1946 Goethe Prize winner / SAT 10-31-15 / Gangsta rap characters / 1960s-80s Chevrolet coupe utility vehicle / Ways of sitting in yoga / Suddenly angrily stop playing game in modern lingo

Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MITZI Gaynor (50A: Gaynor with the one-woman show "Razzle Dazzle!") —

Mitzi Gaynor (born September 4, 1931) is an American actress, singer, and dancer. [...] Gaynor's one-woman show, Razzle Dazzle: My Life Behind the Sequins, toured the United States throughout 2009 and 2010 (including an acclaimed 2 week engagement in NYC); her tour resumed in 2011. (wikipedia)

I do love a Peter Wentz themeless grid. They are whisper quiet (almost no clunks or PLINKs) but also powerful and exciting.  There were pleasant surprises at every turn here: the EL CAMINO and THE KINKS and the ASANAS I should've been doing tonight instead of skipping out and drinking martinis. I feel no guilt, crossword, so shove it! I even mildly enjoyed remembering the defunct sad mall toy store KB TOYS (13D: Former chain store for kids). I had EB TOYS at first, which I think I got to via EB SPORTS ... only it's EA SPORTS ... and EB WHITE ... so I don't really know what happened there. There were some oddish phrasings, like SWARM INTO and SHOOTS IT, but I can deal with those. What's weird (and this may be the martini, who knows) is that when I look at this grid, I keep reparsing many of the answers. NOT RUMP! LAW OMAN! SHOOT SIT! R.E.M. AX! And, of course, GENE'S E.T. 


I had trouble getting started (typical on a Saturday) but then got going with SNUBS (26D: Academy omissions). That answer was transparent, but especially so, given that I had only seconds before glanced at this Tweet:

Coincidentally, I've made crosswords with both Chris Rock and Trevor Noah in the clues (never Seinfeld). Anyway, SNUBS led to ABS and ROOMS led to NOUN and RAGEQUIT led to IRAQ, and all of a sudden things were rolling. Then I ran into THUGS (40A: Gangsta rap characters). I had ---GS and I honestly said out loud "Oh ... don't be THUGS." But then HARIBO was like "Sorry, buddy, it's THUGS." And I just stared at the grid, wondering how the NYT can continue to not know that it has a race problem. And a glaring one, at that. Look, white people, please don't make me explain to you how it looks when a white-produced puzzle for a largely white middle/upper-middle-class audience not only barely acknowledges black people exist, but when it does, only does so via clues gleaned from a cursory (and often dated) understanding of rap and hip-hop. It's either HOMEYS or THUGS with this damned puzzle. And going to "gangsta rap" for a THUGS clue, however defensible from a strictly literal standpoint, is fucking terrible in the age of #BlackLivesMatter, when so many jackass racist white people are wielding "thug" like a racial epithet. I mean, the controversy over white people's use of "THUGS" has been all over the news. Just read. Just watch. This issue is everywhere. White people should leave "thug" the hell alone. It's loaded. We loaded it. I don't care if it actually does appear in rap music or on Tupac's torso or wherever. In the context of a white-produced puzzle for mostly white people, please, dear god, clue THUGS in some way where Race Is Not A Factor. It is, sincerely, the very least you could do.


I really did like this puzzle, though. That one answer notwithstanding.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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