Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:47—on the high side for me, but I solved this around 12:30am after napping for the better part of four hours (!), so the slowness-upon-waking adjustment applies)

THEME: MAY 1718 (37A: See 18- and 60-Across) — apparently the cities of NEW ORLEANS and SAN ANTONIO were founded in that ... year .. three hundred years ago this ... month? OK.

Theme answers:

11D: 60-Across site (ALAMO DOME)
33D: 18-Across sights (JAZZ BANDS)

Word of the Day: ILYA Frank (16A: 1958 Physics co-Nobelist ___ Frank) —

Ilya Mikhailovich Frank (Russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Франк) (23 October 1908 – 22 June 1990) was a Soviet winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1958 jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Igor Y. Tamm, also of the Soviet Union. He received the award for his work in explaining the phenomenon of Cherenkov radiation. He received the Stalin prize in 1946 and 1953 and the USSR state prize in 1971. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't get this at all. We celebrate city foundings? By month? Since when? And who cares? This puzzle exists because NEW ORLEANS and SAN ANTONIO have the same number of letters. That is the only reason this puzzle exists. Do you want to know how thin this theme is? I'll tell you. Please consult the long Downs. I mean ... it's like you knew, "man, this is not enough for a theme," and so you were like "let's put in a couple answers associated with the cities! Brilliant. OK, what's iconic?" And then your idea of iconic is ... [drumroll] ... the ALAMO! (nice) ... DOME! (.... what?). And then some JAZZ BANDS. Iconitude complete! The End! [kisses fingertips] [daps] [Tebows] [moonwalks out of room]

The numbers-in-the-grid thing is only irksome because today is May 17, 2018, so what the hell was the date gonna be? Even when I (finally) got that numbers were supposed to go in there, I didn't know if I was looking for a specific date (May 18 ... some year?) or what. Further, "7" and "8" are properly numerical, whereas "1" and "1" are stupidly numerical (i.e. no one writes them like that). Further furrther, the fill is not good, and it's especially bad in the NE. I mean, ILYA / MYNA? Blargh.

[SAME! (10A)]

I kinda like the concept of a TATTOO RIOT and also the phrase, "DON'T ASK, DOORMAT." That's exactly what you'd say to a DOORMAT who got too nosy, and then the DOORMAT would of course reply, "sorry, sir / ma'am." Because that's what DOORMATs do. SEISM remains one of the ugliest words and SRTAS one of the absurdest abbrevs., while DAZS remains a sad name part. WE WON? No. IN A WORD, no.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. it's a *scarlet* A

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy except for that NE corner, which is treacherous) (5:46)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ron INSANA (1D: Longtime CNBC commentator Ron) —

Ron Insana (born March 31, 1961) is a reporter for Market Score Board Report with Ron Insana, syndicated by Compass, and a Senior Analyst and Commentator at CNBC. He was Managing Director of Insana Capital Partners from inception to collapse. He was the anchor of CNBC's "Street Signs", which aired weekdays during stock market hours. Until December 5, 2003, he and Sue Herera co-anchored CNBC's then flagship nightly financial news program, Business Center. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Note: today's constructor may have built his word list himself, or even constructed this puzzle totally unaided by software, for all I know—but I'm about to go off about purchased word lists and improperly managed constructing software anyway, on general principle] [Don't worry: I actually liked the puzzle]

Control your word lists, people. I know some of you are spending a not-small sum buying a hefty word list from a noted constructor, but JEEZ, rein it in. OWLET MOTHS is bonkers (34A: Insects named after a small bird). It's fine that those moths are real and so they're valid blah blah blah. The point is unless you're an entomologist I don't believe you know what those are. It sounds like you're saying "outlet malls" with a mouthful of oatmeal. OWLET MOTHS looks like something you found out about when your computer told you "hey, this fits here." Mostly I'm against using stuff (esp. longer answers) you don't actually have some familiarity with yourself. Something like OWLET MOTHS just screams "computer fill." Or it shrieks it. Do owls scream or shriek? Man, "shriek" is a weird-looking word. Am I spelling that right? Anyway, the point is, outlier obscurities like this detract from your otherwise lovely grid. Computer assistance is fine—perhaps necessary for some of these grids with showier stacks—but nothing can substitute for good taste and discretion. See also INSANA, wtf. Who voluntarily puts that in their puzzle? Oh, and ASPISH. Come on.

[MOTION]

There's some clunky stuff here, like ATARUN :( and ENHALO :( but overall I found the grid pretty clean. Not exciting, but far from unpleasant. Whoa, what are HYSONS??? I'm only just now seeing this answer (I guess when PEKOES didn't fit, I just got the rest of that answer from crosses). Again, I'm calling 'Roided Word List on this answer (though I'm actually glad to learn this word, as it seems like something I should know, unlike OWLET MOTHS and INSANA). I think my mostly warm disposition toward this puzzle began with CORPSE POSE. One good answer can really do a lot to make the overall solving experience a positive one. PRIDE PARADE was probably the only other answer I actively liked (30A: Outmarch?). Oh, and BANSHEE. RARE JEWELS feels odd to me. Not sure why. Something about it just doesn't quite land. "Precious gems" seems right. RARE JEWELS sounds like a villainous pirate would use when talking of his nefarious plans. If I google ["rare jewels" treasure chest], the NYT's own puzzle blog is the first site that comes up. I like HOV / LANE as successive answers. I like the colloquiality of "JEEZ!" and "SAY WHEN..." There's more here to like than there is not to like.

It was all very easy, though. A minute faster (for me) than yesterday's puzzle. But that NE corner was almost a total disaster. I only know the PERSEIDS and LEONIDS ... so ORIONIDS was ??? Add to the confusion an erstwhile ABC sitcom I've never ever heard of (13D: "The Real ___," former ABC sitcom) (wow, it aired for A Whole Year), a [Modern land in the ancient Sasanian Empire] that I thought was OMAN, and then LIMP—dear lord, that clue (10D: Not go off without a hitch?). If you have a "hitch" in your step, you are limping? Ha ha, your disability is comical? Yikes. I spent what felt like a ton of time trying to find some four-letter synonym for ELOPE. Oh, and I almost forgot. For [Hog's squeal?] I of course had OINK. Thanks, "N" from BANSHEE! You were a ton of help [/sarcasm]. Nothing else but HYSONS and INSANA gave me any trouble. Weird to pack your difficulty into one small corner of the grid, but you do you, puzzle. I got out alive, and with a respectable time, and while I made disbelieving faces a few times, I never groaned or headdesked, so: thumbs up!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (w/ solve-upon-waking difficulty rating adjustment) (8:45)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SLOT CANYON (1A: Geological feature of Zion National Park) —

A slot canyon is a narrow canyon, formed by the wear of water rushing through rock. A slot canyon is significantly deeper than it is wide. Some slot canyons can measure less than 1 metre (3 ft) across at the top but drop more than 30 metres (100 ft) to the floor of the canyon.
Many slot canyons are formed in sandstone and limestone rock, although slot canyons in other rock types such as granite and basalt are possible. Even in sandstone and limestone, only a very small number of creeks will form slot canyons due to a combination of the particular characteristics of the rock and regional rainfall. (wikipedia)

• • •

Trying to figure out why I found this one so flavorless. Possibly because some of the answers meant nothing to me. In fact, the first two long ones are things that maybe I've heard of ... but not really. I ended up inferring them from their word parts (starting from the "Z" that I got from my one gimme up there, AZARIA (6D: Voice actor Hank)). But as far as their being actual things ... I mean, IF YOU SAY SO (best answer in the grid, in my humble as well as honest opinion). OKE was oke-ward but also something I got because of the olde-timey crime fiction that I sometimes read. BRAE I got because I solved crosswords in the early '90s when crosswordese reigned (and rained!). So there's some stuff I just don't know that is also somehow not exciting to learn (you bait hooks with worms ... oh, those WORMS are RED? You don't say ...) (24A: Common bait for fishing). And then the trivia. E.W. LOWE!? Sure, OKE, why not? (18A: E.S. ___, game company that produced Yahtzee and Bingo). This would all be more tolerable if there were more exciting moments, or much much much more entertaining cluing to give the puzzle some spark. As it is, the "spark" (if you want to call it that) comes from the ejaculatory imagery at 14D: One making deposits in a bank? (SPERM DONOR). I have no problem with that answer, but the clue getting cutesy with jacking off, that I'm less fond of. Also why does that clue even have a "?" on it? Are they not officially called "deposits," is that it? It's a sperm bank, you leave your semen there, right? Is this too much? Had your breakfast yet? Anyway, the clue doesn't need the "?" and isn't particularly clever in the first place.

But mostly the grid is fine, actually. It just doesn't do anything for me. CALABASHES? (25D: Fruits also known as bottle gourds) Again, I think I've heard of those, but I can't even picture them. Clearly I'm just having wavelength issues today. I found most of this puzzle pretty easy. Got all knotted up in the NE with ODER for EDER and thus TOTTER for TEETER and all kinds of RED fish (shad! sole!) before WORM. Oh, look, the ODER *is* a German river—so I'm not totally insane. What the bleep is EDER??? Aha, it's just a different ... German ... river. Man, crosswordese is delightful. Note: Leon EDEL wrote a five-volume of Henry James, and trust me, some day, you will need that information. EVEL Knievel, I assume you're already familiar with. Had DOES before ROES (44A: Some deer) and NO IDEA before NO CLUE (41D: "I haven't the foggiest!"), so that made things somewhat rough in the SE. But overall, pretty breezy. Just not nearly zingy or WACKY enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (?) (I've been drinking a little) (12:25)

THEME:"Rhymes, Schmymes"— two-word phrases where second word just replaces opening sounds of first word with SCHM-

Theme answers:

BOOZE SCHMOOZE (23A: Conversation over a few whiskeys?)
NUTS SCHMUTZ (38A: Filth covering pecans and such?)
DEER SCHMEAR (50A: Venison spread?)
NO SCHMO (67A: Hardly a dolt?)
DUCK SCHMUCK (83A: Avoid a jerk?)
QUIT SCHMIDT (90A: Break up with an "unbreakable" Ellie Kemper character?)
HALTS SCHMALTZ (111A: Puts a stop to sentimentality?)

Word of the Day:"The Island of Dr. MOREAU" (64D: H. G. Wells villain) —

The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. Wells described it as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy".
The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic of early science fiction and remains one of Wells's best-known books. The novel is the earliest depiction of the science fiction motif "uplift" in which a more advanced race intervenes in the evolution of an animal species in order to bring the latter to a higher level of intelligence. It has been adapted to film and other media on many occasions. (wikipedia)

• • •

Theme is pretty dang simple—you just have to take all the SCHM- words you can think of and work backwards. But that doesn't mean it wasn't at least mildly entertaining. It was. And it was also easy—very easy—to figure out theme answers. The puzzle-makers must have understood this and adjusted the rest of the puzzle accordingly, because OMG I was struggling to figure things out all over the place. Hardly any of this grid doesn't have ink on it (I print out and mark up the areas where I have difficulty or criticism). Let's start with 1A: Picnic annoyance (BUG BITE). That could've gone a thousand ways, and I needed most of the crosses to see it. I feel like some version of this (clue vague, crosses desperately needed) kept happening over and over and over. 70A: Virus fighters (TECHIES) (!?!?!)—I get that computers can have viruses and TECHIES (among infinite other things they do) might work to clear a computer of viruses, but yikes that connection was tenuous. 75A: Buds come in them (SIX PACKS)! Clever, but oy so much cross-needing. 33D: Dusted off, say (TIDY)! Oh, so it's not a verb, then? Thanks. BASE PAIR, hard (100A: DNA building block). SNIGLET, hard (and wtf pretending that it's an ordinary slang word as opposed to a slang word specifically created by Rich Hall specifically and solely for comedic gags invented by him and not seen or heard since the '80s) (114A: Term for a word that isn't [in] the dictionary, but maybe should be). I honestly felt like I was flying through this thing, but my time says "nope, average at best." Does alcohol make you overestimate your prowess. That might be what's going on here. The Manhattan I had with dinner is still working its magic...

One of the toughest areas for me was the intersection of 10D: Be a witness (LOOK ... ON?) and 31A: Moreover (TOO). When LOOK AT wouldn't work, other options all sounded wrong and seemed improbably. And "Moreover" means more (to me) than a simple too. Also, I would only use "Moreover" and the beginning of a sentence, where I would never use TOO. And then OOZE OUT ... I guess the OUT was the only thing that could work there, but that also too moreover was strange, somehow. Hey, NUTS SCHMUTZ doesn't rhyme, booooooo! SCROD is supposed to be a jokey past tense of SCREW? I don't get that at all. I mean, I am all for the insane joke clue, but ... what is the analogue here? All the -EW verbs I can think of are already past tense (e.g. DREW, FLEW, KNEW). SPEW SPOD? Nope. Seriously wtf are they thinking here? SCREWED ... is what sounds like the past tense of SCREW. What -OD past tense is there besides TROD? Whatever, this "joke" makes no sense. I like ambition, but the execution is a flop.

Best wrong answer today, by which I mean Worst wrong answer because it was both ridiculous and costly, is MR. HYDE for MOREAU (64D: H. G. Wells villain). DR. MOREAU woulda been nicer. Aren't BASSOS really BASSI? Yes, the answer is yes. Again, I ask, wtf? OK, though you probably can't tell, I thought this puzzle was better than your average NYT Sunday—it's a garbage day, so it's a low bar, but a thumbs up is a thumbs up so take it. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Hannah Slovut

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:42)

THEME: baby steps — first words of themers progress from BABY to ... GHOST (!?!?!)

Theme answers:

BABY ALBUM (17A: Holder of some precious memories)
CHILD PRODIGY (22A: Wunderkind)
TEEN VOGUE (30A: Fashion magazine spinoff)
ADULT SWIM (41A: Popular Cartoon Network programming block)
SENIOR MOMENT (47A: Temporary mental lapse)
GHOST TOWN (59A: Place where no one lives anymore)

Word of the Day: Lorena OCHOA (16A: Women's golf star Lorena) —

Lorena Ochoa Reyes (Spanish [ˈlore'naˈocho'a] (help·info); born 15 November 1981) is a Mexican professional golfer who played on the U.S.-based LPGA Tourfrom 2003 to 2010. She was the top-ranked female golfer in the world for 158 consecutive and total weeks (both are LPGA Tour records), from 23 April 2007 to her retirement in 2 May 2010, at the age of 28 years old. As the first Mexican golfer of either gender to be ranked number one in the world, she is considered the best Mexican golfer and the best Latin American female golfer of all time. Ochoa was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

Flying high off my fastest time since I started recording them five weeks ago. That kind of success always makes one predisposed to like a puzzle, and ... yeah, I didn't hate this one, so maybe the drug of speed is having its way with me. Well, not the actual drug of speed—not sure what that would do to me. I didn't really notice the theme as I was solving, and I *certainly* didn't notice that I ended up not just in the grave but Risen From It. What the hell is up with that last themer? It was bad enough to have the "senior" answer be the horrible phrase SENIOR MOMENT, a godawful never-say-it-in-my-presence euphemism for just spacing, which honestly I've been doing since forever. I put the crackers in the fridge, like, 2 weeks ago. I'm only 48. Don't SENIOR MOMENT me. Anyway, it's the only life stage here represented by a lapse or weakness, boo. But GHOST, man, what the hell? Why you got me undead? Dang. Were there no good WRAITH or ZOMBIE phrases? VAMPIRE BAT was one letter too long (though you coulda gone BABY ALBUMS plural and made it work). Or, you know, CORPSE POSE, that works too. Not sure if the last themer is trying to be funny or what? It's bizarre. Eerie. But it's Monday and the theme is otherwise kinda dull so bring on the dancing mummies, I guess, sure, why not?

Hardest thing about this puzzle was parsing the longer Downs, specifically PILE IT ON and HOTFOOT IT. The former moreso than the latter. How do you feel about repeated small words like "IT"? Normally I don't mind much, but somehow the fact that "IT" shows up in both of the marquee non-theme long answers up top ... highlights the duplication more. If the second "IT" phrase had been GOT IT, and that answer had been buried somewhere near the bottom of the grid, I probably wouldn't even have noticed the duplication. Besides those longer Downs, the only answers that gave me pause were TORINO (29A: 1960s-'70s Ford named for an Italian city)—I had TURINO ... because the city is Turin, and also there's a video game series called Gran Turismo ... which I don't play, but I must know the name somehow. Anyhow, the "U" thing messed me up, which then made LOG weird (23D: Item in a grate). I also had trouble with NO MSG (12D: Request to a waiter), since the type of restaurant where one might actually say that phrase was inconveniently left out of the clue. I had the "G" first couldn't think of any words that would work. I got ROOD easily, but only because I'm a medievalist who teaches a poem called "The Dream of the ROOD" on a regular basis. Seems hardish for normals. Crosswordese all up and down this thing (NE and SW corners particularly stuffed). Haven't seen AIWA in forever, perhaps because it now requires the word "Onetime" in its clue. So let's just say kinda stale but mostly solid, with a final themer that, love it or hate it, at least takes the puzzle out of the realm of the mundane.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Stillman

Relative difficulty: Medium, sliding toward Medium-Challenging (*for a Tuesday*) (3:58)

THEME: BIG DIPPER (9D: Part of 17-Across ... and what the circles from A to G depict) — themers related to big dipper and connect-the-dots gives you a kind of replica of said dipper:

Theme answers:

17A: Constellation next to Draco (URSA MAJOR)
34D: Thing located in the night sky by extending a line from circle F past circle G (NORTH STAR)
64A: Another term for 17-Across (GREAT BEAR)

Word of the Day: RONDEL (47D: 14-line verse with only two rhyme sounds) —

A rondel is a verse form originating in French lyrical poetry of the 14th century. It was later used in the verse of other languages as well, such as English and Romanian. It is a variation of the rondeau consisting of two quatrains followed by a quintet (13 lines total) or a sestet (14 lines total). It is not to be confused with the roundel, a similar verse form with repeating refrain.

• • •

OOF. The theme would've been OK, I guess—it's got issues, which I'll get into, but it does what it does and some people like drawing on their puzzles, so, whatever, fine—but when you throw in the fill, this one just slides down enjoyment mountain into the valley of OOF. Let's start with the theme. It's all over the (star) map. It's main purpose seems to be to create a connect-the-dots puzzle that allows us / forces us to envision the BIG DIPPER. But the revealer is in this weird place, and it's clued as *part* of some bigger constellation, which is in the puzzle ... twice (once in Latin, once in an English form that no one ever uses). And then there's NORTH STAR ... which is also called Polaris, but you don't see that here. Also, Polaris is not in the BIG DIPPER or anywhere in URSA MAJOR (it's in the minor bear). So it's conceptually interesting, somewhat ambitious, but rough. And then the fill, come on, can we get this stuff cleaned up. Editors should be sending MTW puzzles with fill like this back to constructors with a "please improve this" message. You know at ARABY that things aren't gonna be great. And then bang there you are with all of ESO BESO which causes you to pause for a stunned second ORSO (!) like some kind of DODO. But OOF, EENY EMO NEG ANOD (!?), ASEA TERI LAO INURE ELON ENOLA (sans gay) SERE ILSA LYES *and* RYES (rhyming unlikely plurals!) ... and that's not even touching the longer unpleasantness BUTENE and RONDEL. This thing is Out of the Past, except "Out of the Past" is one of the greatest movies of all time, so scratch that. It's just stale.

I don't really stop to read and figure out long cross-referenced clues if I don't have to, and I'm certainly not consulting circles unless absolutely necessary, but the theme answers were pretty gettable without much time spent mucking around trying to figure out the exact relationship of the stars in space. Difficulty came from fill. In and around BUTENE, in and around RONDEL—that was all my puzzle drama. Didn't know if it was gonna be ENURE orINURE (16A: Habituate) and stupidly (and mostly inexplicably) wrote in PADUA for 9A: Noted tower setting (BABEL). I was probably thinking PISA, but there were five letters, so ... PADUA! Had trouble with ON DOPE because ... what year is it? Also DODO because DOLT DOPE etc. (36D: Numbskull). And there's ORBIS, dear lord, why? It's Tuesday. What does the "?" in the clue even mean? Is "Caesar's world?" some kind of expression? A pun? ORBIS ... honestly, that answer alone should've prompted a rewrite request. Really hope you know Latin or else are *certain* about the whole ILSA / ELSA thing (which I still botch like half the time ... including today). Do better, puzzle!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging (laughably challenging—a full minute over my slowest recorded Wednesday time since I started keeping track in mid-April) (6:17)

THEME:"expanded" (??)— clues are followed by "... expanded?" and that apparently means that the answer can be found by joining elements on either end of the theme answer ... so the stuff in the middle, which appears to be gobbledygook, has "expanded" the real answer to make a newer, longer answer that is the answer to ... nothing? I think? [updated: fuller explanation below, in italics]

Theme answers:

16A: Beginning, expanded? (STREET ART)
22A: Forming a crust, expanded? (CALIFORNIA KING)
47A: Choose in advance, expanded? (PRESIDENT-ELECT)
57A: Inspiration for something, expanded? (SOUTH PARK)

Word of the Day: NAURU (49D: Island that's the world's third-smalles country, after Vatican City and Monaco) —

Nauru (Nauruan: Naoero, /nɑːˈuːruː/ nah-OO-roo or /ˈnɑːruː/ NAH-roo), officially the Republic of Nauru (Nauruan: Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country in Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 kilometres (186 mi) to the east. It further lies northwest of Tuvalu, north of the Solomon Islands, east-northeast of Papua New Guinea, southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia and south of the Marshall Islands. With 11,347 residents in a 21-square-kilometre (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the smallest state in the South Pacific, smallest republic and third smallest state by area in the world, behind only Vatican City and Monaco. (wikipedia)

• • •

What is this? I don't understand the theme. I get the "expanded" part, but ... why? What are the middle letters? What does the "expansion" mean or represent or anything? Why? It's entirely baffling to me why this puzzle got made, published, etc. Don't a lot of longer phrases have letters on either end that could also make ... a word? Is there even a concept here, something that's being enacted or demonstrated? I mean, honestly, anything? It's such a bad theme I cannot explain its existence. The constructor is prolific, so it's not like some new constructor just had a weak idea. And anyway, that's hardly the issue, since the editor had to accept this thing. And it's got a dumb shape AND it's ridiculously hard for a Wednesday. I routinely do Friday puzzles much faster than I did this thing. Not having Any Idea what the answers to the themers were (since they're utterly unclued), and having literally never heard of a CALIFORNIA KING (born and raised in California, btw), AND staring down giant NE and SW corners that had Fri/Sat-level clues in them, I was floundering. God, what an awful combination—terrible, inexplicable theme AND difficulty pitched way above average. I had to go to Twitter to make sure I wasn't missing something. Thankfully (for my sanity), other late-night solving stalwarts had no clue either.

[update: someone from crossword twitter read the "constructor's notes" and explained: apparently if you abbr. the first words in the themers, you get the answer to the clue. Well, that's better than I thought, but since it missed me, and loads of other people, I'm gonna stand by the idea that this was a design failure ... I mean ST and CA, alright, but PRES? And S??? Those are some weakass abbrevs. and the "expanded" answers remain entirely unclued]

The raisin on this terrible sundae was the stupid "Man up!" bullshit at 6D: "Grow ___!" ("Man up!") ("A PAIR"). You know what the NYT could use? More people without A PAIR. Lots and lots and lots more constructors and editors etc. who possess precisely no pairs. That whole place is such a sausagefest—I'm sure this "tickles" them no end, but honestly, this is an institution that not only inadequately represents women, but that just shrugs ignorantly at the very problem. Here's the preposterously naive recent editorial statement on gender imbalance in the ranks of NYT crossword constructors (posted to a semi-popular constructing listserv by the most famous person in all of crosswords):

Why don't more women wanna be part of this dickfest? I'm sure the problem is not at all cultural. Nope. Chicks just aren't interested man. Stop whining. Grow A PAIR. Etc.

Also, **** that GHETTO clue, man (27A: Poor area). The puzzle is so white and affluent at every level that I'm not really up for this terse, reductive characterization of GHETTO. Keep it out of your puzzle or (last resort) clue it via music, preferably hip-hop (though Elvis is probably the most widely known referent for the puzzle-solving crowd). "Poor area"? Come on. The only "poor area" I see right now is the editorial office that exercised exceedingly "poor" judgment in publishing this thing. I'm too tired to even go into why the NE and SW were hard. They just were. And I totally forgot NAURU, possibly because it's impossibly small. Possibly because my brain couldn't think past PALAU.

THUD THUD THUD THUD (either the sound of the puzzle falling flat or the sound of my head hitting my desk in frustration at the multiple levels of badness on display here—take your pick)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard and Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (hard to say, though, since I have to adjust for a. morning solving and b. oversized grid) (6:59)

THEME: SPOON-ERISMS (61A: What 18-, 25-, 37- and 52-Across all are (whose circled letters name something used with the base phrases))— spoonerisms of things that can be eaten (or served?) with a spoon...

Theme answers:

WHINNY MEETS (18A: Horse races?)
JERRY CELLO (25A: Seinfeld's stringed instrument?)
PASTY HOODING (37A: Particularly pale Ph.D. ceremony?)
PAY GROUPON (52A: Pony up for a certain online deal?)

Word of the Day: DAWSON City (1D: ___ City, center of the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush) —

The Town of the City of Dawson, commonly known as Dawson City or Dawson, is a town in Yukon, Canada. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,375 as of the 2016 census. [...] Dawson City was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush. It began in 1896 and changed the First Nations camp into a thriving city of 40,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted as all but 8,000 people left. When Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population was under 5,000. St. Paul's Anglican Church built that same year is a National Historic Site. [...] In 1978, another kind of buried treasure was discovered when a construction excavation inadvertently uncovered a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films on flammable nitrate film stock from the early 20th century that were buried in (and preserved by) the permafrost. These silent-era film reels, dating from "between 1903 and 1929, were uncovered in the rubble beneath [an] old hockey rink". Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility, the historical find was moved by military transport to Library and Archives Canada and the U.S. Library of Congress for both transfer to safety film and storage. A documentary about the find, Dawson City: Frozen Time was released in 2016.
The City of Dawson and the nearby ghost town of Forty Mile are featured prominently in the novels and short stories of American author Jack London, including The Call of the Wild. London lived in the Dawson area from October 1897 to June 1898. Other writers who lived in and wrote of Dawson City include Pierre Berton and the poet Robert Service. The childhood home of the former is now used as a retreat for professional writers. [...]
The city was home to the Dawson City Nuggets hockey team, which in 1905 challenged the Ottawa Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup. Travelling to Ottawa by dog sled, ship, and train, the team lost the most lopsided series in Stanley Cup history, losing two games by the combined score of 32 to 4. (wikipedia)

• • •

This shouldn't have been so hard, but getting spoonerisms from wacky clues (what other kind could you use?) turns out to be hellishly difficulty. Even when I got WHINNY, I had no idea what kind of "races" I was dealing with, and since at that point I had no idea spoonerisms were even in play ... that whole area was a disaster. I forgot about Imelda MARCOS and could think only of Corazon Aquino, who refused to fit (5A: Onetime big name in Filipino politics). I had -AYS and still couldn't get 5D: Parts of springs (MAYS). Brutal. ARM (6D: Inlet)? Brutal (wanted RIA?). SRSLY? (10D: "Are you kidding me?," in texts)? Brutal (I wanted some version of ORLY?)

It felt like forever before I got the theme, I had the better part of three themers and still nothing. Then I wrote in JOEYS but typoed LOEYS, which mean I kept seeing the *wrong starting letter* for JERRY CELLO (awkward in the non-possessive, but I'll allow it, I guess). Wrote in PASTY HOODIES at first because, as you can see, I had no idea what the theme idea was. "Oh, they're calling Ph.D. hoods "hoodies?" What fresh joke is this!?" Considering the grid is oversized and I was trying to solve upon waking, I have nooooo idea how I squeaked in under 7 minutes. Even reviewing it now, the puzzle feels hard hard hard. I love spoonerisms, and this one has a nice little twist with the whole spoon angle. The spooniness of the themers kind of falls apart as the themers progress. I definitely eat cereal with a spoon, and jello, well, I don't eat that, but sure, I would use a spooon. Hasty pudding???? I don't know what it is, besides a Harvard humor org. of some kind. But assuming it is anything like other kinds of puddings of which I'm aware, spoon seems like the reasonable implement. Grey Poupon, though? I mean, if you're just straight eating Grey Poupon with a spoon, I'm sorry, man. Things must be pretty bad.

Cluing just seemed harder than normal all over. Check out the undercluing at 45D: Some "me" time (SPA DAY) and 30D: Best Buy buy (HDTV). It was like getting [Food item] as a clue for PIZZA or something. You could narrow it down A Little. And then the short vague stuff like 56D: Out for ALIBI, yipes. And then 50A: Doctor or engineer for RIG. Good clues, but hard. Felt like they were trying to compensate for a theme they didn't think was too tricky, but then the theme was plenty tricky, so the overall result played quite hard. But again, my time says it wasn't That hard. Some good fill and clues in here. I especially enjoyed 62D: Opposite of a poetry slam? (ODE), which I wrote in thinking, "yes, ODEs are much more formal and stately than slam poetry," and only later figured out that an ODE praises something instead of "slamming" it. Nice. F*** the NRA, though. Surprised these particular constructors are still using it in puzzles (42A: Grp. with a firearms museum).

[11D: R&B singer who had a 2015 #1 hit with "Can't Feel My Face"]

Bullets:

31A: Literary character with a powerful face (HELEN)— because it launched a thousand ships, per Marlowe. I am obsessed with the Trojan War and I teach Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and I still had trouble getting this one from the clue!
44D: Portable music player brand (DISCMAN)— ... of yore
12D: Mulligan in a dice game (REROLL) — "Mulligan" = do-over. Term from golf (I mean, I think—I've never played golf in my life)
36D: What queso de bola is another name for (EDAM) — learned this recently in another puzzle. Sadly, did not remember it today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium? I slept from 8:30pm to 2:00am, then solved, so ... I feel like I'm out of space and time right now, as I type this at 2:39am. I think my time is a Medium time, maybe tilting Easy (5:52)

THEME: none, except there's a field goal shape and the long answer is NUCLEAR FOOTBALL ... do you kick ... that? Does TED NUGENT kick it? USA USA?

Word of the Day: HOT ROCKS (37D: 12x platinum compilation album by the Rolling Stones, familiarly) —

Hot Rocks 1964–1971 is the first compilation album of Rolling Stones music released by former manager Allen Klein's ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band's Decca/London material in 1970) after the band's departure from Decca and Klein. Released in late 1971, it proved to be The Rolling Stones' biggest-selling release of their career and an enduring and popular retrospective.
After reportedly having been duped by Klein to unknowingly sign over the recording copyrights to all of their material from 1963 to 1970, The Rolling Stones left Decca and formed their own label, Rolling Stones Records, with a new distributor. They recorded Sticky Fingers throughout 1970, releasing it the following spring. Although Klein—and now ABKCO—no longer had The Rolling Stones as clients, their fruitful catalogue was ripe for the picking and, thus, Hot Rocks 1964–1971 was quickly compiled as a double album greatest hits package. (wikipedia)

• • •

KNEELS (7D)

Ironically, or aptly, couldn't get 1A: Frustrated solver's cry ("I"M STUCK!") and so the NW ended up being a total bust at first past. I managed to get IHOP / PORN in there (which I'm fairly sure is the name of somebody's tumblr feed, somewhere ... just sexy music and slo-mo syrup etc. ...) but nothing followed, so I had to roam the grid in search of a gimme to get me started. Thank you, Bobby SEALE (20A: Co-founder of the Black Panther party). SEALE ADA ELDER ENDER'S EDU got me started, but then I stalled and had to roam some more. Picked things back up with TASE ERIE SSN EATS* EAVE, but I pulled EATS because I was least sure of it, and could think of lots of other things that could go there (most notably, FOOD) (28A: Grub). Pulling it let me see the SCENT in PINE SCENT and the NOVEL in ANTI-NOVEL, and that's all I needed. Back-filled the NE and then devoured the rest of the puzzle in methodical clockwise fashion. Seriously, just did a lap around the puzzle, finishing up a the "T" in STARBURST (3D: Fireworks effect). Had a brief scare when I couldn't make continuous progress coming down into the SE—had THE but couldn't see VOICE, had HOT and couldn't remember ROCKS—so I restarted in SE and bang, DLINE (another football answer!) (51D: Gridiron group that tries to sack the QB, collectively) got me going again. Second half of the puzzle (south and west) went much, much faster.

For novice or still-struggling-with-Friday/Saturday solvers out there, maybe it's worth saying that when I say I got IHOP / PORN right away, I did this not because I actually *know* that IHOP is the [Sister chain of Applebee's], but because I know that IHOP is a chain restaurant that's four letters long. That is how crossword brain works—clue narrows it down to a category, brain rolodexes through known items in that category that fit whatever pattern the grid is presenting. I actually wanted SMUT at first for 19A: Steamy fare, but checking the restaurant cross, I thought "hmmm, IHOP?" Which gave me the "P" and that stands for PORN and also stands for "pool" (it stands for "pool"!), 76 trombones! "Gary, INDIANA, Gary INDIANA"! (consider yourselves THANKED for indulging me in this "Music Man" digression")

Is DEEP FAT real? I mean, it's not a thing, is it? How is it "deep"? How deep is your fat!? I really need to learn. Seriously, though, I thought it was "deep" only insofar as you had to put enough of it in the fryer to submerge stuff. It's a weird thing to see stand on its own, without "fried" or "fryer" after it. AD UNITS is so phenomenally dreary as an answer, it makes me hate comprehensive crossword compiler word lists, and I have been in English departments in one way or another for three decades and have literally never come across the term ANTI-NOVEL (I'm sure they exist, they just ... don't, for practical purposes, is what I'm saying). But I mostly enjoyed solving this. Solid grid, whimsical grid shape, snazzy fill here and there (FAIR SHAKE, HOT ROCKS, LET'S ROLL, HATES ON). OK, so no one actually says AH, BLISS, and VROOMED is super-weird in the perfect tense, but those are at least colorful answers. It's fine.

PS LOL OBAMA crossing NUCLEAR FOOTBALL. You *wish* he still had the football. Congrats on your well-considered choices, USA. How'd that North Korea summit thing work out for you? Good? Well, you'll always have the coin.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (7:02) (honestly thought I was like a minute faster, oh well...)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LARGO (8D: Slow and dignified) —

adverb & adjective
1.
(especially as a direction) in a slow tempo and dignified in style.
noun
1.
a passage, movement, or composition marked to be performed in this way. (google)

• • •

Thought I was going to go to sleep and solve this one in the morning, but then I couldn't fall asleep right away (I blame my afternoon nap) and then my wife began solving the puzzle Right Next To Me, which made sleep impossible ("what's she writing? she's writing fast, is it easy? why can't I turn this part of my brain off?"), so I had to just get up and solve the thing. I don't think I was as affected by near-sleep as I am when I try to solve immediately after actual sleep, but some kind of slo-mo effect did seem to be in place. I thought I torched this, but my time was just Pretty Good (by my standards). My fingers apparently weren't moving as quickly as I thought they were. I expect the puzzle to be a CROWD PLEASER, both because it's on the easy side (for Saturday) and because the marquee answers are both bright and familiar. Nothing very obscure in this grid (except Thatcher's husband's name, wth!?). My only gripe is that the SE is just a little too overladen with techy stuff. Two 8-letter apps *and* HTTP in the same little corner = overkill. Spread it oouutt. Oh, and no way the clue for THE CURE should refer to the song "Friday, I'm in Love" when IN LOVE is also in your grid. That is an editing error. THE CURE's catalogue is pretty sizable. No reason for that to happen.

The vast majority of this grid felt quite easy for a Saturday, but there were a few answers in key positions that I struggled to come up with. Slowish start in the NW where I dumbly passed up the chance to write in AZT (4D: Drug marketed as Retrovir), because even though it was my first guess, I thought, "that can't be right ... 'retrovir' sounds more like some kind of Viagra-type pill—Retrovir: Returns Your Manhood!" But the three-letter pill was Of Course AZT, so boo hiss to my instincts. I also opted for LENTO over LARGO, because I will forever get those two confused. But after that initial awkwardness, I settled in. Still, here are the handful of answers that noticeably stopped my flow:

Flow stoppers:

32D: Margaret Thatcher's husband (DENIS) — again, I ask, wth? (who the hell?). That's a French St.'s name and that's really all that that name is.
41A: Heat (ESTRUS) — as this answer crosses DENIS, you can see how things got a little mucked up there in the middle east of this puzzle. Talk about your vague-cluing. [Heat]! That could go a ton of ways. I had EST- and never once considered ESTRUS. That's not a word I've thoguht of or seen in a long long time. [Heat] has so many literal and slang meanings. Argh. So, yes, the DENIS-in-ESTRUS portion of our puzzle was rough going.
36D: Certain voter ID (DEM) — I am booing this answer so hard. This is an answer where the constructor high-fives himself and the solver just stares at him, eyes half-lidded.
47D: "Never stop improving" sloganeer (LOWES)— I am truly terrible at all slogans. Even the ones I know (from TV advertising) I think, "Oh, right that ... slogan ... what was that advertising again?" So now of course I can hear the LOWES guy's voice sloganeering this slogan, but while solving, nope.
58D: Some shelter volunteers, briefly (RNS) —that danged first letter! I should've just left it and it would've filled itself in easily enough from the cross, eventually, but of course I had to sit there and *think* about the stupid letter. Costly, time-wise.

But again, mostly this thing was not a struggle at all. Had a ton of trouble parsing "THE LEGO MOVIE" (39A: Blockbuster 2014 animated film), but parsing problems are part of the package. That's just Saturday being Saturday. All in all, a solid production, with a HOT PHONE SEX bonus. How lucky we are to be alive right now.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium

THEME:"21"— "21" = definition for all themers / all themers are 21 letters long (standard Sunday grid width) (there are also assorted incidental clues containing the number "21" throughout the grid)

[21] answers:

22A: AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY
34A: NUMBER ONE ALBUM BY ADELE
51A: GUNS IN A MILITARY SALUTE
74A: SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE
87A: WINNING BLACKJACK TOTAL
106A: LETTERS IN THESE ANSWERS

Word of the Day: Curtis SLIWA (69D: Guardian Angel Curtis ___) —

Curtis Sliwa (born March 26, 1954) is an American anti-crime activist, founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels, radio talk show host, media personality, and chairman of the Reform Party of New York State. (wikipedia)

• • •

Grueling. I finished very quickly, but like all painful experiences, it felt eternal. There are several reasons why a puzzle like this is never gonna be a CROWD PLEASER (to borrow a term from Saturday's lovely puzzle). First, definitions as answers ... always dicey. At best, dull. At worst tortured. *Especially* tortured when you have to make those answers fit into 21 squares exactly. Thus the phrasing on precisely None of these seems just right. AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY is something ALIENS would say when trying to pass as humans. "We should consume alcoholic beverages now, perhaps from one of the more popular TAVERNS in this urban area. Everyone here is the AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY, correct? Splendid!" That, or the never-released sequel to "The Year of Living Dangerously."GUNS IN A MILITARY SALUTE is probably the tightest of the bunch, while SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE is like having your pinky sawed off with a butter knife. WINNING BLACKJACK *TOTAL*??? Torturing the English language, you are. Further ... there's nowhere for this puzzle to go. It's just a relentless death march of [21]s. The final themer is kind of a revealer, or a twist, but even it kind of whiffs. "THESE" hardly seems specific enough. Theme answers, longer answers, long Acrosses ... say what you mean. THESE? Everything about the themers is just ... off, phrasing-wise. My only serious probably came in trying to parse SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE, and that was largely due to my writing in NECCA instead of NECCO (53D: Brand of wafers).

Then there's the fill. The grid ... it's trying to have a low word count, I think, which is not a great idea. I mean, hurray for ONE TOO MANY and MALEFICENT, but man, overall the fill suffers pretty bad. ELRIO? SNCC? TERNI??? SLIWA!?!?!?! That SLIWA SNCC area in the middle is just dire. And then there's ON A STAR (??), a phrase that should never stand alone. See also Friday-less TGI. And CASE OF, dear lord (73D: Start for every Perry Mason title, wiht "The"). And many more. Too many. CLEA! ITA! GUVS!?!? It's ALOAD, it's ATRAIN, it's ABLAST, it's ... ADLAI! I did this at high speed, but it felt like HI-SPEED (80D: Unlike dial-up internet service, informally), i.e. something ungainly and faux whimsical and sad. QUESTIONS IN A BASIC GAME (21)? NUMBER OF TV'S JUMP STREET (21)? Is it theme? Did I theme?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Challenging (3:36)

THEME: some damned psychotic smiley mouse or something— long answers about smiling and then black squares that approximate a "happy face"

Theme answers:

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE (16A: "Bye Bye Birdie" song)
BREAK INTO A SMILE (37A: What you might do if you sing 16-Across)
FULL OF GOOD CHEER (54A: How you might feel if you sing 16-Across)

Word of the Day: PALAK paneer (22D: ___ paneer (Indian dish made with spinach)) —

Palak paneer (pronounced [paːlək pəniːr]) is a vegetarian dish from the Indian Subcontinent, consisting of paneer in a thick paste made from puréed spinach and seasoned with garlic, garam masala, and other spices. (wikipedia)

• • •

Once more, the editorial decisions are incomprehensible. How're you gonna run this puzzle on a Monday. First of all, it's 72 words—a ridiculously low word count for a Monday. To be clear, 72 is Fri/Sat territory. If it seemed like there was a lot more white space, There Was. Long Acrosses to start, and then themers that cross-referenced. Leaving aside whether the puzzle was "good" or not, this is a damn midweek puzzle. Not Monday. Nope. I mean, on its face Not a Monday. The fill, also very non-Monday, PALAK being the most obvious example. That's gonna hurt a lot of people. I think it's a fine food phrase part, but a. It's A Food Phrase Part (i.e. inherently not great fill), and b. it's not gonna be known by a good chunk of solvers. I've eaten the damn thing and I was still like "DANG, what's that word...?"TRUE DAT is also gonna puzzle some folk. It's definitely ... a thing ... but to my mind, of late, it's a thing white people say when they are trying semi-ironically to sound black, so I'm not the Biggest fan. Plus a whole chunk of solvers are just gonna stare blankly at it. Again, I refer you to my "Not A Monday" assertion, above.

Then there's the manic mouse face. What the hell kind of drugs is that mouse on. Must be good. His pupils are Big. FULL OF GOOD CHEER is bad—bad in that it's not a verb phrase like the others, bad in that BE OF GOOD CHEER is the damned phrase (and hey, look, it's a verb phrase). The thing is, you severely increase the likelihood of solver discontent when you serve up an overly challenging, non-Monday style, strange-fill-having puzzle on a Monday. Monday is typically the day when solvers have a good chance of smiling. It's the most tolerable theme day of the week (along with Thursdays—which are often challenging, but we Expect them to be challenging). And so today we get a Monday puzzle that's all about smiling, but that, ironically, is far less likely to make the solver smile than your average Monday puzzle. TTH. Trying Too Hard. It's a problem. No when to say when.

First, you're assuming "Bye Bye Birdie" song will be a meaningful clue to people. I've seen the movie, and I don't remember that song. That is not a song I associate with that musical. Again, it's Monday. What are you doing? And if I'm singing, I'm telling you to put the damn face on. Cluing it in reference to the singer's smiling is odd. See also the last themer. The song is supposed to have an effect On The Listener. What is happening? ALY, ugh. I had AGA, and both are barfy crosswordese. ESS ESP EPI, ugh. OCALA, DSL, MOT, IDA, LAO, GOA, ABASE—this puzzle may have a few snazzy longer answers, but the cost, man, the cost ... And HAD A MEAL??? That is some super duper green paint. That is sub-ATE A SANDWICH. OK, not sub-, but definitely on a similar level. HAD A BITE is a thing. HAD LUNCH, mostly a thing. DEAL-A-MEAL, definitely a thing. But HAD A MEAL is just weak as a standalone phrase.

Lastly, but importantly, this:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. yesterday's Washington Post Sunday puzzle (by Evan Birnholz) was much better than the NYT (as it often is). If you're not doing it, get on board (esp. when the NYT lets you down).

P.P.S. My friend Lena and I will now be writing up the New Yorker crossword (in dialogue form) every Thursday, on our now-no-longer-defunct blog "New Grids on the Block." New New Yorker crossword drops every Monday, Lena and I chat Monday night, then formatting etc. happens, and voila, Thursday post. We'll also be discussing ... well, whatever the hell else we wanna talk about from the world of crosswords. Oh, and Lena is obsessed with / perpetually mad at the NYT's new Spelling Bee puzzle, so we'll probably have a few words about that too. Here's the inaugural post, which is about all four New Yorker puzzles published to date.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi, everyone, it's Clare! So I have now graduated from college and am back on the West Coast (meaning I'm solving this puzzle at a much nicer time than when I was on the East Coast). I'm working as a waitress for the summer to save up money because a little birdy told me that law school costs a chunk of change. I'm also spending a lot of my free time as a sports fan (Go, Warriors!!) and got to cheer on the Yale men's lacrosse team this afternoon as they won the national championship!

Constructor:John Lieb

Relative difficulty:Quite hard for a Tuesday

THEME: Five answers that repeat three times the letters D, E, N, T, and S, leading to the revealer TRIDENTS

Theme answers:

ODDDUCKS (1A: Idiosyncratic sorts)

FREEEMAIL (20A: Google or Yahoo offering)

SUEANNNEVINS (26A: Betty White's role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show")

PITTTHEELDER (45A: Moniker of an 18th century British statesman)

DRESSSIZE (53A: Sorting criterion at the women's department)

Word of the Day: BOHEMIA (10D: European region that lent its name to a nonconforming lifestyle)

Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech lands in the present-day Czech Republic. In a broader meaning, Bohemia sometimes refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in a historical context, such as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by Bohemian kings. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I found the puzzle quite hard. It might have been because I was trying to solve the puzzle while also watching the Warriors basketball game (while praying for a ROUT), but I still think it played hard. Monday's puzzle felt like a Tuesday, and this Tuesday puzzle felt like it could have been a Wednesday. When I was done with the puzzle, I thought the theme looked clever and elegant, but it wasn't helpful for solving, and the answers DRESSSIZE and FREEEMAIL seemed pretty bland. Some of the acrosses, though, had fun answers like ODDDUCKS, NOOGIE, DHARMA, and PARANOIA. In general, the acrosses felt more elegant than the downs.

There were a few places I got stuck. I thought that 39D: Snow may push them back, for short would be etas instead of ETDS. 37A: Many a word ending in -gon seemed like a weird way to clue for SHAPE. I had no idea what a UNI code was, and it also seems odd to have both UNI and UNA in the same puzzle. And, I found it very hard having SUEANNNEVINS (26A: Betty White's role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show") as such a major answer. Betty White was maybe the fifth main character on that show, which went off the air more than 40 years ago. I also didn't know about KIDFLASH (7D: Speedy DC comics sidekick). I really wanted to make "The Flash" work, even though I knew that wouldn't be right. Watching DC comic shows on the CW apparently didn't help me very much.

There was some nice pop culture in the northeast. Idina Menzel, a Broadway star, played alongside MIMI in "Rent," where "La Vie Boheme" (which sounds like the answer BOHEMIA) was a major song, and she was the voice of ELSA in "Frozen."J.J. Abrams, with Star Trek, Star Wars, etc... is always nice to see. You can even see DHARMA as a play off the TV show Dharma and Greg. I went back and listened to "La Vie Boheme," and it's a pretty fun song!

I also liked some of the clues/answers...

41A: Place for a sweater was quite funny. I originally put down "torso," but SAUNA is much better.
65A: Indulges in too much Netflix as BINGES was nice (I may or may not have partaken in this — after I graduated).
The 63A Monopoly clue to get to AVENUE was clever. I got that one quickly, as I have played many, many games of Monopoly (I always have to be the banker).
I absolutely love Zora NEALE Hurston. I read part of a book of hers (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and completely fell in love with it, and I've remembered her ever since.

Hope everyone has a great Tuesday! I'll be up for a while indulging in Sports Center coverage of my Warriors — then up early to watch more coverage!

Signed, Clare Carroll, a retired Eli

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sande Milton and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:28)

THEME: MIXED BAG (35D: Assortment ... or a description of 32-, 39 and 42-Across?)— I guess in Scrabble™ you keep your TILES in a bag ... where they are mixed ... up. So TILES and STILE and ISLET are anagrams of each other ... because "bag" means "bag of tiles" and so TILES gets anagrammed twice ... this actually makes zero sense from a Scrabble perspective, but whatever, it's a kind of play on words. Then there are various Scrabble-related words around the grid, including SCRABBLE (31D: Game described by this puzzle's four racks), all of which are clued [Rack #_: (scrambled answer)]—actually, these seven-letter words form a sentence when taken in order: PLAYERS ARRANGE JUMBLED LETTERS.

Theme answers:

PLAYERS (20A: Rack #1: AELPRSY)
ARRANGE (25D: Rack #2: AAEGNRR)
JUMBLED (56A: Rack #3: BDEJLMU)
LETTERS (23D: Rack #4: EELRSTT)

Word of the Day: ÁVILA (40A: Historic walled city of Spain) —

Ávila (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈaβila]; Latin: Abula) is a Spanish town located in the autonomous community of Castile and León, and is the capital of the Province of Ávila.
It is sometimes called the Town of Stones and Saints, and it claims that it is one of the towns with the highest number of Romanesque and Gothic churches per capita in Spain. It has complete and prominent medieval town walls, built in the Romanesque style. The town is also known as Ávila de los Caballeros, Ávila del Reyand Ávila de los Leales (Ávila of the Knights, the King and the Loyalists), each of these epithets being present in the town standard.
Orson Welles once named Ávila as the place in which he would most desire to live, calling it a "strange, tragic place", while writer José Martínez Ruiz, in his book El alma castellana (The Castilian Soul), described it as "perhaps the most 16th-century town in Spain".
It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. (wikipedia)

• • •

Did you know 17x13 grids have four fewer squares than 15x15 grids? I figured this out through multiplication. Congratulate me. But it's kinda sorta interesting, in that the weird over/under-sized grid ends up being almost exactly the same number of squares as the standard one. I was trying to account for my fast time. I think the primary issue is a. it's just easy, and b. the [Rack] clues are non-clues. Far, far harder to get from a real clue to an answer than to anagram 7 letters. I do the damn Jumble™ every day. I anagram every dang sign I see. [Rack blah blah blah] is not a clue. It's a gimme. Also, those Rack clues make no sense. How are you getting from [Rack...] to whatever it's called when you use all your letters. Bingo? I don't know, man, I hate Scrabble™something fierce. Anyway, I figured out that the clue wanted me to use all the letters on the [Rack]s, but ... just saying [Rack] seems inadequate. This thing is conceptually a total mess. It's trying to do too much, and doing none of it particularly well. You've got the one core gag (MIXED BAG = bag of tiles, ergo The tiles in TILES are "MIXED" up thrice in the middle of the grid. But obviously that is a very slight theme, so the grid gets this radical segmentation, and then super-boring Scrabble-related words get their own section of the grid and their own [Rack...] clue, which, as I've said, both makes the puzzle super-easy *and* doesn't make a ton of sense, conceptually. I am sad I didn't get to blog yesterday's puzzle now. And you know things are bad when I am regretting the opportunity to blog a Tuesday.

The fill is kind of a MIASMA of oldenness. I haven't seen ALB in a dog's age. The OKRA ORCA I see much more often. SAS DST AGEE INCA ABIE ugh I'm bored already. Trust me, there's more of it. And USROUTE??? Oy. SABOTEURS is a cool word (4D: Some counterintelligence targets), and much of the rest of the longer fill is tolerable, but between the all-over-the-map theme and the crushing olde-timey routineness of much of the fill, there just wasn't much for me to enjoy today. And yet I do want to give some points for trying. This theme was at least unusual, as was the grid shape. If you're gonna screw up, better to screw up going big than going safe.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. UNCUT BARRE made me laugh. Not a great day for UNCUT BARR(E).

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Constructor: Dominick Talvacchio

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:25) (morning solve)

THEME: IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME (39A: What you might say upon seeing 17-, 23-, 51- and 62-Across) — Wacky clues ask for wacky phrases that also happen to be (when parsed differently) a series of Greek letters:

Theme answers:

BET A PIÉTA (17A: Wager one's sculpture of the Virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus?) [beta, pi, eta]
CHIP-SIZE TAXI (23A: Hired vehicle that's only as big as a potato crisp?) [chi, psi, zeta, xi]
THE TAO MICRON (51A: One-millionth of a meter along a spiritual path?) [theta, omicron]
LAMB DATA U. (62A: Inst. of higher learning dedicated to the statistical analysis of young sheep?) [lambda, tau]

Word of the Day: Ally SHEEDY (47D: Ally of the Brat Pack) —

Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy (born June 13, 1962) is an American actress and author. Following her film debut in 1983's Bad Boys, she became known as one of the Brat Pack group of actors in the films The Breakfast Club (1985) and St. Elmo's Fire (1985). She also acted in WarGames (1983) and Short Circuit (1986). For her performance in Lisa Cholodenko's High Art(1998), Sheedy won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. According to IMDB, High Art was nominated for a number of awards, and won the GLAAD Media Awards 1999 Outstanding Film (Limited Release). (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, very mixed feelings about this one. They were not mixed at the outset, when I entered the first few answers and thought, "o, lord, it's gonna be one of *these* days..."TABAC ALEPH APTS ASPS ... I wanted to issue a slew of fill violations right off the bat. Excessive Crud, with a penalty for Excessive Crud In The NW (i.e. Right Off The Bat Crud). If you can't get out of the NW corner without making a face, it's usually gonna be a long day. Or a long 5-ish minutes, as was the case today. I mean, TABAC? That is some "Break Only In Case of Emergency"-type fill, but the only emergency was "you didn't figure out a way to handle the crosses of your themers and so you ended up with very unfavorable letter patterns like --B-C (see also Z--G- at 26D). I got BET A PIÉTA pretty easily (because the clue was pretty literal) but had no idea why it was interesting, and so kept moving. Mostly I was wincing my way through this. I went from TABAC (!) to ICAL (!??!) pretty early on, so every answer felt like stepping in a minefield after that. What fresh hell was coming next. But mostly what was coming was bland old stuff. ESTEE ARNO SECY etc. So all I could think as "this better be in the service of ... something." I.e. the theme better be good. Because the non-theme stuff was not. Not good.

And then I hit the revealer and didn't really process it. Something about Greek letters, great, I'll figure it out when I'm done. But then I hit THE TAO MICRON and had the OMICRON bit and couldn't figure out the rest. I could see OMICRON was a Greek letter, but ... huh, nothing. It was then I looked back and saw that all the wacky themers were built entirely out of greek letter strings. This knowledge actually helped me get the remaining themers quicker (hurray). It also was a very nice and genuine aha moment. And credit to the puzzle for going nuts with the themers. If you're going to go loopy, go very loopy, I always say. And LAMB DATA U. is truly, extraordinarly loopy. That's like some sub-sub-sub-set of 538.com's research department. "You're doing great with the sheep data, kid, but we need you to get more specialized. We're sending you to ... the EWE" ('cause that is definitely what they would call it). Anyway, I like that the puzzle is all in for wackiness. And so I'm left admiring the theme, but sad that the overall experience of solving the puzzle was mostly dreary. This "the theme is Everything, fill schmill" approach is NYT standard, and awfully depressing. Treat the *whole* grid like it matters. Beause it does.

Bullets:

5D: Cher, e.g. (AMI)— I know "cher" as an adj. and AMI as a noun so this was a little odd. But I guess "cher" can be a substantive adj., as in "mon cher(i)." But it still felt awkward; see also DDS clued as a "One" (?) instead of a degree (65D: One whose office has an opening to fill?: Abbr.), and NOEL clued as a "time" (?) (12D: Time of good cheer). It's a song. I'm sure it's technically a *time* by someone's definition, but not by anyone's current usage. Why make your forgettable fill more intolerable by giving them awk clues. I don't get it.
28A: "So long" ("BYE NOW")— Wrote in BYE BYE, and then YIPE! at 30D: "Goodness sakes!" ("OH MY!"). But bad fill (which was also, for me, local fill) helped get me out of the jam: 45A: Locale of Rome and Syracuse: Abbr. (NYS). New York State. Total gimme. There should be a word for this feeling when fill you really don't like really helps you out. "Ugh, you again ... well, thanks, I guess."
1A: Kitchen drawer? (TAP)— one of many ordinary answers where the clues forced me to get everything or nearly everything from crosses. Saw right through this one, I thought, because I have seen this clue before. For AROMA. So my brain just butted its head against AROMA and its synonyms until I freed it by moving on to crosses. Interesting move: using a common "tricky" crossword to play a new and different "trick."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:05)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Herb ADDERLEY (3D: Hall-of-Fame cornerback Herb) —

Herbert Allen Adderley (born June 8, 1939) is a former American football cornerbackwho played for the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL), and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Adderley played college football at Michigan State University and was an All-Big Tenoffensive star as a halfback.^[1] He is the only player to appear in four of the first six Super Bowls. (wikipedia)

• • •

Do people really put their GPA on their résumés?? Awards I get, but GPA?? Ugh, I just googled this, and all the advice is so smarmy and bad and desperate. I advise no, kids (and definitely no, adults over 25). I only got GPA because of GO TIME, which somehow I got first, and instantly (1D: Crucial hour, informally). ADDERLEY was totally unknown to me, so I worked it out from crosses and inference. Remembered (for once) that it's aunt ELLER, not aunt ELLIE, and after I got out of that NW corner, I screamed through the rest of the grid (figuratively—no occasion for actual screaming), missing a turn and veering off course here and there, but mostly just cruising ... until went over one of those tire puncture dealies at the very end trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the SE. Three answers there (well, one, and then two of its crosses) cost me a good 20 to 30 seconds, I think. Oh, the screwed-up spelling of ELENORE didn't help, either. How many damn ways are they to spell that name? ELENORE, gee your folks can't spell!

["You're my pride and joy, et cetera..."]

So the offending answer was LEGMEN (44D: Errand runners), which I know exclusively as a term for ... men who are into legs (as opposed to breasts, or butts). I looked up "legman," though, and it's definitely a thing. But trying to see it when you (confidently!) wrote in NOD at 56A: Academy recognition, informally (NOM) and had no idea what 62A: Booker's title: Abbr. (SEN) was after ... not so easy (Cory Booker is, of course, a SEN. from NJ). I was at a dead stop. Not sure how I finally understood that NOD was (improbably!) wrong, but I guess I have enough experience to start pulling out "correct" answers when you hit a complete impasse. LEGMEN! NOM SEN! Blargh. Not a pleasant way to end an otherwise very pleasant solve. Tiny stumble when I wanted YOU NAILED IT instead of YOU CALLED IT at 35A: "Spot-on prediction!" and bigger stumble when I had ACRID, and then considered ACERB, before ever thinking of ACUTE. Ugh to the five-letter, starts w/ A, [Sharp]-clued answer. But the long Downs were Super easy and the long Acrosses ... were largely taken care of by the longer Downs. I could've tolerated more difficulty here, and more difficulty evenness in particular, but overall I had a good time with this one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (not sure—co-solved it with my wife, so there was a lot of reading clues aloud, and discussion, but we still finished in like 11 minutes, which seems fast, given the conditions)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DAIKON (45D: Japanese root) —

Daikon (大根, literally "big root"), also known by many other names depending on context, is a mild-flavored winter radish (Raphanus sativus variety (cultivar) 'Longipinnatus') usually characterized by fast-growing leaves and a long, white, napiformroot. Originally native to Southeast or continental East Asia, daikon is harvested and consumed throughout the region, as well as in South Asia. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello from a Starbucks IN DC. I am about to go compete ("compete") in The Indie 500 Crossword Tournament, but this morning I am just trying to crank (trank?) this blog out before 9am. I co-solved this with my wife last night and basically enjoyed it. Couldn't spell TZATZIKI to save my life (Ss? Zs?) (56A: Sauce made with yogurt and cucumbers), and I did PSI for PHI (24A: Golden ratio symbol), and SUM for IAM (47A: Cartesian conclusion), and TEE for TEA (57D: It might be in the bag), but other than that there were no real snags. Helped that my wife got a few things superfast, well before I would have. Zs and Xs and Qs meant that the puzzle played easy. CUTEX (9A: Nail care brand) made it supereasy, because that put the X in the first position, which made XENON GAS obvious (13D: Strobe stuff). But now I'm sitting here with my friend Lena Webb (w/ whom I'll be calling the tournament finals later in the day) and we're going over the puzzle. Actually I'm just watching her doing it and writing down her reactions and the ridiculous things she says. She got CUTEX and TAKE A NAP instantly. She is very very happy with the clue for GIN (both because she loves GIN and because the clue seems designed to trick you into a different 3-letter answer: ARM) (54A: It may be in a sling). There were a few items, however, that we both had some issues with. Let's start with ... ODOR (27A: Repute).

The only time I have ever seen the word ODOR used this way was in a NYT crossword. That is, I have never, ever seen the word used this way. ODOR is never used nowadays in a non-repulsive way. SCENT is neutral. ODOR already implies stink. See "body ODOR." The idea that you sniff someone's "repute" is just ... weird. Lots of great potential for cluing ODOR, completely squandered on this archaic nonsense. Also, the scare quotes on "astronauts" in 37A: Some early "astronauts" was disturbing. I mean, the quotes belong there, obviously, since the APES were unwilling participants, but again, so many clues exist and you want to evoke Great Moments In Animal Testing? Speaking of testing, the clue on IQS was probably worst of all (5D: They're high in the Ivy League). First, it's factually wrong, in the sense that no one takes a ****ing IQ test to get into Harvard or Yale. You are assuming they have high IQS, and maybe you're right, but IQ has zero direct correlation to Ivy League admission. It's also just a gross system of measuring human beings, highly racialized and disgusting. Anyone who talks about their high IQ or believes in its meaningfulness is not to be trusted. Or is deeply, sadly insecure. If you go to an Ivy League school, you may be a brilliant, beautiful person. But if you want high correlation between student attribute and student admission, check where the parents went to school, or how much money they make. Come on, man.

Me and Lena, who is dressed to ... fill

GQTYPE is awful, some fill left over from a late-'90s word list. Burn it. Love all the food / drink clues, including DAIKON, which is an aesthetically beautiful word (to me). Lena has never heard of "OZZIE and Harriet," and tbh I mostly forgot they existed (mostly because they existed solely before my time). We all had trouble with CAPITAL B, of course (33D: eBay feature). My helpful advice to Lena (I solved before she did) was "Look at the word!" I offer you all the same advice, for all clues. Very useful. OK, I have to post this. It's So Late. Love from DC. Talk to you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Lena has a JUUL ... I have finally seen one in the wild. Look for it in a crossword near you, maybe.

PPS Erik Agard has the LAT puzzle today, so you should find it and do it because it's probably great. I'll see him later and ask him, but I'm pretty sure it's great.

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Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Medium (I think—untimed)

THEME:"Proving Them Wrong" — five circled squares around the grid end up containing the letter "I"; that "I" also happens to be at the intersection of different baseball teams' name parts, leading to the revealer (which is "proven wrong" by the theme): THERE'S NO "I" IN "TEAM"(63A: Sports axiom refuted by this puzzle)

Theme answers:

20A: Where techno music originated (DETROIT) / 9D: Aggressive types (TIGERS)
25A: Where the Sun shines? (BALTIMORE) / 15D: Relatives of bobolinks (ORIOLES)
49A: Final, countrywide competition (NATIONALS) / 27D: County name in 30 states (WASHINGTON)
78A: Papal enclave members (CARDINALS) / 53D: First U.S. city to host the Olympics (ST. LOUIS)
112A: Where General Mills is headquartered (MINNESOTA) / 101D: Delivery that's usually expected (TWINS)

Word of the Day: ETTA Place (73A: Place in a 1969 western) —

Etta Place (c.1878 – ?) was a companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch. Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain shrouded in mystery.
The Pinkerton Detective Agency described her in 1906 as having, "classic good looks, 27 or 28 years old, 5'4" to 5'5" [163–165 cm] in height, weighing between 110 and 115 lb [50 and 52 kg], with a medium build and brown hair." (wikipedia)

• • •

It was tough to solve this thing after a beautiful day of solving really entertaining tournament puzzles at the Indie 500 Crossword Tournament. At dinner last night a veteran constructor friend of mine—and a far, far nicer human being than I or most people I know could ever hope to be—went off, unprompted, on the diminishing quality of the Sunday NYT crossword, which he no longer bothers with. An editor I'd talked to earlier in the day casually used the phrase, "Back when I was still doing the Times ..." It's slightly weird to see the NYT's crossword app booming and yet routinely hear from solvers and puzzle-makers alike that Sundays just aren't fun any more (in the main). And yet it's the marquee puzzle, the biggie, the one with a title, the one that (if traffic to my site is any indication) has the greatest solvership by numbers. The brand inertia that is carrying that puzzle through the ages is really something.

But anyway, this puzzle. I love baseball so much. I wore one of my hometown AA affiliate's t-shirts to the tournament yesterday and I'm wearing another one today *and* (if the weather holds up, which right now, as I look out the window at the dark blusteriness of an impending thunderstorm, seems increasingly unlikely), I'm going to the Yankees-Orioles game later today at Camden Yards. Oh, and I'm a DETROIT / TIGERS fan, so ... I really, really should be the ideal audience for this puzzle. And yet. And yet I don't get it. I mean, I do, but I don't. What's particularly baseball-y about that slogan? Why baseball teams? Why is there not more non-incidental baseball content? Further, is the premised of the puzzle really that there is, in fact, an "I" in certain team names? Even as jokey wordplay, this is pretty weak. And the totally uneven placement of the theme content is really bizarre. The "I"s are all over the place. The entire E/SE portion of the grid is devoid of theme content. Puzzle wants me to think HOMESTANDS is relevant baseball content, but I'm not buying it. There's nothing to symmetrically complement the DETROIT / TIGERS in the south. MAJORS is totally forced into the grid at this weird, almost-but-not-central place (84A: Group with five members in this puzzle, with "the"). Maybe in the paper / magazine version of this puzzle, there is more evident baseball content. Are the circled squares actually baseballs? Who are these "Them" that you're provin' wrong, these mythical people who militantly insist that "I" does not exist in any team name?

["At the Copa ..."]

Hey, did you know the TIGERS' AA affiliate is in ERIE, PA? And that someone who plays for that team is a SEAWOLF? It's all true. PS ERIEPA is one of my least favorite pieces of fill of all time ever, and who abbrs. "Ohio" as just "O."???

[at least the morning blogging meeting was fun]

Bullets:

71D: German hunting dog (WEIMARANER)— Adventures in misseplling! See also Charlotte AMELIE (98D: Charlotte ___ (Caribbean capital)) (AMALIE)
16D: Only African-American to win an Oscar, Tony and Emmy (VIOLA DAVIS) — Me, a brilliant person: "OSSIE DAVIS!"
102A: ___ Minella (Muppet monkey) (SAL) — Why ... would you name a muppet monkey ... after a disease that can kill you ... that's mostly associated with uncooked chicken. The chicken muppet should be called SAL Minella. I have spoken.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Lena tried to solve this but like many folks I know, she doesn't usually finish them, often pushing them away at the moment they become no longer interesting to her. Here's what her grid looked like when she finally pushed *this* one away:

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Ciao! It's Annabel Monday.

Constructor:Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty:Hard

THEME: DOUBLETREE INN— Theme answers each contained the names of two trees.

Theme answers:

18A: "Nonsense!" (BALDERDASH)
29A: Boneless cut named for a New York restaurant (DELMONICO STEAK)
49A: Jet that avoids radar detection (STEALTHFIGHTER)
62A: Hilton hotel chain...or what 18-, 29- and 49-Across each have (DOUBLETREE)

Word of the Day: GLADS (40A: Some showy blossoms, informally) —

Gladiolus (from Latin, the diminutive of gladius, a sword,^[2]) is a genus of perennial cormous flowering plants in the iris family (Iridaceae).^[3]
It is sometimes called the 'sword lily', but is usually called by its generic name (plural gladioli).^[4]
The genus occurs in Asia, Mediterranean Europe, South Africa, and tropical Africa. The center of diversity is in the Cape Floristic Region.^[5] The genera Acidanthera, Anomalesia, Homoglossum, and Oenostachys, formerly considered distinct, are now included in Gladiolus.^[6]

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Whenever I say a Monday is hard I always want to add "for a Monday!!!!" But still, with that caveat, I did have a relatively tough time with this puzzle. I got stuck on the left side for a while. I'm not really sure why, other than knowing I'll hold a grudge with the constructor for that clue for ARBORS (I was expecting it to be ALLEY or something, not "shady" in the literal sense!). LEWD is one of my least favorite words in the whole world--it's up there with "moist". I think I've expressed my frustration with seeing ERA and directions like NNE clued the exact same way in every Monday ever, but other than that, no real ISSUEs with the fill, other than perhaps a little blandness. I like to be learning lots of new words in my puzzles.

The theme, on the other hand, was the opposite of bland! It took me much longer than I'd like to admit to find the trees in each answer (and I'm still not 100% sure I got them all right, honestly). And I actually didn't knowwhat analder was. Deb Amien in the NYT's Wordplay column commented on the weirdness of constructing a puzzle around a brand name. I think it was definitely worth it for the creativity, though, and it didn't feel like an ad at all.

Bullets:

DROOLS (54A: Slobbers)— Okay, with this right next to KENNEL I basically have to post a picture of my dog. Like, legally speaking. Her name is Juliet and I love her and she likes rolling around on her back and getting covered in grass.

Image may contain: dog, outdoor and nature

look at this absolute baby.

BEE (23A: Flier from flower to flower)— Have I ever talked about my brief stint as a spelling bee star on this blog? I won my school's spelling bee, and made it to 12th place in the county bee before being defeated by the word TAIGA. Seven years later, I'm still mad that the girl who went after me only had to spell DREIDEL. I mean, come on, I'm Jewish, I totally would have gotten that one!
DR. DOOM (4D: Enemy of the Fantastic Four)— This is the most ridiculous name for a villain ever and I have no idea how this series has been going this long without them changing it to something else. But I love it.
UFO (34A: Saucer in the sky, for short)— Appropriately, I've had this song stuck in my head for days for some reason. So now it can be stuck in yours!

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student. (For one more year, anyway.)

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Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:31)

THEME: food-bodied — hyphenated adjectives where pre-hyphen is edible and post-hyphen is body part-related; clues are all one-word adjectives used to describe people:

Theme answers:

BUTTER-FINGERED (16A: Klutzy)
MUTTON-HEADED (30A: Stupid)
HONEY-TONGUED (38A: Eloquent)
CHICKEN-LIVERED (55A: Cowardly)

Word of the Day: LORELEI (34A: Rock singer?) —

The Lorelei (/ˈlɒrəlaɪ/; German: Loreley German: [loːʀəˈlaɪ, ˈloːʀəlaɪ]) is a 132 m (433 ft) high, steep slate rock on the right bank of the river Rhine in the Rhine Gorge (or Middle Rhine) at Sankt Goarshausen in Germany. / The name comes from the old German words lureln, Rhine dialect for "murmuring", and the Celtic term ley "rock". The translation of the name would therefore be: "murmur rock" or "murmuring rock". The heavy currents, and a small waterfall in the area (still visible in the early 19th century) created a murmuring sound, and this combined with the special echo the rock produces to act as a sort of amplifier, giving the rock its name. The murmuring is hard to hear today owing to the urbanization of the area. Other theories attribute the name to the many accidents, by combining the German verb "lauern" (to lurk, lie in wait) with the same "ley" ending, with the translation "lurking rock". [...] In 1801, German author Clemens Brentano composed his ballad Zu Bacharach am Rheine as part of a fragmentary continuation of his novel Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter. It first told the story of an enchanting female associated with the rock. In the poem, the beautiful Lore Lay, betrayed by her sweetheart, is accused of bewitching men and causing their death. Rather than sentence her to death, the bishop consigns her to a nunnery. On the way thereto, accompanied by three knights, she comes to the Lorelei rock. She asks permission to climb it and view the Rhine once again. She does so and thinking that she sees her love in the Rhine, falls to her death; the rock still retained an echo of her name afterwards. Brentano had taken inspiration from Ovid and the Echo myth.
In 1824, Heinrich Heine seized on and adapted Brentano's theme in one of his most famous poems, "Die Lorelei". It describes the eponymous female as a sort of siren who, sitting on the cliff above the Rhine and combing her golden hair, unwittingly distracted shipmen with her beauty and song, causing them to crash on the rocks. In 1837 Heine's lyrics were set to music by Friedrich Silcher in the art song "Lorelei"^[2] that became well known in German-speaking lands. A setting by Franz Liszt was also favored and dozens of other musicians have set the poem to music. (emph mine)

• • •

Weird upside-down and backwards sensation of not caring for the theme much at all but loving the grid. Turning all of the themers into body parts with -ED suffixes (meaning "possessed of (said body part)") was an interesting theme cohesion strategy, but BUTTER-FINGERED? There is a candy bar called Butterfinger, and you might call a clumsy person "Butterfingers!" but I don't think I've heard this adjectival form much. "He is like unto one who has fingers made of actual sticks of butter, in that he is ever letting objects fall from 'twixt his digits." There's just something odd about seeing "butterfingers!" in this adj. form. And MUTTON-HEADED? I know I've never heard that. PIG-HEADED and even MULE-HEADED, sure. But MUTTON-HEADED? I'm sure it's valid, but it's not exactly a bulls-eye. And CHICKEN-LIVERED??? CHICKEN on its own means "cowardly." He was cowardly. He was chicken. Same thing. You're LILY-LIVERED, or even YELLOW-LIVERED (though even there, YELLOW-BELLIED is better...). CHICKEN-LIVERED is absurd. HONEY-TONGUED is the one that lands best, I think, but then I'm a fan of Ralegh's* "Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," so I may be biased.

["A honey tongue, a heart of gall / Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall"]

So the theme felt all kinds of off and wobbly and yet (and this neeeeever happens in early-week puzzles, esp. on Tuesday) I really enjoyed solving this one because the fill was so sweet and smooth and the cluing was totally on point. On Tuesday, I'm usually squirming at least a little because of the fill, which is often overly common, or has been severely compromised by the theme, or both. But this thing was beautiful. Small junky stuff is kept to a minimum and kept marginal, and so we get the pleasure of having SIBELIUS and BUDAPEST and RED TIDES etc. just wash all over us. This grid is clean clean clean. And entertaining. Love the alliterativeness of PROUD PAPA. Love the word PIE-EYED. Very much love the clue on LORELEI. And that wasn't the only wonderful trick clue. 12D: Heat shields? for BADGES! 46A: Expert in calculus: Abbr. for DDS! The clue on MOTHER was a little, er, graphic for my tastes (41D: Person whose inner child has been released?), but it's still very clever. I think SOV. was the only moment of wincing that I experienced today (47D: Part of U.S.S.R.: Abbr.). Otherwise I really liked the grid, even if it was a little LECHEROUS and LEERING.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this week's New Yorker crossword (by Anna Shechtman) is out and it's something.

*not a typo

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1958 Physics co-Nobelist Frank / THU 5-17-18 / Jagged mountain range / Friend of Sheldon on Big Bang Theory / Soft drink whose logo features red circle / Hester Prynne's mark / TV personality in bow tie

Longtime CNBC commentator Ron / FRI 5-18-18 / Annual meteor shower in October / Lying flat on one's back in yoga / Modern land in ancient Sasanian empire

Fine dandy old slang / SAT 5-19-18 / Geological feature of Zion National Park / ES game company that produced Yahtzee Bingo / Fruits also known as bottle gourds / Slight upward curves as in roads beams / River of central Germany

Unnamed character in Camus's Stranger / SUN 5-20-18 / Filth covering pecans such / Mozart's Don Alfonso Leporello / Scottish accents / Backyard shindig informally

Puppeteer lewis / MON 5-21-18 / 1960s-70s Ford named for Italian city / Popular Cartoon Network programming block

Dame Myra of piano fame / TUE 5-22-18 / Compound in synthetic rubber / Constellation next to Draco / Sheik's land in poetry / drain decloggers

Superman-like stance / WED 5-23-18 / Island that's world's third-smallest country after Vatican City Monaco / Quarter barrel of beer /

Seinfeld's stringed instrument / THU 5-24-18 / output of spinning jenny / Portable music player brand / City center of 1890s Klondike Gold Rush

Fictional work that eschews literary conventions / FRI 5-25-18 / Sister chain of applebee's / Rocker nicknamed Motor City Madman / Time-killing plays for quarterbacks / 12x platinum compilation album by Rolling Stones / Reality show whose contestants must be good with numbers

Patronize off-track betting say / SAT 5-26-18 / 2014 Facebook acquisition / Portrayer of Warren Buffet in HBO's too big to fail / Intimate practice done at distance / War-torn mideast city

Guardian Angel Curtis / SUN 5-27-18 / Bygone Cambodian leader with palindromic name / Query from Judas / Shape of every Baha'i temple / Alias of rapper Sean Combs / Former Nebraska senator James

Paneer Indian dish made with spinach / MON 5-28-18 / Hinged part of airplane wing / Washington image seen on back of $50 bill / Corporate hustle bustle / Elizabethan neck decorations

Idiosyncratic sorts / TUES 5-28-18 / Knight's steed / Piquancy / Lopsided game

Big name in nail polish / WED 5-30-18 / 1953 Leslie Caron title role / Message system superseded by fax / Transparent sheet used for overlays / Gooey vegetable /

Filler for une pipe / THU 5-31-18 / Broad-leaved endive / Rum-drinking buddy / First sub-saharan country to obtain independence from colonial rule / One millionth of meter along spiritual path / null number of natural numbers

Harriet's hubby on 1950s-'60s TV / SAT 6-2-18 / Habitat for ibex / Zookeepers rounds informally / Strobe stuff / Alternative to cab

Place in 1969 western / SUN 6-3-18 / Where techno music originated / Minella monkey muppet / Father of Phobos god of fear / Opera set in 1800 Rome / 1904 Jack London novel

Shady places / MON 6-4-18 / Boneless cut named for a New York restaurant / Brand that "nobody doesn't like" / Active types / Deborah of "The King and I"

Composer who's eponym of Helsinki park / TUE 6-5-18 / Lead-in to gender / Nearest target for bowler / Dodges of 1980s / Island off western coast of Scotland / Colorful ocean phenomena caused by dinoflagellates / Neophyte in modern lingo