Sidekick in 1990s SNL skits / SUN 6-19-16 / Many-time Indy 500 pace car / Hazel's love in Fault in Our Stars / 1991 film with tagline secret of life secret's in sauce / Brand with two harnessed horses in its logo / Starting point for Pompeii tourism / 1948 John Wayne film

Constructor:David Woolf

Relative difficulty:Medium


THEME:"Traffic Intersection"— some black squares (in the above version) function like intersections, where the square is "RED" in answers that precede and follow the square, but do not go *through* the square, and "GREEN" in answers that *do* go through the square, thus:

Theme answers:
 
HANK [Green!] BERG, but
BEET [Red!] // [Red!] SCARE

FRIED [Green] TOMATOES
BLOOD [Red] // [Red] RIVER

WINTER [Green] GUM
BIG [Red] // [Red] HAIR

GOD'S [Green] EARTH
SEES [Red] // [Red] EYES

EVER [Green] TREE
TURNS [Red] // [Red] HOTS

and finally

JOLLY [Green] GIANT
RUNNING A [Red!!!!] LIGHT

Word of the Day:TALLINN(63D: Baltic capital) —

Tallinn (/ˈtɑːlɪn/ or /ˈtælɪn/, Estonian pronunciation: [ˈtɑlʲˑinˑ]; names in other languages)^{[citation needed]} is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, 80 km (50 mi) south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn occupies an area of 159.2 km² (61.5 sq mi) and has a population of 440,950. Approximately 32% of Estonia's total population lives in Tallinn. (wikipedia)

RUNNING A [Red] LIGHT. Cute. All the other intersections involved legal driving behavior, but here, a violation, and a near-miss of the JOLLY [Green] GIANT. I thought this theme worked pretty well. I was advised by a note that I should do the PDF or "Web game version" (?) because there would be colored boxes of some sort, possibly with green on two sides of the square and red on the other two sides? Wouldn't that make solving it really obvious. Part of the challenge for *me* was finding exactly which black squares were functioning as intersections. I get that colors are pretty and all, but why give so much away? Oh well, no matter, I did it My Way, and it worked. What's more, the fill was really very clean. I continue to not know TALLINN, so that second "L" was my last squares, but ... maybe next time it'll stick. There's always next time. Good ol' next time.


I picked up the precise nature of the theme at HANK [Green]BERG. I am a Tigers fan, so this is not a surprise. I have never heard of TOMGIRL and do not in any way believe it to be a real thing. TOMBOY, of course. TOMGIRL ... I thought the "Tom" part was supposed to connote the gender convention-breaking for the girl. How do you hop from boy to girl via "Tom"? It makes no sense. What's more, no one ever says it ever. Also, SANTACON is a "pub crawl"? Where when what? Typically "-con"s are conventions. I have never heard of this con and have no way of knowing if it's really famous or just some regional thing or what. Oh, wait. I do have the Internet / internet. Hang on. Wow, it looks like a very modern and really stupid thing and I'm going to go back to not knowing about it now. I was surprised to get stymied by an ampersandwich (BANDB). It's been a while. Usually I can spot those, but today, because the clue was so vague (1A: It's accommodating), and because the "D" cross was a tough "?" clue (4D: One going for a board position?), I had to work that area down to the last square before I knew what was going on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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