Hau pioneering physicist from Denmark / THU 4-26-18 / Bell Atlantic merger partner of 2000 / Greek peak on which Zeus was hidden as infant / Mideast city with stock exchange / Classic catalog provider