Niece's counterpart in French / TUE 6-28-16 / Mathematician whose name sounds like ship / Antarctic volcano named for place in underworld / Moniker for GErman chancellor Konrad Adenauer / Spider's web-producing organ / Decidedly non-feminist woman's group

Constructor:Alex Vratsanos

Relative difficulty:Challenging (not even close to Tuesday)

THEME:spider— some spider answers and then eight LEGs

Theme answers:

• ARACHNIDA (29A: Spider's class)
• BITE MARKS (48A: Things spiders leave)
• CHARLOTTE (22D: Spider of children's literature)
• SPINNERET (23D: Spider's web-producing organ) 

Word of the Day:SPINNERET —

noun

Zoology

noun: spinneret; plural noun: spinnerets

1. any of a number of different organs through which the silk, gossamer, or thread of spiders, silkworms, and certain other insects is produced.

   • (in the production of man-made fibers) a cap or plate with a number of small holes through which a fiber-forming solution is forced. (google)

An inspired idea that came out just dreadful. I mean ... it's like the concept took over and no one involved with making this puzzled cared about the solver's experience any more. All technique, no joy. Fill is a disaster—an out and out, tone deaf, ridiculous vocab/proper-noun-laden Dis As Ter. That SE corner alone, jeez louise. HEHHEH?? NEVEU? Honestly, this is abusive. What could've been clever and cute if done properly on a Tuesday just gets destroyed by careless execution. Try to do too much (the legs AND the four themers AND the fact that the themers intersect) and the whole thing falls apart. I mean, SPINNERET? Come on. BITE MARKS? Arbitrary. Why does the technical fact of making four themers intersect mean ... anything? Why subject solvers to arbitrary nonsense just for some technical "feat." And KRESGE (!?) crossing EREBUSandDER ALTEandSOLTIandGALEN? ADLER crossing EDAandNEVEU (!?!!)? Some name-part (!) called GELL crossing EPICENE? ICE ... LESS????? (humans would say "ICE-FREE"). No. It's Tuesday, for ****'s sake. I guarantee you that the multiple concatenations of proper nouns and foreignisms are going to send myriad solvers crashing to the ground. Why distract from your adorable eight-legged creation with a short-fill horror show. It makes no sense.


P.S. I fell asleep before solving last night and woke up to more confused and angry puzzle-related messages / email than I've had in a good long while. OMOO OLEG ... was there some contest to cram as many short crosswordese names into a grid as possible? Because we have a winner.

P.P.S. that clue on HAREM is ridiculous (31D: Decidedly non-feminist women's group). Why is it that every time the NYT crossword touches the word "feminism," it feels like the editor both doesn't understand it and doesn't respect it?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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