Op-ed columnist Timothy / TUE 3-29-16 / Supporting stalks / Ancestor of harmonica / Obsolescent designation in music business / Early filmmaker Fritz / Sch overlooking Harlem

Constructor:Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty:Medium


THEME:DOGLEGS (38A: Some links holes ... with a hint to the circled letters) — golf theme with dog breeds spelled out in the shape of "doglegs" on a golf course (SETTER, POODLE, BEAGLE, COLLIE). Some other golf answers, including:

• LADIES' TEES (?!) (17A: What red markers may indicate on 59-Acrosses)
• GOLF COURSE (59A: 18 holes, often)

  And possibly these are supposed to be themed as well (?)

• ON A PAR (20A: Even (with))
• CARDED (55A: Scored, as on a 59-Across)

Word of the Day:Timothy EGAN(2D: Op-ed columnist Timothy) —

Timothy Egan (born November 8, 1954 in Seattle, Washington) is an American author and journalist. For The Worst Hard Time, a 2006 book about people who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction^[3][4] and the Washington State Book Award in history/biography. // In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America". He currently lives in Seattle and contributes opinion columns as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. (wikipedia)

I don't play golf and had no idea LADIES' TEES even existed. Also never heard CARDED used to mean "scored." Like, ever. I do know what DOGLEGS are (because of crosswords, weirdly), but MAN, this puzzle left me cold, for several reasons. The first: too Inside Golf. I don't care. I just don't care. LADIES' TEES? I'm guessing they are closer to the pin? Because ladies ... can't hit the ball as far as the men? Or maybe I'm reading the answer all wrong and LADIES' TEES really refers to women's t-shirts. I'm going to choose to believe that when LADIES' TEES are on sale at the department store, "red markers" are used to point this out. Putting dog breeds into little dogleg shapes is pretty corny *and* it puts a lot of pressure on the grid, making it hard to fill cleanly. Hence the Avalanche of painful fill, including every crosswordesey name in the book. Seriously. All of them: ELIE and ESAI and TESSA and ISAK *and* (seriously, we're still going...) ESME and AMOS. And dear lord, JA RULE? Still, we're putting him in puzzles? I'm normally very much pro-hip-hop, but JA RULE has become crutch fill for people who wouldn't know hip-hop from IHOP. It's been a decade+ since he's done anything musically significant. He shouldn't be anywhere near a Tuesday puzzle.


ONE LOOK is basically a giant partial (25D: It just took this before "I fell so hard in love with you," in a 1960s hit). Not great. Also, isn't the lyric "and I fell so hard, hard, HAAAAAARD ..." or is that just the Linda Ronstadt version? (or maybe she's just extending the syllable?)


STIPES and INGLE are words I would go to only in desperation, especially in an early-week puzzle. Weird to think you can get away with ON A PAR as a themer, when a. you don't even clue it via golf (the way you do w/ the symmetrical CARDED) and b. the idiom isn't very golf-y at all. Would you say ON A PAR in relation to golf? I know "PAR" is a golf term, obviously, but is ON A PAR? And I'm supposed to believe in plural POOHS? Again, in an early-week puzzle, I refuse to believe. SCOUNDREL is a nice word, and I like the clue on STEVENS (21A: Cat in a record store). Otherwise,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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