Lake Oahe locale / SUN 4-3-16 / Carson who won 2001 TS Eliot prize for poetry / Mayan food staple / Olympic sprinting champion Devers / Politico with autobiography American Son / 2009 Grammy nominee with lyric But this ain't seaworld this is real as it gets / 2003 #1 hit for Outkast / Fifth century pope great / Post-menorah-lighting treats

Constructor:Natan Last

Relative difficulty:Challenging


THEME:"Jumping To Conclusions"— the theme is really IN ONE EAR AND / OUT THE OTHER (23A: With 113-Across, heard but disregarded ... or a hint to interpreting the Across answers with circled letters). There are six theme answers, three sets of two. Each set of two has one clued answer coming into a space containing the letter string "EAR" but then coming out of the  "EAR" in the *other* answer. So

Theme answers:

FIRST PAIR

• 31A: Common query from one about to leave the house ("WHERE ARE MY KEYS!?")
• 46A: Indignant replay when someone withholds information ("I HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!")

SECOND PAIR

• 55A: "Come on ... be daring" ("TAKE A RISK")
• 77A: "Oh, boo-hoo!" ("CRY ME A RIVER")

THIRD PAIR

• 86A: "Would you consider this suggestion?" ("CAN I MAKE A REQUEST?")
• 100A: Comment to the not-yet-convinced (YOU'LL COME AROUND)

Word of the Day:TERZA rima(109A: ___ rima (meter of Dante's "Divine Comedy")) —

Terza rima (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtɛrtsa ˈriːma]) is a rhymingversestanza form that consists of an interlockingthree-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the ItalianpoetDante Alighieri. // The literal translation of terza rima from Italian is 'third rhyme'. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are d-e-d, e or d-e-d, e-e. (wikipedia)

Way too tired to do this puzzle justice. I solved six tournament puzzles today, and ate and drank and talked a lot, and watched a very touching tribute to the late, great Merl Reagle, put together by "Wordplay" director Patrick Creadon. So, I'm a bit exhausted. There were four of us sitting here in my hotel room trying to solve this, and it was clear we were all pretty bleary-eyed. I was the only one with the stamina to finish, and the only one who really got the theme, and that took me a while. The EAR thing came quickly. Put the EAR in the circles. Great. Done. But then what? I got the Downs to work, but the Acrosses were nonsense. Not sure why the OUT THE OTHER part didn't register more quickly. Probably the gin. Anyway, once I was done, I really appreciated the theme. i found the cluing generally to be very tough and occasionally ... off. [Slip (through)] for SEEP? I refuse to see those as equivalent. I also totally misread 40A: Show wear and figured it was clothes you wear if you are in a show, like gowns or boas. But "Show" is a verb, so ... FRAY. That "F" cross also didn't click for me. [Awesome] = FEARED. Yes. I suppose. I mean, yes. Possibly. But there is no necessary connection between awe and fear. The fill swung between great and less so. OBELI and COR and [Laugh half] HAR = not great. A Lake Oahe (where the what the???) to clue ratty old S. DAK? Grumble grumble. And then the near-dupes. CATE crossing CATO. CIMINO *and* CAMINO in the same grid!? I don't know. They *are* totally different words. So OK. Odd, but OK. To sum up: theme was ingenious, the rest felt a bit rough, and also a bit amped up, difficulty-wise.


I think I'm going to go to bed. I gotta get up to solve the last puzzle at 9am. I was in 30-somethingth place but then made an error on Puzzle 5 in precisely the area I knew I should've rechecked but I got greedy for time and just turned it in quickly. Rookie mistake. Wah WAH. I'm still in the 50s somewhere, which is OK. I keep falling, though, as (apparently) people are successfully contesting some error they did (or didn't) make. Lots of great things happened at the tournament today. I'll write more about them when it's all over. For now, to bed.

Oh, one last thing: BCS is really really not good (93A: Some Johnny Hart panels). First of all, a "panel" is not a "[comic title]." Not ever. But even if you were to read "panels" as "sets of panels making up a completed strip," it's still bad. You just can't pluralize a comics title that way. Not comfortably. GARFIELDS? PEANUTSES? CALVINS & HOBBESESESES? I live in Broome County (B.C.!), whence Johnny Hart (born in Endicott, NY!), and there are "B.C." characters on our buses and in other places. I don't know how this is relevant, but I feel that it is. BCS as a plural = just BS. Except as the bygone college football championship dealie—the Bowl Championship Series. That would be legit. Bygone, but legit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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