Concubine's chamber / SUN 11-8-15 / Hokkaido port / Paternally related / Chiwere speaking tribe / Hokkaido port / Tarzan's simian sidekick / Second-largest dwarf planet / Costner Russo golf flick / Phishing lures / Vinland explorer circa AD 1000

Constructor:Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:"Three-Peat"— theme answers are words where three-letter strings immediately repeat. In the grid ... they do not. So ... you have to imagine the three-letter string ... repeating.

Theme answers:

• CONAN THE BAR[BAR]IAN (23A: 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film)
• ENT[ENT]E CORDIALE (33A: Bringer of peace between nations)
• CHIHUA[HUA], MEXICO (39A: State bordering Texas)
• CIN[CIN]NATI REDS (57A: Rose buds?)
•  TRAINED ASS[ASS]INS (66A: Jason Bourne and others)
• ALF[ALF]A SPROUTS (76A: Salad bar bowlful)
• REPOSSE[SSE]D CARS (91A: Some auto auctions' inventory)
• CHE[CHE]N REPUBLIC (100A: Land in the Caucasus)
• MISS[ISS]IPPI MUD PIE (or maybe the "SSI" repeats, I don't know) (114A: Chocolaty Southern dessert)

Word of the Day:SEHNA knot(7D: ___ knot, rug feature) —

noun

1.

ahand-tiedknot,usedinrugweaving,inwhichtheendsofyarnloopedaroundawarpthreadappearateachoftheintersticesbetweenadjacentthreadsandproduceacompactandrelativelyevenpileeffect.

AlsocalledPersianknot. (dictionary.com)

This will be short, as I have nothing nice to say about this puzzle. I don't know whose idea of a good time this is. It's unfathomable to me that this seemed to anyone like it would be an entertaining / engaging / exciting concept. It's also unfathomable to me how a Sunday NYT ("world's best puzzle"!) grid, in 2015, can be this stale. Staleness is exponentially worse on a Sunday, as there's So Much More of it to wade through. I don't want to play the game where I list all the tired / iffy stuff, but AGNATE (ugh-nate) and OTARU (?!) and ODA and ELENI and ADITS and a million other things (OTOE crossing ESAI, say) put this is in the unappealingly retro category. Even the answers that at least Try to be interesting (EATEN RAW, USED POT) seem off, tin-eared, weird. I find this puzzle's very existence baffling. I can only infer that the NYT is *desperate* for Sunday puzzles. This is your marquee day—biggest solving day of the week, biggest audience, highest constructor pay by a long shot (more than 3x the amount paid for a daily). So the Sunday puzzle could at least have the decency to Show Up.


I would not put ASS (82D: Dunderhead) in a puzzle where one of the themers involves ASS repetition (TRAINED ASS[ASS]INS). But then I wouldn't do a lot of what has been done in this puzzle. I'm going to stop. You can let me know what you think.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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