Turkish moolah / THU 6-2-16 / Hercules spinoff informally / First name in gospel / Brother's place informally / Neighbor of Majorca / Mental flub

Constructor:Susan Gelfand

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME: JACK IN / THE BOX (8D: With 48-Down, children's toy ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)— four JACKs in boxes

Theme answers:

• JACK ASS / JACK FROST
• JACK POTS / JACK CHEESE
• FLAP JACK / LUMBER JACK
• CAR JACK / PHONE JACK 

Word of the Day:BRAINO(58A: Mental flub) —

THINKO (n.) jargon
/thing'koh/(Or"braino",byanalogywith"typo") Amomentary,correctableglitchinmentalprocessing,especiallyoneinvolvingrecallofinformationlearnedbyrote;abubbleinthestreamofconsciousness.
Seealsobrain fart. Comparemouso.
[Jargon File ]
(1996-04-20)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010

Started with RICE, then changed it to STEW and got FRAT and OBI-WAN quickly thereafter. Then I looked at 1D: Nose nipper. I had -F-O-- ... and I knew what I was dealing with. [JACK] FROST went in, [JACK] ASS went across, and off I went. As I continued solving, I thought "This can't really be a JACK IN / THE BOX puzzle, can it? That's a really obvious rebus concept, and I'm virtually certain I've seen it before. Maybe this will have some different twist..." But then it didn't. It just had four JACK boxes, and a patently unnecessary revealer (which is to say, if you got one box, the revealer was obvious). Then I did some sleuthing and discovered that the NYT ran This Exact Theme roughly 4.5 years ago. Conceptually identical. So, since the NYT is just nakedly recycling themes, allow me to nakedly recycle write-ups. Actually, it wasn't my write-up. I was off somewhere, and 5-time ACPT champion Tyler Hinman was filling in for me. Anyway, you can read it here. I'm done here today. There is nothing wrong with this puzzle. It's just a rerun.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS there is one thing wrong and that is BRAINO, holy crap. But I'll let you fight over that one. Good night.

PPS here's that Dec. 1, 2011 grid ...


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