Magnum opus of Spinoza / SAT 4-16-16 / subtilior music style / Place to get brew in more than 11000 US locations / Edible Asian sprout / Quack stopper for short / Only actor to appear in all eight American Pie films

Constructor:Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium (more Easy)


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:Bob RAE, leader of Canada's Liberal party before Justin Trudeau(26A) —

Robert Keith "Bob" Rae, PCCCOOntQC (born August 2, 1948) is a lawyer, negotiator, public speaker and former Canadian politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre and was the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2011 to 2013. He was previously leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and the 21stPremier of Ontario, from 1990-1995. (wikipedia)

Easy, and mostly delightful. The stacks are sparkly and worth the occasional bump and bruise in the shorter crosses. I MEAN, REALLY, that is a nice NW stack, even if you do have to go through BARIC (?) and HAHAS (ugh) and the weird crosswordese twins OLAN and OLIN to get it.  Oh, and OR LESS ... I guess that is a lot of damage for one stack to cause, but it *is* a nice stack. "Nice stack" is now making me laugh because it sounds like an objectifying, sexist remark, but isn't. I don't know what a BARREL CHAIR is, but then again I don't know who Sir JONY Ive is, either, and I'm being mocked on social media for it right now, so maybe BARREL CHAIRs are as ubiquitous as iPhones and I've just been blind. ANOTCH and ORLESS are really too long to be partials, but I did a (mainstream!) puzzle yesterday that had ONAANDE and MYDUST in it, so it's hard for anything to faze me much right now.


I threw BIB down immediately, though I wasn't certain. Then I posited BORIC (so close ... I actually knew Boron was a lower at. no. than 56, but plowed forward anyway) and that mostly-right answer got me RIME, which made it easy to see MERRIEST, which made for an easy hop from B-M... to BAMBOO... and the NW was pretty much done in a couple minutes.

From here, the obvious move is to check out the F and B crosses in FBI CASES, so I did that. Why "obvious"? Because a. I've got the first letters, so there's a higher probability I'll get them than any other answer in the grid, at least at first glance; and b. if/when I get them, they'll have given me the front end of that central grid-spanner. Always great to have the top letters in place in any bank of answers—drastically increases the likelihood you'll be able to drop the Downs and finish off a section expeditiously. And that's what happened, though I wrote in FRAK for 22D: Assault, as a commanding officer, and had No Idea who that Canadian Bob guy was. (Dictionaries are telling me that FRAG actually means "kill a commanding officer, usu. w/ a grenade"; distinction between "assault" and "kill" seems at least moderately important). From FRAG, I ran across grid via GET THE WRONG IDEA and then up to NE, where I briefly struggled with MCCAFE (I don't ... go ... to there). Had --CAFE and had to really think about it. And so, half done:


WIG crossing is weird, but not bad, imho. PERIWIG is probably the most arcane thing in this grid, but the word must live somewhere in my brain, because I somehow wanted PERI-. But I didn't trust it, so moved over to the SE, which is really the most lovely part of the grid. EUGENE LEVY running down into a beautiful triple stack, and not a bad answer in sight. Much, much cleaner than its symmetrical counterpart in the NW. So kudos to this one. It had some rough moments, but I thought it more good than bad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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