Where Picture A might be found / MON 10-12-15 / 1994 sci-fi film turned into series on Showtime / Wrinkle-reducing injection / Navy's gridiron rival

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: Easy (under 2:30, and w/o the pictures!)


THEME:a spoonerism letter-switch thing, with pictures— so I guess there is some NURSERY RHYME that contains the phrase "A POCKET FULL OF RYE" (which is depicted in Picture A) and then if you switch the "P" and "R" you get (sound-wise) ROCKET FULL OF PIE (which is depicted in Picture B):

Word of the Day:"STARGATE"(5D: 1994 sci-fi film turned into a series on Showtime) —

Stargate (French: Stargate, la porte des étoiles) is a 1994 French-American^[3]adventure science fiction film released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Carolco Pictures. Created by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the film is the first release in the Stargate franchise. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the film stars Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Alexis Cruz, Mili Avital, and Viveca Lindfors. The plot centers on the premise of a "Stargate", an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole enabling travel to a similar device elsewhere in the universe. The film's central plot explores the theory of extraterrestrial beings having an influence upon human civilization. // The film had a mixed initial critical reception, earning both praise and criticism for its atmosphere, story, characters, and graphic content. Nevertheless, Stargate became a commercial success worldwide. Devlin and Emmerich gave the rights to the franchise to MGM when they were working on their 1996 film Independence Day, and MGM retains the domestic television rights. The rights to the Stargate film are owned by StudioCanal, with Lions Gate Entertainment handling most distribution in international theatrical and worldwide home video releases, although Rialto Pictures handles domestic distribution under license from StudioCanal. (wikipedia)

Well I blithely downloaded and solved this and had no idea what "Picture A" meant. I figured it would be explained in some later clue. I went on to solve the puzzle in 2:28. That is only a few seconds away from my record—and this grid is 16 wide!? I never even saw the other theme clues. I just wrecked this thing. I am always happy to be superfast because it makes me feel like Hercules, but I probably shouldn't be able to lay waste to an extra-wide puzzle without even looking at the theme clues, let alone grasping the theme. A more visible note on the homepage would've been nice. I finally noticed there was a little yellow "note" symbol in my AcrossLite program, so I clicked on it and saw that I was supposed to go to a different URL to download a .PDF or something. I just went back to the NYT puzzle page and got the official grid from the applet there. My feeling is that this is some wordplay and Patrick is a good cartoonist, but it's just a very tiny bit of wordplay and you can't really tell how good a cartoonist Patrick is from the equally tiny pictures (here: go buy his wonderful cartoon / puzzle book, "Zep, in the Curse of the Evil Dr. Sumac Who Lives Next Door"). Further, the rest of the puzzle was barely there. It's clean and smooth (LOL on the entirely accurate LOSER clue, 64A: Put-down from Donald Trump), but it felt slight, and my lightning time suggests that the "New Idea" here (this is the NYT's "New Ideas Week," I'm told...) was not really integral. More superficial / decorative. I can see how adding pictures to the grid could be cool, though. I'm all for it, if a. they seem to matter, and b. I get a better heads-up that the downloaded puzzle isn't going to be able to handle the pictures.


One question: why is the grid 16 wide? It's not like POCKET FULL OF RYE (the "A"-less version) would've been excessively opaque. Maybe there just needed to be more white space, since the pictures took up so much real estate. Just wondering out loud ... anyway, gotta go work on a new crossword project that I'll be unveiling later today. A group project. It's gonna be fun.

Later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Solve the debut BuzzFeed crossword by Neville Fogarty
P.P.S. Read about BuzzFeed crossword, and indie crosswords, every day at the new blog, "New Grids on the Block." (Core Contributors: Lena Webb, Ben Johnston, Peter Broda, Erin Milligan-Milburn, and me)

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