Abbr in Guiness logo / THU 3-24-16 / Washington Post March figure / Washington Post April figure / Author who wrote Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again

Constructor:David Liben-Nowell and Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty:Medium, except for the part where I had an error that wasn't actually an error, which took my time to Infinity, so ... Medchallengimpossible?

THEME: 

The "self-descriptive statement about a 16-Across [LOGICAL FALLACY]" is:

CIRCULAR REASONING MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE, which reads in a rectangular loop in the middle of the puzzle

Then there is another theme answer at the bottom: BEG THE QUESTION (64A: Reach a conclusion by assuming one's conclusion true)—so, another form of circular reasoning

Word of the Day:"The Washington Post March"(34A: "The Washington Post March" figure => SOUSA) —

The Washington Post is a march composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889. Since then, it has remained as one of his most popular marches throughout the United States and many other countries.

This was joyless, largely for technical reasons, but also for circular reasoning being represented in a ... rectangle. Sad trombone. But the concept is cute, and clever, in its way, and deserved better treatment than it got in the online and downloadable versions. In the latter, an important element of the puzzle (the "AROUND" clue) simply wasn't there. But apparently in the app and on the NYT site, as well as in the Across Lite (.puz, downloaded) version, the puzzle simply has a flat-out, no-doubt-about-it error. There appears to have been a late change to the grid, but not a commensurate change to the *clues*, so ... the clues said DAZE / ZIP (21D: Flabbergast / 33A: Nada), but the "correct" grid said DALE / LIP (see grid, above). So no one got a Happy Pencil or congratulatory message or anything ... just seconds to minutes of bewilderment wondering where the damned error was (answer: nowhere). So spectacular technical incompetence overshadows the damn puzzle. I feel bad for the constructors. [UPDATE: I am told the error was fixed sometime last night]


There's not much to say here. The theme is self-explanatory and you liked it or you didn't. Fill is not very interesting, but it's not terrible either. It just is. CUBANO is nice and timely, given the recent presidential visit to Cuba (29D: Castro, por ejemplo). I flew through this pretty quickly except for in the west, where I couldn't get the circular phrase to meet up until I (finally) figured out BEACON (25D: High light?). I was thinking much higher, like up in the sky. I had BE-CO- and decided to run the alphabet for the first missing letter. Luckily for me, the first letter of the alphabet is "A." Clue, solved. Puzzle, finished.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. in case you were befuddled by the clue at 35A: The Washington Post April figure (NAT): the Nationals (aka the NATs) are Washington's baseball team, and baseball's regular season begins in April, and presumably the Post writes about ... them.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]