Former Sanyo competitor / TUE 4-26-16 / Canyon Park running spot in Hollywood Hills / Ones helping public prosector / Aggressive manager for child star / Popular strength-training program

Constructor:Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:words made into scandals— familiar words/names ending in -GATE are reimagined (in wacky "?" clues) as unlikely scandal names:

Theme answers:

• DELEGATE (18A: Scandal surrounding copy editors' proofreading marks?)
• ELONGATE (19A: Scandal involving Tesla C.E.O. Musk?)
• APPLEGATE (28A: Scandal affecting iPhone owners?) (Christina! She'll like that...)
  
• FLOODGATE (47A: Scandal in the aftermath of a tsunami?)
• TAILGATE (57A: Scandal that implicates a detective?)
• NAVIGATE (61A: Scandal depicted in "Avatar"?)

Word of the Day:RUNYON Canyon Park(33A: ___ Canyon Park (running spot in the Hollywood Hills)) —

Runyon Canyon Park is a 160-acre (65 ha) park in Los Angeles, California, at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, managed by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The southern entrance to the park is located at the north end of Fuller Avenue in Hollywood. The northern entrance is off the 7300 block of Mulholland Drive. The Runyon Canyon Road, a fire road that is closed to public motor vehicle access, runs roughly through the center of the park between the northern and southern entrances along Runyon Canyon itself, and there are numerous smaller hiking trails throughout the park. The highest point in the park at an elevation of 1,320 ft (402 m) is known as Indian Rock. Because of its proximity to residential areas of Hollywood and the Hollywood Hills, celebrity sightings are common. The park is also noted for having a fairly liberal dog policy, with dogs allowed off-leash in 90 of the park's 160 acres (0.65 km²). (wikipedia)

Simple, clever concept, very easy to solve (so many -GATEs to be automatically filled in).  For me, the highlight of the puzzle wasn't the theme, it was the sassy, polished grid. FRENEMY and STAGEMOM before I even got out of the NW? That's impressive. There's current and/or snappy fill all over the place. I particularly liked CROSSFIT, AIR COVER, LOST LOVE, LOW-RISK, and "WORD UP," though I'd've clued that last one via the 1986 Cameo song. People mostly actually just say "Word," if they use that expression at all. This is an incredibly minor point. There is hardly any junk in this puzzle. ADAS, I don't like. Any other problematic short fill is, at worst, overfamiliar, and even that is quite infrequent. No CHAGRIN here. The weirdest answer in the puzzle was RUNYON. Usually I'm giving sideeye to the hyperlocal *NYC* (or overall Northeastern US) fill, accusing the puzzle of its own special brand of provincialism. But a park in L.A.? When I see pictures, the park actually looks familiar, but I lived in Southern California for a while and I've never heard of RUNYON Canyon Park. It is a deeply weird proper noun to put in your *Tuesday* *NYT* puzzle, especially when a much more famous RUNYON is readily available to you (Damon, who wrote "Guys & Dolls" and was a hugely famous sportswriter and short story writer in the early 20th c.). But with this theme that essentially gives away huge chunks of real estate in the grid, maybe the thinking was that you gotta put *something* in there to slow people down. So ... some park! Why not?


My stumbles were not that noteworthy. First thing I wrote in the grid was PEONS, but I instantly knew it was wrong (1A: Medieval drudges). RUNYON slowed me down a bit over there in the west. I hesitated writing in SEAN Bean because even though it felt right, I couldn't picture him in my head. Only Mr. Bean popped up. And SEAN Astin. But no matter. SEAN was right. This one was perhaps over-easy, but highly pleasing for me nonetheless. Nice gridwork.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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