Boy genius of old teen fiction / TUE 5-10-16 / Alsace assents / Broken Tower poet / Former dictator of Panama / Actress Malone of Hunger Games

Constructor:David Kwong

Relative difficulty:Easy (because of all the proper nouns, your mileage may vary)


THEME:"BIRDMAN" (51A: Best Picture of 2014 ... or what 18-, 23-, 28-, 34-, 46- and 56-Across is) — men whose last name is also a type of bird:

Theme answers:

• EARL WEAVER (18A: Longtime Orioles manager in the Baseball Hall of Fame)
• JOHN JAY (23A: Co-author of the Federalist Papers)
• TONY HAWK (28A: Big name in skateboarding)
• HART CRANE (34A: "The Broken Tower" poet)
• TOM SWIFT (46A: Boy genius of old teen fiction) (what's an "old teen"?) (jk)
  
• PETER FINCH (56A: "Network" Oscar winner)

Word of the Day:TOM SWIFT —

Tom Swift is the main character of five series of American juvenile science fiction and adventure novels that emphasize science, invention and technology. First published in 1910, the series total more than 100 volumes. The character was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book-packaging firm. Tom's adventures have been written by various ghostwriters, beginning with Howard Garis. Most of the books are credited to the collective pseudonym"Victor Appleton". The 33 volumes of the second series use the pseudonym Victor Appleton II for the author. For this series, and some of the later series, the main character is "Tom Swift, Jr." New titles have been published as recently as 2007. Most of the various series emphasized Tom's inventions. The books generally describe the effects of science and technology as wholly beneficial, and the role of the inventor in society as admirable and heroic. // Translated into many languages, the books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Tom Swift has also been the subject of a board game and a television series. Several famous people, including Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov, have cited "Tom Swift" as an inspiration. Several inventions, including the Taser, have been inspired allegedly by Swift's fictional inventions. "TASER" is said to be an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle." (wikipedia)

Simple theme, smooth grid—remarkably smooth, considering how dense the theme is. When constructors try to cram tons of theme material into a grid, the grid often groans MIGHTY-ly under the pressure, but this one doesn't even sag a little. It's hard to say how difficult this puzzle was, relative to other Tuesdays, because not knowing even one name could slow you down considerably. I was lucky enough to know them all, with my moments of greatest theme answer uncertainty coming with HART CRANE ("The Broken Tower" is not a work I've ever heard of) and TOM SWIFT (whose name I know more from those stupid 'Tom Swifties' than anything else). But with letters already in place before I looked at their clues, even HART and TOM weren't too much trouble. I thought this puzzle was going to have some improbable "county seat" theme, where cities (e.g. SAVANNAH) sat alongside counties of which they were the seat (e.g. CHATHAM). If you start in the NW, as many do, this seems a reasonable first impression.


CHATHAM slowed me down (3D: Georgia county of which [SAVANNAH] is the seat), but after that, I had no more than a second or two's hesitation with any answer until I hit the other side of the grid. Every answer went right in, no problem. Weirdly, it was the revealer that gave me the most trouble. Even with several letters in place, I had no idea what movie could possibly have won Best Picture *just last year* that I couldn't remember *at all*. I had BIR- and still no idea. Also struggled a bit with SAMARIA (43D: Biblical city of Palestine), so that section kept me from what could've been close to a record Tuesday solving time for me. But surrounding answers were easy enough to pick up. Again, I'm really impressed there are so many themers and so little junk (INSO, NSW, CTA, STUF, AHS ... if you wanted to carp, you could carp there, I suppose ... oh INANER; I do genuinely dislike that word, but that's just a matter of (dis)taste, I think). I should probably add that I didn't really know WEAVER or SWIFT was a bird type (well, especially the former). But that hardly mattered, considering I didn't know birds were even in play until the puzzle was over.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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