Nickname for New York's Aqueduct Racetrack / TUE 1-5-16 / Reductive film trope for blonde / Little red animal in children's tale / Ancient dynastic ruler briefly

Constructor: Jim Holland

Relative difficulty: Played way slower than normal for me ... not sure why


THEME: T-—familiar phrases have T- added to the front, creating low-grade wackiness:

Theme answers:

• T-MOBILE HOME (16A: Major telecom's corporate headquarters?)
• T-SQUARE ROOTS (26A: Early history of a drafting tool?)
• T-BALL BEARING (42A: Demeanor during a kid's outdoor game?)
• T-TOP BILLING (56A: Sending of invoices for removable car roofs?)

Word of the Day: EIGER (61A: Treacherous peak in the Alps) —

The Eiger is a 3,970-metre (13,020 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at 4,158 m (13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high (5,900 ft) north face of rock and ice, named Eigerwand or Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the homonymous pass connecting the two valleys. (wikipedia)

I guess this is the conclusion to yesterday's absurd PF puzzle. That is, it puts the "T" in PFFT.  I barely noticed the theme, which is probably good, because I don't think it's much worth noticing. It's slight, and it's thin. Where is the T-BONE CHINA or the T-CELL BLOCK or the T-REX RYAN or T-ZONE DEFENSE or T-PAIN AU CHOCOLAT (15!) etc.? If you're gonna go with a weak concept like this, you should go for greater theme density, and certainly go for much cleverer, much funnier clues. These didn't land At All. The most literal wackiness I've ever seen. Cluing is really, really, really important to puzzle enjoyment, and it can be the difference between a theme that works and theme that doesn't. It was like no one was really trying with these theme clues. This might've worked with a denser theme and with more Wednesday-difficulty theme cluing, something less painfully straightforward than what we get here.


Outside of ALLEGORY and LAST LEG and GOOD TO GO, there wasn't a lot of zip to this one. Cluing also seemed off in places. The [Room often next to a bedroom] is a bathroom. BATH is a shortening, "bedroom" is not, so, foul. BATH is informal real estate talk. BATH as a "room" slowed me down for sure, as did the "informally" in the lame LAME clue (2D: Not cool, informally). "Cool" is *already* informal. LAME parallels it perfectly. Why on earth do you add "informally" there? And who chooses BIG A (!?!?!) (52D: Nickname for New York's Aqueduct Racetrack) over RIGA. World capital beats "nickname" for some racetrack any day. Any. Day. AIRTO is an early contender for worst partial of the year. BIMBO isn't really redeemed by the semi-self-aware clue (43D: Reductive film trope for a blonde). MISNAME is what the person who chose "Y'all Qaeda" to describe those buffoonish Oregon terrorists did. "Y'all" is southern, not western. Obviously the superior name is "Vanilla ISIS." The angry white people with guns and a poor understanding of the Constitution are Vanilla ISIS. So much apter. The most humiliating thing I did while solving this puzzle was enter HUGH at 38D: Grant for moviemaking? And this after watching "His Girl Friday" (one of my favorite movies) Just Last Night. Ugh. I'm sorry, CARY.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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